The American Model: A European Dystopia

US Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum recently decried that the NHS brought down the British empire. Ignoring the questionable historical accuracy, this attitude is abhorrant. How dare he blast our system while theirs fails so badly, just look at the statistics. Unfortunately, his attitude is being praised and copied by many in the Conservative party  who just refuse to look at the facts (remember Hannan?); the current struggle is not just ideological, and not "class", but between facts established by statistics and blind ideology - the 21st Century equivalent to religion for some. 

A few posts back I mentioned the ‘Battle for Europe’, where Britain faces an invisible struggle between American neo-liberalism and European ‘welfarism’. Neo-liberalism, as run in America, follows the holy trinity of competition, privatisation and deregulation. These are the basis of the American model of education, health and security which emphasises individual freedom and responsibility; if you’re poor and cannot afford things, it is your fault and you must work harder. It is a model that puts the individual’s financial incentive as the only reason to do anything, a model where greed is not only good but natural; not something to be overcome but embraced.

While that model is what many Americans believe, or at least those in charge, what do we Europeans, or those dedicated to fairness and social justice, believe? Our aim is the elimination of poverty from society, and we believe that the redistribution of wealth and the equal provision of basic services is the best way to accomplish that aim. Education open to all, health available to all and equal security under the law for all not biased towards the wealthy. European values are incompatible with the American model.

There are three basic services which the state should provide its citizens; an education system, a health system and a security system which includes the police, the prison system and the armed forces – even neo-liberal idols from Rand to Hayek deemed the army as too important to privatise. There are plenty of other provisions for the state to spend on; housing, environment, agriculture and so on, but the three outlined above are the most basic necessities of life in modern society. These three systems cannot be privatised because they are so basic to a just society but also because their privatisation simply will not work according to both socialist and neo-liberal theory.

Privatised hospitals cannot work. A hospital cannot be run on the incentive of profit as no profit can be made from a hospital without charging patients ungodly bills. It is no secret that American hospitals have the best equipment, the best facilities and the best doctors, but that does not matter when 20% of the population cannot afford even basic healthcare. Compare it to the Model T automobile, often considered the best car, even the best invention, in history, a real landmark and defining moment. It was not the fastest car, or the most powerful, or was it the simplest. The greatness of the Model T was because it was the most available; that was its revolution. The exclusiveness of American hospitals, with operations and appointments bankrupt families and leave people in debt, is a burden to their society; heal the sick, not leave them in debt. Citizens are left with a painful choice; remain ill and or be in debt. Studies by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have found that life expectancy is unrelated to spending on health care in rich countries. More egalitarian societies are healthier. Even in global hospital rankings, the UK comes above the USA. But there is no correlation between the degree of privatisation and ranking; France is 75% publicly owned and ranks first, Spain second with 65%, UK somewhere near 15 with over 90%. The US health system does not work; profit can never be a stable or moral basis for a hospital.

The American education system is notorious, particularly its state education which keeps people in a cycle of poverty. Those who cannot afford anything other than state education wind up with poor academic records and live in poverty; there is very limited social mobility in the land of the free. If California was a separate country, it would be the seventh richest in the world, yet it has the second worse education records because whenever the state government introduce a tax the people vote it down. Low taxes equals low education attainment. Not to forget those schools who teach creationism and other potentially dangerous and unregulated material. Is this what we want for Britain? We may think £9000 a year tuition is outrageous; the Americans have it worse. Though they do have a scholarship programme, we are talking tuition in the tens of thousands. And also tuition for education we would expect to get for free. People are priced out of education; the affluent get the qualifications, thus the money. Despite its classless history and a theoretically open and mobile society, the education system keeps the wealthy at the top and the poor well below.

American prisons further exaggerate social ills and turn petty thieves into hardened gangsters. The American prison rate is comparable to China and the USSR, never mind Western democracies. The American prison system is the model which shows that harsh prisons are not effective; re-offence rates are sky high, crime is the highest out of the wealthiest nations, it creates a criminal underclass. Privatising the prison system means charging prisoners for use, that means that the market runs on maintaining tough sentences and a consistently high and increasing prisoner number. In Arizona this meant bribing judges to send people to jail. It also means charging people who often have no qualifications and are unemployable and already poor; totally inefficient.

The American model, the neo-liberal privatised model, runs on the incentive of profit. If there is no profit then there is no incentive for private investment; there is no market where there is no money to be made. Schools, hospitals and prisons are not designed to make profit; they are designed to help people, thus their privatisation makes no sense. The only way profit can be made is by the introduction of fees – tuition fees for compulsory education, fees for using hospitals and fees for prisoners, essentially a charge for getting sick and for leaving the straight and narrow. These people don’t need debt, they need help. Such fees put a price on necessity and maintain in effect an immobile class system; an underclass is created.

These are not the models to copy; they empirically fail in their task and do not work, they are counterproductive to that European ideal of a fair society. So can someone please explain why our government is emulating this model? It is not an ideological objection so much as a practical one; we are emulating failure. Blair says “it is not a case of two diverging paths”, well it is; American market driven, profit incentivised individualism or European decency and drive to help those in need. Competition or co-operation.

European values are incompatible with the American model, just as American values are incompatible with the European model. But it is more than just incompatibility; the American model does not work, promotes an unjust and unequal society and is morally rotten. Britain faces a choice; profit or decency. For a fairer society which we social democrats of all colours, from committed hard left socialists to advocates of the Third Way, fight for we must roll back the frontiers of the free market, unite with our European partners and send American marketism to the fire. If we are to have a healthy society we must shun the American model and fight against its implementation.

Robert Reich said in a recent article on Social Europe Journal (SEJ – go check it out); “Privatize” means pay-for-it-yourself. The practical consequence of this in an economy whose wealth and income are now more concentrated than any time in 90 years is to make high-quality public goods available to fewer and fewer.”

[Also check PES for various alternatives, including a “Change Europe” and “Regulate Financial Market Now” petitions. I know, online petitions are ineffective, but give it a go]

Robert Reich on US "private" model; http://www.social-europe.eu/2012/01/the-decline-of-the-public-good/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SEJColumns+%28Social+Europe+Journal+%C2%BB+Columns%29&utm_content=FaceBook ]