Compared to other world powers like Europe, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Japan, the United States falls short of several indicators of success. These failings are why many are reconsidering the United States’ status as a “first world” country or world power, since these aspects place American society more closely with developing nations with severe inequalities. But why? And why does it feel like the US is becoming more conservative?
When nations transition out of “developing” status, there is always a common thread that conservatives hate: They embrace some aspect of ‘socialism.’ Of course, international political scientists are quick to point out that these countries aren’t actually socialist, but that doesn’t change the stilted way American media represent them.
In reality, it’s America that has changed; Fox News would blow a gasket if politicians proposed massive liberal reforms like the New Deal today. Around the time of the Reagan administration, America changed its perspective on the government’s role in helping its citizens – rather than the government actively creating programs to uplift those in poverty and other unfortunate circumstances, these programs were labeled as ‘handouts’ that the undeserving poor didn’t earn, compared to the new tax cuts corporations and the wealthy were receiving.
At some point in the last 100 years, Americans warped their sense of welfare. As unbelievable as it may sound, there was a time when the majority of Americans believed the government had a duty to provide welfare because there was a moral duty to help those in need. Welfare and charity weren’t always deemed hand-outs; folks weren’t seen as failures for using the system, and welfare was a right that every American could feel confident in. Poverty and struggle were not the failing of the individual, but the result of a greater society and the government failing. For the larger world, this reality still exists.
Case Study: Canada & Universal Healthcare
Through the Canada Health Act of 1984, all Canadian citizens and permanent residents have had access to universal public healthcare. ‘Universal healthcare‘ refers to countries where federal taxes are used to pay for healthcare services rather than requiring individuals to pay private insurance companies – it dates back to the late 1800s and is considered one of the most visible markers as to whether a country is doing well. On the global stage, any country that can afford to use tax revenue to offset healthcare must be doing okay compared to countries that utilize capitalism to bar healthcare services to only those who can pay premiums.
According to the Commonwealth Fund, 73 out of 195 countries have universal healthcare – which comes out to 69% of the world’s population. These countries range from Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Singapore, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Armenia.
Capitalist conservatives are quick to point out that universal healthcare isn’t perfect, commonly bogged down with long wait times to receive specialized care. These are the same folks who argue the United States has better doctors, service options, and general wellness due to capitalism forcing providers to compete – but these are all false. The United States has possibly the worst healthcare and overall health in the global north, evidenced by high disease rates, infant and maternal mortality, low life expectancy, and poor pollution.
NOT SO FUN FACTS:
As of 2024, the average life expectancy is 79.5 years, which is more comparable with countries like Cuba (78.3), Saudi Arabia (79.0), and Panama (79.8) rather than ‘similar’ global powers like Japan (84.4), Germany (81.5), Canada (82.7), and Australia (84.1).
Heart disease makes up 20% of all deaths in the United States!
5.4 infants die per 1,000 live births in the United States, which is double compared to countries such as Canada (3.8) and Japan (2.6).
Case Study: Germany & Bürgergeld
Since 2023, Germany has provided Bürgergeld (translated as Citizen’s Benefit), which provides a basic income to replace previous unemployment programs. All job-seeking adults in Germany are eligible as long as they maintain job-seeking requirements and coordinate with Jobcenter, providing them with €502 per month in addition to rent and energy help. At their core, all unemployment programs are meant to keep working adults afloat while in-between jobs so that they do not sink into crisis.
In the United States, it is extremely difficult to obtain unemployment funds. Our program is intentionally designed to help as few people as possible. To qualify, you have to prove you’ve lost your previous job through no fault of your own (meaning you weren’t fired and you didn’t quit on your own) and must regularly prove you are applying for new work at the risk of being audited and forced to pay unemployment funds back. The US’s strict definition of “unemployment” is purposely misleading.
This system promotes individuals to work all the time. Labor rights are weighted for corporations and supervisors – employees who reside in at-will states can be fired at any moment, resulting in them being out of work and unable to pay bills while still not qualifying for unemployment because their job loss was “their fault.” This isn’t a system that moves people out of poverty; it incentivizes it.
REALITY CHECK:
Politicians hammer on the reality that the American middle class is shrinking. And it’s true – the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. According to the Pew Research Center, this has been occurring for the past five decades… which is ironically the same amount of time since Ronald Reagan and his “revolutionary” economics changed America.
In 1971, 61% of adults were classified as middle class, whereas just 50% of American adults met that criteria in 2021. The median income for the middle class has also declined over the past half-century – which affirms the fact that the US isn’t built to uplift citizens and the American Dream is a fantasy.
Case STudy: India & Gurdwaras
Technically, Indian gurdwaras aren’t government programs – they’re nonprofit charities that serve all Indians regardless of faith, although they’re operated out of the Sikh tenet of kindness. These temples can overwhelmingly serve their communities through donations and volunteers. Gurdwaras offer food, shelter, and meeting spaces, no matter sex, age, religion, or sexuality. They’re what we wish US homeless shelters could be.
In the US, homeless shelters rely on government funding because Americans aren’t willing to donate money to these agencies. For most, donating would be akin to enabling the homeless. If one’s wealth and life circumstances are determined by morality, then the homeless are being punished. We struggle with empathy, a basic aspect of humanity that some individuals want to present as radical and wrong. If American shelters are unable to obtain enough government funding, they’re forced to shut down – even if there are still homeless individuals in the area that are then pushed onto the streets. In comparison, Indian gurdwaras use donations and volunteers because they have a surplus; they don’t need government assistance to provide care.
To add on top of this, the United States is becoming increasingly hostile to homeless populations. Americans feel entitled to not see those in poverty, laws and orders are being pushed to arrest homeless individuals for existing as homeless in public, even when there are no places for them to go.
Why are Americans content with mediocrity?
When compared to the rest of the world, why is the United States so unwilling to continue moving forward? It’s a fundamental question that both Republicans and Democrats fail to answer. Corporate profit has kept the US from moving economically forward for the last 50 years. Why are American workers so resistant to rebelling?
The explanation is two-fold. America’s anti-commie can be traced to the Red Scare when senators like Joseph McCarthy used moral panic to accelerate Americans’ anxieties over the rise of left-wing ideologies in the 1940s and 1950s. McCarthy and the right cemented the underlying belief that to be American, one must be against left-wing ideologies like communism; to favor systems like communism and socialism is to be un-American. McCarthyism was a hard time that led to civil liberties being squashed in the name of patriotism and national security.
By the 1980s, there was a massive media push to convince Americans that their wealth was the byproduct of pure hard work and good moral character. Propaganda was produced to persuade workers that anyone can become unfathomably wealthy with enough work ethic, obscuring the reality that nepotism, family status, luck, and other uncontrollable factors play parts in our life stories. The ultra-wealthy are of an inherently better moral character because they “worked” for their money; the best route to financial success is not through labor laws that restrict corporate wealth but by licking the boots of one’s supervisors in hopes you will be rewarded. Once one generation had taken the bait set by corporations who bribed Congress and Reagan with lobbying, the rest was history.
Beyond the United States, these “leftist” institutions, like universal healthcare and affordable college, aren’t socialism. They’re common sense. While most British citizens will moan at the imperfect nature of the NHS, they’ll also be quick to point out that universal healthcare is a fundamental right to them. Japan isn’t any less capitalist because it enforces a livable minimum wage. Germans are more likely to believe programs like Bürgergeld are a right paid for by working citizens rather than extreme leftism – and they’d probably be offended if you insinuated they were communist. These welfare programs are moderate, centrist. They aren’t “socialist” to anyone outside of the United States.
Fundamentally, the second aspect of America’s issues is the Overton Window. It’s a large reason why the US is so different from its peers. The theory suggests that regular folks find moderate ideas reasonable based on the furthest left and right extremes. The realm of reasonable ideas is the “Overton Window,” where politicians can easily advocate for policies without worrying about major pushback. Yet the Window isn’t static; it moves because society changes.
Take an issue like the Israel-Palestine conflict. One side of the spectrum pledges full support to Israel (the US right), the other side pledges support to Palestine (the US left). The “reasonable” in-between is to either support both or neither (Democrats). Or, consider the status of marijuana in the United States – one side advocates for harsher prison sentencing and criminalization, while the other argues for recreational legalization. The moderate approach falls somewhere between decriminalization and age restrictions.
The issue with the Overton Window is that moderate isn’t always better, especially regarding civil rights. Going back to the 1960s, one side argued for the enslavement and dehumanization of all people of color, while the other advocated for equal rights. The moderate solution between the KKK and equality was segregation. When human rights are at the focus, moderate solutions are never reasonable or humane. Both sides of the political spectrum play a metaphorical tug-of-war with the Overton Window. For equal civil rights for Black Americans to be the reasonable solution, people had to keep pushing against the window. But then, Donald Trump entered the political stage.
Trump doesn’t play by the rules; he plays by what suits him best. Trump has normalized far-right ideas throughout his presidential campaigns, both directly through comments like demeaning Latino Americans and transgender people, as well as indirectly by giving a voice to extremists like Elon Musk’s Nazi salute. He’s quick to call everything he despises socialist to stir up American anxieties, and he’s just as quick to fume when opposition calls him a fascist or neonazi.
And this time around, Democrats are trying to play moderates rather than rebel against Trump’s status quo – but that led to their failure in 2024 because they failed to appeal to the working class of real moderates.