A Government that Works for All the People
My mom and I engaged in yet another enjoyable and mutually respectful political discussion the other evening. As usual, neither one of us succeeded in changing the other’s belief system one iota, but that’s not the point; it’s always fun nonetheless. During our talk, Mom asserted that Democrats perceive that the only way for them to come into and stay in power is to get as many needy people into the country as possible, promise them free stuff, and thus attract their votes.
I know this is a popular Fox News talking point, and in truth, I actually can’t say that there aren’t strategists somewhere thinking about all this. Having said that, there are some grave problems with this argument:
• Only citizens can vote, so loosening the borders so that would-be strawberry pickers, gardeners, busboys, and nannies can enter the country illegally wouldn’t accomplish anything for Democrats in government. (It would, of course, improve the lives of the Americans who benefit from the affordable prices these low-wage people enable.)
• The battle over immigration reform has been around at least since I was a little boy, and it seems to have been equally intransigent through both Democratic and Republican administrations; there has been very little progress over the last half-century. No one wants to waste time “pushing a rope,” and trying to displace an immovable object.
• Most importantly, this is a horribly cynical viewpoint of humankind. There are good people out there, after all. There are people who believe healthcare is a right, that education should be affordable, that having 22 million children living in poverty, locking children in cages and destroying the environment for profit are all outrageous, etc. Are people like Bernie Sanders hungry for wealth and power? Ah….no.
“Giving away free stuff” is just a jaundiced way of saying “having a government that works for all the people.” Most people believe, and I’m certainly one of them, that it’s actually a good thing to have a government that provides services that people are happy to pay for, and that, as a consequence, have a country that features good environmental protection, and little or no homelessness, impoverishment, people dying of treatable diseases, preventable ignorance, and other social ills. They also don’t have situations where three individuals have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the country.
After all, that’s precisely the way most of the developed world works; there is nothing unique about the United States that makes it incapable of being like Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Brunei, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.
