American Exceptionalism Viewed from Economic, Political and Cultural Factors - Essay Example

People are free to choose and run their lives; even private parties have freedom on the economic side. They do not have to get intervention from the state regarding taxes, tariffs, enforced monopolies, and restrictive regulations. (laissez-faire principle; sourced from www.wikipedia.org). It is fortunate for private parties to be free from such matters, but for the citizens, there are still taxes to be paid. What has happened is that The United States taxes its citizens more lightly and as a result, less money to be used for social programs. There is a comparison since most Western European countries spend more money on social programs.

From the economic factors, it can be analyzed that when The United States government has decided to reduce its citizens` taxes, there might be economic instability. It can be seen mostly after the war in Iraq (2003) that The United States' economic condition decreased slowly and the life condition of its people had not been as comfortable as it used to be. Furthermore, the global crisis that has happened in recent times has had an impact too. The United States citizens cannot afford certain levels of life standards like they used to have. The condition can be observed from how stagnancy occurred in mortgages and how many banks were closed which makes more people jobless. The tax reduction has been a relieving fact for United States citizens, but since it has an impact on the social programs, a consequence prevails. In this case, social programs are ways for those who are unfortunate to get help and even have a better living. When the money for social programs is reduced, some people do not get benefits anymore.

Analyzing this matter from the political side it is not far from what happens in the economic factors. Political instability might occur when economic condition falls moderately. For example, when the jobless number rises higher and higher, there must be shock therapy for its political condition. People would like to be frank with the government that action to decrease problems is needed. Even though The United States has its “American Exceptionalism” which made them the strongest as ever, as Barack Obama – the president of the United States – mentioned, “I see no contradiction between believing that America has a continued extraordinary role in leading the world towards peace and prosperity and recognizing that leadership is incumbent, depends on, our ability to create partnerships, we create partnerships because we can’t solve these problems alone”. (Barack Obama – April 2009). It can be analyzed that although comparisons among countries are acceptable to be observed, like The United States instability is also being influenced by the whole world. An agreement must be put to Obama`s statement that every country in this world should gather to find solutions to any problems; including how to maintain the running of social programs in this global crisis.

Cultural factors could be the least impact but also the unfortunate one to face this American Exceptionalism. Culture is the whole unity to defines people and their origin. Culture has more to be shown to express people’s happiness. The very basic culture that American people have is the Thanksgiving celebration. (Once again, it is needed to emphasize that the tax reduction does not always mean positive, it even means that there is economic instability. The economic instability also influences every household in America). On Thanksgiving, American people will spend time with family and have celebrations. When an economic crisis occurs, it means that every household should manage a more efficient budget for their Thanksgiving celebration. It can be said that celebrating American favorite moments will not be as merry as it used to be.

In addition, discussing the health care reform, I think The United States is not following to be like Europe. Each European country has far less population than The United States, so it is almost impossible to apply the same health care reform. The  United Kingdom has free healthcare units spread around many areas, in which the citizens can have free medical services. It is hard to implement that kind of concept since the population number matters a lot. That is why the health care reform in The United States is more to soluble implementation such as the Act to ensure health insurance which is available to all on the same basis and price regardless of health status, to make more employers responsible for their worker's health insurance, to extend subsidies to middle-income persons who have no employer insurance, and extend Medicaid to people on higher incomes. To conclude, like Barack Obama said it is all about the partnership to solve any problems.