The United States has the world’s second-largest social support system. This is not what we normally hear, but it is true. Only France spends a higher proportion of the entire economy on social spending and support.
This reality serves to undermine President Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion social infrastructure bill. At The Guardian, Ben Davis tells us that the new spending “comes in a country that spends comparatively little on social programs in the first place.”
What?
As the OECD tells us: “After accounting for private social expenditure and the impact of the tax system, France is the biggest social spender at over 31% of GDP, but the United States moves up to second place at just below 30% of GDP.” In total, the U.S. spends more even than Bernie Sanders’s dreamworld utopia of Sweden (at about 25% of GDP).
It’s entirely possible to make the claim that government is the right way to allocate social spending. But so also can we make the opposite claim that government should play a lesser role. In the end, these are arguments about how we organize social spending, not whether there should be such spending at all.
It’s true that there is no mandated paid family leave program for the country. Still, most new mothers do gain unpaid maternity leave. Maybe that’s not enough. That said, there is no legal requirement for paid vacation, yet near everyone gets it. It’s entirely possible for folks to work out their own arrangements without Washington, D.C. mandating those arrangements for them and their employers.
The liberal argument, then, isn’t that a social welfare system must be created, but rather that government must take over the system that already exists.
