Is America Going Socialist?

 My wife’s Facebook universe is being utterly consumed by the post-election conspiracy wormhole of whether or not “still-free” America is going down the path of socialism, and whether this (or not) is going to provoke the Second Coming of Christ and/or the imminent dissolution of the E Pluribus Unum; so she naturally looked to her pagan philosopher of a husband (which would be me) to think some Big Thoughts on this topic. And so of course here They are. As any man can testify, marital bliss works a whole lot better when we do what our wives tell us.

The Basis of Democracy. One danger for republican democracy, but the only assured promise of its eventual success, resides in the individual; and not just in the individual as meat on the hoof, as sheer numbers in a mass; but rather the individual as conceived of by Aristotle, Descartes, Jefferson, and Kant – as the thinking thing. And if the American individual should ever commit to the path of thinking purposefully, as a student of bruta facta as opposed to an inert depository that accepts or believes the contents of every idiot fwd and email rumor monger that lands in our PC inboxes, or that takes things only at their face value, then our modern democracy will finally begin to mark its entry into the true matrix of unpredictability and opportunity, which is the predictable philosophical endgame of every democracy.

            A Thinking Individual is dangerous; but the T-I is also the only true potential for the philosophy of democracy, and it makes us uneasy. Rightly so; for as the American philosopher John Dewey wrote: “If we once start thinking no one can guarantee what will be the outcome, except that many objects, ends and institutions will be surely doomed. Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world in peril, and no one can wholly predict what will emerge in its place.”

Recognition of a Problem. In some pockets of post-election America there has been, of late, a significant amount of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth over the impressive shellacking taken by Governor Romney. The hue and cry, of course, has been wrapped around the familiar old McCarthy-era chestnut – that America is on the road to European Socialism, which, as we all know if we know anything at all, is only a hop, skip, and a jump away from pinko Communism; and the road is short, steep and slippery as hell! It is a “come-to-Jesus” moment in America; because it is just possible that this last American election, when seen for what some Americans think it is… as a people’s turning away from the God of democracy and toward Godless socialism, will be the straw that broke the camel’s back, which, when good and broken, will either induce the labor of the Christian Rapture and the Tribulation, or embolden Texans into finally getting around to seceding from the “maggot ridden” Union, whichever comes first. Yee-haw!

            One of my wife’s Facebook “friends” even got her knickers in a philosophical twist by resolutely affirming pre-election that her God would not allow a socialist Obama to be reelected. The philosophical conundrum is now obvious, or at the very least, the illogical cat has certainly scampered out of the proverbial bag – because this “friend’s” religious “argument” dictates that either Obama did not get reelected on November 6, 2012, or that her God, like Homer’s Zeus (e.g., Iliad I:428-487), was out to an exotic dinner party somewhere else and not paying much attention to America’s elections; either way, the philosophical outlook for such a religious point of view is not pretty.

            So, it would seem that a certain segment of the American people, the above segment that got roundly whammed in these elections, is pretty certain that the other segment, which won the election in a whamming kind of way, has an absolutely wrong-headed philosophical vision of America. Group One, the losers, thinks that Group Two, the winners, have a totally flawed conception of democracy in American as an ATM. On this reading, G-2ers voted democratic because “they wanted stuff” from the government, and not because they wanted to be the noble creators of State, like G-1ers would have been had they won. Of course, one is instantly flooded by all-too-recent memories of the halcyon days of the Bush-Cheney era, which brought us wars and rumors of wars, an economic meltdown to rival that of the Great Depression, a transference of wealth away from the middle and lower classes that probably gave many an overindulged economic forecaster indigestion, and which left so many, many Americans remarkably poorer by having known it and lived through it.

Government & Management Theory.  Irrespective the party or the administration, there is inherent to the Big Idea of people-participation in government a practical, if not to say obviously organizational problem, which will always be at the very heart of the function we call State. How does one go about organizing a big community? There is always going to be some “few” who will have to sort out, in a management sort of way, the “many”; in the community there are always going to be some who have more (stuff, money, land, brains, beauty, family connections, ambition, talent, you name it…), and some who have less.

            There is by necessity an ingrained division of labor in any form of organization or community governance; where labor has been divided, it is not brain-science to suggest that there will no longer be an Absolute Equity, because the labor of State is supposedly divided, in the best of all possible worlds, along the lines of disposition, and competence, and willingness, rather than equality. Therefore the American philosophes were wise to see the equity of men, not in their individuality (i.e., personal disposition, competence, and willingness), but through the eyes of the Universal Law that protects each one of the We the People. This reveals itself to be a wisdom indeed because, looking back, most attempts to engineer artificially into the social space other types of equity (affirmative action comes to mind), inevitably result in injustices. Inequality (i.e., difference) does not automatically equate to injustice.

            In the above-linked ATM article, Lewis Lapham states the inescapable and axiomatic principle for this type of management distinction in government, which would be more abstract and philosophical if it were not so simple and confoundedly practical:

From Aristotle the founders borrowed the theorem that all government, no matter what its name or form, incorporates the means by which the privileged few arrange the distribution of law and property for the less-fortunate many. Recognizing in themselves the sort of people to whom James Madison assigned “the most wisdom to discern, and the most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society,” they undertook to draft a constitution that employed an aristocratic means to achieve a democratic end.

Statement of the Problem. What I would really like to know at this point, then, is something about the G-2 voters who dared to shock and awe the G-1 voters by winning these last elections. What is all the “stuff” they actually want from government, stuff that G-1 voters (the losers) would not take from government for love or money? In what ways is our post-election America now following a socialist agenda or moving toward a socialism, which will then tip over into a communism, which will then provoke either the Second Coming of Christ or the secession of Texas, along with potentially 30 other states, from the American Union?

Thinking Through the Problem. For almost two years my wife and I have been teaching and living in a country, the Netherlands, where the social contract is clearly defined in terms of a socialist philosophy, and frankly, I have only just recently seen a noticeable difference between this socialist county where we live and the “still-free” America that we left behind. As far as I can tell from living here, and can remember from my pay-stubs in America, in both social contract countries the State has the legal right, and indeed obligation, to use my tax-dollars 1) to staff and maintain the schools and universities and hospitals, 2) to keep up the roads and parks and public spaces, 3) to bring clean water and gas and electricity to my house, to take away sewage, and to maintain these infrastructures, 4) to empty the trash, and 5) to provide defense to the people (which might also include financing a foreign war or two, plus wars of a home-grown political sort: on Terror, on Drugs, on Poverty, on Karl Rove, as well as on miscellaneous other war-worthy causes, at least in the case of the US).

            On a side note for item 5): there has been something troubling me about this last warrior fact… The military budget for the Netherlands is expected to reach $10.77 billion by 2016, while the military budget for the U.S. is currently at $964.8 billion, which is expected to decline to $901.8 billion by 2016. Given this information, I still cannot quite figure out why I feel safer in the Netherlands—they are obviously not spending nearly enough money on my personal safety, and I am still awaiting, eagerly if not overly persuaded, their adoption of the equivalent of the American Patriot Act (whatever the budget!), so I can feel even safer yet! (This may be read with irony, if so desired…)

            So, schools and hospitals, trash, sewage, roads & other infrastructure, clean water, electricity, and wars—tax-wise, when all is said and done, it would seem that in both countries approximately the same amount of real money is gone from my paycheck every month, and that in both countries my tax dollars go to creating and enabling the practical possibilities of my life and well-being. Have I missed something? Did I miss the fact that the social philosophy of the Americans is comparable in its practical outworking to that of any other socialist State in Europe? Did I miss the fact that this is what pragmatic socialism looks like? Already long before this present generation America’s Socialism started with people-oriented, republican (i.e., non-monarchical) policies from the likes of Abraham Lincoln (Republican), Teddy Roosevelt (Republican), Franklin Roosevelt (Democrat), and Dwight Eisenhower (Republican). So for the question as to whether America has gotten to socialism yet… the answer is clearly: away and beyond. In fact, it would seem that America has been functioning on the principle of pragmatic socialism at least since the days of Honest Abe Lincoln.

More Thinking + Information. So, you might well ask, in addition to the pragmatic socialism inherent organizationally to republican democracy, what else does American socialism look like? Well, in the U.S. I have a tax rate of 28-32% for federal taxes, to which is added property taxes + sales and/or other state & local taxes, + (FICA, social security + Medicare), which is another 7.65%. So when the dust settles at the end of my American month, real money out of my pay going to tax-type liabilities, is between 40-50%. The Internet-God confirms this approximate figure: “Federal tax rates vary from 10% to 35% of taxable income. State and local tax rates vary widely by jurisdiction, from 0% to 12.696%.” 
            However, my liability is still not quite finished in the U.S. I also had to make monthly contributions to my health insurance, which changed according to my university’s contract negotiations: I went from about $100.00 a month for a single man in 1997, to about $650.00 a month for a single man in the early 2000s, then back to around $125.00 for a family of 4 (marital blended bliss set in…) around the end of that decade.

            In the Netherlands, on the other hand, and I say this in the interests of transparency, I qualify for diminished taxes (exonerated from the first 30% of my income) because I am a foreign employee. This is a cost-of-living type of compensation or adjustment, agreed upon contractually between the U.S. and the Netherlands, to encourage working exchanges between the two countries—workers from less expensive cost-of-living economies, like in the U.S., can actually afford to travel to, work and live in more expensive economies, like the Netherlands. Again according to the Internet-God, in the Netherlands: “Income tax is charged on a progressive basis on Box 1 income, at rates ranging from 2.5% to 52% (2007), at a rate of 22% on Box 2 income up to €250,000 and 25% on the excess (2007), and at a flat rate of 30% on Box 3 income.” Now, this gobbledygook (at least for those of us who are more philosophically inclined) does not mean much to me, but the “street” version is that the tax rate is roughly going to be around 52% for all and sundry, most likely under that threshold for many, but never over for anyone.

            So it would seem that in this socialist country, with my foreign worker status, I am actually paying less in the way of taxes than I would in the U.S.; and without the special foreign worker status, I would be paying approximately the same as I was paying at my former teaching position—from 40-50%. Health insurance costs are additional in NL, like they were for me in the U.S.; but the cost of the health plan seems to be stable countrywide—at about €99 per person per month for the basic plan.

Conclusions? What do I deduce from this short but tedious comparison of my tax-life in the U.S. and my tax-life in the Netherlands? That 1) my tax liability, and what I get for my tax dollars/euros, is approximately the same in both the U.S. and in the Netherlands; and that 2) either America and the Netherlands are both and have been for a very long time socialist states, or that neither are socialisms in any way that should be bothersome to anyone living in American. It certainly does not seem to bother the Dutch very much. Perhaps I should also add a third obvious deduction: 3) that I am excluding from my equation that category of American that thinks the government should have no right to take money out of our wallets for taxation purposes.

Perhaps it would be informative at this point, to reflect on the ways the U.S. and the Netherlands differ in their social philosophies. I suggested earlier in this Reflection that I only just recently learned about a noticeable difference between this socialist county where my wife and I live and the “still-free” (=supposedly non-socialist) American nation that we left behind.

            Big Difference #One is that in the Netherlands EVERYONE has access to the justice system, and one pays according to income. For instance, my blended daughter is a graduate student here, and she is having “issues” with Dutch Immigration (IND) right now. She is in the process of legally appealing a rather pompous bureaucratic decision not to allow her to immigrate to Holland as a family member—apparently in the Netherlands you cease being a family member at the age of 18 and if you have ever had an independent income. Anyway, based on her funds/revenue, her appeal will cost her a whopping €76. The courts will hire the attorneys, make the case, etc., and… we will see what we will see.

            In America on the other hand, and I say this in shame, the citizen has very limited access to individual justice. According to the World Justice Project’s “Rule of Law Index,” in fact, the U.S. placed 20th out of 35 nations in terms of access to legal counsel. How charming. And it should be noted for the record that “limited access” does not mean that the doorways to lawyers’ offices are just too narrow to accommodate the throngs of all of America’s tired, poor, and “huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” (per our Statue of Liberty); no, the entry into the hallowed Halls of Justice by the “wretched refuse” on America’s “teeming shore” is limited by the exorbitant price of justice in America—justice, a top-shelf item with a hefty price tag, costs real money in America, real $ dollars and not credit cards. Sell your house and you might be able to afford Justice in the land of the free and home of the brave.

            So, as we remember back to my blended child’s legal contortions with Dutch immigration, if you have ever had dealings of any sort with the U.S. Immigration Service, “things” are really quite Short and Sweet: you leave on your own initiative or you are deported—fairly traditional American black & white. There is not enough money in the universe to pay for attorney’s fees and wait the years on end for justice to happen in terms of American immigration.

Big Difference #One, then, is that Justice is accessible to all and sundry, or to anyone who can scrape together the €76, in the NL; and We the People do not pay a single euro extra for this clearly socialist benefit. ‘Nuf said though about the costs of justice behind America’s “golden door.”

A second difference in how the social State is expressed and practiced in the Netherlands as compared to the U.S., is access to health care. In the Netherlands there is no need for a social safety net, because every single person living in the Netherlands, Dutch and other, is socially safe. Everyone pays, even those on unemployment pay for health insurance out of their unemployment benefit; and those who need to use the various services less, actually help defray the costs for those who use the services more. I do not suppose this is actually brain-science economics.

            In the U.S., on the other hand, there is the need of a social safety net, such as hospital emergency rooms and “free” clinics, all of which is paid for out of taxpayer dollars. It would probably be cheaper, dollar-wise, to have a more well organized health care program in the U.S., where all the citizens would have to pay, because the taxpayer pays anyway whether he wants to or not. As it stands at this point in the U.S., it is true that Obama-care is improving people’s access to healthcare, and that the number of Americans without health care declined in 2011; so now there are only about 48.6 million Americans without coverage.  An improvement in fact, compared to the numbers in pre-Obama America!

            So what does 48.6 million people without health care, let alone Americans without health care, look like? Well, this number looks a whole lot like a number that equals or surpasses the total individual populations of the following countries:  South Africa, Ukraine, Colombia, Spain, Argentina, Poland, Tanzania, Sudan, Kenya, Algeria, Canada, Morocco, Afghanistan, Uganda, Iraq, Peru, Nepal, Venezuela, Uzbekistan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Republic of China (Taiwan), North Korea, Ghana, Romania, Yemen, Sri Lanka, Australia, ad nauseam… In fact, there are only 25 countries in the entire world that have total populations larger than the U.S. population of uninsured citizens (i.e., 48.6 million), which means that the uninsured American population beats the total individual populations of 171 countries, hands down. I suppose this could be considered a record of some sort.

Big Difference #Two, then, is that health care is accessible, indeed mandatory, to all and sundry in the NL; and We the People do not pay a single euro extra for this clearly socialist benefit. ‘Nuf said though about the costs of health care behind America’s “golden door.”

            As a side note: this type of social benefit, or pragmatic socialism, is a recognition that it is not only the citizen who has an obligation to the State in the social contract, but that the State has obligations vis-à-vis the citizen as well; because for work, and therefore production and productivity to continue to maintain the viability of the State in the world, a thriving and healthy class that works must exist. This, also, is not brain-science economics; but it is a benefit of socialism in the NL that is only now beginning to come to America, thanks to her current socialist president.

Big Difference #Three: university tuition costs about € 1,700 per annum for students in any university in the Netherlands; but tuition fees vary according to individual countries in the European social community.

            In the U.S. the average costs of tuition have gone up around 15%, with top universities logging in at between $36,000 - $43,000 per annum. ‘Nuf said.

With respect to Big Difference #Three the U.S. enters a Plea of Nolo Contendere.

America does not like to lose, and does not lose often; but when she loses, she loses Big Time.