America, It’s Time To Wake Up

Or, American exceptionalism and false consciousness.

American exceptionalism is an ideology in a truly Marxist sense. Marx argued that ideology grows from the dominant means of production — in America’s case, capitalism. Furthermore, it is weaponized by the ruling class against the working class:

According to Marx, the superstructure of society, the realm of ideology, grows out of the base, the realm of production, to reflect the interests of the ruling class and justify the status quo that keeps them in power.

In the ruling class’ weaponization of ideology against the working class, the working class develops what is called false consciousness, which is

the notion that members of the proletariat unwittingly misperceive their real position in society and systematically misunderstand their genuine interests within the social relations of production under capitalism. False consciousness denotes people’s inability to recognize inequality, oppression, and exploitation in a capitalist society because of the prevalence within it of views that naturalize and legitimize the existence of social classes.

American exceptionalism is perhaps the dominant reinforcer of false consciousness; insofar as exceptionalism means that the values of America ought to be proselytized and universally valued, it closes itself off to the possibility of critique. If American values are the ideal, then why ought they change? This is the wool which is pulled over the eyes of the working class — justifying their inequality, oppression, and exploitation as “the best of all possible worlds.”

Despite the pervasiveness of this ideology, it remains a blatant misrepresentation of reality. This is what I seek to demonstrate in this article, focusing on two metrics which will be compared with Canada — my home and native land — as well as many of the nations which a number of Americans decry as “socialist” states. The metrics I will employ are (1) qualitative and (2) quantitative, each with three variables. Qualitatively, we ask “How does America fare regarding health, education, and happiness?” Quantitatively, we ask “How does America fare regarding income, employment, and economic freedom?”

The Data

The only variable by which America is exceptional is disposable income — and even this is illusory, insofar as the cost of health insurance for countries without public healthcare (which is, on this list, only America) was not deducted. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, for those who have insurance under their employer, the average annual premiums for family health insurance was $20,576 in 2019. Accounting for employers picking up around 71% of that bill, the average family forked over about $6,015. The average household disposable income for Americans, if they were overwhelmingly covered by employer-sponsored health insurance, falls from $45,284 to $39,269 — but we are not even finished yet.

The Kaiser Family Foundation also reports that only around 49% of Americans are covered by employer-sponsored health insurance; for the other 51% not covered by employer-sponsored health insurance, the average is around $1,168 per month, or around $14,016 per year. If the other 51% of Americans, therefore, were covered by insurance outside of employment, then the combined average for Americans would be around $10,015.5 per year, reducing the average household disposable income to around $35,268.5 per year — just below that of Norway. Other sources report an average which is around the $10,015.5 mark, so we will keep the number as such — and ignore the 8–10% of Americans who don’t have any health insurance and the roughly 23 million Americans covered by the Affordable Care Act, as (a) the $10,015.5 estimate is unlikely to change significantly because of that, and (b) the math has actually given me a headache.

American Unexceptionalism

Given that the average household income in America has dropped to around $35,268.5 when we factor in the incredibly high costs of health insurance, America is unexceptional by virtue of every variable covered here. America is, compared to the countries with a strong social safety net which are covered here — and Canada, with our moderate safety net — under-performing in terms of healthcare access and quality, education, disposable income, employment rates, economic freedom, and happiness. The creeds of exceptionalism, denouncing strong social safety nets as “socialism” with passionate statements such as “Welfare makes people lazy,” therefore have no basis in reality. Such creeds merely serve to, by perpetuating the illusion of exceptionalism, keep the working class in a state of false consciousness.

Working class of America, you are being fed illusions which keep you in chains.

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