It’s a popular right wing/conservative talking point. Government doesn’t help people. We’d all be better off to let charities and the good natures of our neighbors take care of us in bad times. Trouble is, when bad times hit, less people step up to the plate to help others:
As the recession took hold, most Americans cut back on volunteer work and other civic activities, according to a survey conducted for the National Conference on Citizenship. […]
The survey found that 72 percent of Americans said they were devoting less time to volunteering and other civic activities, like providing food and shelter to those in need and participating in public discussions like town-hall-style meetings. […]
The decline in volunteerism is not good news for nonprofits, which are relying on volunteers to help offset declining revenues. In a study by the Listening Post Project, affiliated with the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies, about 4 in 10 of the responding nonprofits said they had increased their use of volunteers, and almost half said they planned to use more volunteers over the next year.
It really shouldn’t come as any big surprise. The last time we had a recession close to this big (the early 80’s) volunteerism dropped also. When times get really tough, people’s own lives take precedence. Particularly those who are unemployed or underemployed or fear that their jobs are at risk. And economists are projecting high rates of unemployment will continue for the foreseeable future.
So, big business can’t save us. Wall Street and it’s resident Masters of the Universe got us into this mess and their own greed and selfishness prohibits them from helping anyone other than themselves and their stockholders. They’ll gladly take handouts/bailouts/corporate welfare from government when they “screw the pooch” but don’t expect them to use any of that bailout money to help the common man, woman or child. And large non-profit charitable organizations are just not large enough to deal with the extent of the economic suffering which has been inflicted upon millions of Americans as a result of the crash of the Free Market’s unregulated joy ride. And thanks to that crash many local and even state governments are in dire straits as well (California anyone?).
Say what you will Republicans, but the only one left standing who can do anything about the mess we’ve landed in thanks to the policies your philosophy of small government created is the Federal Government under President Barack Obama and a Democratic majority Congress. You know, the entity whose founding document requires it to “provide for the general welfare?” So unless you have the billions of dollars in some off shore tax haven needed to re-start our economic engine, and are willing to provide them to the rest of us out of the goodness of your heart (like that would ever happen), please, just get out of the way and let them clean up the disaster that an out of control, unregulated private financial sector has wrought. You’ll have plenty of time to bitch about how awful Big Government is in the future, but for now just shut your pie holes.*
* I know. Another fantasy that isn’t ever going to come true. But hey, it sure felt good to say it.