As a Brit who often visits the USA, I have struggled to understand the US view of government, and especially taxation. It seems unique in the developed world.
Today I listened to a program on the BBC called "The Public Philosopher" in which a well-known philosopher interacted with an audience at Harvard about universal healthcare. He asked audience members to speak about their beliefs and tried to reveal the principles behind their beliefs.
My country (like most in Europe) has a universal healthcare system. Britain is a rather extreme example, because its system is financed by tax and run by a government agency. In other European countries, the health systems are often insurance-based. But however payment is organised, to have universal basic healthcare, most countries insist that everyone is covered. This means that people who are unable to work are paid for by taxation, and workers are covered by compulsory insurance arranged by their employers.
All these systems need compulsion, and Europeans accept that. Compulsion means that healthy people can't say "I won't pay insurance (or tax) because I'm not sick" and insurance companies can't say "we won't accept a sick person because we will lose money".
The big surprise for me is the strong belief of the Harvard audience that compulsion (they called it "coercion") is un-American. For Republicans, this was expressed simply as "the government should not take away what I've earned". For Democrats, the question is whether poor people are coerced by their poverty and sick people are coerced by their sickness, so that they are denied participation in American society. The debate was not about the obvious benefits of basic universal healthcare, only about freedom from coercion.
Now to Europeans, this focus on coercion is surprising. We don't like being taxed, (who does) but we all assume that our governments must be coercive about a lot of things in order to run the country.
For Europeans, the freedom to elect our governments is enough. When the government coerces us to pay tax and obey the law, that is OK because we elected them to do that and we can un-elect them at the next election.
For Americans (at least in the audience in Harvard) freedom also means freedom from government coercion. I think that this must relate to the fact that the US constitution is confrontational. So an election is not about choosing between manifestos, as it would be in most European countries; it is about choosing adversaries who will slug it out in the Washington boxing ring.
I note that the American Revolution was not won to secure freedom from taxation as some US citizens claim. It was won to ensure that there was no taxation without representation.
My question to US citizens is this: is this an accurate picture of the US system and an accurate analysis of the differerence in thinking between the USA and Europe?
Tuesday, 30 October 2012
Saturday, 13 October 2012
Europe - a good thing or a bad thing?
As a Brit, I don't hear politicians saying that Europe is good for us. There are plenty of politicians who think it is, but they seem afraid to say so.
The British view of Europe is narrowly focussed on the European laws and regulations that affect us. We often complain bitterly that "they" in Brussels are controlling our lives.
I work on medical devices. Before Europe published the Medical Device Directive, my company had to obey separate safety regulations for each of the (then) 12 countries in Europe. Afterwards, we only had one regulation for 12 countries. Since then, the EU has grown to 27 countries. The European regulations are simpler than many of the national regulations, and they allow manufacturers complete freedom as long as they obey the one set of European safety regulations. How could this be bad?
As one of the authors of international standards, I am one of the "they" that Brits complain about. Even worse, I am writing standards that will probably be recognised all round the world, not just in Europe!
Other Europeans have a quite different view of Europe. For the French and Germans, Europe is about ensuring that the terrible wars of the past never happen again. For most Brits it is about a free-trade area. Brits don't want a United States of Europe. Germans generally do.
Yesterday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Peace Prize to the European Union for keeping the peace on the European continent from 1945 to the present.
The joke is that Norway has never joined the European Union!
Turning to the USA, you might expect that a federation of states would do better. But the USA has never taken that final step of ensuring that the federal government is supreme. The consitution, written in the days when it took 6 weeks to travel from Maine to Georgia, allows states the power to pass different and contradictory laws. And the civil war ensured that state's rights would never again be seriously challenged by the federal government.
So it seems to me that on both sides of the Atlantic, we don't have agreement on whether we want political union and, if so, how we might achieve it.
The British view of Europe is narrowly focussed on the European laws and regulations that affect us. We often complain bitterly that "they" in Brussels are controlling our lives.
I work on medical devices. Before Europe published the Medical Device Directive, my company had to obey separate safety regulations for each of the (then) 12 countries in Europe. Afterwards, we only had one regulation for 12 countries. Since then, the EU has grown to 27 countries. The European regulations are simpler than many of the national regulations, and they allow manufacturers complete freedom as long as they obey the one set of European safety regulations. How could this be bad?
As one of the authors of international standards, I am one of the "they" that Brits complain about. Even worse, I am writing standards that will probably be recognised all round the world, not just in Europe!
Other Europeans have a quite different view of Europe. For the French and Germans, Europe is about ensuring that the terrible wars of the past never happen again. For most Brits it is about a free-trade area. Brits don't want a United States of Europe. Germans generally do.
Yesterday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Peace Prize to the European Union for keeping the peace on the European continent from 1945 to the present.
The joke is that Norway has never joined the European Union!
Turning to the USA, you might expect that a federation of states would do better. But the USA has never taken that final step of ensuring that the federal government is supreme. The consitution, written in the days when it took 6 weeks to travel from Maine to Georgia, allows states the power to pass different and contradictory laws. And the civil war ensured that state's rights would never again be seriously challenged by the federal government.
So it seems to me that on both sides of the Atlantic, we don't have agreement on whether we want political union and, if so, how we might achieve it.
Monday, 8 October 2012
Our national stereotypes
I'm British and I travel a lot, especially in the USA. Now, Americans are very nice people, welcoming, friendly and hospitable, but I soon noticed a habit of measuring the rest of the world against the American Norm. At first I was amused, sometimes angry and then finally thoughtful. Do British people do the same? Are we just the same as Americans? Do we measure the rest of the world against the British Norm? Of course we do!
This blog is really about all nationalities and the mistaken beliefs they have about themselves, but I will focus on British and American errors, because those are the ones I see.
It is easy for me to see when an American has a mistaken understanding of America's position in the world, but not so easy for me to see the mistakes that I make myself. So if you are American, and you have always wanted to tell the British what's wrong with them, here's your chance! All I ask is that you avoid ranting and recognise that this is a two-way process.
Let's kick off with a simple set of errors about language. The British usually pronounce foreign words as if they were written in English. No mystery there - it's what you do if you haven't learnt to speak the foreign language. Americans have a strange habit of pronouncing all French words with a strong emphasis on the last syllable. So the French Filet (a boneless cut of meat) becomes "Fillit" in Britain and "Flay" in America. The French name Bernard is pronounced with the emphasis on the first syllable in Britain (Burnud) and the emphasis on the second syllable in America (Brnard. And yet in France both words are pronounced with an equal emphasis on both syllables. Why don't Americans mispronounce French the same way the British do? Their idea of how to mispronounce it must have started somewhere. Any ideas?
Of course, this leads on to a common Bitish illusion - that Americans don't speak real English and that they need to be put straight by any British person who has the opportunity. The truth is, of course, that British and American forms of English have both changed in the last 400 years, and 300 million Americans have a perfect right to speak the English that has evolved on their continent. But I know lots of Brits who are unshakable in their belief in the special position of British English. And yet some Americans have apologised to me for speaking an inferior form of English. So it's not just a British idea.
This blog is really about all nationalities and the mistaken beliefs they have about themselves, but I will focus on British and American errors, because those are the ones I see.
It is easy for me to see when an American has a mistaken understanding of America's position in the world, but not so easy for me to see the mistakes that I make myself. So if you are American, and you have always wanted to tell the British what's wrong with them, here's your chance! All I ask is that you avoid ranting and recognise that this is a two-way process.
Let's kick off with a simple set of errors about language. The British usually pronounce foreign words as if they were written in English. No mystery there - it's what you do if you haven't learnt to speak the foreign language. Americans have a strange habit of pronouncing all French words with a strong emphasis on the last syllable. So the French Filet (a boneless cut of meat) becomes "Fillit" in Britain and "Flay" in America. The French name Bernard is pronounced with the emphasis on the first syllable in Britain (Burnud) and the emphasis on the second syllable in America (Brnard. And yet in France both words are pronounced with an equal emphasis on both syllables. Why don't Americans mispronounce French the same way the British do? Their idea of how to mispronounce it must have started somewhere. Any ideas?
Of course, this leads on to a common Bitish illusion - that Americans don't speak real English and that they need to be put straight by any British person who has the opportunity. The truth is, of course, that British and American forms of English have both changed in the last 400 years, and 300 million Americans have a perfect right to speak the English that has evolved on their continent. But I know lots of Brits who are unshakable in their belief in the special position of British English. And yet some Americans have apologised to me for speaking an inferior form of English. So it's not just a British idea.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)