#hayek — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #hayek, aggregated by home.social.
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While reading “Masters of the Universe: #Hayek, #Friedman, and the Birth of #Neoliberal Politics,” I learned that the reason that benefits like #healthcare are tied to #employment in the US is because of a compromise position taken by the AFL-CIO and the major unions after WWII. Looking for more detail, I ran a query through kimi.com & the response was so good that I thought I’d share it on here.
Query: After World War II, why did the AFL-CIO and major unions in the United States promote tying benefits to employment instead of universal benefits?
Response: After World War II, the AFL-CIO and major U.S. unions pushed for employer-tied benefits instead of universal government programs due to a combination of political pragmatism, Cold War ideology, and strategic self-interest.
Here are the key reasons:
1. The Failure of Universal Healthcare (Truman’s Defeat)
The decisive turning point was the collapse of President Truman’s national health insurance plan. It was fiercely opposed by the American Medical Association, conservatives, and Southern Democrats, and ultimately defeated. Having lost that battle, labor leaders like UAW President Walter Reuther pivoted to what they called a "second-best" strategy: securing benefits through collective bargaining.2. The Cold War & Anti-Socialism
In the late 1940s and 50s, universal benefits were easily branded as “socialized medicine.” To survive, the CIO purged its communist-led unions, and the merged AFL-CIO positioned itself firmly within the anti-communist consensus. Tying benefits to employment was seen as a capitalist, free-market alternative that demonstrated private-sector unions could deliver the American Dream. 1/2 -
Richard J Murphy drops the bomb on Friedrich #Hayek & Milton #Friedman:
It’s the very policies that they recommended to avoid a ”Road to Serfdom” that created the very circumstances where we are now.
Everyone but a small elite is poor, doesn’t own anything, can’t affect their future, rents everything and is forever tied to working without ever making enough to better their lives.
But instead of beliving their eyes, they’re told to accept #neoliberalism on #faith
