In my previous post, I accused my conservative Republican friends of selfishness. Some of my conservative Republican friends read this blog. I doubt I’ve endeared myself to them.
So I should probably clarify my own relationship with selfishness. All humans are selfish, covetous, and jealous. I’m human. I worked hard for what I have and will fight to protect it. Is that selfish enough?
Where I differ from my conservative friends is over what they call enlightened self-interest, the magical belief that if only everyone acted out of pure selfishness, society as a whole would benefit, that the rest of us would be inspired to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, that unfettered capitalism is all the government we need.
As far as I can see, unrestrained personal selfishness and unfettered capitalism are ruining America. The disparity between rich and poor is widening, workers are losing rights and protections, and greedy investors and industrialists are closing plants in the USA and moving them overseas. Our infrastructure is becoming so decrepit only a massive national-level WPA-style effort can rebuild it, let alone improve it for future needs. Our public education system is slowly being replaced with a privatized low-wage charter school system. The nice little extras we get in return for the taxes we pay — libraries, parks, bike paths — are on the chopping block from coast to coast.
Unrestrained personal selfishness and unfettered capitalism will not address any of these problems. Government is the only institution that can. And government lives on our tax payments.
Though I’m as selfish as anyone else, I don’t want to see my countrymen starving in the streets. Americans need jobs, and along with those jobs, they need living wages, health care, and viable pension plans. I don’t mind paying higher taxes to help make that happen.
I’m a socialist. I could not have gone to college if it weren’t for taxpayer-funded state colleges. I would not have a pension and health care today if I had not worked for the government. Government has been good to me.
I’m also a selfish socialist. I would not have gotten an education without hard work or the will to better myself. I would not have succeeded in the US Air Force without a well-developed work ethic and sound values. I would not have raised a family and made a good life for them without constantly putting them first and looking out for their interests.
So I’m hardly a communist. I don’t believe in to each according to his needs; I believe in to each according to what he’s earned. But for people to earn, there must be jobs, including jobs for those who now receive welfare, at least those who can work (and day care for their children). Along with jobs, there need to be minimum standards for wages, health care, and pensions. Unrestrained personal selfishness and unfettered capitalism will never make any of that happen. It won’t happen without government, and it can’t happen without taxes to pay for it. The well-off need to pay proportionally more in taxes; the rich more yet.
I am, in addition to being a selfish socialist, a protectionist. We have to reverse the exporting of jobs overseas. American companies that have outsourced jobs should have the shit taxed out of them, and by that I mean taxed so heavily they’ll have no alternative but to bring the jobs back. Foreign corporations wanting to sell goods in America should pay hefty import tariffs — or build plants here. Employers who do not offer health care and pension plans to their workers need to contribute heavily to government-run health care and pension plans.
Socialism is just a demonized name for regulated capitalism. We need to bring back regulation.
My conservative Republican friends will read this and think, how naïve. Guilty . . . perhaps. What I propose can happen. It’s doable. Moreover, unlike communism, it conforms to and accommodates human nature.
What my conservative friends dream of — a Randian paradise of enlightened self-interest — can’t happen. We just aren’t like that; when selfishness is unrestrained and capitalism is unfettered, the inevitable outcome is that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And that’s not the America I want.