As American workers struggle to accept their country’s new place in the economic world order, how will China really be viewed and will Obama get his way on heathcare reforms?
WASHINGTON DC, USA – Late on Saturday night the cause of reforming healthcare in America took another baby step forward.
The Senate agreed to debate the healthcare bill but it’s still far from clear whether they will eventually vote to pass it.
Many Republican senators who are opposed to the reforms are loudly shouting that, with unemployment at 10 per cent in the US, the government should be worrying about job creation not healthcare reform.
But it is precisely because of the high and rising levels of unemployment that a lot of Americans are worrying urgently about their own healthcare coverage.
Most people in the US get their health insurance through their employer. It is far too expensive for most people to pay for it on their own, even if they do have work. And of course if you lose your job that means your health coverage goes with it.
So all of a sudden millions of Americans are in greater need than ever before of a comprehensive overhaul of the system.
In a climate of unemployment, anxiety and paranoia spread easily. There is also growing fear of China – where President Barack Obama spent much of last week.
Even as Obama was talking up how Chinese stimulus spending on infrastructure projects has created a huge market for American construction equipment, large parts of the US workforce are living in fear that their job will be outsourced to a cheaper Chinese worker.
It doesn’t do anything to ease their concerns if Americans stop to consider not just their absolutely enormous public finance deficit, but just how much of that debt is held by the Chinese.
America’s workers are deeply unsure about their global economic role in the future. They are struggling to get their heads around the idea that the US will not continue to be the economic world leader.
And recession is making them feel the chill winds of economic decline already. So it’s not surprising there is a pervasive sense of insecurity.
Americans want to know how to define their place in the 21st century. What will mark them out as different from emerging economies like China?
With healthcare reform they have an opportunity to show how a mature economy – even one in trouble, especially one in trouble – can still take care of its people. But this can only happen if they can find a way to make sure that all their citizens have access to comprehensive health care.
They could use this opportunity to renew their “American Dream” to create a vision that combines compassion with naked capitalism. But only if people start making the connection between jobs and healthcare, instead of arguing that they are two separate problems.