Philobiblon

I’ve been pondering this for a while. The “American model” of politics and society supports a small state and everything possible (and sometimes impossible) being left to the market. And the most minimal of minimalist (ranging to non-existent) social support systems.

This is a society that despite being the richest by per capita income in the world, has nearly 15% of households suffering food insecurity – in simple terms they sometimes don’t know where there next meal is coming from.

About 1 in 50 Americans lives in a household that has no income but food stamps – a hundred to a couple of hundred dollars a month that can only be used for basic purchases.

It is a society that has just about the worst maternal mortality rates in the developed world,

On the side of medicine, run basically for the benefit of the deeply flawed, indeed often deadly, pharmaceutical industry, giant healthcare providers who get away wiith charging crazy prices, and medical insurance companies that make enormous profits.

So what is Britain now doing? Both the former Labour government and the current Tory-Lib Dem coalition is privatising the much-loved and valued NHS at a rate of knots, steaming towards the privatised American system.

They’re slashing away our already (by European standards) inadequate benefits system at a rate of knots, heading towards the American “you probably won’t actually starve, but you’ll sometimes go hungry” model.

I’ve been pondering a figure I came across that the basic Job Seekers’ Allowance of £65.45 is equivalent to just 41 per cent of the Minimum Income Standard for a working-age adult. (I’ve been just about living recently on Night Nurse, an anti-cough medicine that’s the only thing that allows me to sleep at night, and if you’re on job seekers’, that, at around £6 a bottle, is clearly not in the budget, so I’d just have to be coughing all night…)

But my headline question is really rhetorical. Because if you look at some other figures about America, such as the fact that the top 1% of earners get 23.5% of the income – it is clear why America is the way it is: it is run for the benefit of the few.

And now Britain, under two successive government of different hues, is going the same way.

The unanswered question is how democracy has managed to deliver this outcome…