Invoking the Invisible Hand: Social Security and the Privatization Debates (Rhetoric & Public Affairs) - Hardcover

Robert Asen (author)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 087013843X ISBN 13: 9780870138430

Publisher: Michigan State University Press, 2009

Synopsis

In Invoking the Invisible Hand Robert Asen scrutinizes contemporary debates over proposals to privatize Social Security. Asen argues that a rights-based rhetoric employed by Social Security's original supporters enabled advocates of privatization to align their proposals with the widely held belief that Social Security functions simply as a return on a worker's contributions and that it is not, in fact, a social insurance program. By analyzing major debates over a preeminent American institution, Asen reveals the ways in which language is deployed to identify problems for public policy, craft policy solutions, and promote policies to the populace. He shows how debate participants seek to create favorable contexts for their preferred policies and how they connect these policies to idealized images of the nation.

About this title

About the Author

Robert Asen is Professor, Communication Arts Department, and an affiliate at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2010, he received the National Communication Association Winans-Wichelns Award.

Edition details

• Publisher: Michigan State University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 087013843X
• ISBN 13: 9780870138430
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 322