Erza Klein hits the nail on the head for why we need good social programs.
Donations to private charities fell by 11 percent last year. That’s the steepest one-time drop in 20 years, and it came, of course, just as the need for the services that those charities provide exploded.
Charity is counter-cyclical. When the economy is booming and there’s less need, there’s also more capacity. When the is worse and there’s more need, donations dry up and there’s less capacity. That’s not a criticism of charities: It’s hardly their fault. And nor is it a criticism of the people who donate — or stop donating — to charities. When you’re worried about paying your mortgage, it’s harder to help other people pay theirs.
But it’s a big part of why we need a robust, federal safety net that’s immune — in a way state-funded programs like Medicaid are not — from the ravages of the business cycle. One of the smartest things we could do would be to federalize the funding for Medicaid and unemployment insurance, or at least create some automatic formulas in which a rise of X amount in the unemployment rate triggered a rise of X percent in the size of the federal contribution.
Having a social safety net isn’t just good policy that makes sure people have money to put back into the economy, it’s good ethics to insure that people are taken care of when they need it most.
