The family in society

Spiegel recently took a look at the way globalization and capitalism are slowly but surely making the welfare state fall apart.1 The article appears to be somewhat dated, but that matters little for its conclusions, though I cannot explain why it has just now in the last week or so come to my attention. Not that I am so very well informed, but because I am not and so it is unusual to find my attention being drawn to an article more than 6 months old.

Returning to topic, much of the article is rather self-evident. Companies gravitate towards the places in the world where they can get the most labor out of their money, and away from those with higher costs, in taxes or in labor. Thus countries in which a company would have to pay pensions, unemployment, sick leave, and similar things, are seeing harsh competition from places like Mexico or Asia that offer a much cheaper work force.

As I said, not much to see there. There was however, one item of note, one place in which the author approached wisdom. "[I]t is the family, and not the company, which offers social protection."2

The family, the Church teaches, is the basic unit of society. The family, not the individual. It, and not the company or the government, has the primary responsibility for ensuring the welfare of its members, particularly the most defenseless of them: the very young, the very old, and the very ill. Public education and social services have their place, but in a secondary capacity, to back up the family, to pick up the slack when any given family fails in its duty, either through negligence or through inability. But that role is secondary, and it is fitting that conforming to a more real view of society, even only a slightly more real view, should produce benefits.

For I do not claim that Asia and Mexico, places where workers have few rights and less justice, are better than we. They get this one point more right perhaps, but they get others so very wrong. It is natural that they should benefit to the extent that they are right, but they are still lesser places to live, because of the other flaws in their societies.