The price of freedom

Inspired by the PBS pledge drive screening of several Rick Steves episodes (I swear they only show his show during pledge drives), I fired up his Web site.

Anyway, I found an interesting essay he wrote about the cultural and social awakening travel has been to him, explaining how it has basically made him a dogged liberal on economic and cultural issues.

There's one particularly poignant passage in this vignette, when Steves remarks upon the high taxes in Switzerland and a Swiss friend replies "What's it worth to live in a country with no homeless, no hunger, and where everyone has access to good healthcare and a top-quality education?"

That pretty much sums up the difference in philosophies separating America from Europe, or most of the rest of the world for that matter.

I mean, honestly, wouldn't it be worth it to pay seemingly high taxes if it meant that all the folks in this country [just kidding] had a roof over their heads, food on their tables, clothes on their backs, doctors to call on for medical attention, good schools for their youth and the other benefits of a social democratic welfare state?

"But," you say, "such a utopia can only be a fantasy. No one would approve of higher taxes in America."

Except that it's not such a pipe dream. For one thing, Americans pay roughly the same amount in taxes as residents of most industrialized countries. Our income tax seems lower, but we have many more hidden taxes that tend to get overlooked in an international comparison of tax rates. The problem is, we don't get the same kind of return on our investment that folks in other countries do. Seems that when you consistently blow half of your country's budget on the military and the rest of the time are hellbent on creating a regressive, rather than progressive schedule of taxation, there isn't much to go around on piddling matters like education, healthcare or human services.

Really, you and I, Joe Sixpack, are getting the shaft. We (well, more you, since I don't have any income at the moment) drop a sizable chunk of change in Mean Uncle Sam's coffers, then watch him blow it on toys for the rich, or unnecessary projects that mainly benefit the rich. It's disgusting.

But I guess that's what it means to be an American. Not so much to love liberty as to treasure the freedom for the ultra-rich to get richer on the backs on everyone else. There's no logical reason for a lot of this to be so. Universal health insurance, for one, should already be a reality. And what's ridiculous and sad is that we could insure everyone in America without spending one dime more on healthcare than we already do. Simply switching to a single-payer system, like the one in place north of the border Canada way, would save enough money in consolidating the industry's bureaucracy (for all the griping antigovernment conservatives do about the "bloated bureaucracy," they seem to have no grasp of the fact that the private sector does no better in minimizing bureaucracy) to provide care to all Americans. We can't do that, however, because it'd mean socialized medicine.

So what? Yes, it's socialized medicine. Socialized. Socialized! Whoop-dee-freakin'-doo. Get over yourself. The private sector and free market have proven time and again their manifest inability to magically work out schemes by which everyone would be covered.

Furthermore, it's probably costing taxpayers more -- a lot more -- in the long run to have so many people without insurance. Preventative medicine and prompt care for relatively minor ailments and injuries cost a fraction of major surgery and prolonged hospital stays. But most Americans without health insurance (like myself) have to forgo basic medical treatment for these small problems because they can't afford the out-of-pocket costs. So the ailments don't get the relatively inexpensive, necessary care and are allowed to fester and worsen until they become full-blown major conditions, at which point these same folks without healthcare have to overburden public hospitals, again, at taxpayers' expense. Except that instead of looking at maybe a couple of hundred bucks for a doctor's visit and some simple remedy, we're talking about thousands of dollars in steep hospital fees, major medical procedures and expensive treatments.

This is the stuff that kills me. Conservatives and their dittoheads go on and on ad nauseum about how free markets are a panacea for everything and how the government is inherently bad, etc. But by their own logic, using a cost/benefit analysis, it doesn't add up. It's actually cheaper to the taxpayer to have these sorts of social programs than it is to turn a blind eye and cold heart to those on the lower eschelons of society.

In this regard, perhaps Michael Moore is right in his new book, Dude, Where's My Country, when he talks about how this is all a load of bull that a narrow group of the rich try to sell to the masses and largely succeed, thanks in great measure to the willy-nilly media and right-wing pundits who evangelize the gospel of Supply Side Jesus. Not that I'm generally one to believe conspiracy theories, but that's really not what this is. It's not an active conspiracy, per se, not like Bill Gates, Michael Eisner, Jack Welch, et al have formed a cell in their elusive Manhattan enclaves where they plot such havoc on the country and the world. But there is a lot of logic(!) in what Moore writes. Read it for yourself.

Rick Steves makes this interesting comparison where he talks about how Americans tend to view their relationship with government with an "us vs. them" mentality, whereas Europeans have more of a "the government is us" mindset. I think that's a useful dichotomy for understanding prevailing political attitudes in the two parts of the world. And if we accept this characterization, then you get a fascinating notion of how these two sorts of societies are organized. America, I would argue (as would many other people), is much more oligarchic and antagonistic. A powerful few wield most of the political and economic control, and the government seems to be of, for and by the elite rather than the people. Europe, by contrast, has a less stratified society and, I contend, a more vibrant democracy. And really, shouldn't we change popular perceptions of government, make people see it as an agent of us? If only we could inculcate a popular ethos of community, of shared mission and journey, people might not threaten rebellion everytime some political candidate had the gumption to propose universal healthcare.

Coming full circle, I'm just not sure what to make of the situation. I'm conflicted. On the one hand, I'm a committed social democrat. The anarchist in me is all for doing away with government and letting people help each other without coercion, but the realist in me sees a long and treacherous road ahead before attitudes and structures sufficiently evolve to make such a bold attempt. I simply believe government has an obligation to society to ensure a basic quality of living for everyone. I don't think I'm very radical in my beliefs, or at least in my methods. Despite my fascination with communism, I've taken enough history to know that it's not the route to go. But by the same token, I've been a socially and politically cognizant being long enough to recognize that unfettered capitalism won't promote the greater good.

One of the most unexpected but I think revolutionary ideas I've come to embrace is that capitalism is a great motor for social change. That's right. I'd be a fool to deny that profit motives exist, that people and companies don't operate in a fashion that will maximize their earnings. But what should also be obvious to anyone is that markets and economic actors, left to their own devices, will pursue largely predatory and uncreative means to make money. It's a lot easier to get rich by rigging the rules so that others do labor while you collect the spoils, but it isn't very productive or beneficial to anyone else. Besides, unadulterated capitalism isn't inherently good. Free markets promote monopolies and other anticompetitive arrangements that harm everyone but the monopolists. Innovation is a wonderful thing, one of humanity's proudest attributes. But some reigns have to be put on capitalism in order to realize its full potential. So, the key is to create incentives for people to innovate, to come up with new ways of doing things that serve everyone. And here's where it gets sticky.

Not being an economist or having much grounding in economic theory beyond the aggregate supply and demand curves I studied in high school macroeconomics, I'm not qualified to go into great detail on this. But essentially, I believe there is potential for the government to manipulate markets so as to encourage the economy to operate in a way that benefits society. For lack of a better name, and to borrow from my favorite historical epoch, I'll call this market socialism. The gist is that we'll let capitalism operate up to a point. So long as it fuels social welfare programs, protects the environment, doesn't compromise the future and continues to innovate, all while protecting the rights of workers and others, it can do as it sees fit. And while this might seem to greatly impinge the freedom of producers to produce (tough beans), it still allows quite a bit of latitude. But more importantly, it allows capitalism to do its thing and operate on all cylinders as the engine for social welfare.

While I don't know if that's ever going to happen, I do know that it's a lot closer to reality in Europe and other industrialized countries than it is here. And I'm not sure if that will ever change. It's hard for me to envision the sea change in the American political landscape (nice mixing of metaphors, eh?) necessary to institute such measures. So I don't know what to do. Is it worthwhile to agitate for reform, for change? I don't know (though I'll keep doing it regardless). Or maybe conditions will get so dire that we'll have some sort of great popular revolution that will create a new, better social order. Such a defeatist outlook doesn't seem particularly viable, nor necessarily palatable. Granted, the world has seen its share of bloodless, "velvet" revolutions in recent decades. But there have also been plenty of violent coups and rebellions, so it could be a mixed and/or disastrous blessing.

What then? Move to Canada? Or Europe? I'd love to live in Prague, or Krakow, maybe Dubrovnik or some other grand old city, both historical and modern, cosmopolitan, vibrant, livable. But my dreams (delusions, perhaps?) of doing that seem, well, pipe dreams. Realistically, I might learn Czech or German or another language well enough to converse and read and debate and communicate in a foreign land. And it's not inconceivable for me to take up residence elsewhere for a year or two, maybe even longer. But I won't ever fullybelong.

There's just something about uprooting one's self and relocating to a different culture that ends up unsatisfying. You can pack up and distance yourself from your old life, assume a new one, immerse yourself in a culture and adopt its customs and affectations, but you still can't fully embrace it because you can never get completely beyond your origins, even if those evolve and change so as to become unrecognizable in the time you're gone. Maybe I'm overcynical or jaded, or perhaps too influenced by Milan Kundera's outstanding novel, Ignorance, which addresses the émigré experience, undoubtedly influenced by that of Kundera. But at a certain fundamental, (gulp) essential level, there's a certain Americanness to me I don't feel I can ever fully transcend. Perhaps if I had moved abroad earlier, as a child, and completed my socialization and adolescence in a different culture, it might be different. I could move more fluidly between cultures and feel completely and equally at home in both. But that's not the case.

This worries me. I'm not sure why. Perhaps I feel it an obstacle to having the temerity to move abroad, to emigrate, to sever all but the essential ties to my homeland and transplant myself elsewhere. It's a nice thought at times. I'm not sure I could ever bring myself to do it, at least not permanently, but then I wonder if my trepidation is mainly the product of my Americanness and the recognition that I will forever be possessed of this.

Or perhaps it's the shame evoked by my Americanness. I seldom feel like this is really my country, that it belongs to me, that I belong to it. Yet it's mine all the same. That's a prickly pill to swallow. Many times I'd like to renounce all ties to this country, particularly as its government commits many horrific crimes in my name. But I effectively can't. I can turn my back on my citizenship, but I can't very well adopt a new homeland. So I remain conflicted.

Maybe I should just move to Canada. Culturally, it's fairly close to America. And its social and political values appear in line with my own. So perhaps that's the most workable solution. I just wish it weren't so bloody cold in Toronto. Or Vancouver. Or Ottawa.