Deborah Stone - The Samaritan's Dilemma: Should Government Help Your Neighbor?

Who is responsible for our welfare—the individual or society? In 1981, Ronald Reagan famously declared, “Government is not the solution to our problems.” In February 2009, Newsweek proclaimed, “We Are All Socialists Now.” Surely the economic crisis triggered this tectonic change in our political culture, but Deborah Stone has a different take. The desire for collective responsibility also grew from the vast reservoir of everyday altruism that was so neglected during the “greed is good” era. She will show why bringing the Good Samaritan ethic into public policy is critical for a healthy democracy.

Deborah Stone is a Research Professor of Government at Dartmouth College and a founding editor of The American Prospect. She is the author of three previous books, including Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making, which has been translated into five languages and won the Wildavsky Award from the American Political Science association for its enduring contribution to policy studies. She has taught at M.I.T., Brandeis University, and as a visitor at Yale, Tulane, University of Bremen, Germany and National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan. Her essays have appeared in The Nation, New Republic, Boston Review, Civilization, and Natural History, and Natural New England. She has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and Harvard Law School, and was a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar.