My experience of what government can do to improve our society.

Much of our (more rational) current political discussion about reviving our economy seems to revolve around a simple-minded question of what got us out of the Depression. For the sake of argument, let's grant that it was WWII and not the New Deal's social safety net that revved up the economy again. Does that prove that we don't need government?

Today's NY Times Magazine (I pay for my paper subscription) has an interesting short article by Judith Warner entitled "What the Great Recession Has Done to Family Life." She discusses the touted beneficial effects of economic hardship: Does hardship make us more family- and community- oriented? Is this even what we really want?

As I read the concluding paragraph, I realize that it sums up my liberal view of government. As someone who grew up in the 40s and 50s, I remember a time where work was rewarded and people seemed to prosper. (Yes, I know only too well about the problems of the times.)

But is prosperity in the form of a higher GDP, higher stock prices, etc., all that we need?

What came out of the combined experience of the Great Depression and World War II — broad measures of quality-of-life equalization like a sharply progressive tax policy with rates on the wealthy unimaginable today, the G.I. Bill, government-subsidized home mortgages for veterans — permitted the easier, less-frenzied middle class family life that older Americans remember from the 1950s and ’60s and that younger Americans dream of. In other words, it wasn’t individual families that reformed themselves after the crucible of the Depression. It was our society. (my emphasis)

In other words, right wingers may remember war spending as having revived the economy, but I and others remember greater tax-fairness, spending on education, building of the infrastructure, etc., as having been what made America so economically wonderful at that time.