Examining Social Welfare in Post-Apocalypse America

Sometime in the 80's, a random deviant scrawled this message on the wall of an infamous housing cooperative in Berkeley: 

Only seven more shopping days till Armageddon.

Beneath the cynical joke about impending annihilation lies a prophetic perception of the current state of American class consciousness. Having outlasted multiple doomsdays predicted by various Mayan astrologers, would-be cosmologists, and Harold Camping, ego and materialism are still the only things holding us back from registering reality. Did I mention part of "registering reality" means confronting some very real and research-based predictions of future calamity?

"May you live in interesting times."

-Chinese Proverb-

Source: Beyond Revolution, Occupy Oakland 2011

On September 12th, Technology Review reported that 45% of American jobs will likely be automated within the next 20 years. In May, the Social Security Administration confirmed its projection that the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) Trust Funds will become depleted in 2033, and the Disability Insurance (DI) Trust Fund will run out in 2016. Currently, 1 out of every 15 Americans lives in deep poverty (less than $11,510 for a family of four). The United States can no longer pretend to be a solid tower of prosperity...and a record $16 trillion in debt means we can't afford to, either.

Maybe most of us already gleaned this information from the news, our phones, and our Facebooks. What are we doing about it?

The Call
In the aptly titled article "It's the Inequality, Stupid", Mother Jones charted data collected in several

Source: Mother Jones, "How Rich are the Super Rich?

recent studies, including research from 2007 revealing that the top 1% of income earners in the US control 34.6% of the nation's wealth. One chart created by professors at Harvard and Duke compared what most Americans believe the income distribution to be to reality, and then to how the majority want it to look. The study revealed the sheer power of denial and obfuscated media messages. However, by 2008 the growing gap in wealth had manifested in conspicuous signs of economic weakness like rising unemployment, the collapse of the housing market, and astounding levels of private debt.

...and the Response
Eventually, in 2011, outrage at the corporate abuse that created the Great Recession generated the impetus for the organization of the Occupy Wall Street encampment and the subsequent construction of hundreds of Occupy tent cities in places around the world. Public and institutional opposition to the movement led to the violent destruction of many of the camps by late 2012, and most of the rest disbanded because of poor organization and fracturing.

Occupy was criticized for lacking a clear and unified message. Significantly, the movement was driven as much by abstract notions as a solid understanding of the economic dynamics behind the growing separation between the "99 percent" and the "1 percent". The ideological slogans associated with Occupy include: "Democracy by Consensus", "Decolonization Now", and "Debt is Slavery", and these sharp catchphrases target the political and economic structures underlying American institutions, including representative democracy and capitalism.


Deconstructed Spaces
In American Ethnologist, Jeffrey Juris argued that, "social media contributed to an emerging logic of aggregation in the more recent #Occupy movements—one that involve[d] the assembling of masses of individuals from diverse backgrounds within physical spaces." Attempts at unifying or defining the movement's immediate goals often resulted in backlash from the bulk of the occupiers, who saw Occupy as an experiment in social freedom and equality. As such, the dream of Occupy was to build an alternative and non-hierarchical system which would eliminate racism, classism, sexism, and the need for representative governance. Ambitious goals.

Source: Benjamin Smith, The Quotes Project 

Occupy was a true countercultural movement, not just an economic protest, and it tried to deconstruct basic social structures in order to promote simplified, utopian spaces. Many conservatives (somewhat understandably) misunderstood the movement as a disorganized and amoral gathering of antisocial derelicts. As Walter from The Big Lebowski famously pronounced, "nihilists? Say what you like about the tenents of National Socialism, dude, at least it's an ethos."

Although organizational failures and public backlash resulted in the dispersion of the bulk of the dispirited occupiers, many Americans are now firmly aware of the undeniable existence of widespread poverty and inequality.

Motivating Social Change in Cynical Times

Source: Mabel Hill,
Illustration for "Chicken Little" 

The legacy of Occupy includes a lot of anti-consumerist sentiment and some resentful disenfranchisement. Social service professionals and liberal policy makers are currently trying to build on the lessons learned during a countercultural movement that was rather opposed to strategic political and social organization.

In particular, social workers face the paradoxical professional responsibility of fostering social change while preserving overall cohesion in a disenchanted society. Many are tasked with the job of providing palliative care to the newly impoverished, disabled, and underemployed. Others are trying to adjust to changes in healthcare policy, welfare reform, and funding deficits.

In times like these, it is extremely important to reflect on our origins and goals. What does it mean to advance the cause of social justice during an era of unprecedented change? How can we conceptualize an ethical system when it seems most established ideologies are beginning to fail? Perhaps the only way to re-examine our priorities is by seeking to understand the warnings and predictions economic theorists, folk tellers, and historians have already provided.