Public education and health care are the entities. The recalcitrant partners are property owners and employers respectively. In each case something which improves the lot of the entire populace depends on the largess of a portion of the populace for funding.
All modern societies, indeed all societies which have ever functioned above the level of nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers, have maintained themselves through an economic system of wealth redistribution. America is no exception. However, certain groups in America have consistently argued that this is not the case and that a complex society can exist without a functioning government-run economic system. They believe, or claim to believe, that America could get along just fine if taxes were eliminated and public services were provided by privately funded charities.
The United States tried that under the Articles of Confederation. It didn't work, and the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution. Ever since its ratification, however, those whose wealth depends on the existence of an underpaid but compliant workforce have taken steps to undermine any attempt by the government "to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" as set forth in the Preamble.
Calling themselves "strict constructionists," they assert that to the Founding Fathers the phrase "ourselves and our Posterity" meant wealthy property owners like themselves, not ordinary citizens.
This narrow interpretation of four words within the Preamble to the Constitution allowed slavery to exist until the Civil War and then morph into Jim Crow after emancipation.
Today that same mindset undermines the public education system by tying funding to property taxes while sustaining a system of private educational institutions available predominately to the wealthy. It is also the reason health insurance is tied to employment. Such an arrangement denies adequate health care to millions of unemployed and under-employed Americans while coercing millions more with better-paying jobs to resign themselves to unjust and inequitable working conditions.
Remember this whenever you hear folks shouting "Socialism!" in response to the current attempt to reform the health care system.
The United States tried that under the Articles of Confederation. It didn't work, and the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution. Ever since its ratification, however, those whose wealth depends on the existence of an underpaid but compliant workforce have taken steps to undermine any attempt by the government "to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" as set forth in the Preamble.
Calling themselves "strict constructionists," they assert that to the Founding Fathers the phrase "ourselves and our Posterity" meant wealthy property owners like themselves, not ordinary citizens.
This narrow interpretation of four words within the Preamble to the Constitution allowed slavery to exist until the Civil War and then morph into Jim Crow after emancipation.
Today that same mindset undermines the public education system by tying funding to property taxes while sustaining a system of private educational institutions available predominately to the wealthy. It is also the reason health insurance is tied to employment. Such an arrangement denies adequate health care to millions of unemployed and under-employed Americans while coercing millions more with better-paying jobs to resign themselves to unjust and inequitable working conditions.
Remember this whenever you hear folks shouting "Socialism!" in response to the current attempt to reform the health care system.
Link to source: http://www.gocomics.com/patoliphant/2009/09/08/
No comments:
Post a Comment