It is a principle of community that each watch out for the other as much as possible—for reasons of safety, childrearing, role modeling, and stability. Oftentimes, people do not want to get involved in the neighborhood, for a focus on community seems to take away from individual concern and prosperity. Because of this tradition of self-centeredness and a combination of anthropophobia (i.e., fear of people) and soteriophobia (fear of dependence on others), the notion of sacrifice for the betterment of neighborhoods and the overall community has been anathema in American traditions in social relations.
Hence, it is no wonder that many people are up in arms that people are required to purchase health insurance, even when they are not sick or have not had any serious ailment. The major individualistic strand in the United States condemns any governmental mandate—alleging that it interferes with human freedom and the right to decide what to do with hard-earned income. Usually, there is little, if any, consideration about how their participation, or sacrifice, might help others challenged by existential circumstances. Those who can easily afford buying health insurance ruthlessly chime in, in opposition to mandate because they are hesitant to support any measure that goes against their frequently rudimentary and erroneous understanding of old-time laissez-faire capitalism and communism. Forcing people to buy into some plan, thought privately run, raises, to them, the specter of socialized medicine, Western society’s perennial nemesis.
When I was in professional school, pursuing a post-baccalaureate in religious and theological studies, I encountered a colleague who argued that the bible commands us to take care of ourselves and not to lift our hands and voices on behalf of the needy. I was both alarmed and appalled, and I genuinely wondered whether I was missing a few pages in my copy of the scriptures or had gotten my hands on an underground, subversive copy somehow! One of the most ubiquitous messages and lessons in the bible is to care for the exploited, marginalized, and oppressed.
By buying into health insurance, the healthy help to drive down the escalating costs of health care and enable those otherwise uninsurable to obtain minimal coverage. Just as we are required to pay taxes on our earnings to subsidize, for example, the military-industrial complex and rarely make any bones about it, we should likewise refuse to rankle over reducing the costs of medical care through buying into health insurance.
Why would anyone with a modicum of decency allow one’s nebulous comprehension of rights and freedoms to trump the receipt of healthcare services to those currently unable to acquire them? Private insurers are looking for the bottom line: money and profits. They do not care whether a person receives insurance, for anyone denied is quickly replaced by another who’s picked up. The cruelty of the market economy is clearly discerned, and the only way to curb its inertial juggernaut is through radical intervention by the public and governmental sectors.
I am not a doomsday theorist. However, it is incumbent upon me to say that the United States cannot continue to survive without changing its economic structure’s reliance on free enterprise market capitalism. For this system disproportionately makes paupers and exculpates imperviousness to the needs of others. An economic approach that works first to ensure fundamental and existential needs are met for everyone, including access to quality health care, would undergird our democratic republic and launch new vistas of opportunity. It would also help us to be perceived better in the world and become a harbinger of efforts for global peace.
Finally, we could become a nation that not only pays lip service to human rights, but also transforms itself from a sad tradition of rugged, dispassionate individualism to the fulfillment of the beloved community and a society of the best possible.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Sunday, December 12, 2010
TAX CUTS, PHILANTHROPY, & SOCIAL CHANGE
Extending the tax cuts for the wealthiest in the United States was an unnecessary concession of the Obama Administration, which is concluding a very disappointing second year in the executive office. These acquiescences on the part of Pres. Obama to the minority party in the two houses of the legislature are poor examples of his campaign promise to begin a new era in the nation’s capital. Being a centrist is nothing new, for Obama has a perfect model in the former president who recently visited with him in the Oval Office, namely William Jefferson Clinton. Universal health care has yet to be realized, and the end to the economic recession is nowhere in sight for the middle and lower classes—not to mention the persistent underclass, for which the current administration seems to have little, if any, regard.
What is the point of allowing the rich not to pay taxes on income that they receive for doing very little, while their workers are being laid off or are making wages that are morally unconscionable in comparison? Who benefits from these tax breaks besides the individuals receiving them? History and common sense show that they do not redound to the favor of the middle and lower classes, not to mention job creation and the general economy. There is no trickle down reality that we are missing here, for it never has and does not exist. Just because a person repeats the lame idea does not make it healthy; the theory was invalid from its propagandistic inception!
Charity is always a good thing, and as many people should engage in it that can afford to make the sacrifice. There are some who can give much more than others’ proportional giving, for they have way more materially than they and their family need or could spend. So, it comes as no surprise that Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and an assortment of multi-billionaires and multi-millionaires have pledged philanthropic donations—as if they are going beyond the call of moral duty to give money they have earned because of cheap labor, tax incentives, subsidies, and the floor of capitalism that inevitably create and divide folks into economic classes. The bottom line is that their largesse will not change a system that produces paupers out of necessity.
Charitable donations are not intended to reform, transform, or revolutionize structures, processes, and policies that discriminate against the middle, working, and lower classes and the poor. In order to improve the life chances of the masses of people who work every day, but cannot easily make ends meet, the market economy on which this country relies has to be seriously changed. This movement towards change may seem as an insuperable challenge, but there is very little alternative to stem the unethical sequestration of the haves and the have-nots. Radical change in our economic structure is not a new idea in theory, but it is very fresh as an action agenda.
What is really at stake is what type of society makes for fairness, equity, and the satisfaction of basic physical and existential needs. It is absurd to think that some inhuman economic forces should be relied upon instead of human intervention to construct our society. We can build a society that guarantees an income for all Americans, affordable housing, exceptional educational resources and facilities, and promise for continued opportunities for the next generation.
Our concentration on the merits of American democracy often avoids identifying and seeking to redress the failures of the republic. We would rather imprison anyone that calls attention to those failures than seek to root out the causes and build a society that make all citizens full participants. Instead of forging the best possible society, we foolishly seek to perpetuate the status quo that is clearly not working.
What is the point of allowing the rich not to pay taxes on income that they receive for doing very little, while their workers are being laid off or are making wages that are morally unconscionable in comparison? Who benefits from these tax breaks besides the individuals receiving them? History and common sense show that they do not redound to the favor of the middle and lower classes, not to mention job creation and the general economy. There is no trickle down reality that we are missing here, for it never has and does not exist. Just because a person repeats the lame idea does not make it healthy; the theory was invalid from its propagandistic inception!
Charity is always a good thing, and as many people should engage in it that can afford to make the sacrifice. There are some who can give much more than others’ proportional giving, for they have way more materially than they and their family need or could spend. So, it comes as no surprise that Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and an assortment of multi-billionaires and multi-millionaires have pledged philanthropic donations—as if they are going beyond the call of moral duty to give money they have earned because of cheap labor, tax incentives, subsidies, and the floor of capitalism that inevitably create and divide folks into economic classes. The bottom line is that their largesse will not change a system that produces paupers out of necessity.
Charitable donations are not intended to reform, transform, or revolutionize structures, processes, and policies that discriminate against the middle, working, and lower classes and the poor. In order to improve the life chances of the masses of people who work every day, but cannot easily make ends meet, the market economy on which this country relies has to be seriously changed. This movement towards change may seem as an insuperable challenge, but there is very little alternative to stem the unethical sequestration of the haves and the have-nots. Radical change in our economic structure is not a new idea in theory, but it is very fresh as an action agenda.
What is really at stake is what type of society makes for fairness, equity, and the satisfaction of basic physical and existential needs. It is absurd to think that some inhuman economic forces should be relied upon instead of human intervention to construct our society. We can build a society that guarantees an income for all Americans, affordable housing, exceptional educational resources and facilities, and promise for continued opportunities for the next generation.
Our concentration on the merits of American democracy often avoids identifying and seeking to redress the failures of the republic. We would rather imprison anyone that calls attention to those failures than seek to root out the causes and build a society that make all citizens full participants. Instead of forging the best possible society, we foolishly seek to perpetuate the status quo that is clearly not working.
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