UnNews:Is the Government doing enough to suppress the proletariat?
 |
This article features first-hand journalism by an UnNews correspondent. |
| Straight talk, from straight faces | ✪ | UnNews | ✪ | Friday, November 22, 2024, 00:53:59 (UTC) |
| Is the Government doing enough to suppress the proletariat? | 
|
29 August 2009
WASHINGTON, DC - The debate about how best to subjugate the working classes was reignited this week when a group of Republican Senators claimed that the liberal policies of the Obama administration might lead to workers demanding decent pay and working conditions in the American workplace.
"We have fought long and hard to preserve the interests of big business against the general population," former Presidential candidate John McCain told UnNews, "and now President Obama wants to undo all that hard work."
Critics point in particular to President Obama's "universal health insurance" proposal, which many claim may impact negatively on the US elite's access to quality healthcare. "Health-care is a zero-sum game," right-wing commentator Ann Coulter told UnNews "If millions of uninsured Americans suddenly have access to healthcare, what effect do you think that is going to have on the rich who already have insurance?"
John McCain echoed Coulter's point, adding "If we start telling people they have a right to healthcare, they might start thinking they also have a right to decent living standards, or meaningful control over the political system."
However, the Obama White House hit back, pointing out that his healthcare plan is essentially a massive subsidy to the private health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. "Those who claim we have the best interests of ordinary Americans in mind are being disingenuous," a White House spokesperson said yesterday. "If we really cared about ordinary Americans we would bring in free healthcare as a right of citizenship funded through a progressive taxation system, but nobody has any intention of ever doing that." He went on to point out that the burden of insuring those with pre-existing conditions would be taken on by the taxpayer, leaving private companies free to make profit from the rest.
Other critics, however, have expressed concern that the President's economic stimulus package, with its spending on social programmes, might raise the living standards of the American proletariat, before giggling childishly at the fact that they were talking about Obama's "huge package."
The White House responded by saying "President Obama is just as committed to protecting the interests of corporate America as the Republicans, he just chooses to go about it in a more sophisticated way. For example, the President's pro-immigration stance will ensure that there is an abundance of cheap migrant labour to undercut the pay and living standards of American workers."