The "S" Word

When I moved back to America after being away for an extended period I discovered there was a word that couldn't be said. A friend of mine was telling me a racist story about how she had seen one man call another man "The 'N' word." "You mean nigger?" I asked. She acquiesced with a nod.

I have mixed feelings about making a word unspeakable --much like Harry Potter's nemesis, the One Who Can't Be Named-- but I must admit that I never liked the word much and I won't really miss it. Besides, I get to hear it over and over again in the streets since it's now the young black equivalent of 'dude'.

But I noticed there is another word that has become almost unpronounceable in America today: socialism. It's nearly taboo. It's okay to use it as an insult as in an email I saw go by recently in which Obama was described as a "socialist Muslim". Even folks on the left in America talk about socialists as if they were all extreme radicals who can't be taken seriously. So let's just call it the "S word" and not ruffle any feathers.

This notion is funny to me since most of my friends in France and throughout Europe are members of a socialist party. My old friends Marcia and Fabrice, both high-level advertising execs with two cars, a large flat in Paris overflowing with contemporary art, a weekend home in Champagne and a summer home in Morocco: both socialists.
Or Pierre, a self made multi-millionaire business consultant to large euro-corporations with a chateau in Bordeaux and a house in Saint Martin. Also a socialist (but more of the ecological leaning).
And then there's Martine, a free-lance copywriter mom who scratches out marketing documents and web copy for most of France's Forbes 100. Dyed in the wool socialist.

So what makes these otherwise pro-business folks belong to the Socialist Party and vote socialist in elections? My guess is the common denominator is they believe that the role of government is to offer humane services to its citizens, such as health care, a quality education, childcare and social services for the poor and the marginalized (which, by the way, have a direct impact on lowering crime rates). And they are perfectly willing to have part of their income be taxed every month to pay for these services. In France the individual income tax rates vary from 10% to 48%, in the US they are 15% to 35%.

What amazes me about the die-hard, turbo-capitalists that the US pumps out is that they are actually fond of socialism when it suits them.

Take for instance the many wealthy Americans who own summer houses in France or a flat in Paris (ask Mr Forbes about that). At fancy cocktail parties, one can hear them comment on how beautiful the public parks are, how clean and safe the streets, how nice it is to have decent on-time trains. The notion that we could have all those things in the US, arguably the wealthiest country in the world, never seems to cross their mind.

Closer to home there are Reaganomics fans like George Bush II who after what is considered one of the most tragic moments in modern American history, decided to nationalize airport security. Isn't he one of the defend-til-you-die folks behind the idea that anything government does is wastefully done? The same George Bush who increased steel tariffs to save jobs in the Rust Belt?
Can you say "market intervention"?

The US hypocritically screams at the Europeans for unashamedly subsidizing EADS, maker of Airbus, yet finds all kinds of ways to slip money to Boeing and friends. People I know at Boeing say they consider themselves civil servants. And when Airbus recently won a huge contract in a competitive bid against Boeing, Washington insiders yelled foul play long enough to have the contract renegotiated. Agriculture, cruise ships, oil companies, weapons manufacturers, KBR, Halliburton, tax loopholes for corporations and the list goes on.

The recent $700 billion gesture of kindness that the US government is considering making to the finance industry (after Fannie and Freddie, AIG, etc) isn't socialism of course. Nationalizing banks is what socialists do, just ask our neighbor Hugo. Real, balls-out capitalists stand by the power of the market at all costs and... may the best man win. This is just a 're-adjustment'.

My guess is there are several reasons why it is nearly impossible to take all these subsidies and funnel them into programs that might bring America better schools, cleaner parks, free higher education and health care for all.

1 - The pull yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps blind idealism that says we can all become a rags to riches entrepreneur if we just keep trying hard enough (A shame-based approach which also enhances disdain for poor people).
2 - The fact that non-rich people rarely get elected to national office (Imagine that in many countries there are actually teachers, postal carriers and farmers getting elected to parliaments).
3 - Rich people want to be able to choose where their social giving goes and don't want their money being mixed with everyone else's. (Plus it allows them to have a wing of a hospital with their name on it.)
4 - In America, 'poor' is often a code word for people of color and deep rooted racism keeps the white middle class majority from wanting to help them.

I contend that, with our capacity for innovation, pragmatism and entrepreneurship we could create the most exciting social programs in the world to give our kids quality education, to create outstanding public transportation, to invent new forms of health care delivery. If we wanted to, we could do an American version of socialism without all of the old communist-infused baggage that many European countries lug around: inflexible labor unions, grandfathered civil servant positions, entrenched us-and-them mentalities.

We would just have to call it something other than socialism.