SANFORD: Greed, self-interest tarnishes American capitalism

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) told Fox News on Dec. 13 that she would absolutely not support health reform "if we're not saving more money for our government than we're spending."

If people's health, their very lives, aren't worth spending money on, what is?

In politics today, the argument always comes back to cost and the unholy pursuit of the American greenback.

We can't have comprehensive health care because it would cost too much.

We can't have carbon cap and trade because it would cost too much.

Bailing out the banks costs too much and letting them fail might have cost too much more, so they say, on and on and on.

Capitalism is killing America.

Did you know the word ‘capitalism' doesn't appear once in the Constitution of the United States?

Business appears once, but not in relation to commerce, which appears twice in relation to tariffs and states equality.

None of these words appears in the Bill of Rights, and commerce appears only once in the Declaration of Independence ("…that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to … establish Commerce…").

I am neither a bona fide socialist nor a libertarian, having leanings both ways, which often war with one another, a stance I maintain (perhaps against common sense) is healthy.

But I am a writer, and pay a great deal of attention to language.

What I notice is that in debate over the pressing issues of our nation, it always comes back to a single thing – money.

The word ‘budget' was used 1,827 times in the past month in Congress, ranking third behind ‘health' at 2,236 and ‘security' at 2,159, according to Capital Words (http://www.capitalwords.org). In contrast, ‘justice' was used 290 times, ‘tranquility' three times, ‘welfare' 61 times, ‘liberty' 111 times and ‘posterity' four times.

Where do these words come from? The Preamble of the Constitution.

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Well, so maybe tranquility and posterity are somewhat outdated, but justice, welfare and liberty are still in common usage.

So why are we not discussing these things when weighing the merit of new legislation?

Some will argue, and rightly so, that we cannot ensure anyone's justice, welfare or liberty if the government is bankrupt, the economy defunct and the population unemployed.

This is true.

The trouble is, it is not the capitalist system itself which is killing America, it is our overvaluation of it.

Capitalism, even regulated quasi-socialist capitalism as we have today, works (more or less). But it is a system that works by balancing some of the worst aspects of human nature – greed and self-interest – against each other.

Proponents claim it also promotes virtues like hard work and responsibility with promises of social and economic mobility, something often demonstrated to be more myth than everyday occurrence.

They hold the life stories of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett up as proof, never mind that they are merely two out of how many hundred million?

The odds of winning the lottery are better, roughly one in 14 million.

This is especially true among the lowest income brackets, those whom legislation, such as health care reform, has the greatest ability to impact.

Between 1979 and 2004, the real, after-tax income of the bottom 20 percent of earners increased 9 percent.

This is compared to a 69 percent increase for the top 20 percent of earners. So, the rich became richer, and the poor became moderately less poor.

When we overvalue a system that promotes self-centered behavior, or worse, necessitates such behavior as part of its regulating mechanism, we endorse that behavior.

It becomes acceptable to neglect the welfare of our neighbors because fixing broken things would "cost too much."

Worse, the very threat of "cost too much" is now enough to castrate, if not kill outright, most bills.

Congressmen and women spend their time on the floor waiving dueling reports.

The Heritage Foundation predicts the Kerry-Boxer climate change bill will cost a family of four an additional $1,000 a year in energy costs alone by 2035 (without inflation).

Whereas the Environmental Protection Agency estimates the additional cost per household to be not more than $111.

Who are we to believe?

As a result, environmentalists have attempted (and generally failed) to highlight the disastrous costs of inaction.

Apparently, people with a "save the world" complex have a hard time speaking modern capitalism's "save yourself" language.

The same thing is happening with the health care debate.

The poor still have access to emergency care, a cost that is "shifted" onto those of us lucky enough to have insurance.

Yet, emergency rooms can't treat chronic diseases like diabetes or cancer, at least not until they're so far advanced as to be terminal.

There's no such thing as an emergency annual mammogram, so it's far too early to pat ourselves on the back for our progressive "turn no one away" policies.

The Commonwealth Fund projects the 47 million uninsured of 2007 will become 61 million in 2020.

Yes, greed and self-interest are really working out, aren't they?

There are solutions out there, ones that protect this essential capitalist economy.

Europe has successfully managed to blend capitalist business with social welfare for many decades.

If the will to actually enact health care reform or climate change legislation can be harnessed for the right reasons – because they will save lives and help lift people out of poverty – I have no doubt we'll figure out the "how."