• Complain

Charles Lockhart - Gaining Ground: Tailoring Social Programs to American Values

Here you can read online Charles Lockhart - Gaining Ground: Tailoring Social Programs to American Values full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 1989, publisher: University of California Press, genre: Politics. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

No cover
  • Book:
    Gaining Ground: Tailoring Social Programs to American Values
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    University of California Press
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    1989
  • Rating:
    5 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 100
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

Gaining Ground: Tailoring Social Programs to American Values: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Gaining Ground: Tailoring Social Programs to American Values" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

Social policy questions present Americans with a cruel dilemma. Most of us will confront hazards, such as illness or aging, against which private personal resources are an inadequate defense. With this in mind, it becomes clear that conditions of our contemporary society make some kinds of public social programs necessary. Yet, many Americans find difficulty with state-sponsored public programs which, though aimed at providing a safety net for our most vulnerable citizens, seem to run against such American values as individualism and self-reliance. In Gaining Ground, Charles Lockhart suggests a way to reconcile this dilemma by tailoring public social programs to prominent values of American political culture.Using the social security system as a model, Lockhart suggests that all social policy programs should draw upon five basic principles. First, they ought--as much as possible--to be based on reciprocity; those who contribute to the social product may in turn draw on that product when social hazards confront them. Second, social program assistance should generally be aimed at supplementing recipient households efforts at self-support. Third, programs should be inclusive; benefits should be accessible to everyone within a particular program. Fourth, we should rely insofar as possible on social insurance for meeting the needs of those confronting various social hazards. And fifth, social merging programs incorporating features similar to those of social insurance are preferable to public assistance efforts. Lockhart uses these principles to develop an innovative plan for social policy that he calls an investments approach.Gaining Ground provides an important contribution to the discussion about the dynamics and future of social policy and should elicit a range of responses from scholars and policymakers alike.

Charles Lockhart: author's other books


Who wrote Gaining Ground: Tailoring Social Programs to American Values? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

Gaining Ground: Tailoring Social Programs to American Values — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Gaining Ground: Tailoring Social Programs to American Values" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make
title author publisher isbn10 asin - photo 1

title:
author:
publisher:
isbn10 | asin:
print isbn13:
ebook isbn13:
language:
subject
publication date:
lcc:
ddc:
subject:
Page iii
Gaining Ground
Tailoring Social Programs to American Values
Charles Lockhart
Page iv University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles California - photo 2
Page iv
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
1989 by
The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lockhart, Charles, 1944
Gaining ground.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. United StatesSocial policy1980
2. Human servicesUnited States. 3. Social values.
I. Title.
HN59.2.L63 1989 361.6'1'0973 88-29594
ISBN 0-520-06437-2 (alk. paper)
Printed in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Page v
To my father and the memory of my mother
and
for J.M.D., M.G., and J.G.
Page vii
CONTENTS
Preface
ix
Introduction
1
Part One:
Socioeconomic Rights and American Values
1. Patterns of Resource Inadequacy and American Values
11
2. Socioeconomic Rights and American Conceptions of Distributive Justice
26
3. Implications for Prominent American Values
45
4. Practical Problems: Complexity and Compliance
67
Part Two:
The Investments Approach to Social Programs
Introduction to Case Studies
81
5. Social Security
83
6. Aid to Families with Dependent Children
102
7. Medicare
122
8. The Investments Approach
140
Notes
165
Index
205

Page ix
PREFACE
My interest in public social provision can be traced to the late 1970s, when three close friends were stricken with serious, lengthy illnesses. In each case, treatment cost more than limited insurance and moderate incomes could bear. Under these circumstances the anxieties of illness can wreak as much damage to the soul as illness does to the body; it is particularly difficult to retain a sense of self-respect when some of the authorities to whom one turns for healing act as though it were morally reprehensible not to have sufficient savings to cover catastrophic medical bills. At the time, the Texas economy was booming, and this coincidence exacerbated my sense of the unfairness of my friends' plight. Furthermore, as a member of a political science faculty with an abiding interest in Western European politics, I knew that my friends and others like them would have suffered less severely had they been living in almost any other advanced industrial society.
The experiences of my friends were hardly unusual. Every day the lives of good people are shattered by social hazards over which they have little control: illness, disability, unemployment, divorce. Nonetheless, as a society we have yet to develop sufficiently thorough efforts to protect people from ineluctable social hazards. Thus responsible, productive citizens who might reasonably be viewed as assets to their communities sometimes find themselves in dire straits through nothing more than bad luck.
At the time of my friends' illnesses I was completing some work on the management and resolution of international conflicts. Thereafter, I tried my hand for a while at studying the variety of re-
Page x
sponses made by contemporary advanced industrial societies to common social hazards. But it was difficult for me to distract my attention at length from the American case. Was there no hope for improvement? I began to formulate a response to this question in late 1982. A leave during the 198384 academic year gave me a chance to put together a rough manuscript of this book.
In the autumn of 1984 I discovered Charles Murray's Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 19501980. Aspects of his interesting analysis of the relations between Americans and public social programs reinforced my own views, though in terms of policy prescriptions he and I stand a long way apart. Murray's suggestions would, I believe, make the plight of many vulnerable people even more difficult. But Murray's policy prescriptions are not the only conclusions one could reasonably derive from an analysis similar to his. There are ways of regaining the ground that we have lost. Thus while I have my differences with Murray, I greatly respect his book, and my obvious play on his title reflects these two distinct reactions.
I have learned a good deal about social policy over the last five years. I want to mention those who have helped me while absolving them of any responsibility for gaps in my learning. Early on in my work I benefited from the help and encouragement of two colleagues at Texas Christian University (TCU), Gregg Franzwa and Richard Galvin. I appreciate as well a leave TCU granted during the 198384 academic year. My leave was spent at the Harvard University Center for European Studies. I am grateful to Alexander George and Robert Jervis for their help in placing me there. Peter Hall went out of his way to assist me, and I owe the basic outline of this book to a series of conversations with him in the autumn of 1983. I am thankful as well for kindly assistance from Chris Allen, Jennifer Schirmer, and Rosemary Taylor. Abby Collins and Kirsten Morris of the Center's administrative staff were also extremely helpful. In the spring of 1984 I sat in on Hugh Heclo's seminar on the welfare state. I am extremely grateful for the experience, and I benefited immensely from interaction with seminar members including Jeff Rubin, Ronald Samuels, Steven R. Smith, Peter S. Stamus, and Adam Swift. Others in Cambridge who have been helpful then or since include Douglas Hibbs, Ellen Immergut, Eric Nordlinger, Theda Skocpol, and especially Margaret Weir.
Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Gaining Ground: Tailoring Social Programs to American Values»

Look at similar books to Gaining Ground: Tailoring Social Programs to American Values. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «Gaining Ground: Tailoring Social Programs to American Values»

Discussion, reviews of the book Gaining Ground: Tailoring Social Programs to American Values and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.