Abstract
It is common among contemporary scholars comparing the development of the American welfare state to European nations to note that the USA appears to lag far behind the other developed industrial democracies. By the mid-to-late nineteenth century, many European countries, even yet to fulfill full male enfranchisement, had already begun to form the elements of a national welfare state. Pension and old-age income security, unemployment insurance, increasing protection from child labor, and assurance of labor union coverage of large swaths of the working population were enshrined in national legislation and other elements of “birth to grave” benefits were taking hold in European nations. An array of housing programs did much to assure a substantial proportion of the population access to housing and at least a basic, if limited, system of health care was made available. In contrast, in America, these elements of a welfare state lagged far behind. While there was a quite extensive system of state-level pension systems for widows and Civil War veterans, albeit fragmented and widely varying among the states in the American federal structure, little else of an overt welfare state, especially, was visible at the national level. Only in 1913 was a national income tax imposed throughout the USA (if restricted to only the very highest income groups), unemployment insurance was unevenly available only among some states (and not at all legislated in many), a universal old-age income security system did not exist, welfare benefits to the poor were paltry, and health care was almost entirely private. And, there were very few housing programs in the USA to assist families to secure decent, affordable housing.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Ann Shola Orloff, “The Political Origins of America’s Belated Welfare State”: 37–38.
- 2.
Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992).
- 3.
Christopher Howard, The Hidden Welfare State: Tax Expenditures and Social Policy in the United States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 48–54; Martin J. Sklar, The United States as a Developing Country (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 13–25; see also Editors of Fortune Magazine [Archibald MacLeish], Housing America (New York: Harcourt Brace 1932), 6–7, 33–138.
- 4.
Suzanne Mettler, The Submerged State, 15–22.
- 5.
Stanley S. Surrey, “The Money Marketeers on The U.S. Income Tax System—The Need for a Full Accounting, November 15, 1967”, United States Department of the Treasury, Annual Report of the Secretary of the Treasury on the State of the Finances for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1968 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1969), 322; Stanley S. Surrey, Pathways to Tax Reform (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 6.
- 6.
Leonard E. Burman, Christopher Geissler, and Eric J. Toder, “How Big Are Total Individual Income Tax Expenditures, and Who Benefits from Them?” The American Economic Review, Vol. 98, No. 2 (May, 2008): 79–83; Mettler, The Submerged State, 22–26.
- 7.
Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, “Winner-Take-All Politics: Public Policy, Political Organization, and the Precipitous Rise of Top Incomes in the United States,” Politics and Society, Vol. 38, No. 2 (2010): 175–179.
- 8.
Suzanne Mettler, Submerged State, 31–44.
- 9.
Christopher Howard, Hidden Welfare State, chapters 3, 4, and 7; David J. Erickson, The Housing Policy Revolution: Networks and Neighborhoods (Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press, 2009), 73–74, 86–99.
- 10.
Price Fishback, Jonathan Rose, and Kenneth Snowden, Well Worth Saving: How the New Deal Safeguarded Home Ownership (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), chapters 7–10; C. Lowell Harriss, History and Policies of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (New York: NBER, 1951); Kenneth Feingold and Theda Skocpol, State and Party in America’s New Deal (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), chapters 3–4.
- 11.
Charles E. Lindblom, Politics and Markets: The World’s Political-Economic Systems (New York: Basic Books, 1977), chapters 7–8.
- 12.
Ronald F. King, Money, Time, and Politics: Investment Tax Subsidies and American Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 162–189.
- 13.
Christopher Howard, Hidden Welfare State, 105–113.
- 14.
Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966).
- 15.
Moynihan, Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding, 87–100; O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge, 167–173.
- 16.
House Budget Committee Majority Staff, The War on Poverty, Fifty Years Later (Washington, DC: U.S. House of Representative Budget Committee, 2014); Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950–1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1984), chapters 4–6.
- 17.
Paul Pierson, Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 20–36.
- 18.
Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, “Winner-Take-All Politics: Public Policy, Political Organization, and the Precipitous Rise of Top Incomes in the United States,” Politics and Society, Vol. 38, No. 2 (2010): 171–175.
- 19.
Susannah Camic Tahk, “The Tax War on Poverty,” Arizona Law Review, Vol. 56, No. 3 (2014): 793.
- 20.
See the Center on Tax Policy’s concise summary at http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/background/shelters/expenditures.cfm; Tahk “Tax War on Poverty”: 797–820.
- 21.
Robert J. Lampman’s response was typical. An economist at the University of Wisconsin, Lampman wrote in a discussion paper for the influential Institute for Research on Poverty, “Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan,” is “a radical twist to the income maintenance system which took shape with the landmark Social Security Act of 1935.”; See also O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge, 191–192, 215–216.
- 22.
Tahk, “Tax War on Poverty”: 799–801; Dennis Coyle and Aaron Wildavsky, “Requisites of Radical Reform: Income Maintenance versus Tax Preferences,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Autumn, 1987): 1–16.
- 23.
Dorothy Brown, “Race and Class Matter in Tax Policy,” Columbia Law Review, Vol. 107, No. 3 (April 2007): 793–796.
- 24.
David Erickson, Housing Policy Revolution, 86–87; Rachel Bratt, Rebuilding a Low-Income Housing Policy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), 106–107.
- 25.
Erickson, Housing Policy Revolution, 88.
- 26.
Quoted in Tahk, “Tax War on Poverty”: 811.
- 27.
Bratt, Rebuilding A Low-Income Housing Policy, 106.
- 28.
Alex F. Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States (New York: Routledge, 2006), 83; contemporary data were accessed at HUDUSER at http://ww.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/pdrdatas.html.
- 29.
Tahk, “Tax War on Poverty”: 811.
- 30.
Housing Policy Revolution, 90.
- 31.
Alex F. Schwartz, Housing Policy, 96.
- 32.
Mihir Desai, Dhammika Dharmapala, and Monica Singhal “Tax Incentives for Affordable Housing: The Low Income Housing Tax Credit,” Tax Policy and the Economy, Vol. 24, No. 1 (2010): 181, 201.
- 33.
Karen Mossberger, The Politics of Ideas and the Spread of Enterprise Zones (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2000), 55.
- 34.
- 35.
Evaluating the impact of federal community economic development policies on targeted populations: The case of the New Markets initiatives of 2000, Julia Sass Rubin and Gregory M. Stankiewicz.
- 36.
- 37.
Ibid.
- 38.
Ibid.
- 39.
- 40.
The NMVC eventually was approved but ultimately failed from a performance and scale perspective since it only resulted in about 60 loans according to SBA statistics as of 2015. For additional information and statistics, see https://www.sba.gov/category/lender-navigation/sba-loan-programs/new-markets-venture-capital-program.
- 41.
- 42.
Ibid.
- 43.
Congressional Record, Community Renewal and New Markets Act of 2000, House of Representatives, July 25, 2000, H6822 at https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-2000-07-25/pdf/CREC-2000-07-25-pt1-PgH6797-2.pdf#page=26.
- 44.
Martin D. Abravanel, et al., New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) Program Evaluation, Final Report (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2013).
- 45.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_budget_estimate_vs_actual_2012_XXbs1n; analysis of federal budget historical tables from the U.S. Government Printing Office at http://ww.gpo.gov.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Greer, J.L., Gonzales, O. (2017). Tax Expenditures and Social Policy. In: Community Economic Development in the United States. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-69810-3_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-69810-3_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-49790-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-69810-3
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)