In the wake of pension "reform" and with Social Security and health care existing less as salient issues to be discussed and more as looming spectres of certain doom, some of us have been asking: "Why is corporate America unable to admit that in these areas, nationalization and socialization might actually benefit their interests?" The best answer has been simple: they are motivated by ideology. Their ideology clearly and blindly refuses to accept that any enterprise or institution may be better served by a governmental or a societal entity. This is useful so far as understanding your opponent, but it is more difficult to use this to work towards positive change, to convince those people with the blinders on that our ideas are not so radical and dangerous after all.
[the good stuff follows]
In the August 28 issue of
The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/... Malcolm Gladwell succinctly traces the history of company-based health care and pension provision, and eloquently explains why these ideas are doomed to fail. Health care and pensions were not turned over to large, society-wide pools of risk and benefit-taking because "Charlie Wilson [President of G.M. in 1950] felt the way [other] business leaders did: that collectivization was a threat to the free market and to the autonomy of business owners." And so, to thwart the unions agitating for expanded social security and industry wide pensions, and to circumvent arguments for national health insurance (for which Harry Truman was a proponent), companies decided themselves to offer health care and pensions to workers. This in turn, has led and is leading to the reduced competitiveness and outright bankruptcy of American firms.
It all has to do with demographics, Gladwell says. There really are too many old people and retirees to be supported by an ever shrinking workforce, proportionally speaking. I first heard this idea spouted by conservatives who thought that because of the demographic crisis, we should have much larger families and/or we should turn to a privatized, you're-on-your-own system. This is jack-assinine, of course, but it is instructive.
Gladwell argues that 56 years ago, business leaders actively decided to take on responsibilities that were contrary to their interests and the interests of their shareholders. Union leaders and workers accepted this system not because it was what they wanted, but because it was good enough; it offered them the benefits they as workers demanded. Most workers, most people, will only take an issue that far, to the personal, immediate, did-I-get-what-I-wanted level.
Herein lies our strategy for debating health care and pensions and social security whenever it comes up. Single-payer insurance for both health care and retirement is the obvious rational way to go. It benefits both workers who need it and corporate interests that have no business hamstringing themselves with inefficient worker compensation. This needs to be both expanded into clear, level-headed policy and reduced into media-sized talking points. It is the angle, the only angle. Yet our efforts at galvanizing popular support for this solution is going to be stymied by a public both complacent and cynical. They largely have the benefits they want even as they distrust government and corporations handling of these benefits. Because of Republican misrule, they -- we -- distrust government, and because people are often adverse to change, we distrust any concrete notions of reform. The way to get the public on the side of single-payer is to have their insurance really imperiled by Republican ideas of privatization. We saw this work when that word hijacked Bush's plan for Social Security evisceration -- err, reform. This will happen again, and we need to be ready. But at the same time, we need to offer up a coherent and united idea for how we really can benefit working Americans both now and later.