Medicare For Whom?
When universal language is used in non-universal ways.
There is a history of exemptions ironically being made when universal terms are used in political slogans to group people. For example, when Jefferson penned “All men were created equal” or where the pledge reads “Liberty and Justice for all”, he didn’t keep the well-being of Black slaves in mind. A more contemporaneous example is when assholes hold up signs saying “all lives matter” while cops massacre and exploit Black people systematically. In order to unmask misleading ideas, a helpful question to ask is “…except for whom?” It’s an important question that should be asked upon encountering slogans that claim to be universally inclusive of all individuals.
So when considering the slogan “Medicare For All”, is there anyone being left out? Well it’s an initiative only for americans, i.e: not the entire working class but only a subclass. This subclass is characterized by the division between those who live in producing and consuming countries, which is to say the empire and the imperialized. This is because welfare in general, which medicare is a form of, is derived from taxes. If we examine the material nature of their implementation and assume that we fund them by “taxing the rich”, then it means that they are a product of how the rich generate their profits. Since the dawn of imperialism in the twentieth century, most wealth generation was exported overseas where cheap labourers, i.e.: modern-day slaves¹, are exploited. These poor labourers could not even dream of having even a papercut healed from so-called “Medicare For All”.
Therefore all that the wealth taxation does is endorse the status quo. Via policies such as “Medicare for All” (and other similar types of welfare such as “UBI”), breadcrumbs are shared around the populace of the western nations. So rather than having only just a minority of a few bloody hands in the west, what the wealth tax does is makes even more hands bloody. It also ends up becoming an act of stealing from Peter to pay Paul² as it prioritizes the american working class over the working class living elsewhere. So since you can’t put the “All” in “Medicare For All”, or the “U” in “UBI”, these plans are inherently nationalistic!
This is why Marx emphasized the seizure of the means of producing wealth rather than wealth itself. Those exploited by mega-corps can’t ever practically be the beneficiaries of any sort of welfare in the form of reparations. Hell, that would be comparable to unscrambling an omelette³ or unmixing a cup of coffee! So, rather than tax wealth, why not disrupt the process for how the wealthy get their wealth?
However, there is an additional concern too: implementing UBI and increasing the wealth tax will have the effect of incentivizing the rich to compensate by accelerating their international exploitation. Because the wealthy want a win-win. As if they would voluntarily lose money! Ha! They are not going to willingly “suffer” a net-loss from taxes without exploiting more to make up the difference.
Conclusion
After all is said and done, it’s a PR campaign for even more resources to be transferred to the working class over here from the working class over there. If you tax wealth, the wealthy are going to extract more from the international working class to compensate. So is there any sense in talking about “Medicare For All” or “Universal Basic Income” if we do not mean what we say?
[1]: Modern day slavery is when people in El Salvador are working in American factories for $0.50 an hour for 12 hours. The difference between $0.50 and $0 is negligible.
[2]: “To rob Peter to pay Paul”, a saying from Elizabethan England
[3]: du fromage
