Why does business align itself with conservatives in supporting the status quo of our failed healthcare system? If I am a conservative businessman, why would I choose a system that discourages personal responsibility? Why would I choose to bear the burden of my employees’ healthcare? Why would I support an anti-market system that forces many to stay in a dead-end job solely for their insurance benefits? If I support the free market, don’t I want market forces—such as performance, ability, and individual choice—to prevail? Do I really want to compete again foreign companies who have universal healthcare and therefore much lower overhead costs? (see this case study) There are historical reasons behind these questions, but I don’t understand why the fear of taxes drives business to get behind such a poorly structured system.
Tag Archives: socialism
Is Obama a socialist?
This is a question that many are asking. Right-wing pundits, from Hannity and Beck to Palin and Gingrich, are claiming that President Barack Hussain Obama is a socialist. I have actually never heard of a Indonesian Muslim, black liberation theology-believing, socialist (as conservatives are alleging).
As a genuine socialist, Maaass sums up his view of Obama like this: “Barack Obama’s journey from ‘Yes We Can’ to ‘No We Won’t’ has been a bitter disappointment to his supporters” (p.138). “Like Bush before him, Obama’s policy is shaped by the interests of the U.S. corporate and political establishment and expanding American empire around the world” (p.60-61).
What does Obama really think about our free market capitalist system? He has said, “I believe in the free market, competition, and entrepreneurship, and think no small number of government programs don’t work as advertised” (The Audacity of Hope, p. 10). Hardly the words of a socialist. Yet Sean Hannity insists that Obama “sees the world in Marxist, class-warfare terms…every fiber of his being exudes resentment toward the productive, successful, and well-off in society…[he wants to] turn this nation into a full-blown socialist state…[he doesn’t] believe in the inherent fairness or goodness of the capitalist system…he is a leftist to his core…” (p. 68-107).