The next four years will present new challenges in governance and new opportunities to get policy right. It’s my honor to lead an institution that stands for the universality of human dignity and the limitlessness of human potential, and fights for policy and culture to better reflect both these truths.
One Huge Question That Could Define the Next Four Years!
If you’re into public policy, you may want to be a little more fluent in the emerging policy issues that the new Trump administration has to tackle. For instance, what will be done for veterans care? How will schools improve performance for K-12 students? What exactly is a “border adjustment tax“?
But there’s also a much bigger picture we need to understand. Let’s be honest: It wasn’t a massive popular demand for a border adjustment that swept Trump into the White House. So what was it? Here’s my explanation:
America has gotten pretty good at helping struggling people, but pretty terrible at needing them. Our nation is rendering millions of people effectively superfluous. This violates human dignity. And now we are seeing the results.
Everything from ancient philosophy to survey data tell us that feeling necessary – feeling useful to others – is a crucial piece of a happy and satisfying human life. How do you think things are trending for working-class Americans on this particular score?
Today, compared to 50 years ago, three times as many men are completely outside the labor force – that is, neither gainfully employed nor even seeking work. This dystopic economic shift owes partially to the Great Recession, partially to irresponsible policies, partially to decaying social norms, and partially to longer-term structural changes outside of Washington’s control.
The problem is only compounded by atrophy in other institutions that provide alternate paths to neededness. Instead of staying strong and buffering against economic decay, these other factors – family stability, religious participation, community engagement – are also sliding downward. Meanwhile, though our Great Society-era safety net has helped make poverty and joblessness a bit less materially intolerable, it has not made these states any less soul-crushing or any more escapable.
Both liberals and conservatives need to retire the old mindset of finding more ways to help citizens. This does not mean doing nothing, however. Congress and the Trump administration must develop a new agenda, consonant with the truths of free enterprise, that is specifically designed to make forgotten Americans more needed.
Editor’s Note: Sign Up to Stay in Touch With Arthur. Arthur is launching a new feature essay early this year that will diagnose this problem of feeling useful and instantiate an agenda with specific policy ideas to make more people needed. Updates will also be found at ThePursuitofHappiness.com.
For more information on the impact of being needed, enjoy this background piece on the subject.
