It does depend on the state you live in and the industry you work in. This is just my opinion, but I get the sense that a rather significant proportion of the US population regards any kind of assistance as synonymous with admitting defeat. It’s not just unions, but for any kind of welfare too, people think they are leeches if they have to ask for help. But it’s what our tax money is for; we pay a certain percentage of our income to support the unemployed and medically needy. We also have food programs and shelter to provide to the poor and homeless. Many of these programs don’t get enough funding to provide enough for those in need because their use is stigmatized and importance minimized in our culture. The propaganda about the American dream is at least in part responsible, I think. When people speak against welfare programs you hear a lot of selfish talk, such as, “I work hard, why would I pay more taxes so that someone else can sit on their ass all day?” Or sometimes these heated discussions have a racist overtone; that immigrants will come and sponge off our welfare programs if we expand them. Whether that is true or not is irrelevant to me. Compassion for fellow citizens is the point for me and it’s why I would support any assistance programs no matter the risk of whether bad actors will try to take advantage, that’s the government’s responsibility to provide a tidy set of policies so that help falls into the hands of those truly in need.
Sorry for the digression but I see the attitudes about welfare as linked to that about unions. Many citizens don’t believe that unions would have their best interests in mind (as with government on welfare programs) and that to pay dues would be simply to line the pockets of the union reps at the top for little to no benefit. Some people also buy into the notion that they can rather earn the trust and loyalty of their employer by working hard and that working hard is a virtue in and of itself. If they mean working hard to achieve a personal goal, then I do see the virtue of that point of view, but otherwise, I disagree, work is simply a means of making an income to support life in society.
It seems like think tanks and similar entities are quite effective in shaping the general mind’s perspective on a social state. I hope that some of the people holding these beliefs of being robbed by their fellow citizens can readjust to reality by a comparison of the size of welfare budgets and cuts that are taken by hard working leeches along the way. I think one of the more prominent examples are the US healthcare system: it has the highest cost per person, yet is unable to deliver, with people having to pay for services out of their own pockets on top of this. I see this system to be ineffective and inefficient mostly because of people in the chain that grab whatever they can.
Oh, they’ve been villainized my entire life. I grew up believing that they caused harm. I’m super-pro union, now. But I had to radically shift my politics before that happened and I wasn’t ever even on the Right.
So sad… Also I didn’t realize the strong decline in unions in the USA.
It does depend on the state you live in and the industry you work in. This is just my opinion, but I get the sense that a rather significant proportion of the US population regards any kind of assistance as synonymous with admitting defeat. It’s not just unions, but for any kind of welfare too, people think they are leeches if they have to ask for help. But it’s what our tax money is for; we pay a certain percentage of our income to support the unemployed and medically needy. We also have food programs and shelter to provide to the poor and homeless. Many of these programs don’t get enough funding to provide enough for those in need because their use is stigmatized and importance minimized in our culture. The propaganda about the American dream is at least in part responsible, I think. When people speak against welfare programs you hear a lot of selfish talk, such as, “I work hard, why would I pay more taxes so that someone else can sit on their ass all day?” Or sometimes these heated discussions have a racist overtone; that immigrants will come and sponge off our welfare programs if we expand them. Whether that is true or not is irrelevant to me. Compassion for fellow citizens is the point for me and it’s why I would support any assistance programs no matter the risk of whether bad actors will try to take advantage, that’s the government’s responsibility to provide a tidy set of policies so that help falls into the hands of those truly in need.
Sorry for the digression but I see the attitudes about welfare as linked to that about unions. Many citizens don’t believe that unions would have their best interests in mind (as with government on welfare programs) and that to pay dues would be simply to line the pockets of the union reps at the top for little to no benefit. Some people also buy into the notion that they can rather earn the trust and loyalty of their employer by working hard and that working hard is a virtue in and of itself. If they mean working hard to achieve a personal goal, then I do see the virtue of that point of view, but otherwise, I disagree, work is simply a means of making an income to support life in society.
It seems like think tanks and similar entities are quite effective in shaping the general mind’s perspective on a social state. I hope that some of the people holding these beliefs of being robbed by their fellow citizens can readjust to reality by a comparison of the size of welfare budgets and cuts that are taken by hard working leeches along the way. I think one of the more prominent examples are the US healthcare system: it has the highest cost per person, yet is unable to deliver, with people having to pay for services out of their own pockets on top of this. I see this system to be ineffective and inefficient mostly because of people in the chain that grab whatever they can.
Oh, they’ve been villainized my entire life. I grew up believing that they caused harm. I’m super-pro union, now. But I had to radically shift my politics before that happened and I wasn’t ever even on the Right.