Social class in America: the 2004 budget

Consider also how the 2004 budget deals with labor, the chronic buzz-kill of the M.B.A. world. In the spirit of such classic market-model solutions as medical savings accounts and school vouchers, it unveils what it calls -Personal Re-employment Accounts" (PRAs), a bold new program that may someday supplant traditional unemployment insurance altogether. The budget describes our existing unemployment system as "an unwieldy relic," mainly because it relies on taxes levied on the worker's former employer, and because "employers complain that their federal unemployment taxes are too high." Awww. PRAs, on the other hand, will provide the unemployed worker with a fixed sum of money (up to $3 000 apparently regardless of the worker's expenses or previous state of employment) doled out to her in installments while she remains unemployed the balance deliverable as soon as she finds work. The PRA is thus supposed to give the worker?-get this?-an incentive to find a job. Evidently that's what's lacking in these recessionary times: the will of workers to get off their ass and stop being poor.

Imagine how an observer who is utterly innocent of American ways might respond to this. "Won't this incentive business simply be negated by the above-described dividend business?" they might ask. "Won't those unemployed workers simply fall back on their newly tax-free dividends and continue their lazy ways?" Imagine how the room would fall silent and everyone would blush at the stranger's naivete, how some thoughtful Bushite would take him aside and explain to him that we have, in America, something called social class. The policies aren't contradictory, since the people who receive unemployment and the people who receive dividends come from very, very different groups. Handouts are okay for the rich, who own most of the stock, but workers -- well, workers need to learn discipline.