AND ANOTHER ONE

(ht/ Boing Boing)

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." -- Thomas Jefferson

A majority of Americans failed to realize that the 2009 stimulus bill included tax breaks, so for their personal world, the stimulus bill was a failure.  Prof. Suzanne Mettler reports that these kind of breaks for low and middle income people simply don't register as part of the social welfare state with most beneficiaries.  She calls these the "submerged state":

...policies that lay beneath the surface of US market institutions and within the federal tax system. ... I am referring here to a conglomeration of federal social policies that incentivize and subsidize activities engaged in by private actors and individuals. These feature a variety of tools, including social benefits in the form of tax breaks for individuals and families; the regulation and tax free nature of benefits provided by private employers, including health care benefits in the form of insurance;and the government-sponsored enterprises and third party organizations that receive federal subsidies in exchange for carrying out public policy goals, such as the banks and lending associations that have administered student loans.