Go read this article about the welfare state and the ethnic divide in America.

I agree with the premise, that(some)Americans (some white Americans) are resistant to social welfare programs that benefit people who they think are “unworthy”, even if those programs would benefit themselves.

But I also think those people are the screaming, rabid mouthed, teabagging minority.

I think that as we all get pushed further down the ladder into poverty, more American’s are thinking that social welfare programs aren’t so bad. Most people want universal health care, for example. Most folks want single payer or a public option. The one thing about the downward spiral that only the wealthy are immune. When middle class white people can’t get jobs with health insurance, or when that insurance fails to provide actual health care, then the cost/ benefit of racism & classism and even sexism gets to be too high. We’ve seen that with working class households, where dads perform more unpaid family care than dads in upper class houses and where a female bread winner not making the same wage as her male counterparts has a direct effect on their male partners.

No- I don’t think we are a post- anything society. But I do think we are all rational people in the end. Industrial age capitalism ended slavery, and the last Great depression brought us social security, perhaps technology age poverty will bring us something else that is good.