On Chewing Gum and Socialism
Around 1990 as a 10–11-year-old I was enamored by Juicy Fruit Chewing Gum. My cousin came home to India for his grad school holidays and brought me these goodies. Chewing gums back then in India, were about one-third the size of a Juicy Fruit and were hardly juicy. Within a year, I saw Juicy Fruit spring up in every mom-and-pop grocery store and suddenly, they were affordable. I could get them using my extra dimes, running chores.
How did this transformation happen? In 1991, India opened to foreign direct investments and multi-national companies. Suddenly, we were surrounded by foreign chocolates — Toblerone, Hershey, and Wrigley’s chewing gum of course! That was my entry from the world of primarily socialist India to that of a global, market-led economy. Indians gave up their Maruti cars for Honda Accords, Chevrolets and Skoda Octavias, scooped up Baskin Robbins ice cream, ate McDonalds burgers and shopped for their Nike shoes right at home. My memory of Indian movies before the 1990s is filled with unemployed young graduates depicted as the ‘angry young hero’. Alternately, the hero would take a factory worker job that was beneath him and rise up as a union leader. But with globalization in the 1990s came the multi-national jobs in technology companies, foreign banks and retail companies. My parents’ generation aimed for a Government job that they kept for 40 years and retired with a life-long pension. But a market-led global economy, benefited many lower middle-class families like mine and raised our standard of living.
Contrast that with the U.S. There were remnants of socialism before the world war, but post WWII, socialism became synonymous with communist Russia and soon became taboo with the advent of the cold war. Many Americans still don’t realize that America is not 100% capitalist. It has ‘socialist’ initiatives like social security and the public schools’ system. May be public schools need to reinvent and change their paradigms. Instead of teachers’ unions dictating terms on tenure, we replace it with a system of well-paid, happy teachers who are themselves graded. Social security is fast losing money. It may not even fund those who are paying into it in this generation. It needs a huge revamp. On that note , I am impressed with ideas on universal basic income and how they would especially benefit everyone during the Covid crisis.
But there are pitfalls in pure capitalism. For a developed nation, the U.S probably has the most expensive healthcare system that punishes those with pre-existing conditions and does not work for those not employed full-time. As a centrist, I was cautious about universal health care, but given the dysfunction of the industry in private sector, it makes me rethink this. This is even after I’ve heard stories from friends and acquaintances on the demerits of universal healthcare in places like U.K, Germany where you have to wait for months to see a doctor or where they would not try that experimental drug for a chronic disease. If we can balance affordable healthcare with innovation in treatments, drugs, it is a solvable problem.
May be the answer is not capitalism or socialism. I remember the term ‘mixed economy’ from my civics class. It’s a balance of policies with the right mix of socialism and market economy. But the devil is in the details as policymakers in each country carve this out for their people.
May be its like chewing gum. A pull here and a roll there should bring the right mix. Maybe we will figure it out in our lifetime!
