In the end, this transition we’re going through could prove more exciting than people think, but right now asking large numbers of people to go from being an “employee” to a “work entrepreneur” feels scary and uncertain. Having a national health care safety net under the vast majority of Americans — to ease and enable people to make this transition — is both morally right and in the interest of everyone who wants a stable society.
After casually mentioning his globe-trotting elbow rubbing with the best and brightest, Friedman says that the economy is changing in ways that are different than the past. We don't know how it will change and allow for middle class jobs the way changes have worked in the past.
But he guesses that we will have to transition from working for companies that provide health insurance as a benefit to being entrepreneurs marketing our individual skills, and that having national health care will be a safety net that will encourage this shift. So he supports Obamacare despite the problems in design and roll out.
He leaps from economic changes of unknown effect to supporting a flawed health insurance law to cope with those changes.
Even if a great Obamacare law was the answer, why back the flawed roll out?
Even if the changes in our labor pool turn out as Friedman says, why is even a perfectly working Obamacare the answer to health worries? Couldn't simple tax code changes to subsidize catastrophic insurance for the poorest provide that net more cheaply? Couldn't improving inter-state competition for policies help lower costs?
And what if the experts are wrong about this change in our economy being different from the previous changes over the last two centuries, as Friedman writes. If the changes share more with past changes than the experts think, isn't a law that encourages employers to dump company-provided health insurance just as much of a cause of that change than a reaction to the change?
Further, what if our experience in the post-World War II decades was the anomaly caused by our unique position as the only modern economy left standing after the devastation of World War II? As other countries recovered, our unique position would end, no? Wouldn't figuring out the cause be important to figuring out an answer?
We don't know how our economy will change, but the answer to coping with that unknown future is a massive and poorly designed government plan that we really can't afford anyway. But since all the right people support Obamacare, why would Friedman risk getting erased from the invitation lists to those global get-togethers and the smaller versions in the Upper West Side? It doesn't even matter if Obamacare can work. All that matters is that Tom is on the correct side of the debate.
He made that mistake once by supporting the 2003 invasion of Iraq and then saw his fan base turn against the war when it got tougher than expected as Iran and Syria waged war on us there. Wow! The social calendar got thin for a while after that, eh? Even the technological wonder of Netflix doesn't make the transition from 20th century elbow rubbing with the glitterati over cocktails exciting!
As a wise man once said, it is better to look good than to feel good. Tom wants to look good.
I know this touches on Obamacare and I swore I'd lay off. But really, this is more about Tom Friedman and the great mystery to me of why he is considered a wise sage of our age.
Perhaps I'm too dismissive of Friedman. After all, Tom is one of those people who could be vulnerable to transitions caused by technology.
I'm (still) not saying you couldn't drown in a pool of Friedman's wisdom. But you would have to be drunk and face down to do so.
