Paul Krugman today lays it all out: how Big Government has been what has stood between us and a 1930s-style Great Depression (even as he acknowledges that they could have done a better job of it). Some excerpts: (but read the whole thing!)
I heard you say that we aren’t going to have a second Great Depression. What saved us?
The answer, basically, is Big Government.
So the government fixed things? Does everyone go back to work tomorrow?
Just to be clear: the economic situation remains terrible. We haven’t yet reached the point at which things are actually improving; for now, all we have to celebrate are indications that things are getting worse more slowly.
[...]
So automatic stabilizers, an imperfect but effective enough financial bailout, and an imperfect but at least helpful stimulus package are all working together to overcome the problems in the economy?
Ronald Reagan was wrong: sometimes the private sector is the problem, and government is the solution.
That's not the only thing he was wrong about.
And aren’t you glad that right now the government is being run by people who don’t hate government?
[...]
One of the obstacles to effective health-care reform (read: Medicare For All, but the same is true of the weak-tea public plans on offer) is that distrust of the government, that is to say, not trusting the government to take care of its citizens, was exacerbated to an extraordinary degree during the Bush II administration. Its (in)actions after 9/11 (NYC still waiting for promised aid) and Katrina, etc., have left the people who "work hard and play by the rules" understandably skeptical that the government will act in their best interest or help them out in case of need.
So when the government does work in these ways, we need to point it out, loudly and often. Here is a case where, unfortunately for the message, "works in these ways" means "made things a lot less bad than they would have otherwise been" - all the more reason to say it loudly and often.
Remember, people tend to believe things that they hear a lot.
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Well, this is all very half a loaf...
I don't know how people in communities that have 20%plus unemployment are going to feel about well, aren't you happy it isn't worse.
Medicare for All is Civil Rights
Then that is the wrong way to say it.
And we still need for the government to be doing better, and MORE.
I'm seeing too many people here falling into moxie traps recently.
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We can't afford not to have single-payer!
Another form of moxie trap
is having distaste for/ distrust of Obama translate into not being able to say anything positive about government programs and policies that have been put in place on his watch - and TARP very much falls into that category - because it might, possibly, come across as saying something positive about Obama. [I was never opposed to bailing out the banks - I was, and still am, opposed to bailing them out without significant restrictions and regulations put in place. I believe that at one time Pelosi and other congressional Democrats also held this position.]
It's possible to point out that a government program has done good as far as it goes, while also saying that it does not go far enough.
And if we don't get the message out that Government action can be a good thing, we risk reinforcing the message that Government is the enemy.
The challenge is to make Government work for us, and at the same time to get people to trust that Government can do good things for its citizens. People don't mind paying taxes to the extent that they see that they are getting something for their tax dollars.
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We can't afford not to have single-payer!
Uh, I agree that intervention was needed
to stop the financial sector from collapse, and I liked the parts of the stimulus that were stimulative. I am making a political point that its hard to argue this worked to people without jobs.
Medicare for All is Civil Rights
Yes, and I'm making the point
that we should find a way.
I'm not disagreeing with you about the difficulty. For unemployed people, for example, we can point out that the stimulus package was both smaller and less targeted than many economists thought wise (Krugman, Roubini, Stiglitz, etc...) and so when there is a chance for stimulus II - and that's probably going to come - we need to make sure the next one is the right size and better targeted.
Otherwise, we leave the field open to those who will argue the stimulus failed and so more would be wasted.
(There are also arguments to be made about the value of deficit spending here, but I doubt unemployed people running out their benefits are very concerned about that right now.)
Actually, I am less concerned with arguments than with messages in this thread. I think people really should read the paper I linked about "Setting People Straight" which reviews the evidence about what works and what doesn't (when reaching out to groups of people: individuals may be reached differently). We are often convinced of the value of methods of persuasion which don't work in the real world - they seem to make sense, but they don't work. And I think repeating an action that hasn't worked in the past, hoping for a different outcome... wasn't that somebody's definition of insanity?
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We can't afford not to have single-payer!
I agree.
I am not actually confronted with many people who don't believe in government here in my little blue state. :) I'm more confronted with people who don't think the government has done enough. But, yes, I agree. I have these arguments with my rightwing in-laws all the time. The latest was when I had to explain Obama wasn't trying to "socialize" medicine, which lead to me endorsing a single payer. They were appalled. I said well, what about you? Do you like Medicare? Of course, yes, they like it and they don't want any cuts to Medicare. I said, well, there you go, Medicare is single payer, government financed health care...kinda left them speechless.
Medicare for All is Civil Rights