The Recovery of America’s Identity

The approval of the health care reform bill is not only an important political victory for Obama, who was a bit weakened by the economic crisis. It is an important step towards the construction of the new America that Obama had in mind when he was a candidate for the White House.

It is a reform that will affect not only health, but the whole American society, and it is coherent with other measures taken in this office year, from the doubling of investment in primary education to the recent reform of school programs. Obama’s goal is not, as some Republicans’ shouts alarmed, to make America a socialist and egalitarian country, but to make it become a land of opportunity for all, once again: a country where the American dream may once again be possible. Over the last fifteen years America has experienced a great leap forward, riding the extraordinary scientific and technological revolution started in the eighties, and has managed to attract, motivate and reward the finest talent from all over the world. But in this huge run-up, too many people have been left behind — way too many.

The 46 million citizens without health insurance who currently live in America (a frightening figure of almost 15% of the population) are not vagrants, alcoholics, or idiots; they are mostly ordinary citizens, with a job and a family. According to a report released last year by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 70% of the uninsured live in households where at least one component has a full time job. And, even more disconcerting, 40% of the uninsured are young people between 19 and 29 years.

If these young people do not even have the money to look after their health, how can they have the necessary resources to educate themselves and build a future? This situation severely undermines the foundations of social mobility in the United States, transforming the American dream into a mirage increasingly blurred. Data from numerous studies confirm this. The intergenerational mobility of incomes in the United States is one of the lowest in the Western world: almost 50% of the incomes differential of parents is transmitted to the children, so those born rich have high chances of staying rich, while those born poor remain poor. This problem has been ignored for a long time, overshadowed by the extraordinary stories of young people who suddenly become successful entrepreneurs.

These stories have continued to project everywhere the image of an America full of opportunities, able to recognize and highlight merits and skills. Yes, but whose talents and skills? Taking a closer look, the protagonists of these stories of success were young people like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, who came from wealthy families that established their businesses while they were at Harvard or at other prestigious institutions. And it is the same for the many talented foreigners who have built business empires in the U.S. They were all young people who have found vast opportunities in the United States, but they did not land there with a suitcase made of cardboard: they went to get an MBA at Carnegie Mellon, like Vinod Khosla, the Indian co-founder of Sun Microsystems, or a PhD in Computer Science at Stanford, like the Russian Sergey Brin, Google co-founder, or like Sabeer Bhatia, another Indian, co-founder of Hotmail. Meanwhile for millions of kids born and raised in the United States, the universities – the quality ones – became increasingly unreachable.

It is no coincidence that Bill Gates and other high tech entrepreneurs are lobbying Congress to increase the admission of foreign students into the country, because young Americans give up or fail to obtain the prestigious degrees requested by them. This phenomenon could have enormous consequences not only on the future innovative and competitive capacity of the United States, but also on the country’s social tissue and on the sense of belonging of its citizens. If America loses social mobility, its citizens lose the sense of possibility, trust and identification in institutions that has always been the great strength of the United States.

Obama knows that and understands that social mobility is a mixed blessing: on one hand, it is the recognition of excellence, but on the other it is the access to opportunities to develop this excellence. In the last fifteen years, the United States has been very concerned about the former, but little about the latter, with the risk of losing its true essence of “land of opportunity for all.” Being able to balance these two souls will not be easy, but it is the challenge that the United States will have to face if they want to continue to grow and let the new generations of Americans dream.