Smart Like a What?

New RNC Chair, Michael Steele, says there’s a huge difference between “work” and “jobs”. While he may deny it later, he clearly states that a “job” is only legitimate if it has no endpoint. “Otherwise … why don’t we all just get a government job and call it a day?” he asks.

Steele is so obviously wrong, his point is barely worth considering. But what does he mean? He means that his ideology does not permit him to admit that government spending can stimulate the economy—that paying working-class people to dig ditches, repair roads, and build bridges cannot possibly have a positive, lasting effect on the economy. Perhaps we should look to those working-class souls, especially to the unemployed, to those who can’t afford even preventative medical care, to the newly homeless due to home foreclosure, to those who lost their savings due to Madoff or the money market collapse or the stock market. Does it matter to them whether the work has an endpoint? Or does it matter, most immediately, whether it will help them buy food, pay for housing and transportation, to pay for medical bills, and to care for their children?

The cycle of poverty is vicious. Sometimes, people live on such an edge that a month’s pay (or much less) can send them into a cycle from which it takes years to recover. More and more in America and other developed nations see that edge creeping ever closer, though they never expected it. And meanwhile, people like Michael Steele and John McCain are busy clinging to their conservative ideology: Tax cuts work; wealth trickles down; FDR was a fraud; financial markets are inherently responsible; self-made men exist; government doesn’t work.

Ideology must make way for reality and learn in the face of ignorance.