It was refreshing to read the unvarnished differences between our polarized parties in the columns of David Brooks and Paul Krugman today (New York Times, June 15, 2012).  The rhetoric of the campaign has bombarded us with accusations about spending, deficits, loopholes and tax cuts. One party is maligned as the “spend and tax” party, while the other is labeled the “cut and reduce benefits” party, as if one was the profligate mother and the other the austere father of the nation. Excuse the gender stereotypes, but we are talking about caricatures here, not reality.

In fact, each party has it hands open to its own constituency and closed to those it considers over-compensated.  The question of the next election is who should be satisfied?

David Brooks characterizes our current economy as an obsolete “welfare state,” because government is spending more and more on services, such as health, retirement, education and protection, rather than “productivity.”

 . . . the current model shifts resources away from the innovative sectors of the economy and into the bloated state-supported ones, like health care and education.

Brooks’ assumption is that our society is energized by business and “innovation,” and the resources that we put into public services deny this productive sector its vitality.

The welfare state favors security over risk, comfort over effort, stability over innovation. Money that could go to schools and innovation must now go to pensions and health care.

Oddly he refers to education in one paragraph as “bloated and state-supported,” but in the next paragraph as a partner to “innovation.”  Perhaps he really favors education, but not so much public education.  So his distinction between the “bloated state-supported” institutions and the “innovative” enterprises that drive the economy is really one of public vs. private.  Public sector = wasteful; private sector= productive.

He has a point. After all, what useful products come from the public sector? Alert minds, safe neighborhoods, disaster prevention, disease prevention and healing. None of these make the Dow-Jones’ heart skip a beat.  They do nothing but improve our quality of life. They produce nothing but social welfare. “Welfare” is defined as one of the goals of government in the Preamble to the Constitution, which states, among other purposes, “to promote General Welfare.”  But there is nothing productive about this goal; it merely improves our lives.

As Paul Krugman points out, the public sector does not figure in Governor Romney’s plan for America. In an outburst he later qualified, Romney criticized President Obama’s interest in restoring jobs to the public sector:

He says we need more firemen, policemen, more teachers. . . . It is time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.

Krugman points out that in Romney’s campaign “government” is conflated with public sector jobs, so that waste is associated with the service professions. “Conservatives love to pretend that there are vast armies of government bureaucrats doing who knows what; a majority of government workers are employed in either education (teachers) or public protection (police officers or fire fighters). ”  So if you analyze the jobs that fall under the “public sector,” they are the services that sustain and improve our way of life. Unfortunately these services don’t “produce” anything, so they are demeaned by Governor Romney and David Brooks.

However, Krugman goes on to argue, the public sector does create jobs. Public sector jobs are down 1.4 million, says Krugman, “if it had grown as fast as it did under President George W. Bush.” These jobs alone would have lowered unemployment to 7.3 per cent, if they had not been severely cut by federal, state and local governments.

Public sector jobs are never part of the Republican stimulus equation because the party does not respect the service professions.  Romney’s gaffe about not needing “firemen, policemen and teachers” was no gaffe at all, but the dark subtext of his campaign to reduce government.  The irony of the right wing attack on public services is that while reducing the employees that provide them, it complains indignantly about falling test scores, rising crime rates, and exploding health costs.

Even more ironic is that politicians who complain about the public sector will soon be joining it, if they are elected.  Once in office they discover they can’t accomplish much, because of depleted funding, and suddenly they become the enemy for wanting to raise revenue or decrease the benefits of Social Security or Medicare.

Citizens who work in public schools, public safety, public health, and public administration are not the problem: most of them are gifted and self-sacrificing professionals who work hard for moderate compensation.  Yes, their health and pension benefits have to be recalibrated to balance local budgets, but so have private employees in the auto industry and countless others.  Who has not made contractual compromises to pay for expensive health insurance in the last five years?

Those who serve the public should not be cowed or debased by the ugly subtext of Governor Romney and the right wing.  There is honor in public service and a social vitality that is not measured in profit and productivity.  “General welfare” is a privilege insured by the U.S. Constitution, and those that work for it are valuable citizens, as much as those that innovate and spawn industries.