In business schools, they use real-life case studies to demonstrate and explain the effects of different business policies and how external forces, such as government regulation and taxation, affect business outcomes. You can use this methodology to investigate anything. One such story, taken at random might be dismissed as anecdotal evidence, but when a whole lot of stories, or every story with similar particulars, ends with similar results, one is justified in making generalizations. You can't deny facts, especially significant statistical findings.
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Crazy Americans all rant and rave about how terrible all socialism is. Once you’ve seen how people’s lives are changed for the better with democratic socialism, it becomes obvious that that’s what we ought to have here. But, we don’t. (Because, freedom?) There is never any explanation about what's so terrible about universal medical care and education, or job and pension security though worker organization and collective bargaining. It's stunning how absolutely certain most Americans are that we have the best society possible and that no one else in the world has it anywhere near as good as we do.
The evidence of better quality of life outside the United States is freely available. We're always hearing statistics about higher literacy, lower poverty, more equitable income distribution, longer lifespans, lower mortality, lower incidence of disease and even general "happiness" in other countries. All countries that surpass us in such measures are, to some extent at least, more "socialist" than we are. The idea that democratic socialism is correlate with a better life for the populace at large, however, seems to have no resonance whatsoever. Why doesn't any of this information seem to have any effect on the smug satisfaction of self-styled "conservatives" and other libertarian poseurs?
Such implacable dogmatism to the official litany of the Republican Party is the result of never having directly experienced socialism in any form. Personal experience, such as living and working in Denmark for an extended period of time, can fix that. I read Living with Denmark's Democratic Socialism on Veterans Day and compared the writer's experience with socialism to my own.
The piece was the kind of reaction nearly every intelligent, deliberate person has when exposed for any length of time to democratic socialism. I had a similar epiphany in 1972, about six months into my two-year tour in Germany while serving with the U.S. Army. I’d come to the conclusion that the German people had it pretty good. I had wangled an assignment for myself as a lifeguard at the Armed Forces Recreation Center in Berchtesgaden. Our squad of eight was housed in a military Kasern, but we had to walk through the town to our duty station, a hotel swimming pool. We had a lot of contact with the civilian populace and had the option of being part of the community if we wanted to. When you live with people, you eventually get the full picture about what their lives are like.
I had some German friends, most significantly, a girlfriend. By direct observation and talking to her, her friends and her family, I found out everything I needed to know about what “socialism” really meant. It was wonderful, almost a paradise. It’s true that they would get their knickers (or, perhaps, Lederhosen) in a twist about stuff, but it was always jive-ass, chicken-shit, local stuff, like zoning ordinances for the greenhouses and kennels used in their family businesses. For big stuff, like retirement income, medical care, getting work, making a living, labor conditions and most day-to-day dealings, these people didn’t seem to ever have any serious concerns. They knew that they were covered and that things would be taken care of. Life was good for them.
This blew my mind when I saw how problems that would have catastrophic, permanently life-altering repercussions for most working people in the United States hardly affected them at all. My girlfriend got sick once and was treated quickly and efficiently. Her father had a chronic complaint associated with, but not directly caused by war injuries. He was packed off for six weeks to a spa on the North Sea for a Kur, where he had mud baths, massages and hydrotherapy. None of this cost them anything. It was all part of their national health benefits. She had lived in the United States for a time, so she carefully explained the differences between Germany and the United States when this sort of thing happened. This impressed me quite a lot, but these seemed liked trivial incidents, easy to explain away. Then, something happened that is the basis for my case study. Like any business school case study, it's just one story. But, this one story is typical of what is experienced by most people, and is thereby a sound basis for generalization and theorizing.
---CASE STUDY---
One of her drinking buddies was an 18-year-old apprentice pharmacy tech. She was single, lived at home with her working-class parents, and was still “in high school” by American standards. (She was nearing the end of a two-year work/study apprenticeship after ten years of schooling. This is the standard track for those not planning on a university education.) One night, she was out with some other friends and was in a car wreck. Her leg was broken and she suffered other injuries. These required surgery and hospitalization.
My girlfriend and I visited her in the hospital and the small talk revealed what democratic socialism means to low-income, working people in Germany when they have a life-threatening crisis.
- All treatment, from emergency vehicles to outpatient recovery care was free to her. At some point, her mother brought in the national health care enrollment card, but producing it had no effect on how quickly she was cared for or the type of care she received.
- When she was released from the hospital, she got money for the taxi that took her home. She couldn’t ride public transit because she had a big cast on her leg. No one even asked if her parents could pick her up in the family car because it was the hospital’s responsibility to care for her and get her home for outpatient care. She got vouchers for the taxi rides to and from her clinic appointments and therapy sessions.
- All medicine was free.
- She got her full pay from her job, and was guaranteed to return to work and resume her apprenticeship when she was ready. (Completing the apprenticeship meant that she was guaranteed a job doing that kind of work and could get unemployment benefits if appropriate work were not available. They don’t don’t have college graduates dispensing espresso or trained pharmacy technicians waiting on table.) In addition, she got a small amount of extra pay for extraordinary expenses resulting from her injury.
- There was no accounting of sick leave or use of accrued vacation time for her recovery. She was injured and could not work or go to school. That was the end of it. She still got paid. The determination of what she was capable of, and how long she needed to recover, was made entirely by medical personnel, not any kind of insurance adjuster or bureaucrat.
- When the doctors came to the conclusion that after her recovery she would have some disability and would not be able to perform a job that required her to stand most of the time, she was allowed to switch from her Berufschule (non-academic “high school”) apprenticeship to Gymnasium (university-prep “high school”), which would qualify her for higher education if she completed it. This is equivalent to dropping out of high school while pursuing a vocational curriculum and being allowed to re-enroll in a college prep curriculum, without prejudice. As all schooling is free in Germany, it's also the same as being assured of a full academic scholarship to college. She wasn't getting any kind of special treatment; everybody gets this kind of opportunity.
---END OF CASE STUDY---
So, what can we conclude here about life under democratic socialism in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1972? This case study satisfied me that free universal medical care and education are a good thing. I shudder to think about what would have happened to the young pharmacy tech if she had been living in America.
- Her parents had a small farm and would have probably had only catastrophic individual health insurance, or perhaps not had any insurance at all. As a pre-Obamacare "adult", she might not even be covered under her parents' policy even if they had one.
- There would have been hefty bills for the ambulance and huge expenses for the surgery, hospitalization and recovery. Even with insurance, the deductibles, copays and coverage limite would have meant a huge outlay out of pocket.
- As the family was not wealthy, the accident might have been enough to break them financially, drive them into debt, and eventually deprive them of their livelihood if they lost the farm.
- Being unable to work or go to school, she would have lost her part-time job at the fast food restaurant, receiving no disability leave or pay.
- There would be no therapy or long-term rehabilitation once the cast came off. If she couldn't walk right, she might have to use a cane or a crutch, so her waitressing days would have clearly been over.
- She probably would been forced to put off her plans to enroll at the local community college until she could get back to working somewhere and save up enough for tuition and fees.
Beyond the advantages of universal health care, the probable effect of a serious medial problem on education is the big point here. The American equivalent of my girlfriend’s younger friend might have graduated from high school with mediocre grades or dropped out and secured a GED with some remedial night classes once she had shaped a career goal. Either way, she would have had her sights on a pharmacy tech training program, which would culminate in an associate's degree. But, without experience, she would have had no clear idea of whether she had any real interest in that kind of work. If she did get a job at the local chain drug store, she could not work in the pharmacy because she had no training. (There are very few apprenticeship programs in the United States outside the building trades while in Germany, everyone who doesn't go to university can get into one.)
The idea of her fitness for working on her feet would not have been part of her deliberation about a job. As with her peers, success in life hinges on getting, and keeping, some kind of stable job. To get that, you had to have training, which costs money. If you have money, you can get training. Without it, you cannot. With this kind of financial pressure, any consideration of what you like or don’t like, or even what is most suitable for you physically, is a secondary consideration. Self-actualization and maximizing one’s personal potential is a luxury reserved for the well-to-do in this country. Ordinary people, not just the poor, have to take what they can get, and are expected to be grateful for it.
Republicans, and the backers of their policies, can’t make their way to the idea that anyone has the right to anything that they or they family can’t pay for by themselves. This callous, mean-spirited outlook is morally bankrupt and tarnishes one’s soul. It has to be scourged from being deemed an acceptable public stance. Once the electorate figures out that this pseudo-libertarian, sociopathic (e.g., Ayn Rand) philosophy is no good and has to go, Republicans and other so-called “conservatives” will be hooted out of office. Then and only then can be get down to fixing the mess these clowns have made.
This why I'm backing democratic socialist Bernie Sanders for President. He gets it, and so does anyone who has lived for a while in a country with democratic socialism. There is no credible, fact-based argument against it. The only reason the entire population, en masse, doesn't immediately institute it is that a majority of the people suffer from a number of hysterical delusions about what is patently obvious to most of the people in the world, but not us.
This leads us to my question of the day and poll. Take your time on this because we've all heard each of these crazy, stupid ideas mouthed more than once by Republican candidates for President. Each of these notions is manifestly untrue, so your mission is to determine which one of these howlers is the most egregious.