We’re All Socialists

We all believe in socialism for ourselves, and libertarianism for others. That is, we all think that we have a right to help from the government, and the rest of the world should fend for itself.

In the summer of 2010, at a rally for a Democratic congressman, an old man shouted, “Get your government hands off my Medicare.” This is a great truth, except that Medicare is a government health benefit for the elderly. That is to say, the government is Medicare.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case. When Medicare was created, none other than Ronald Reagan, then an actor, explained that it was the beginning of communism in the United States.

His memorable message ends like this: “If you don’t [write to Congress], this program I promise you, will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow and behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country. Until one day as Normam Thomas said we will wake to find that we have socialism. And if you don’t do this and I don’t do this, one of these days we are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children, what it once was like in America – when men were free.”

Reagan began receiving Medicare benefits around 1975, and continued receiving them until his death. To me it does not appear that in the U.S. the people are sitting down to tell their children about how free they once were before they had Medicare. But 40 percent of the people enrolled in the system claim that they have never received any government assistance.

This fallacy that any government program is a kind of attack is a formidable rhetorical device, and an extremely effective way of deceiving the public. In the U.S., for example, no one knows that since the 1940s the medical insurance industry has been exempt from anti-trust laws, so criticizing Obama’s healthcare reforms on the grounds that they undermine the free market are laughable; there is no free market in that market.

All the libertarians who ask that the government get out of their lives never stop to think that the government subsidizes their houses, because mortgage interest is tax exempt. And all those who complain about the Spanish public debt and the administration’s wanton ways never stop to think that the private debt is at least twice the size of the public debt and the private sector did not begin to reduce its debt until 2011.

The answer, in these cases, is, “I deserve it.” That is what an extremely libertarian taxi driver in Texas told me, when he said that next year he would retire and begin to collect Medicaid, another health care program for the poor. Another option, equally common is: “I can’t do without it.” That is what I heard at a Mitt Romney rally, from an ex-soldier, who was terrified of the expansion of the government under Obama, and to whom I replied, “As a member of the military you have worked in the government your whole life.”