Social Utilitarianism

Mill defines the Greatest Happiness Principle as the greatest good for the greatest number of people. As with all of the other philosophers we have read, Mill sees his philosophy as a personal philosophy meant to be carried out and lived in individual lives. My question however is should we see Mill’s teachings as a more general social philosophy intended for the greater benefit of society rather than the individual? Mill states that the good of an action is derived from the good that action produces. In this sense he means to promote an overall net positive for the society by the actions of the society’s individual citizens. It is in this net overall positive that Mill tries to make a better society and in the end better its citizens as a whole in the long run. One can look throughout the more distant past of American history to see examples of communities and citizens making personal sacrifices in order to benefit the whole. In our faster paced, individualized lives the word sacrifice has a stigma to it, however to preceding generations it was simply what you did for your neighbor and he for you when times got hard. In taking a closer look at how Mill’s philosophy could be put into effect on a society/nationwide basis vs. a small community let’s consider many of the current proposals in D.C. regarding issues such as healthcare, public support of those in need, and other such social issues. Healthcare is arguably a right for all citizens of an industrialized and wealthy country such as ours. However, the cost of such healthcare is rising at incredible levels due to costly breakthroughs in technology and science as well as the rising costs of malpractice insurance. These issues could be resolved in a Utilitarian fashion by the instating of new standards of healthcare as well as malpractice. By issuing tort reform you benefit the whole of society by slowing if not even stopping the rising the cost of healthcare. The government and its citizens do have responsibilities towards the less fortunate in society, however many of these systems have broken down and are functioning subpar of what they were intended to be. A new works program as well as revived job/skills training would benefit this country in ways too numerous to count and would fit well into Utilitarian thought. The country would be benefited as a whole and would do much to ease the burden of social programs in the national budget due to the rise of employment and increased job opportunity. Motivating those in poverty and offering the glimmer of hope beyond that of a mere substance level check every month would do much to benefit the nation and would instead push the country in the direction it was always meant to be.