After Super Tuesday, we have a fairly clear picture of who may be on our ballots come November. On the left, Democrats will likely nominate Hillary Clinton, and on the right, Republicans will begrudgingly send for Donald Trump to take the dais.
That’s if Marco Rubio doesn’t kill him with terrible jokes and insults first.
Photo courtesy of the Chicago Tribune.
Anyway, while Donald Trump runs roughshod over Ben Carson and Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders continue to insult each other with policy.
Well, kind of.
Supporters of Sanders believe that he has the right tenor and ideas to lead a political revolution in this nation. Which, he might, Americans just don’t believe in it.
Sanders wants to make public college tuition free and create a single-payer healthcare system where everyone has a guaranteed health plan. But the detractors of Sanders’ proposals say that nothing in America is free.
Congressman John Lewis, a Civil Rights hero and Hillary Clinton supporter, said just that when talking about Sanders and his proposals.
“I think it’s the wrong message to send to any group. There’s not anything free in America. We all have to pay for something. Education is not free. Health care is not free. Food is not free. Water is not free. I think it’s very misleading to say to the American people, we’re going to give you something free.”
He went on to say that young Americans need to learn the value of hard work before thinking that they’ll receive anything for free.
It’s also strange considering that his statements do not match with America’s attitude.
According to a Gallup poll, most Americans believe that college is affordable only to the affluent. The study revealed that most Americans think that higher education is available, just 21 percent say that it is affordable.
Going further, just 17 percent of white Americans say it’s affordable and 19 percent of black Americans believe the same.
Another poll conducted by Gallup found that half of all college presidents who participated in the poll support free college tuition. A secondary Gallup poll revealed that nearly half of all Americans want employers to help with the cost of tuition, and when President Barack Obama unveiled his plan for free community college, 63 percent said that it should be supported.
Congressman John Lewis also supported the president’s plan for free college.
For Clinton, she has no plan to make college free, just more affordable. Clinton’s plan is a $350 billion idea that would “require families to make a “realistic” contribution toward tuition costs.” She wants to change how Americans repay their loans and would also make the process a lot smoother and easier.
Again–Clinton’s plan isn’t free, just more affordable. She would tax the rich and give the poor, kind of like Bernie, and students would be required to work on the basis that American’s don’t stand for handouts.
But going back to hard work and the attitude that Americans have towards it, we are a nation that actually works too hard. Compared to the 1970’s, Americans work an extra month a year, and put in more hours “than anyone in the industrialized world.”
We retire late, don’t take enough vacation, and still have the belief that we’re not working hard enough. But our attitudes are steeped in hypocrisy about who we believe works the hardest and why.
Through “hard work and resiliency“, Americans may pull themselves out of poverty more so than the government or education can. That attitude is prevailing as one in four Americans think that poor people are lazy, and that the rich have capital because of work ethic.
Just 24 percent of Americans believe that this country’s economic policies are to blame for income inequality yet 70 percent believe the government should do something to fix it.
We have an idea of what’s wrong with America, like laziness, and think that the government should do something about it.
So it is not necessarily surprising that Bernie Sanders and his campaign for freebies aren’t catching on. It is due in part because we believe in a fallacy; in an idea that’s so backwards that it is inexpiable.
Free means we don’t work hard, and if don’t work hard, we don’t deserve to exist.
For many of America’s politicians, John Lewis included, the value of hard work and resiliency trump the idea of accessibility.
-JH
photo credit: Growth in U.S. Family Income: 1947-1979 Versus 1980-2007 via photopin (license)
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