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We “rethink the week” with Valerie Endress, Professor of Political Communication at Rhode Island College; Dean Spiliotes, Professor and Civic Scholar at Southern NH University; and Mark Fernald, attorney and former gubernatorial candidate in New Hampshire. We discuss the Democratic presidential debate, and in particular the discussion of gun violence. In what has been dubbed his “breakout moment,” Beto O’Rourke proudly answered a question: “Hell, yeah, we’re going to be coming for your AR-15s and AK-47s.” We aren’t optimistic that Beto’s plan will become law, but we agree that it’s good to have the discussion.
Beto’s statement significantly changes the national conversation. Most of us know nothing about AR-15s, AK-47s, and bump stocks. We are not helping ourselves if we simply put our heads in the sand and pretend that issues like gun violence (and the Second Amendment) just don’t exist. We hope that our country will be able to discuss even the most difficult issues from *all* points of view — and actually listen respectfully to each other.
We also discuss Cory Booker’s observation in the debate that our country needs to develop a “capacity for empathy” and that we must teach this to our children. Like many people, Booker appreciates that people’s personal experiences with a particular issue can raise their consciousness about that issue and stimulate a passion for advocating around it. And this can influence public policy and legislation. We have seen this occur in the areas of gun violence, women’s rights and gay marriage, for example.
But should our society wait until the majority of Americans have lost a loved one to gun violence? We would rather see changes made without so much suffering. We agree with Booker: We’d rather see policies change based on people’s developing the capacity for empathy: empathy for *other* people’s suffering, even if neither we nor our loved ones are victims of a personal tragedy.
We turn our attention to activity within the labor movement. For decades, most union success has occurred among public employees. Recently, the private sector has also been reminded of the variety of improvements that unions have, through American history, contributed to working people’s well-being. Employees in private industries as diverse as Kaiser-Permanente (nurses) and General Motors (auto workers) are going on strike.
Such disruptions would probably not have occurred if the disputes were only about wages. But workers now are more concerned about their *job security*. They can’t rely on their employers to continue employing them, rather than outsourcing the work overseas, closing plants, or even less broad RIFs/layoffs and other “cost-cutting” actions.
Working people are also beginning to realize that their employer-based health insurance — which is the basis for their expressed concerns about single-payer national health proposals — is, in fact, costing them a lot more money than they thought. Employer health plans are not really “free” just because “the employer pays for it.” In order to convince their employers to provide decent health-insurance benefits, workers have had to expend a lot of their blood, sweat, tears, and their bargaining power, perhaps forgoing significant wage increases, improvements in working conditions, and other benefits. These costs would be reduced if workers were guaranteed access to universal health care.
Yes, these dollar benefits to workers would be balanced by some increase in their federal taxes in order to pay for the program. People would need to consider the balance between the financial pros and cons (and other non-financial factors such as a more-secure guarantee that their health care program will always be there, even if they leave their employer voluntarily or get fired/laid off or their job is outsourced or they retire). We think the overall amount that workers would pay for health insurance through a single-payer plan (whether Medicare or other) will save them money in the big picture.
