America’s been great and maybe I’d have stayed a bit longer if I could, but it’s not for me long-term. Americans work their arses off – long hours, little vacation time – to achieve what is considered basic comfort here. Expectations of public services are low and that widens the already-wide gap between America’s ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. That gap is one reason Bernie Sanders is leading in all Democratic nominee polls, despite his ‘radicalism’ and ‘socialism’… much of which we’d call ‘normal’ or ‘left of center’ in Ireland. For those who succeed, those who can thrive, America’s the greatest country in the world. But life is not merely the decision to thrive or not to thrive; shit does indeed happen and when it does, the US is a cold place indeed – and makes Ireland positively tropical in comparison.
MASSIVE DISCLAIMER; Lord above, this is not me advocating a vote for Fianna Fáil (vote for who you want as long as you vote) but it shows just how little support the state gives here in America when the most ‘radical’ person in the Democratic race has similar policies to a centrist Irish party.
Me, not being Fianna Fáil’s cover girl.
Americans work hard, damned hard. For most people, a prime concern when picking a job is the healthcare that comes with it. If you’re a contractor with an app-based service (i.e. an Uber driver), or a part-time worker (less than 30hrs), your job doesn’t automatically give you healthcare. The cost of family health coverage in the U.S. now tops $20,000[1]. The high cost of health care has historically been a trigger for bankruptcy filings; two-thirds of people who file for bankruptcy cite medical issues as a key contributor to their financial downfall[2]. 31 million Americans do not have health insurance, and though they legally cannot be turned away from emergency care, their bill will likely run into the thousands. But even aside from healthcare, US employees clock in 20% more hours than workers in France and Germany, yet it’s the only developed country in the world without a single legally required paid vacation day/holiday and one in four Americans doesn’t have a single paid day off[3]. One in four women go back to work within 10 days of giving birth because America does not to offer statutory paid maternity leave[4]. A common route to job security is a university education but a good friend of mine owes approx. $95,000 of student debt for undergrad and Masters. She’s only of the lucky ones because a university she attended is one of the most well-endowed universities in the world, otherwise she would owe about $250,000 for the undergrad alone. That’s a fair uphill incline even if you come from wealth or even the middle classes, but for anyone coming from economic disadvantage, it’s doors slammed in your face left, right and center
There isn’t the same culture of pride in public services that you see in the UK with the NHS or even with post offices in Ireland. Public services – transport, post offices, schools etc. – are seen to be for poor people, and when those services get run into the ground by a government that doesn’t want to fund them, there isn’t all that much of an outcry. Anyone with the money here goes private, for pretty much everything. Many people take Ubers instead of hopping on the bus and only poor people and eejits like me ride the Greyhound. Post offices are miles apart and the US postal service isn’t great. The main fuss about Medicare for All is that the people who have health insurance from their employers are frightened at the prospect of having to use public services which they’ve only ever known as being kinda shit. Public services are supposed to level the playing field, but the mythology of everyone pulling themselves up by their bootstraps is so ingrained in this country that it’s okay for the state to do the minimum possible – i.e. barely keeping people afloat week-to-week and doing nothing to level that playing field long-term. The best example of this is in education, which is funded by each area’s local property taxes. Instead of pooling all the money and distributing it equally amongst all schools, a nice suburb has a well-resourced school but the poor area in New Orleans has a classroom with eighteen chairs for nineteen kids (that’s an actual example, the teacher told me they rotated every hour). The lack of public service provision doesn’t just affect people born into poverty – though, obviously, it affects them far more – everyone is affected by the costs of healthcare, education, vomit-inducingly expensive childcare that is one result of a lack of state/federal support.
So ingrained is the idea of everyone pulling themselves up by their bootstraps that moves towards functioning public services are decried as socialism here. Yet, what is often disparagingly referred to as socialism, or ‘radical leftist thinking’ or the ‘far left’ is what we consider fairly normal in Ireland. Recently a friend told me they consider themselves traditional Fianna Fáil, but the Democrat nominee they most identify with is Bernie Sanders. There are holes in that statement, but not so much regarding public service provision. Bernie’s manifesto contains provisions on high quality universal single-tier health system, free third level education, housing for all and the support of local lenders like credit unions and post offices – all of which featured prominently in Fianna Fáil’s 2020 manifesto. Bernie’s plans for healthcare that has everyone in a hoop is basically the NHS, and what we’re striving for in Ireland is an NHS-type system. His plan for education is the one that we say we have, i.e. that financial means would not block a path to higher education. Lord above, this is not me advocating a vote for Fianna Fáil but it shows just how little support the state gives here in America when the most ‘radical’ person in the Democratic race shares policies with the Irish party that considers itself ‘centrist’.
If you’re Irish and think little of my support for public services, then let’s have a word about that free secondary schooling you received after 1967 or the nominally-free third level education you or your kids enjoyed after 1996. Credit due to them, Americans work damned hard to be here. Ireland has many problems, not least with the actual provision of those public services I’m lauding, but it is a kinder country to live in; less fixated on work, and more allowing of time and space to work on the things that truly matter like family, community, leisure and kindness. It’s for that reason that I’ll be sad to leave in the short-term but long-term happy to be home.
[1] Bloomberg, 25 September 2019
[2] CNBC, 11 February 2019
[3] USA Today, 8 June 2013.
[4] Guardian, 28 October 2019. America’s one of only two countries in the world that doesn’t provide statutory maternity leave; the other is Papua New Guinea.
doireann.ie 