Walter Russell Mead describes in his latest essay on the decline of the blue social model how 30 years ago he viewed the modern welfare state as the summit of human achievement. Today he rejoices that the blue model has proven itself to be economically unsustainable on the grounds that it has exacted too high a price in human potential.
In 19th century largely rural America he argues people saw themselves primarily in terms of their function as producers. In 20th-century America the “emphasis [is] on consumption rather than production as the defining characteristic of the good life.” The result in Mead’s judgment is a society of “people rich in stuff but poor in soul … a society of bored couch potatoes seeking artificial stimulus and excitement.”
Like most of us Mead has no great desire to hitch up his mule and go plow the back 40. But he cannot escape the fact that a harder life produced more serious thoughtful people. On the family farm children were part of the family economic unit from early childhood and took on greater responsibility as they grew older. Families did not just work together; they planned together. Farm kids sat with their parents as they figured out which crops to plant. When they bought shoes or other goods they knew exactly how much work planning and anxious calculation went into the money they brought to the store.
Today by contrast children are shielded from the great secret of adult life: How much time is spent thinking and worrying about money. Children are not expected or asked to contribute to the family economic unit in any way. The period of being shielded from any serious exposure to the world of work grows ever longer. Adolescence now officially extends to 26 under Obamacare. As a consequence “young people often spend a quarter century primarily as critics of a life they know very little about ” writes Mead.
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