The production possibilities frontier (PPF) for guns versus butter. Points like X that are outside the PPF are impossible to achieve. Points such as B, C, and D
illustrate the trade-off between guns and butter: at these levels of
production, producing more of one requires producing less of the other.
Points located along the PPF curve represent sustainable combinations of
each type of production in a world where scarcity is a binding
constrain. A, however, is inside of the PPF and represents a combination of output that is not utilizing all available resources.
In macroeconomics, the guns versus butter model is an example of a simple production–possibility frontier. It demonstrates the relationship between a nation's investment in defense and civilian goods. The "guns or butter" model is used generally as a simplification of national spending as a part of GDP.
This may be seen as an analogy for choices between defense and civilian
spending in more complex economies. The nation will have to decide
which balance of guns versus butter best fulfills its needs, with its
choice being partly influenced by the military spending and military
stance of potential opponents.
Researchers in political economy have viewed the trade-off between military and consumer spending as a useful predictor of election success.
In this example, a nation has to choose between two options when
spending its finite resources. It may buy either guns (invest in
defense/military) or butter (invest in production of goods), or a
combination of both.
Origin of the term
One theory on the origin of the concept comes from the decision to expand munitions before the U.S. entered World War I. In 1914 the leading global exporter of nitrates for gunpowder was Chile.
Chile maintained neutrality during the war and provided nearly all of
the US's nitrate requirements. It was also the principal ingredient of
chemical fertilizer in farming. The U.S. realized it needed cointrol of its own supply. The National Defense Act of 1916
directed the president to select a site for the artificial production
of nitrates within the United States. It was not until September 1917,
several months after the United States entered the war , that Wilson
selected Muscle Shoals, Alabama,
after more than a year of competition among political rivals. A
deadlock in the Congress was broken when South Carolina Senator Ellison D. Smith
sponsored the National Defense Act of 1916 that directed "the Secretary
of Agriculture to manufacture nitrates for fertilizers in peace and
munitions in war at water power sites designated by the President". This
was presented by the news media as "guns and butter."
Tax expert Albert Lepawsky stated in 1941, "Contrary to the popular
slogan, it is not a question of guns versus butter" because basic food
supplies will not be cut. He explained:
Reducing
non-defense consumption as a whole, however, may play fully as important
a role as increasing the nation's production. Indeed, for the first
World War, it was estimated by John M. Clark that while 13 billions came
out of increased production, 19 billions were paid for by decreased
consumption.
Significance
"Butter"
represents nonsecurity goods that increase social welfare, such as
schools, hospitals, parks, and roads. "Guns" refer to security goods
such as personnel—both troops and civilian support staff—as well as
military equipment like weapons, ships, or tanks. Because these two
types of goods represent a tradeoff, a country cannot increase one
without negatively impacting the other. States often attempt to share
the burden of defense through alliances. This allows a state to reduce
its own production of guns and shift resources towards social goods.
If armed conflict is avoided, then expenditure on guns represents
deadweight, or resources that could have been better spent on butter.
In the case of war, however, the production–possibility frontier
shrinks through the loss of life and infrastructure. This, in turn,
limits the ability of the state to produce social goods, and the ability
of society to benefit from them.
Quoted use of the term
Perhaps the best known use of the phrase (in translation) was in Nazi Germany. In a speech on January 17, 1936, Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels
stated: "We can do without butter, but, despite all our love of peace,
not without arms. One cannot shoot with butter, but with guns."
Referencing the same concept, sometime in the summer of the same year
another Nazi official, Hermann Göring, announced in a speech: "Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat."
US President Lyndon B. Johnson used the phrase to catch the attention of the national media while reporting on the state of national defense and the economy.
Another use of the phrase was British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's statement, in a 1976 speech she gave at the old Kensington Town Hall, in which she said, "The Soviets put guns over butter, but we put almost everything over guns."
The song "Guns Before Butter" by Gang of Four from their 1979 album Entertainment! is about this concept.
The Prodigy's 1997 album The Fat of the Land
has the following text on the fold-out booklet: "We have no butter, but
I ask you /Would you rather have butter or guns? /Shall we import lard
or steel? Let me tell you /Preparedness makes us powerful. /Butter
merely makes us fat."
The concept was also discussed in the 2001 movie Baby Boy.
NYC based rap group Flatbush Zombies reference the concept in their song “Regular and Complex (GNB) by sampling dialogue delivered by Ving Rhames from the film Baby Boy,
in which guns are identified as things that “appreciate with value”
such as real estate or stocks and bonds, while butter as identified as
cars, and jewelry, and other things that “don’t mean shit after you buy
it.”
The concept is referenced in the title of the song "Gunz n Butter" on A$AP Rocky's 2018 album Testing.
Great Society example
Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society
programs in the 1960s, when he was President of the United States, are
examples of the guns versus butter model. While Johnson wanted to
continue New Deal programs and expand welfare with his own Great Society programs, he was also involved in both the arms race of the Cold War and in the Vietnam War. These wars put strains on the economy and hampered his Great Society programs.
Every
gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies,
in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed,
those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not
spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the
genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick
school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each
serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped
hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a
single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a
single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000
people.
This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the
world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true
sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a
cross of iron. ... Is there no other way the world may live?
Foreign Policy magazine named the lawyer Shirin Ebadi a leading intellectual for her work protecting human rights in Iran.
An intellectual is a person who engages in critical thinking, research, and reflection
to advance discussions of academic subjects. This often involves
publishing work for consumption by the general public that adds depth to
issues that affect society.
It may also include directly addressing societal issues and proposing solutions for the normative problems of society, making one a public intellectual. The public intellectual may create or mediate culture
by participating in politics, either to defend a concrete proposition
or to denounce an injustice, usually by either rejecting or producing or
extending an ideology, and by defending a system of values.
Etymological background
"Man of letters"
The term "man of letters" derives from the French term belletrist or homme de lettres but is not synonymous with "an academic". A "man of letters" was a literate man, able to read and write, as opposed to an illiterate man in a time when literacy was rare and thus highly valued in the upper strata of society. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the term Belletrist(s) came to be applied to the literati: the French participants in—sometimes referred to as "citizens" of—the Republic of Letters, which evolved into the salon,
a social institution, usually run by a hostess, meant for the
edification, education, and cultural refinement of the participants.
In the late 19th century, when literacy was relatively common in European countries such as the United Kingdom, the "Man of Letters" (littérateur)
denotation broadened to mean "specialized", a man who earned his living
writing intellectually (not creatively) about literature: the essayist, the journalist, the critic,
et al. In the 20th century, such an approach was gradually superseded
by the academic method, and the term "Man of Letters" became disused,
replaced by the generic term "intellectual", describing the intellectual
person.
"Intellectual"
The earliest record of the English noun "intellectual" is found in the 19th century, where in 1813, Byron reports that 'I wish I may be well enough to listen to these intellectuals'.
Over the course of the 19th century, other variants of the already
established adjective 'intellectual' as a noun appeared in English and
in French, where in the 1890s the noun ('intellectuels') formed from the
adjective 'intellectuel' appeared with higher frequency in the
literature.
Collini writes about this time that "[a]mong this cluster of linguistic
experiments there occurred ... the occasional usage of ‘intellectuals’
as a plural noun to refer, usually with a figurative or ironic intent,
to a collection of people who might be identified in terms of their
intellectual inclinations or pretensions."
In early 19th century Britain, Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined the term clerisy,
the intellectual class responsible for upholding and maintaining the
national culture, the secular equivalent of the Anglican clergy.
Likewise, in Tsarist Russia, there arose the intelligentsia (1860s–70s), who were the status class of white-collar workers.
For Germany, the theologian Alister McGrath said that "the emergence of a socially alienated, theologically literate, antiestablishment lay intelligentsia is one of the more significant phenomena of the social history of Germany in the 1830s".
An intellectual class in Europe was socially important, especially to
self-styled intellectuals, whose participation in society's arts,
politics, journalism, and education—of either nationalist, internationalist,
or ethnic sentiment—constitute "vocation of the intellectual".
Moreover, some intellectuals were anti-academic, despite universities
(the Academy) being synonymous with intellectualism.
In France, the Dreyfus affair (1894–1906), an identity crisis of anti-semitic nationalism for the French Third Republic (1870–1940), marked the full emergence of the "intellectual in public life", especially Émile Zola, Octave Mirbeau and Anatole France directly addressing the matter of French antisemitism
to the public; thenceforward, "intellectual" became common, yet
initially derogatory, usage; its French noun usage is attributed to Georges Clemenceau in 1898.
Nevertheless, by 1930 the term "intellectual" passed from its earlier
pejorative associations and restricted usages to a widely accepted term
and it was because of the Dreyfus Affair that the term also acquired
generally accepted use in English.
In the 20th century, the term intellectual acquired positive connotations of social prestige, derived from possessing intellect and intelligence, especially when the intellectual's activities exerted positive consequences in the public sphere and so increased the intellectual understanding of the public, by means of moral responsibility, altruism, and solidarity, without resorting to the manipulations of demagoguery, paternalism and incivility (condescension). The sociologist Frank Furedi
said that "Intellectuals are not defined according to the jobs they do,
but [by] the manner in which they act, the way they see themselves, and
the [social and political] values that they uphold.
According to Thomas Sowell, as a descriptive term of person, personality, and profession, the word intellectual identifies three traits:
In Latin language, at least starting from the Carolingian Empire, intellectuals could be called litterati, a term which is sometimes applied today.
The word intellectual is found in Indian scripture Mahabharata in the Bachelorette meeting (Swayambara Sava) of Draupadi. Immediately after Arjuna and Raja-Maharaja (kings-emperors) came to the meeting, Nipuna Buddhijibina (perfect intellectuals) appeared at the meeting.
In Imperial China in the period from 206 BC until AD 1912, the intellectuals were the Scholar-officials ("Scholar-gentlemen"), who were civil servants appointed by the Emperor of China to perform the tasks of daily governance. Such civil servants earned academic degrees by means of imperial examination, and also were skilled calligraphers, and knew Confucian philosophy. Historian Wing-Tsit Chan concludes that:
Generally speaking, the record of
these scholar-gentlemen has been a worthy one. It was good enough to be
praised and imitated in 18th century Europe. Nevertheless, it has given
China a tremendous handicap in their transition from government by men
to government by law, and personal considerations in Chinese government
have been a curse.
In Joseon Korea (1392–1910), the intellectuals were the literati, who knew how to read and write, and had been designated, as the chungin (the "middle people"), in accordance with the Confucian system. Socially, they constituted the petite bourgeoisie,
composed of scholar-bureaucrats (scholars, professionals, and
technicians) who administered the dynastic rule of the Joseon dynasty.
The term public intellectual describes the intellectual participating in the public-affairs discourse of society, in addition to an academic career. Regardless of the academic field or the professional expertise, the public intellectual addresses and responds to the normative
problems of society, and, as such, is expected to be an impartial
critic who can "rise above the partial preoccupation of one's own
profession—and engage with the global issues of truth, judgment, and taste of the time". In Representations of the Intellectual (1994), Edward Saïd
said that the "true intellectual is, therefore, always an outsider,
living in self-imposed exile, and on the margins of society".
Public intellectuals usually arise from the educated élite of a
society; although the North American usage of the term "intellectual"
includes the university academics. The difference between "intellectual" and "academic" is participation in the realm of public affairs.
Jürgen Habermas' Structural Transformation of Public Sphere
(1963) made significant contribution to the notion of public
intellectual by historically and conceptually delineating the idea of
private and public. Controversial, in the same year, was Ralf Dahrendorf's definition: “As the court-jesters
of modern society, all intellectuals have the duty to doubt everything
that is obvious, to make relative all authority, to ask all those
questions that no one else dares to ask".
An intellectual usually is associated with an ideology or with a philosophy. The Czech intellectual Václav Havel
said that politics and intellectuals can be linked, but that moral
responsibility for the intellectual's ideas, even when advocated by a
politician, remains with the intellectual. Therefore, it is best to
avoid utopian intellectuals who offer 'universal insights' to resolve the problems of political economy with public policies
that might harm and that have harmed civil society; that intellectuals
be mindful of the social and cultural ties created with their words,
insights and ideas; and should be heard as social critics of politics and power.
Public engagement
The determining factor for a Thinker (historian, philosopher, scientist, writer, artist) to be considered a public intellectual is the degree to which he or she is implicated and engaged with the vital reality of the contemporary world, i.e. participation in the public affairs of society. Consequently, being designated as a public intellectual is determined by the degree of influence of the designator's motivations, opinions, and options of action (social, political, ideological), and by affinity with the given thinker.
After the failure of the large-scale May 68
movement in France, intellectuals within the country were often
maligned for having specific areas of expertise while discussing general
subjects like democracy. Intellectuals increasingly claimed to be
within marginalized groups rather than their spokespeople, and centered
their activism on the social problems relevant to their areas of
expertise (such as gender relations in the case of psychologists). A
similar shift occurred in China after the Tiananmen Square Massacre from the "universal intellectual" (who plans better futures from within academia) to minjian ("grassroots") intellectuals, the latter group represented by such figures as Wang Xiaobo, social scientist Yu Jianrong, and Yanhuang Chunqiu editor Ding Dong.
Public policy
In the matters of public policy,
the public intellectual connects scholarly research to the practical
matters of solving societal problems. The British sociologist Michael Burawoy, an exponent of public sociology,
said that professional sociology has failed, by giving insufficient
attention to resolving social problems, and that a dialogue between the
academic and the layman would bridge the gap. An example is how Chilean intellectuals worked to reestablish democracy within the right-wing, neoliberal governments of the Military dictatorship of Chile (1973–90),
the Pinochet régime allowed professional opportunities for some liberal
and left-wing social scientists to work as politicians and as
consultants in effort to realize the theoretical economics of the Chicago Boys, but their access to power was contingent upon political pragmatism, abandoning the political neutrality of the academic intellectual.
In The Sociological Imagination (1959), C. Wright Mills
said that academics had become ill-equipped for participating in public
discourse, and that journalists usually are "more politically alert and
knowledgeable than sociologists, economists, and especially ...
political scientists". That, because the universities of the U.S. are bureaucratic, private businesses, they "do not teach critical reasoning to the student", who then does not "how to gauge what is going on in the general struggle for power in modern society". Likewise, Richard Rorty criticized the participation of intellectuals in public discourse as an example of the "civic irresponsibility of intellect, especially academic intellect".
The American legal scholar Richard Posner
said that the participation of academic public intellectuals in the
public life of society is characterized by logically untidy and
politically biased statements of the kind that would be unacceptable to
academia. That there are few ideologically and politically independent
public intellectuals, and disapproves that public intellectuals limit
themselves to practical matters of public policy, and not with values or public philosophy, or public ethics, or public theology, not with matters of moral and spiritual outrage.
Intellectuals as Social Class
Socially, intellectuals constitute the intelligentsia, a status class organised either by ideology (conservative, fascist, socialist, liberal, reactionary, revolutionary, democratic, communist intellectuals etc.), or by nationality (American intellectuals, French intellectuals, Ibero–American intellectuals, et al.). The term intelligentsiya originated from the of Tsarist Russia (c. 1860s–1870s), where it denotes the social stratum of those possessing intellectual formation (schooling, education), and who were Russian society's counterpart to the German Bildungsbürgertum and to the French bourgeoisie éclairée, the enlightened middle classes of those realms.
In Marxist philosophy, the social class function of the intellectuals (the intelligentsia)
is to be the source of progressive ideas for the transformation of
society: providing advice and counsel to the political leaders,
interpreting the country's politics to the mass of the population (urban
workers and peasants). In the pamphlet What Is to Be Done? (1902), Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said that vanguard-party revolution required the participation of the intellectuals to explain the complexities of socialist ideology to the uneducated proletariat
and the urban industrial workers in order to integrate them to the
revolution because "the history of all countries shows that the working
class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness" and will settle for the limited, socio-economic gains so achieved. In Russia as in Continental Europe,
socialist theory was the product of the "educated representatives of
the propertied classes", of "revolutionary socialist intellectuals",
such as were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
The Hungarian Marxist philosopher György Lukács
(1885–1971) identified the intelligentsia as the privileged social
class who provide revolutionary leadership. By means of intelligible and
accessible interpretation, the intellectuals explain to the workers and
peasants the "Who?", the "How?" and the "Why?" of the social, economic
and political status quo—the ideological totality of society—and its practical, revolutionary application to the transformation of their society.
The Italian communist theoretician Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) developed Karl Marx's conception of the intelligentsia to include political leadership in the public sphere. That because "all knowledge is existentially-based",
the intellectuals, who create and preserve knowledge, are "spokesmen
for different social groups, and articulate particular social
interests". That intellectuals occur in each social class and throughout
the right-wing, the centre and the left-wing of the political spectrum and that as a social class the "intellectuals view themselves as autonomous from the ruling class" of their society.
Addressing their role as a social class, Jean-Paul Sartre
said that intellectuals are the moral conscience of their age; that
their moral and ethical responsibilities are to observe the
socio-political moment, and to freely speak to their society, in
accordance with their consciences.
The British historian Norman Stone said that the intellectual social class misunderstand the reality of society and so are doomed to the errors of logical fallacy, ideological stupidity, and poor planning hampered by ideology. In her memoirs, the Conservative politician Margaret Thatcher wrote that the anti-monarchical French Revolution (1789–1799) was "a utopian attempt to overthrow a traditional order [...] in the name of abstract ideas, formulated by vain intellectuals".
Latin America
The American academic Peter H. Smith
describes the intellectuals of Latin America as people from an
identifiable social class, who have been conditioned by that common
experience and thus are inclined to share a set of common assumptions (values and ethics); that ninety-four per cent of intellectuals come either from the middle class or from the upper class and that only six per cent come from the working class. Philosopher Steven Fuller said that because cultural capital confers power and social status as a status group they must be autonomous in order to be credible as intellectuals:
It is relatively easy to demonstrate autonomy, if you come from a wealthy or [an] aristocratic background. You simply need to disown your status and champion the poor and [the] downtrodden [...]. [A]utonomy is much harder to demonstrate if you come from a poor or proletarian background [...], [thus] calls to join the wealthy in common cause appear to betray one's class origins.
United States
The Congregational theologian Edwards Amasa Park proposed segregating the intellectuals from the public sphere of society in the United States
The 19th-century U.S. Congregational theologian Edwards Amasa Park said: "We do wrong to our own minds, when we carry out scientific difficulties down to the arena of popular dissension". In his view, it was necessary for the sake of social, economic and political stability "to separate the serious, technical role of professionals from their responsibility [for] supplying usable philosophies
for the general public". This expresses a dichotomy, derived from
Plato, between public knowledge and private knowledge, "civic culture"
and "professional culture", the intellectual sphere of life and the life of ordinary people in society.
In "The Intellectuals and Socialism" (1949), Friedrich Hayek
wrote that "journalists, teachers, ministers, lecturers, publicists,
radio commentators, writers of fiction, cartoonists, and artists" form
an intellectual social class whose function is to communicate the
complex and specialized knowledge of the scientist to the general public. He argued that intellectuals were attracted to socialism or social democracy because the socialists offered "broad visions; the spacious comprehension of the social order, as a whole, which a planned system
promises" and that such broad-vision philosophies "succeeded in
inspiring the imagination of the intellectuals" to change and improve
their societies.
According to Hayek, intellectuals disproportionately support socialism
for idealistic and utopian reasons that cannot be realized in practice.
Persecution of intellectuals
Totalitarian governments manipulate and apply anti-intellectualism
to repress political dissent. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)
and the following dictatorship (1939–1975) of General Francisco Franco,
the reactionary repression of the White Terror (1936–1945) was notably
anti-intellectual, with most of the 200,000 civilians killed being the
Spanish intelligentsia, the politically active teachers and academics,
artists and writers of the deposed Second Spanish Republic (1931–1939). Intellectuals were also targeted by the Nazis, the Communist regime in
China, the Khmer Rouge, the Young Turks, and in conflicts in Bangladesh,
the former Yugoslavia, and Poland.
Criticism
The economist Milton Friedman identified the intelligentsia and the business class as interfering with capitalism.
The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre noted that "the Intellectual is someone who meddles in what does not concern them. (L'intellectuel est quelqu'un qui se mêle de ce qui ne le regarde pas.)". Noam Chomsky expressed the view that "intellectuals are specialists in defamation, they are basically political commissars, they are the ideological administrators, the most threatened by dissidence."
In "An Interview with Milton Friedman" (1974), the American economist Milton Friedman said that businessmen and intellectuals are enemies of capitalism:
most intellectuals believed in socialism while businessman expected
economic privileges. In his essay "Why Do Intellectuals Oppose
Capitalism?" (1998), the American libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick of the Cato Institute
argued that intellectuals become embittered leftists because their
academic skills, much rewarded at school and at university, are
undervalued and underpaid in the capitalist market economy.
Thus, intellectuals turn against capitalism despite enjoying more
comfortable lives in capitalist societies than they might enjoy under
either socialism or communism.
The economist Thomas Sowell wrote in his book Intellectuals and Society
(2010) that intellectuals, who are producers of knowledge, not material
goods, tend to speak outside their own areas of expertise, and yet
expect social and professional benefits from the halo effect
derived from possessing professional expertise. In relation to other
professions, public intellectuals are socially detached from the
negative and unintended consequences of public policy derived from their ideas. Sowell gives the example of Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), who advised the British government against national rearmament in the years before the First World War.
"Defund the police" is a slogan that supports divesting funds from police departments and reallocating them to non-policing forms of public safety and community support, such as social services,
youth services, housing, education, healthcare and other community
resources. Activists who use the phrase may do so with varying
intentions; some seek modest reductions, while others argue for full
divestment as a step toward the abolition of contemporary police services.
Activists who support the defunding of police departments often argue
that investing in community programs could provide a better crime
deterrent for communities; funds would go toward addressing social issues, like poverty, homelessness, and mental disorders. Police abolitionists call for replacing existing police forces with other systems of public safety, like housing, employment, community health, education, and other programs.
Black Lives Matter, the Movement for Black Lives,
and other activists have used the phrase to call for police budget
reductions and to delegate certain police responsibilities to other
organizations. In Black Reconstruction in America, first published in 1935, W. E. B. Du Bois
wrote about "abolition-democracy", which advocated for the removal of
institutions that were rooted in racist and repressive practices,
including prisons, convict leasing, and white police forces. In the
1960s, activists such as Angela Davis advocated for the defunding or abolition of police departments. The 2017 book The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale has been called "a manual of sorts for the defund movement."
Many sociologists, criminologists, and journalists have criticized aspects of the police defunding movement. In the United States, politicians from both the Democratic and Republican
parties have spoken against defunding, although Republicans have sought
to link Democrats to the movement in congressional races. Among the general public in the United States, the concept of defunding is unpopular.
Background
"Defund Police" sign at a June 7, 2020 rally in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Since the 1960s, municipal governments have increasingly spent larger
portions of their budgets on law enforcement. This is partially rooted
in the "war on crime," launched by President Lyndon B. Johnson, which prioritized crime control via law enforcement and prisons. Meanwhile, police unions have wielded significant power in local politics, due to direct endorsements of political candidates and funding of campaigns. Police department budgets have been considered "untouchable" for decades.
By 2020, U.S. cities collectively spent approximately $115
billion per year on policing. In particular, in Los Angeles in 2020,
the LAPD
budget constituted about 18% of the city's budget ($1.86 billion out of
$10.5 billion) and about 54% of the city's general funds (i.e., tax
revenues that are not designated for special purposes). In Chicago in 2020, the CPD constituted about 18% of the city's budget and 40% of the city's general funds ($1.6 billion). In New York City in 2020, the NYPD budget constituted about 6% of the city's budget ($5.9 billion out of $97.8 billion), the third largest budget after the Department of Education and the Department of Social Services. In Minneapolis, the budget for the police and corrections departments grew 41% between 2009 and 2019.
As of 2017, state and local government spending on policing has
remained just under 4 percent of general expenditures for the past 40
years. In 2017, over 95% went towards operational costs, such as
salaries and benefits.
While the officers per capita in major cities have not significantly
changed, they have been equipped with more technology, gear, and
training in the last few decades. On average, large cities spend about
8% of their general expenditures on policing, 5% on housing, and 3% on
parks. Most cities' police budgets are larger than other public safety departments, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, where other budgets lessened but policing budgets were largely untouched.
Police defunding and abolition activists argue that the police have a
poor track record of resolving cases related to murder, rape, and
domestic abuse.
Some further argue that police social work intervention, as known,
leads to mass incarceration, risk of physical and mental harm, exposure
to violence, and in some instances, death.
According to a 2020 study from The Washington Post,
police spending has increased almost 800% nationwide since 1960, but
there has been a minuscule drop in both general crime rate and the more
specific violent crime rate.
Critics argue that police officers and police departments provide too
many services. According to this argument, the United States has an
over-reliance on law enforcement, which is expected to handle an
unrealistically wide range of social issues, such as homelessness,
mental health, and substance abuse.
For these reasons, some activists have called for an unbundling of
services. Under this model, many services that were previously provided
by law enforcement would be provided by specialized response teams.
These teams could include social workers, emergency medical technicians, conflict resolution specialists, restorative justice teams, and other community-based professionals.
Police officers may be particularly badly suited for some community issues, such as mental health crises.
However, 1 in 4 people who are killed by the police have severe mental
illness. Some activists argue that, if someone is experiencing a mental
health crisis, and if there is no emergent threat to themselves or other
people, mental health professionals may be more adept and capable
responders. Some activists also believe that if more funds were diverted
to help treat and support those with mental health issues, there could
be better outcomes.
A 2020 paper by researchers at the RAND Corporation
argues that the police are often given too many roles in society and
asked to solve issues that they are not properly trained for and that
would be better suited for professionals such as mental health, homelessness, drug abuse, and school related violence.
While the movement is rooted primarily in the work of left-wing scholar activists in the 1970s, it has the support from many libertarians,
though they rarely use the slogan "defund the police." Libertarians
support the movement out of a concern for constitutional rights and a
stance against what they consider far-reaching and ever-expanding powers
given to state actors (particularly qualified immunities).
Effect on crime
The extent to which defunding police leads to a rise in crime has been challenged by scholars and policy experts. Criminologist Richard Rosenfeld argues that the increased rate of crime which followed the George Floyd protests was more linked to the COVID-19 pandemic
than calls for police defunding, noting that while violent crime rates
had increased, property crime rates had decreased, which he said showed
evidence that crime was more connected to COVID-19 lockdowns. Patrick Sharkey, another criminologist, attributed the increase in crime to the Ferguson effect,
arguing that "when you depend on the police to dominate public spaces
and they suddenly step back from that role, violence can increase." In Austin, Texas, after U.S. Representative Michael McCaul
said defunding the police had led to an increased rate of homicides,
fact checkers said it was "hard to draw the conclusion the homicide rate
is up strictly because of reallocating police funding."
Responses
Social scientists
According to Princeton sociologist Patrick Sharkey,
the best evidence available shows that while police are effective in
reducing violence, there is also a growing body of evidence that
demonstrates community organizations can play a central role in reducing
violence:
Police are effective at reducing
violence, the most damaging feature of urban inequality. And yet one can
argue that law enforcement is an authoritarian institution that
historically has inflicted violence on black people and continues to do
so today. To resolve these divergent ideas requires thinking about
whether there are other groups or institutions that can uphold public
safety without the damage done by law enforcement. Decades of
criminological theory and growing evidence demonstrate that residents
and local organizations can indeed “police” their own neighborhoods and
control violence — in a way that builds stronger communities.
In an interview with The Atlantic,
Sharkey stated, "Police presence can reduce violence, but there are
lots of other things that reduce violence, too. Business improvement
districts reduce violence. University security organizations reduce
violence. It’s possible that relying on police isn’t as necessary as we
once thought, and that we might even have safer communities without many
of them." In an interview with Vox,
Sharkey acknowledged the effectiveness of aggressive policing and mass
incarceration in reducing violence, but said these methods have "had
staggering costs." He went on to say "The next model should be one
driven primarily by residents and local organizations as the central
actors. Police still certainly have a role to play, but responding to
violent crime takes up only a tiny fraction of police officers’ time. So
the idea here is that we can rely on residents and local organizations
to take over most of the duties that [officers] currently handle and
make sure neighborhoods are safe."
Criminologists Justin Nix and Scott Wolfe state in the Washington Post,
"We have enough research evidence to be concerned about the immediate
impact of drastic budget cuts or wholesale disbanding of police
agencies: Crime and victimization will increase....These collateral
consequences will disproportionately harm minority communities that need
help, not further marginalization." They go on to state that, "Cities
that have more police officers per capita tend to have lower crime
rates. This does not necessarily mean we need to hire more police.
Rather, having more officers per capita provides greater ability to
dedicate resources to community- and problem-oriented policing
approaches that have been shown to reduce crime and improve community
satisfaction." They further argue that police departments need to be
held more accountable for their use of funds, suggesting more emphasis
on evidence-based practices, and say that making the police responsible
for so many social ills should be reconsidered, although stating the
infrastructure to handle those should be in place before reallocating
funds.
Kevin Robinson, a retired police chief and lecturer of
criminology and criminal justice at Arizona State University, suggests
that the slogan "defund the police" is misguided. He states that a more
appropriate terminology would be "re-allocation" of specific portions of
police department budgets. He states that most such budgets are tight,
but says that a thorough review of spending is always warranted, and
that program effectiveness should determine whether or not a program is
continued. He says that criminals usually weigh the possibility of
getting caught when committing a crime, and that "if there is a low
likelihood of apprehension there will be more crimes committed — more
people victimized." He further states that "Studies have shown...that
effective social programs can reduce criminality in adults and
juveniles", and encourages police departments to incorporate social
programs with police work.
Sociologist Rashawn Ray, writing for the Brookings Institution,
states that much of what police do is misaligned with their skillset
and training, and suggests that a reduction in their workload would
increase their ability to solve violent crimes. He further states:
One
consistent finding in the social science literature is that if we
really want to reduce crime, education equity and the establishment of a
work infrastructure is the best approach. A study using 60 years of
data found that an increase in funding for police did not significantly
relate to a decrease in crime. Throwing more police on the street to
solve a structural problem is one of the reasons why people are
protesting in the streets. Defunding police—reallocating funding away
from police departments to other sectors of government—may be more
beneficial for reducing crime and police violence.
Media
Matthew Yglesias, writing in Vox,
criticized police defunding and abolition activists for lacking a plan
for how to deal with violent crime, and for ignoring the substantial
literature finding that having more police leads to less violent crime.
He stated that their dismissal of police reform
ignores that even modest reforms have been shown to reduce police
misconduct. He writes that across government as a whole, only a very
small portion of spending goes to the police, and that while more social
spending would probably reduce crime, that does not need to come out of
police budgets, noting that the United States actually has 35% fewer
police officers per capita than the rest of the world. He also states
that abolishing public police services would lead to a surge in the use
of private security services by those who can afford them, and that such services would lack accountability.
The slogan's relation to the police abolition movement has been described as a motte-and-bailey fallacy by John Murawski at RealClearInvestigations.
According to him, when "Defund the police" is criticized as tantamount
to police abolition by opponents, proponents provide a moderate
interpretation in terms of police demilitarization until the criticisms are addressed, only to return to more radical interpretations later.
Christy E. Lopez, in a column for The Washington Post,
supported the idea of defunding the police, stating that reform is not
enough. She says that goals vary within the movement, and that
"[d]efunding the police means shrinking the scope of police
responsibilities and shifting most of what government does to keep us
safe to entities that are better equipped to meet that need. It means
investing more in mental-health care and housing, and expanding the use
of community mediation and violence interruption programs."
“We
need to reimagine how we do policing. But to take all policing off is
something a latte liberal may go for as they sit around the Hamptons
discussing this as an academic problem. But people living on the ground
need proper policing."
A YouGov
opinion poll with fieldwork on May 29–30, 2020, found that less than
20% of American adults supported funding cuts for policing, with similar
levels of support among Republicans and Democrats.
In a poll conducted by ABC News/Ipsos of 686 participants, on June 10–11, 34% of US adults supported "the movement to 'defund the police'" and 64% opposed it.
Support was higher among black Americans (57%) than among whites (26%)
and Hispanics (42%), and higher among Democrats (55%) than among
Republicans or Independents.
A June 23–July 6 survey by Gallup
found that 81% of African Americans wanted police to spend the same
amount of time or more time in their neighborhoods, as did 86% of the
sample as a whole.
Politicians
Democratic Party
Chalk graffiti in Washington, D.C. on June 9, 2020
Joe Biden,
the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee who would go on to win
the 2020 election, opposed defunding police forces, arguing instead that
policing needed substantial reform. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders
opposed defunding, arguing for more accountability for police, along
with better education and training, and making their job better defined. U.S. Senator Cory Booker said he understood the sentiment behind the slogan but would not use it. U.S. Representative and Congressional Black Caucus chair Karen Bass
said, "I do think that, in cities, in states, we need to look at how we
are spending the resources and invest more in our communities. Maybe
this is an opportunity to re-envision public safety."
On November 9, 2020, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn stated that "'Defund the police' is killing our party, and we've got to stop it."
Clyburn argued that the phrase was reminiscent of the similarly radical
phrase "burn, baby, burn" used in the racial protests of the 60's,
which undermined broad support for dismantling racial injustice.
Progressive lawmakers within the Democratic Party Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
support defunding the police, believing that "Policing in our country
is inherently & intentionally racist" and thus have called for
Police Departments to be dismantled.
In a December 2020 interview with journalist Peter Hamby, former U.S. President Barack Obama said that using "defund the police" may cause politicians to lose support and make their statements less effective.
Republican Party
U.S. President Donald Trump
on June 4, 2020, tweeted "The Radical Left Democrats new theme is
"Defund the Police". Remember that when you don't want Crime, especially
against you and your family. This is where Sleepy Joe is being dragged
by the socialists. I am the complete opposite, more money for Law
Enforcement! #LAWANDORDER".
In the 2020 elections, Republicans running in competitive districts successfully flipped many Democratic-held seats by associating the Democratic candidate with the slogan.
In competitive House of Representatives and Senate races, Republicans
attacked their Democratic opponents by claiming, often falsely, that the
Democratic candidate supports defunding the police.
Both Democrats and Republicans have cited association with the
defunding movement as a contributing factor in the Democrats' loss of
seats in the 2020 House elections and the poorer than expected results in other Democratic campaigns.
Cities
A protester calling to defund the NYPD during the Daunte Wright protests in New York City
In 2020, local policymakers in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington,
D.C., San Francisco and other US cities have supported some form of
defunding or opposing budget increases.
In New York City, activists and lawmakers asked Mayor Bill de Blasio in April 2020 to use cuts to the police budget to make up for shortfalls caused by the Coronavirus pandemic.
In June, during the Floyd protests, a group of 48 candidates for city
office, along with Brooklyn College's Policing and Social Justice
Project, asked the city council to reduce the NYPD budget by $1 billion
over four years. City comptroller Scott Stringer
said the city could save $1.1 billion over four years by cutting the
numbers of police and reducing overtime and could divert the funds to
"social workers, counselors, community-based violence interrupters, and other trained professionals." On June 15, 2020, Police Commissioner Dermot Shea announced that the NYPD would eliminate its plainclothes police
units in the precinct-level and Housing Bureau anti-crime teams, and
the officers would be reassigned to community policing and detective
work.
As of August 2020, New York City had cut $1 billion from the police
budget, but this mostly involved shifting some responsibilities to other
city agencies, with the size of the force barely changing.
Some black and Latino members of the city council opposed major cuts to
policing, with the majority leader saying it was "colonization" pushed
by white progressives, while others supported more cuts.
Miami protest on June 7, 2020
In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti has said he would cut as much as $150 million from the Los Angeles Police Department's (LAPD) budget, a reversal of his planned increase of $120 million. Garcetti announced the funds would be redirected to community initiatives. In San Francisco, Mayor London Breed announced a plan to redirect some police funds to the city's African-American community, and she announced that police will no longer respond to non-criminal calls.
In Milwaukee, an activist group called African-American Roundtable,
formed by 65 organizations, asked the city to divert $75 million from
the police budget to public health and housing.
In Minneapolis, activist groups Reclaim the Block and Black Visions Collective requested for the police budget to be cut by $45 million. Members of the Minneapolis City Council signed a pledge to dismantle the police and create new public safety systems.
City council member Lisa Bender explained, "Our commitment is to end
policing as we know it and to recreate systems of public safety that
actually keep us safe."
In September, the pledge was set aside. Pledge signer Andrew Johnson
clarified that he had supported the pledge only in spirit, not
literally. Lisa Bender, the council president, said that different
interpretations of the pledge by different council members had created
confusion. The New York Times
reported that the pledge "has been rejected by the city's mayor, a
plurality of residents in recent public opinion polls, and an increasing
number of community groups. Taking its place have been the types of
incremental reforms that the city's progressive politicians had
denounced."
By the end of 2020, as the city was dealing with a spike in violent
crime, Minneapolis officials agreed to a 4.5 percent shift of the city's
$179 million annual police budget to violence prevention programs and
non-emergency services, which was far short of the sweeping changes
demanded by activists and pledged by local lawmakers in the wake of
Floyd's death.
In Nashville on June 2, 2020, a city budget hearing lasted over
ten hours to accommodate the large numbers of residents waiting to take
their turn to ask the city to defund the police.
In August 2020, the Austin City Council unanimously voted to cut $150 million, about one third, from the Austin Police Departments
budget. About $80 million of the cuts consists of moving several
civilian functions from the police department to other parts of city
government, and $50 million is for "alternative forms of public safety".
The other $20 million is to be reallocated to other city programs
including violence prevention, abortion access, and food access.
Police unions
Protest in Los Angeles on June 6, 2020
US police unions have historically resisted even minor reforms and accountability measures including resisting repeal of qualified immunity.
The Los Angeles Police Protective League
said defunding the police would be the "quickest way to make our
neighborhoods more dangerous" and that "at this time...'defunding' the
LAPD is the most irresponsible thing anyone can propose."
Outside the United States
In Canada, politicians in major cities have expressed interest in diverting some police funds. In Toronto, city councilors Josh Matlow and Kristyn Wong-Tam have planned to propose a 10% cut to the police budget. In Montreal, Mayor Valérie Plante has said she is in talks about the police budget.
In Scotland, a violence reduction unit was set up in 2005, which aims to prevent violence with educational and outreach programs.
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