https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51308.From_Mutual_Aid_to_the_Welfare_State
If you actually look at "Private Lives of Americans" prior to WWI, most Americans were apolitical and disengaged to the point of isolationism unless they had something specific in mind (patronage or land rights). Wilson had to drag an American public in kicking and screaming. The response to the WWI draft were along the lines of "WTH are you? What federal government?" The first steps to participation were a bunch of people got veteran benefits that tied them to federal government. Because until the New Deal, most everyone did not deal with the federal government directly. Income tax was only assessed on very high incomes, there was no SSN, pretty much the only interaction you had with the secular authorities is if you were an immigrant and the entry points. Veterans benefits (a different form of entitlement but also came with a conscription order) and entitlement programs change this attitude.
On the other hand, you bet your life that before the New Deal, you belonged to a church, and you did care very much about church politics, because how that collection money got used and how the parsonage was maintained and what charities were allocated from the church as you would be an eventual beneficiary of them. If you did not belong to a church, and inevitably had one of life's great disasters (loss of a job, someone gets sick, your house burns down), the resulting domino effect usually meant you and your family died if not for church charity. Your life depended on church membership, and you certainly believed in a benevolent God if only for the cynical reason that you needed the community who believed in the same God to survive. The reason why we can all be atheists in the present era is due to the New Deal and later Great Society, where the functions formerly covered by charity (care for the sick and aged, food security, poor relief) became functions of the federal government rather than the church. But to pay for those benefits, the taxes were extended down to very low income workers, so now due to the interactions of being a beneficiary and a payer, we all interact with the federal government to some degree.
At the end of the day it is about putting food on the table. It doesn't matter who is president. You are going to benefit from it. You just need to know how to play the game.
Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile app
I disagree as it can matter who is president, when we have one that actually changes the rules of the bureaucracy game as it trickles down to you in observable ways. FDR (creating the bureaucracy for economic and judicial policy), LBJ (expanded the bureaucracy into social policy), Nixon (expanded the bureaucracy into scientific policy), Reagan (expanded the military bureaucracy and made the civil service more accountable to the OMB), Clinton (expanded the bureaucracy by shifting civil service into contractor positions), GW Bush (expanded the bureaucracy into internal security). I actually think Hillary would have been one of those who would have changed the rules of the bureaucracy yet again. I'm not sure on Trump as I don't think anyone really has a handle of what he's capable of.
We all owe our jobs to LBJ at some level (both directly as a matter of health care reimbursement, but also indirectly from tax treatment and infrastructure construction via HCFA/CMS), and we owe the way we are paid from day to day to Reagan. If a Chris Christie shows up who is savvy enough to tear into the bureaucracy, that'll be another interesting day, and that day is soon coming if not Trump.
I'm looking forward though to the Trump tax cuts on the back of the poor. We do benefit from this, but it's a short term personal gain for a long term societal loss.
