A number of years ago a priest, a friend of mine,
asked if I believed in God. He said I should ask myself that question every
morning. A couple of weeks ago a long-time friend asked me, “Do we want to
remain a capitalist society or a far-left socialistic with big government
controlling all?” I admit that I don’t ask that question every morning, but maybe
I should. It is a timely question what with the election coming up and all. The
simple answer for me is that I want a democratic-republic form of government with
a capitalist economic system, and no bigger than necessary. Much like deciding if there is a god, deciding
on one form of government or another or one economic system or another is too
complex for simple answers. It requires a little wonkiness.
Pure capitalism and pure socialism are opposing
forms of economics. One puts the means of production in the hands of private
owners who try to make a profit. The other puts the means of production in the
hands of the state. Both require some oversight and regulation. Democracy and
Dictatorships are opposing forms of governing. In a democracy, the people run
the government. The Vermont Town Meeting is a good example. The US isn’t a
democracy, but a republic. In a republic, the people elect representatives who
make the laws and regulate their implementation. In some countries, the people
even elect their president. In the US, however, the States elect the President.[i] Big
government and small government are two philosophies about how to manage
government operations. Creating the government system that we want along with
the economic system that we want with a manageable size sometimes proves to be
harder to accomplish than creating a belief system.
Henry David Thoreau, in Civil Disobedience,
opined, “The government that governs best governs least.” There is your argument for a small
government. He may have summarized John Locke’s ideas about governance
accurately, but 2020 isn’t 1849. While we live in a country founded on the
ideals of the Age of Enlightenment, the first to proclaim a nation ruled by “We
the people,” the world and the country have changed. I’m a small government sort
of person by nature, but complexity requires skilled people and effective
management. We are a big country with big issues. We specialize in big ideas
and big dreams. It takes a lot of people to make that work. California has
883,400 government employees, local and state. Florida has 424,961, Texas
563,000, and Vermont 14,680. And then there are the two million Federal
employees, one for every 175 of us. That doesn’t count the postal service and
the armed services. We already have Big Government! Too much I say.
I’m never sure which part of the government I want to
cut. Do I want to cut the fire department or the police department? Do I want
to cut the county health department or the county hospital? Do I want to cut
the national park service or the local park department? Do I want to cut the
FDA, the CDC, the NIH, or OSHA? No, but I wish they would do their jobs. Do I
want to cut the local planning committee, the water district, the sewer
district, the school district, the … well it goes on? I want less government,
but how to get it will require a sea change in our expectations about the role
of government.
Instead of asking governments to leave us alone to
slug out a living and a future for ourselves we incrementally keep asking them
to protect us from ourselves. I don’t have young children anymore, which is a
good thing if you consider the skill and knowledge needed to install a car
seat. The owner’s manual for my car has instructions for installing a car seat,
securing a child in a car seat; the how-to starts on page 50, with small print,
illustrations, and warnings, ending on page 64. The final entry instructs me to
unhook the car seat before I take the kid out of the car. Those fourteen pages
of instructions are included because of government regulations and related
lawsuits. Whatever happened to throwing the kids in the back of the station
wagon with a blanket and taking off to the drive-in movies or a cross-country
trip? Do we want to do away with those laws and regulations? Probably not, but
14 pages, really? (The 13 pages that tell me how to use Bluetooth and hook up
Apple Car Play, however, seem about right.)
It seems to me that our democratic-republic- capitalist
system could use a tune-up every now and then; minor tweaks here and there if
you will. What we have now is pretty good for those who picked the right
parents or those who work their way up without a privileged life. Our Constitution
calls on us to form a more perfect union, which to me means we should always be
changing, trying to get better, to do better, to grasp for the wind, to keep from
sliding back to the good-old-days, which were not so good for a whole
bunch of people.
Let’s try to have a healthcare system that works
equally for everyone regardless of economic status or a labor system that
shares the profits of the company with the workers. Walmart’s 1.5 million store
employees earn an average of $14.26 per hour or $29,660 for those who work 40
hours per week. That won’t pay the rent and buy food in most towns. The top 5
employees of the company made $68,000,000 last year. The company‘s net income
was about $60,000 per employee. They could spread some of that around. The federal minimum wage was $7.25 per hour in 2009. The Federal minimum wage in
2020 is $7.25. Georgia still has a minimum wage of $5.15 on the books.
One percent of Americans own about 90% plus of the
country’s wealth. We resemble a Russian oligarchy. Instead of lowering the
taxes for middle-class people, Congress lowered the taxes for the richest
cohort of the nation. Affluent people don’t contribute to Social Security
beyond the absolute minimum required, so the retirement of the bottom 30-40% of
the country is in danger of being underfunded in a few years.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit earlier this year, 30
million people lost their jobs and nearly five million of them lost their health
insurance. In Europe, nobody lost his or her health care insurance. Why is the US, the richest country in the world the only industrialized nation that
doesn’t have universal health care or that considers healthcare an employment
benefit?
Our state legislatures could stop gerrymandering
Congressional and state legislative districts to favor one party or group over
the other so that we have a fair representation. The expectation in a
democratic-republic is that the people would choose those who represent them.
In too many states the legislature chooses the people who will elect them. In
the US Senate, about 80% of the Senators represent about 50% of the population
which gives them enormous power to pass laws that don’t really represent the
will of the majority of people.
Chief Justice Roberts once wrote that the best way
to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discrimination based on
race.[ii] An interesting observation from someone who came of age and was educated in an era
when “color-blind” was devoutly to be wished but didn’t work out as hoped. So
once again we need to energize our efforts to ensure that everyone treats
everyone else fairly and everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed. People are
in the streets protesting police brutality, poor housing, lack of good schools,
redlining of real estate sales and loans, and other discriminatory actions. We
need to fix these things now, not in generations. Too many generations have
passed since MLK led the nation toward systemic change. We need leadership that
seeks equality under law and doesn’t praise the descendants of Northern
Europeans for having beautiful genes. We heard those cries back in the late
1930s and early 1940s
There is a lot more that we can do to improve the
country, not because it isn’t a good place already, but because we can’t stop
improving. Truth be told, however, it isn’t going to get better until we come
to grips with the awful political divide, the chasm that separates us from one
another. It is at such a level, that in the middle of one of the worst pandemics
in a century, the wearing of a mask, to prevent our infecting other people, has
become a political statement. The concept of two political parties arguing over
two sets of beliefs and then compromising for the betterment of the country, a
requirement in a democratic-republic, is considered capitulation. A Senate
Majority leader who held up one nomination for a Supreme Court Justice for ten
months because it was too close to an election now promises to ram through
another nomination because “we have the votes” even though people have started
casting ballots in the presidential election. This behavior will not sustain a republic, as
Franklin warned us at the inception of our experiment in self-rule.
Our instability, caused by political parties most
interested in power and ideology sets us on the road of distrust of our
national institutions, our expressed values, and our example to the world of how
democracy works. We are losing our role as leader of the free world. Russia, a sworn enemy, attacks our campaign on a daily basis, China moves across Asia and Africa at breakneck speed building roads and ports, and Iran funds and arms our
enemies in the Near East.
Our Founders gave us our marching orders. It is up
to us to improve on their beginnings. We
can make society equally available to all its citizens, not just the favored
few, where everyone has a home, adequate food, and access to quality healthcare.
We can be a nation that has great schools at all levels that are equal but
never separate; we can have the freedom to walk the streets without fear, even
at night; we can have a political system that is fair and representative of all
of us and that is chosen by us. That is what democracy is all about, and none of
it is what socialism is all about.
I’m going to think about that at least once a week
from now on!
[i] Constitution of the United States, Article II: Each State
shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number
of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which
the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or
Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be
appointed an Elector. The
Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two
persons, of whom one at least shall not lie an Inhabitant of the same State
with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and
of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and
transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to
the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence
of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the
Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes
shall be the President,
[ii] Chief Justice John Roberts majority opinion in Parents Involved in Community Schools vs.
Seattle School District, case analysis, Georgetown Law Center, 2008
