Let's do something else

One of the big hullabaloos during the campaign was around health care – Obama wanted to essentially socialize it, making coverage available through the government and force insurance companies to bring prices down, while McCain wanted to continue using the current system but give people money to pay for it. Opposition to Obama shrieked at the idea of socialism and opposition to McCain said the amount of money he proposed wouldn't cover the costs and many people would be worse off. For all of the Republican yakking about free markets and how much better everything is when it isn't run by the government, we sure have made a mess of health care. Not a single person in this country thinks our health care system works, except maybe the insurance companies (who have made out like bandits in a bigger and more blatant scam than the current home-loan debacle). Noam Chomsky said health care has long been the number one issue of the American people but only started to get talked about when big companies began complaining about the high cost of providing coverage. There are few instances in recent history when the complaints of companies are the same as of the people and we're at a moment right now where so many things are broken that if we take the time, we can put them together right and turn a bad situation into an incredible opportunity.



One of those broken things is our consumer-based economy. 76% of our GDP is made up of spending on consumer goods and they're related like a spiral. When spending is up, the economy does better, more jobs get created, people have more disposable income and they shop more. But when spending is down, like in a recession, the economy does worse, jobs get cut and people stop spending, increasing the speed of the downward spinning. Over the past few months, we've watched our lawmakers flailing around crying wolf and begging for bailout packages and stimulus packages without any real strategy. From where I sit, and I'm sorry for this analogy but it reminds me of a guy trying to regain his erection when the moment has already past. You can spend the next half hour working to get it back only to find that your partner doesn't care anymore, or you can just go do something else. I would like to propose that we do something else. I'm tired of watching my representatives trying to pump life into the economy by throwing money at it. The money doesn't build anything that will stimulate a long-term upward spiral, it might give us a short boost but then we'll fall limp again.

The thing that everyone is talking about is green tech and for a good reason. The warnings about global warming are getting louder and louder and to anyone paying attention, they make everything else seem a little trivial. The governor of California just issued a directive to the state to start preparing for rising sea levels and a new study from the University of California shows the state losing trillions of dollars of real estate to fires. Among the other expensive disasters in store for us are drought, energy shortages, earthquakes, loss in tourism revenue and massive agricultural losses. To not change RIGHT NOW is the dumbest thing this country can do. We voted change into the White House but as Obama keeps reminding us, it's also us who will have to change. The whole world is registering the effects of global warming and so why not rebuild our economy around an industry that is not at odds with what the people need, an industry that will not only grow our economic future but will also keep us from financial ruin? We already know that there aren't enough fossil fuels in the world to meet the future energy demands of the U.S., China and India and while I'm sure we'll keep fighting over oil until every last drop is gone, why not also implement other technologies? We can't afford to wait and the acquisition and consumption of oil is largely responsible for global warming anyway.



So here's an idea. Let's do two drastic things right now to change our economy. First, let's socialize medicine and kill the insurance companies or make them work for us instead of the other way around. If we remove the burden of health care from employers, we will make huge strides towards keeping businesses here and maybe even luring some back. Second, let's level the energy playing field and create huge financial incentives for corporations to go green. If we did those two things, we could massively grow the green sector – putting new products on the market, giving unemployed people jobs, slashing emissions and pollution, promoting innovation and retaining more of our smart people – and relieve the country of the massive health care burden – putting more disposable income into the hands of Americans, increasing company profits and decreasing fraudulent behavior. President Bush says we don't have to give up on free people and free markets, and I agree. There are times, however, when we should do something else. This is one of those times.

Uncivilized States of America

Between the ages of 12 and 19, I went to Europe three times with my family. We mainly went to visit my relatives in England but also managed to see Paris, stay in rural France, drive through southern Germany, tour Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria and tour through Wales staying in farmhouse B&B’s. My English cousins, only a few years younger than me, thought America was so cool and always talked about someday wanting to live here. It was the eighties; no one in Europe thinks that way about America anymore. Even at that young age, I advised them that America was not all they thought it was. It was in those years that I formulated the opinion that the U.S. treated its citizens as stupid ill-behaved children that can’t be trusted with responsibility. A sentiment echoed decades later in President Bush’s statement that it didn’t matter if we didn’t support the war in Iraq because he knew what was best for the country.

Why is it, I asked, that at 16 I can pay taxes but I can’t vote? That I can drive but can’t go to a club to see a concert with my friends? That I can go to college but can’t borrow money to pay for it? In Europe, college is free and parents are allowed to determine when and how their kids can drink alcohol. At monuments in Britain, there were no ropes or signs restricting where you can go or telling you how to behave. Their government trusts its citizens to be adults and behave accordingly. If you fall and get hurt, it’s your fault and responsibility. You wouldn’t sue for your mistake. But then, you wouldn’t have to because your medical treatment is free regardless of how it happened or who is to blame.

For twenty years, I have wanted to live in Europe. As a teenager, I made “mood boards” of European villages, small farms and old towns that I wanted to visit. I haven’t managed to spend much more than four weeks in Italy as an adult, four of the best weeks of my life. Lately though, I‘ve been feeling so down on America, so tired of the lies and hypocrisy that seem to be everywhere. Why do we spend more than ten times more on military “defense” than any other country in the world? Are we really ten times safer? Or in ten times as much danger? Our president says it to keep our country safe and yet we are being polluted by industry, poisoned by our food and killed by a lack of health care and campaign of misinformation about what is “food.” Why are we told and why do people believe that this is the greatest nation on earth? Because we have democracy? We have the lowest voter turnout of any democracy on the planet, so that can’t be the reason.

I just watched Michael Moore’s new film, Sicko. All these years I’ve been arguing with people who didn’t believe me when I said that Europeans were better off than us. My cousins all own their own homes, have new cars, little to no debt and have traveled all over the world on their holidays. They aren’t better educated than me and I probably make the same amount of money, minus the five weeks paid mandatory vacation. They’re politically informed and engaged and never have had a problem finding work. And they’re healthy.

Sicko, while focused on the sham that is our “health care industry,” also asks the bigger question of “what’s wrong with us”? Why are we the only civilized nation in the world that denies basic rights and services – health care, time off and education – to its citizens? It’s no wonder Europeans don’t respect us, we put up with the most disgusting abuse and corruption but then wave our flags and tell everyone to be like us. It’s unfortunate that more Americans haven’t spent time overseas to see how other people live. Moore makes a good point about how we’ve been brainwashed to believe that national health care would be socialist and socialism is a bad, scary thing. Well it is to rich people but for the rest of us, it’s the purpose of government and society. As Jared Diamond describes in Guns, Germs and Steel, in a kleptocracy it’s what we get in exchange for those in charge taking the largest portion of goods. This article references the best quote in the film from a Labor Party member of Parliament, a portion of which is that “an educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern.” Keep us frightened and demoralized and we won’t protest our condition. Bingo!

Look at these happy people, they just had a baby for free:


Moore takes a crew of sick Americans, including 9/11 rescue workers denied treatment, to Guatanamo Bay where the terrorists being held and receiving better medical attention than most Americans. They end up in a hospital, in Cuba of all places, where they get first class treatment in a segment that rendered me in tears much like one of those makeover reality shows. This country is being run into the ground by greedy and corrupt politicians and corporations, who are getting rich of us, and it’s happening right before our eyes. Someday, when people start trying to leave this country and live elsewhere, we’ll be asked why we didn’t do anything to stop it.

A while back someone sent me a video explaining the writer's strike in Hollywood on YouTube. It was a very simple and factual explanation, nothing emotional, just this is what we have, this is what we're asking for and this is why. Underneath the video, there were hundreds of comments. Almost all of them were hateful vitriolic statements about the writers being lazy and untalented. People said I hope you starve. They said, why should you get compensated when the rest of us are screwed by business? They accused writers of being greedy. I couldn't believe it. A friend of mine said she thought they were planted there by studios but I don't think so. I've seen too many examples of Americans slinging hate at each other to know that we're an angry bunch of people who hate to see other people get something they deserve, unless it's punishment. But the anger is misdirected. We should be angry, we should be very angry but not at each other. Moore says at the end of the movie that nothing will change until we starting thinking of "we" instead of "me."