People claim Elizabeth and Bernie are too liberal, that their projects would beggar the country, so we can’t select them.
There must be something wrong with programs that have existed in Europe for decades. There must be something wrong and beyond our resources, with liberal programs, even though many corporate leaders support them.
Health care? The money is obviously there. People have been buying insurance forever. Employers have been paying for it for decades. And what they wouldn’t buy, the public has been paying for through emergency rooms. Let me explain the real difference. If employers pay their share through the tax system, they won’t have to worry about so-called employee benefits every time they hire someone. Even though corporations would pay about the same, the shift from a payroll expense to a public program would take the cost out of the calculus whenever business thinks about hiring someone. Or thinks about giving people a real job instead of a gig. Public programs help the economy flow. Many corporations understand that. Competition can be built in with a public option, for example. And small business would function much more easily. But false conservatives, playing on the fears of the public, don’t want to admit that they’re behind the logical eight ball.
Business could rarely get going if they had to build their own physical and social services. In fact business always wants the public to give them whatever they need. They don’t even want to build ballparks on their own dimes! But if they had to find and get water to their businesses and workers, or build their own electrical systems off the grid, or cut and pave their own roads, it would cost more and few could get started. They’d be stuck next to waterfalls like the old mills. But that’s what the fear mongers call socialism. And if they had to build all the physical and social infrastructure they need, they’d spend as little as possible and sacrifice the health of their employees. I’m not making that up – it’s the history of company towns that virtually enslaved employees, paying them in what was called company scrip. Complain and you lost your job, your home, and went into the world penniless, homeless and likely without your family as well.
Social investments protect our jobs and our freedom. Americans who know their history know that’s the world that President Franklin Roosevelt rescued us from with the New Deal by the end of the great depression. Some rich folk hated him for it because it gave most of us a chance at decent lives instead of slavery to corporate masters. Now that corporations are finding ways to take it back through the gig economy, outsourcing and union busting, we need to recreate the New Deal that gave us Social Security, unemployment insurance, the right to organize and that eventually led to Medicare. Far from being unsustainable, Americans had their best years since Roosevelt and the New Deal. And corporations too know that they can live with it because public programs give them the flexibility they want to add employees without the added expense of so-called benefits.
Too liberal? Don’t make me laugh through my tears at the ruin of the American worker.
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.