America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great (11 page)

Today we live in the information age where knowledge is power, yet — as I discussed earlier — almost one third of all our students drop out of high school before graduation.
⁸
In many inner-city schools the dropout rate is considerably higher than that. It is time for corporate America and the rest of society to band together to stop the hemorrhaging and give these young people the incentive and tools to complete their education and become a part of a “can-do” society versus a “what can you do for me” society. For a well-functioning capitalistic society cannot sustain itself without a steady supply of enthusiastic and hard-working individuals who are excited about achieving the American dream.

S
INCE MY MOTHER
had only a third-grade education and was functionally illiterate, there weren’t many lucrative job opportunities available to her. To compensate, she worked two and sometimes even three jobs, cleaning the houses of wealthy families and caring for their children. She frequently left the house at five in the morning and did not return until midnight, which meant that Curtis and I would sometimes not see her for several days at a time. When she was at home, you could see the fatigue in her eyes, but the little time and energy she did have, she always spent on Curtis and me. It was clear that whether she was working or spending time with us, she wanted us to have a better life than the one we had.

When other families went on outings, for example, we couldn’t. There simply wasn’t enough money. Every once in a while, however, Mother would save up enough for us to go to the fair, but only enough for us to get in the gate — we had to enjoy the rides by watching others. We couldn’t try our hand at any of the games, no matter how much we practiced pitching coins or playing basketball at home. Most adults can recall wonderful childhood tastes from nibbling on cotton candy, hot dogs, french fries, ice cream, and rainbow-colored snow cones, but Curtis and I had to be content to only smell — never taste.

Being unable to give us many of the little joys of childhood weighed heavily on Mother. When we’d arrive at the checkout counter in a grocery store and have to run the inevitable gauntlet of assorted candies, we’d ask
her if we could have something “this time,” but the answer was always no. The look in her eyes was so devastating that after a while we wouldn’t even ask. There was no money for a babysitter either, so Curtis and I were pretty much left on our own.

But Mother was always creative in coming up with ways for us to make ends meet. In the summertime, for example, when farmers’ crops were ready for harvest, she would drive us out to the country on the weekend, stop at a farmhouse, and offer to pick four bushels of a crop if we could keep one. Farmers usually complied, and we’d bring home fresh vegetables or fruit, such as strawberries, peaches, tomatoes, and green beans. Although we may have complained about the work, it was fun picking produce together as a family. And once we returned home, she would can many of the items to sustain us during the winter months.

Most of Mother’s friends and relatives also struggling with economic hardship were quite happy to lean on public assistance. As a child, I overheard many conversations in which they detailed schemes — some of which were quite elaborate — for obtaining more government aid.
Take a course in a community college
, I heard them say,
to make it appear that you are trying to escape welfare. That will get you extra money for child care. Your social worker
,
who will be so happy and proud of you
,
can be easily manipulated. By the time they grow weary of their work and move on
,
another one will have been assigned to your case
. I often wonder what they could have accomplished if they had spent that intellectual energy developing a new business. My mother steadfastly resisted her friends’ lifestyle because, even though she only had a third-grade education, she had noticed that almost no one who became a welfare mom ever came off of welfare, and she was repulsed by the thought of perpetually depending on others.

The attitude of my mother’s friends and relatives was very similar to that of the students in a course I took in school, in which only two grades were given:
satisfactory
and
unsatisfactory
. Many of the students in that particular class — who usually strove to excel — relaxed and set aside any notion of spending long hours studying to get an
A
on an exam, let alone working for extra credit. After all, they knew they would receive at best a grade of
satisfactory
no matter how hard they worked. On the one hand, it comforted many students to know that they would pass the course without ever having to extend themselves much — but on the other hand, it discouraged many students from working hard to achieve excellence.

Some might question the wisdom of my mother’s drive toward self-sufficiency and her no-nonsense parenting of us boys, but I believe the
proof is in the pudding: one son became an aviation engineer and the other became a neurosurgeon, two of the most prestigious professions. Many children of the wealthy clients for whom she worked managed to only just get by in life or worse — some ended up dead, in the penal system, or on welfare.

My journey from inner-city poverty to board-certified neurosurgeon was arduous and expensive, as it is for anyone who decides to become a doctor. Today, even those from middle-class families graduate from medical school with student debt equivalent to the mortgage on a house. They are not able to pay off those debts for several more years because they also have to complete an internship — and, in many cases, several years of residency with very modest wages. Doctors today are frequently well into their thirties by the time they are able to even begin addressing their debts. In many other countries, medical education is completely subsidized by the government, because they realize that the physicians will contribute substantially to the well-being of their society. Since the graduating doctors in those countries are not saddled with the burden of great financial debt, they are free to choose the area of medicine that appeals most to them without focusing on the salary of any given specialty.

The question then is, are there aspects of socialism that are worth keeping or incorporating into the fabric of our society? Or does capitalism have the upper hand when it comes to solutions?

In the United States, physicians in high-paying specialties are increasing much faster than primary care physicians, largely because graduating doctors choose their specialties based on the amount of debt they have incurred rather than based on their interests and talents. This is a problem that we can solve quickly and relatively inexpensively by eliminating or greatly reducing medical school tuition. By embracing a positive aspect of socialism, medical education would be subsidized for the good of the entire nation. Admitting there are beneficial aspects of socialism, however, does not obligate us to completely reorient our nation’s economic system. The resulting increase in the number of primary care physicians would address many of the problems that patients in this country currently face regarding access to doctors.

However, in the same way that capitalists and socialists differ over who should pay for and receive benefits, tension exists in the medical community over the disparity in salaries among the specialties. Those in the lower-paying specialties frequently resent what they consider excessive salaries paid to specialists such as cardiothoracic surgeons and neurosurgeons. In
multispecialty practices or academic medical centers, those lucrative specialty departments usually subsidize the other departments, making things more equitable. I bring this up because this paradigm reflects our society at large and is somewhat analogous to the argument between capitalism and socialism. Capitalists would say that those who work the longest and hardest, and are exposed to the most risk, should receive the greatest financial rewards, while socialists would say that everyone has essentially equal training and the same general profession, thus it is unfair for one to receive more compensation than another.

It is easy to see validity in both points of view upon a superficial analysis; however, a deeper look at the differences between the specialties is revealing. Certain specialties, such as neurosurgery and obstetrics, face enormous medico-legal costs because we continue to leave tort reform — legal reform aimed at reigning in out-of-control lawsuits within the health-care sector — unaddressed. In some of our major cities such as Philadelphia and Chicago, the average malpractice premium for a neurosurgeon exceeds $300,000 annually. It is also commonly accepted that the three most stressful occupations are 911 operator, air traffic controller, and neurosurgeon. Neurosurgeons generally die several years earlier than the population at large. I recently went back and calculated the average age of death of ten neurosurgeons that I knew personally and was shocked to discover the number to be in the lower sixties. I’m hopeful that that age is now on the rise since more attention is being placed on the number of hours worked and alleviation of stress, but we still have a long way to go. Many people in surgical specialties also have to retire earlier because physical skills decline more quickly than mental skills. Although many wish to deny it, vision and dexterity at age seventy is unlikely to be comparable to the same at age thirty. So when one takes into account years of training, amount of stress, life expectancy, and earlier retirement, it should be easy to see that few people would consider certain specialties if there were no differential remuneration. This is not to say that these individuals are only interested in money, but in a capitalistic society, risk taking and sacrifice are frequently rewarded financially.

Not long ago, Candy and I had an opportunity to visit Cuba with a group of young American business leaders. There the government essentially owns and controls everything, including where people live, what they do for a living, and how much they earn. Certain people who are smiled on by the government are allowed to rent elegant accommodations and enjoy a privileged
lifestyle, while the vast majority of the population must be satisfied with meager resources. However, their basic health-care needs are taken care of and they are unlikely to be homeless or starving.

A university professor in Cuba makes little more than an unskilled laborer — and in some cases less. In addition, many of our waiters and waitresses had advanced education degrees, but found that they could earn more money waiting tables. The many street vendors and performers in the main city squares created a festive façade, but having spoken to many Cuban refugees, I could only sympathize with the masses of people and hope that someday they can experience true freedom. Although some people, such as the documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, extol the virtues of Cuban society, the tide of illegal immigration is from Cuba to America, not vice versa. More people seem to prefer freedom with the opportunity to create security than security without freedom. If people could freely choose which type of society they preferred to live in, life would be very fair. Unfortunately, although Americans are free to leave this country any time they want to go live somewhere else, such privileges are not afforded to the average Cuban or those in many other countries where the government controls their lives.

To be fair, some people love socialism’s ideas, which they see as bringing about a utopian existence. They feel there is less conflict and competition when everyone is treated the same. But does the socialist ideal of equality hold?

One summer, I worked at a Chrysler plant in Detroit as a preassembly line worker, monotonously welding hour after hour. It was quite boring work, and I received a decent salary whether I worked hard or decreased my production. What I really wanted to do was be a driver who moved the finished product from the end of the assembly line to a large parking lot. Those jobs went to a privileged few with connections in the company. However, I worked so hard at my job that eventually management noticed and gave me my dream job as a driver.

In socialistic systems, as in capitalist ones, intelligence and diligence are often eventually noticed, and individuals are moved into privileged positions. In other words, you could say that although everyone is equal in socialism, some are more equal than others. So differential treatment is a part of socialism just as it is in capitalism, but in the latter system,
self-dependency and self-reliance play the larger role in one’s advancement, whereas in the former system, currying favor with the powers that be and hoping to be noticed plays the larger role in advancement.

One of the most appealing aspects of socialism is the safety net it provides for its citizens. Because all resources are supposedly distributed in an equitable fashion, there should be enough money, food, and services to provide everyone with a reasonable lifestyle. Theoretically, socialism eliminates the disparity between some living with great wealth while others live in poverty. This system requires that the government have intimate knowledge of everyone’s personal property and resources in order to be able to redistribute wealth. Although most Americans have great compassion for those less fortunate than themselves, very few would agree to involuntarily sharing all they had earned by their hard work with people they didn’t even know.

When I was growing up, a homeless man came to our church one Sabbath, and he kept talking about how hungry he was. My mother had made an enormous pot of chili, my favorite food, so she invited the man home for dinner. I have never seen anyone eat so many bowls of chili, but he was eventually satisfied, as was my mother. I saw many acts of kindness by my family and many others over the years, and I believe that generosity is part of the American way of life. However, I suspect that my mother would have been quite unhappy if a government agent had come along and confiscated her chili in order to share it with others who had nothing to eat. She would have felt that it was her chili, and that she had the right to share with whomsoever she wished. And therein lies one of the fundamental differences between capitalism and socialism.