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/187/ The Huge Package State ft. Anton Jäger (Patreon)

Published:
2021-04-20 06:01:00
Imported:
2024-07
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Content

On cash welfarism and state investment. Plus regionalism in Belgium & the UK.

Anton Jäger is back on the pod to discuss the emerging 'transfer state'. We examine Biden's massive trillion-dollar spending plans and ask if this means we're leaving neoliberalism. What are the limitations to the 'cashification of welfare'? Also comparisons with cash transfers or lack thereof in the UK, Brazil and Belgium.

Plus Anton talks us through recent Belgian history and why its immobilism and bureaucracy has actually prevented a full-on neoliberal assault.

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Comments

Joel

Interesting interview. I'm not sure that Anton's distinction between the Biden infrastructure package and Medicare for All in terms of subcontracting vs direct state provisioning really holds up. Medicare for All just means the federal government pays private healthcare and pharmaceutical companies to provide healthcare for citizens, like the infrastructure plan pays contractors to provide infrastructure and conduct R&D. In fact, the Biden infrastructure bill does include direct state provisioning of services in its expansion of home healthcare, since home health aides are directly employed by some state governments because of policies pushed by unions to make collective bargaining feasible for these workers (the final bill may expand this model to all states). I would grant that Biden ignoring Medicare for All is a highly salient issue for the U.S. left, since it's basically the last major part of its platform that hasn't been adopted by the Democratic leadership and isn’t wildly unpopular and ill-conceived (like defund the police, etc.). Even then, mainstream Democrats increasingly support M4A, including about half the Congressional caucus and the governor of California, who ran on implementing it at the state level. I wouldn’t hold my breath for them to achieve anything on this front, but the mainstream Democrats’ failings here aren't enough on their own to motivate a distinct left political identity for practically any voters, especially with all of the left's other baggage. To be clear, the fact that mainstream Democrats have made the left obsolete isn't reason to celebrate them, but it certainly says something about the state of the left.

R

I am somewhat surprised, given Anton's work on basic income, that Philippe Van Parijs wasn't mentioned in this episode.