Open Letter to the Social Workers in America

Remaining Relevant...

“Relevance” is a word that I hear bandied about a lot these days. The talking heads on cable news programs ask, “Is the UN still relevant?” Hollywood actors turned activists ask themselves, in terms of political discourse, “Are we relevant?” Once in 1992 former President Bill Clinton held a press conference for the express purpose of announcing that he was still “relevant” after the GOP claimed a majority in the House of Representatives for the first time in four decades.

From my vantage point, and maybe it’s the pessimist in me, I have feared for a few years now, of the waning relevance of the social work industry and social workers in general. Part of this fear I have of becoming slowly but surely irrelevant, stems from our seeming over-eagerness to redefine ourselves as “psycho-therapists”. We’ve merrily tap danced our way into the field of psychological therapy through lobbying for licensure and the ability to accept insurance, gladly taking less than PHD psychologist. In the three years that I went to Fordham University, I was not overwhelmed by the amount of grassroots activists and advocates that used to be the core of social work. I was stampeded over by folks who thought they were taking a short cut to the coveted “shingle outside their home”; the illustrious psycho-therapy private practice. These were the same people whom when asked, “Is social work political,” they answered with blank stares and yawns.

This isn’t the only problem haunting social work however. We are the supposed to be the self-proclaimed experts on how to end the War on Poverty. We are supposed to be the very soldiers and generals marching through the streets bringing those in need out from the cold abandonment and into the light of success. We are supposed to be the living embodiment of the New Deal and the Great Society…but we aren’t.

When any social worker is asked, “What should we do to end poverty once and for all,” the answer they usually come up with, “Spend more money!” Every niche and every constituency group has a lobby that is ever asking more of the American taxpayer. And then we as a group get indignant when the folks providing said money demand results. Furthermore, we cry revolution whenever “The Conservatives’ (cue wicked music) decide they are going to cut funding to programs that don’t produce results.

I fear we are encroaching upon irrelevance because we cannot, as an industry, seem to get out of our own way. There are viable solutions to poverty, which is our supposed field of academic expertise, but because of our apparent inability to evolve, we won’t promote them.

Of course I’m talking about the Basic Income Guarantee (BIG). The BIG is, in short, the cheaper, simpler answer to welfare/public assistance, farm subsidies, corporate buyouts, social security, unemployment insurance, public housing and all of the bureaucracies they create.

This is from “A history of income guarantees”

“During the Nixon era Friedman's views were to dominate. Friedman saw in the application of the negative income tax an opportunity to pay the poor and only the poor, to dismantle much of the welfare infrastructure which sustained service delivery (and has well paid bureaucrats and social science professionals), to rationalize the tax and social security systems, and - he hoped - also to abolish farm subsidies and transfers to the middle class such as those provided through the education and housing systems (Friedman & Friedman 1980 ch.4, Friedman 1968, Cohen & Friedman 1972 pp.21-52, 99-114). Lampman (1965), another early advocate whose views were influential in the Johnson administration, argued that the negative tax is both a supplement and a complement to the existing welfare programs, although he believed it would and should reduce public assistance. Negative income tax represents for Friedman a "means to attack existing poverty with a minimum of income redistribution (Green 1967 p. 61)." Lampman and Friedman made much more of alleged work disincentive effects than did contemporary writers like Theobald.” BIG History

Any social worker who stands against the BIG without offering up an equitable solution but for the sake of preserving the failed relic of the “Welfare State” is not only betraying the public trust but is also failing to hold up our much ballyhooed “social work ethic”.

Social work isn’t about preserving the bureaucracy or income redistribution for the sake of punishing the wealthy; it’s about helping people help themselves and ending poverty in America. This business of standing against the BIG makes those that do no better than corporate pirates. There is one difference however, capitalists in America will always be relevant, even if they are thieves, while we slouch toward extinction due to our own shortsightedness.

Sincerely,

Conservative Social Worker
Mark Radulich