Big news in the pseudo-political-protest world, folks—in the dark, early morning hours of Feb. 20, somebody or somebodies took to the Reinert parking lot with a can of paint and a sworn goal of informing us that we really should “Buy American!” If you, like me, happened to own a car made by a company such as Toyota or Honda, you went outside that morning to find that someone was not at all happy with your choice of vehicle.
My choice of vehicle, incidentally, is a 1997 Toyota Camry. Built, should you be curious, in Kentucky, and purchased in Baltimore, Md. While I can’t claim to know where exactly every internal component was constructed, the majority of the profit from the car likely went to American workers. The paint these midnight Matisses applied, on the other hand, was likely manufactured by some sort of retail conglomerate with factories in any country but America. Buying American is no longer as easy as looking at the company logo.
Amusingly, the vandal or vandals seemed to agree: A Chevy parked near my car also managed to be tagged. That was either a silly mistake or a high-minded comment about globalism, capitalism and the nature of companies to pursue profit over the livelihood of their employees. I am guessing the former, but it is true that companies we would think of as American born and bred are sending a lot of business abroad. Ford, for instance, is second only to Volkswagen in European car sales—indeed, some of the better cars the company makes are predominantly sold overseas.
While my Camry was constructed in America, businesses—American or otherwise—are moving manufacturing divisions out of the country. There are a multitude of reasons for this, but the results are the same: more people out of work. Manufacturing operations still in the country are becoming increasingly mechanized, requiring higher skill levels.
The taggers might disagree, but this is actually a great thing for America. We’re all going to have to become smarter, stronger, more innovative and more willing to accept change. If the world were run properly, this would be as natural as living creatures being made out of carbon atoms, but instead it’s sadly difficult. There are a number of reasons for the challenges facing such a rapidly updating society, but the most prescient one to solve is the health care debacle. If workers cannot through one way or another stay healthy, they do not make money—for themselves, their family or the people for whom they work.
And so, in a world in which people paint “Buy American!” on other people’s cars, I feel as though it is all I can do to keep from spray painting on the very same cars: “Help Americans! (And support health care reform!)” We could spend money on American products or we could spend money, our tax dollars, on something that goes—through the roundabout route of being healthier, paying less and working more—into the pocket of every American.
Were I lucky enough to be in an income tax bracket that is going to be hit by a health care reform bill, I would pay the extra tax happily, because I know that, in a much more helpful version of trickle-down economics, the money I give to the government is going to keep Americans working and healthy. I fully realize how idealistic that sounds, but I truly believe that health care reform is among the top ways we can make our country even more fantastic than it already is.
Unfortunately, this is not proving to be easy. I won’t blather on about which bill is better or why—I still want a public option back in the mix— but I will say that on Feb. 25, President Barack Obama will be holding a health care summit with people who savagely disagree with both of us. It’s a step forward in a process that spends a lot of time running backwards into spikes, so one can only hope that some good comes of it. Televised on C-SPAN, it might not bear the immediate punch that a slogan painted onto your car does, but it could distract people for long enough, could include people who feel left out, as well as make improving the country a discussion instead of a series of pithy sound bites.
Noah Berman is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences.
