Health Care and Poverty
The United States does not have the best health care system in the world. The profit motive has ensured that in the United States health care system there is more profit in a pound of cure than an ounce of prevention. Many believe that the U.S. leads the world in its delivery of health care to its citizens, but this is a false assumption. In fact the United States rates 37th in health care delivery in all of the worlds industrialized nations. While it’s true that the U.S. does lead the world in emergency care, these advancements do not translate into better over all care for its citizens.
The United States does however lead the industrialized nations in poverty and income inequity . The disparity of income is the highest in the industrialized world and the root of the poor health care delivery model. In the simplest terms, many cannot afford the exorbitant cost of health care and without healthcare insurance. A person is completely vulnerable to the enormous cost of health care. This condition, economic disparity, may explain the growing number of American citizens, over 45 million, who do not have health care coverage. And as the number of uninsured citizens grow, the cost of health care delivery rises, in part because the citizens who are covered with a health insurance plan must make up the financial difference of those who are not covered by health insurance.
But the healthcare debate in the U.S. is at a stalemate. While conservatives and liberals decide on a delivery model, the cost of care continues to rise. Conservatives think the U.S. health care system needs reform because there is too much government involvement in health care; liberals because there is not enough. Most of this dissatisfaction stems from the high expense and unavailability of U.S. health care to its most vulnerable citizens. During the 1993 debate on health care reform, polls consistently showed that two-thirds of all Americans supported the idea of universal coverage. Of the 10 largest industrialized nations, the U.S. ranked dead last in health care satisfaction, with an approval rating of only 11 percent.
The root of the problem is poverty. The United States leads the world in emergency care., but we fall flat where health care is most important – prevention and maintenance. It’s not a coincidence that many of our poorest are the ones who suffer the most under our health care system. The link between being poor and living an unhealthy live style has been well established. Political scientist Jeffrey Reiman writes: "Less money means less nutritious food, less heat in winter, less fresh air in summer, less distance from sick people, less knowledge about illness or medicine, fewer doctor visits, fewer dental visits, less preventative care, and above all else, less first-quality medical attention when all these other deprivations take their toll and a poor person finds himself seriously ill”. - The Rich Get Richer And the Poor Get Prison
The European nations have done much to reduce poverty within their borders. In Europe during the last century, life expectancy doubled after governments purified their drinking water, created modern sanitation systems and reduced poverty. In America during this century, the highest cancer rates are found in neighborhoods within the chemical industry, most of those neighborhoods are poor. A healthy diet and exercise provide better health than most medicines in many circumstances, yet our poor continue to eat low cost food which are high in fat, calories and cholesterol. Other nations have realized that factors outside the hospital are more important than factors inside it, and have used this wisdom to lower their health care costs.
If the United States does not want to continue to fall behind our European neighbors in quality of life , then we must pass a universal health care initiative and reduce poverty. According to the University of Michigan Poverty Center, in 2004, 12.7 percent of all persons lived in poverty. In 1993 the poverty rate was 15.1 percent. Between 1993 and 2000, the poverty rate fell each year, reaching 11.3 percent in 2000. Poverty has risen in each of the last four years. Children represent a disproportionate share of the poor in the United States; they are 25 percent of the total population, but 35 percent of the poor population. In 2004, 13 million children, or 17.8 percent, were poor.
The poverty trend must be reversed, or it will continue to grow. The cure for poverty is not going to be easy, there is no silver bullet, but it must begin. We can start by rebuilding our industrial base to provide good paying jobs for those in poverty. There are millions of people who will be left behind as our economy “evolves” into a service driven, education dependent economy. Many have fallen though the cracks already. We must do more to protect our industries from unfair competition and overseas monopolies, both drive our wages down and lower our standard of living for the working poor.
Also, we must make education more available for the poorest among us. This will improve their social standing and job marketability. We must change our perception about health care, health care must be a universal right, not a privilege for those who can afford it.
The cost for these initiatives will not be cheap, or easy to implement. But the side effects of economic disparity will not disappear without intervention. I believe that our government can find compromise on these issues and thereby legislature a solution the problem of inadequate health care and disparity of wealth. As poverty continues to expand, as healthcare continues become out of reach and as more and more people are disenfranchised by globalization; our troubles will grow.
How can we afford not to intervene?
The United States does not have the best health care system in the world. The profit motive has ensured that in the United States health care system there is more profit in a pound of cure than an ounce of prevention. Many believe that the U.S. leads the world in its delivery of health care to its citizens, but this is a false assumption. In fact the United States rates 37th in health care delivery in all of the worlds industrialized nations. While it’s true that the U.S. does lead the world in emergency care, these advancements do not translate into better over all care for its citizens.
The United States does however lead the industrialized nations in poverty and income inequity . The disparity of income is the highest in the industrialized world and the root of the poor health care delivery model. In the simplest terms, many cannot afford the exorbitant cost of health care and without healthcare insurance. A person is completely vulnerable to the enormous cost of health care. This condition, economic disparity, may explain the growing number of American citizens, over 45 million, who do not have health care coverage. And as the number of uninsured citizens grow, the cost of health care delivery rises, in part because the citizens who are covered with a health insurance plan must make up the financial difference of those who are not covered by health insurance.
But the healthcare debate in the U.S. is at a stalemate. While conservatives and liberals decide on a delivery model, the cost of care continues to rise. Conservatives think the U.S. health care system needs reform because there is too much government involvement in health care; liberals because there is not enough. Most of this dissatisfaction stems from the high expense and unavailability of U.S. health care to its most vulnerable citizens. During the 1993 debate on health care reform, polls consistently showed that two-thirds of all Americans supported the idea of universal coverage. Of the 10 largest industrialized nations, the U.S. ranked dead last in health care satisfaction, with an approval rating of only 11 percent.
The root of the problem is poverty. The United States leads the world in emergency care., but we fall flat where health care is most important – prevention and maintenance. It’s not a coincidence that many of our poorest are the ones who suffer the most under our health care system. The link between being poor and living an unhealthy live style has been well established. Political scientist Jeffrey Reiman writes: "Less money means less nutritious food, less heat in winter, less fresh air in summer, less distance from sick people, less knowledge about illness or medicine, fewer doctor visits, fewer dental visits, less preventative care, and above all else, less first-quality medical attention when all these other deprivations take their toll and a poor person finds himself seriously ill”. - The Rich Get Richer And the Poor Get Prison
The European nations have done much to reduce poverty within their borders. In Europe during the last century, life expectancy doubled after governments purified their drinking water, created modern sanitation systems and reduced poverty. In America during this century, the highest cancer rates are found in neighborhoods within the chemical industry, most of those neighborhoods are poor. A healthy diet and exercise provide better health than most medicines in many circumstances, yet our poor continue to eat low cost food which are high in fat, calories and cholesterol. Other nations have realized that factors outside the hospital are more important than factors inside it, and have used this wisdom to lower their health care costs.
If the United States does not want to continue to fall behind our European neighbors in quality of life , then we must pass a universal health care initiative and reduce poverty. According to the University of Michigan Poverty Center, in 2004, 12.7 percent of all persons lived in poverty. In 1993 the poverty rate was 15.1 percent. Between 1993 and 2000, the poverty rate fell each year, reaching 11.3 percent in 2000. Poverty has risen in each of the last four years. Children represent a disproportionate share of the poor in the United States; they are 25 percent of the total population, but 35 percent of the poor population. In 2004, 13 million children, or 17.8 percent, were poor.
The poverty trend must be reversed, or it will continue to grow. The cure for poverty is not going to be easy, there is no silver bullet, but it must begin. We can start by rebuilding our industrial base to provide good paying jobs for those in poverty. There are millions of people who will be left behind as our economy “evolves” into a service driven, education dependent economy. Many have fallen though the cracks already. We must do more to protect our industries from unfair competition and overseas monopolies, both drive our wages down and lower our standard of living for the working poor.
Also, we must make education more available for the poorest among us. This will improve their social standing and job marketability. We must change our perception about health care, health care must be a universal right, not a privilege for those who can afford it.
The cost for these initiatives will not be cheap, or easy to implement. But the side effects of economic disparity will not disappear without intervention. I believe that our government can find compromise on these issues and thereby legislature a solution the problem of inadequate health care and disparity of wealth. As poverty continues to expand, as healthcare continues become out of reach and as more and more people are disenfranchised by globalization; our troubles will grow.
How can we afford not to intervene?
posted by Van at 8:51 AM
11 Comments:
You talk of income inequality as though it's a bad thing, Van. It's most certainly NOT a bad thing at all.
The most economically backward nations (places like France and Germany, though Germnay's changing) tend to have have less income inequity than more economically advanced nations, like the U.S.
The FACT is that some skills are simply more valuable than others.
ANY skill that can be done by anyone (ie. dish-washing, mopping floors, digging ditches, etc) are less valuable precisely because there is far more supply than there is demand.
Skills that are more valuable (internal medicine, patent law, consistently picking good stocks, etc) are rewarded greatly because the supply of that labor is low compared to the demand for it.
Income inequality is a factor of adhering to the market forces (supply & demand) that value some skills greatly and others meagerly.
That's NOT a liability, it's a great thing for the overall economy, yes, even for those mired in those low-skilled, low-paying jobs, as deprivation provides the best incentive for people to focus on improving their own lot.
Without income inequality there is no economic liberty and without economic liberty there is no such thing as, nor reason for individual liberty/freedom.
Too many people today mistakenly define "freedom" as "Doing whatever we want, so long as we don't harm anyone else."
That is NOT "freedom," that's license.
License (doing whatever we want) is BAD. It's bad for the overall economy, it's bad for the community and it's really bad for many individuals, especially dysfunctional and self-destructive individuals.
Real "freedom" is liberty, which, as defined by America's Founders is "complete responsibility for and ownership over our own lives." That is, liberty = full personal responsibility and freedom from government coercion, especially "well-meaning coercion," where government dares to harm some, in order to benefit others (ie. any form of wealth redistribution).
Which brings us to education. The best teachers can ONLY reach the focused and motivated students they come in contact with.
There is no such thing as a teacher who motivates. There are some teachers who can make a subject come alive, BUT there are NONE who can reach those "students" who are uninterested and unreachable.
A great math teacher I had in College used to say, "I teach mathematical facts, I don't teach motivation or focus." His point was that education is a COMMODITY and it is only what each of us makes of it.
You can put two people in the very same class on quadratic equations and one will come away knowing the subject cold and the other hopelessly confused.
WHY?
Because that commodity (that educational experience) is only what each student makes of it.
The major problem with our educational system today is that it's dealing with 21st century challenges, while still using 19th century tactics.
The modern day classroom is an outdated "education factory."
It needs to be done away with and with it, the conventional idea of the teacher. We can now take the very best educators in all the varying disciplines and put them on DVDs and make those lectures, and that class work available to ALL.
That'll take a massive upheaval in the educational field and most likely a huge dislocation of many thousands of teachers....but it would certainly be a boom to those few teachers included among "the best," who'd make a fortune off their material!
As far as health care goes, once again, health care is a COMMODITY, like HOUSING, CLOTHING, FOOD, etc.
NONE of those things are "rights."
They're simply commodities to be bought and sold.
I've made (and make) money off housing and hopefully will make even more as rising interest rates will almost certainly account for many more foreclosures in the coming few years.
I'm not wishing anyone any ill will, but I'm always looking for opportunities to improve my position and I see housing stock for what it is - a COMMODITY.
A house isn't a person's home UNLESS he can pay for it.
If person A loses a home to foreclosure and person C picks it up, refinishes it and rents it out for a profit, that's ultimately GOOD for the economy AND the community.
Trying to make commodities "rights" is an attempt to justify and reintroduce chattel slavery.
If "health care" really is "a right," then not only can we make government force doctors to make it available BELOW their own costs, but to bar such people from ever leaving that field for better opportunities, because they're simply too valuable as health care providers.
We Americans DON'T have the right to contstrain others like that. If tomorrow, every thoracic surgeon opted to become writers or stock brokers, there's nothing that either we, or our government COULD do about it.
In fact, I'd say "There's NOTHING for any of us to do about it anyway. I mean if we really need thoracic surgeons, we'll simply remove the constraints on that profession and create incentives for those talented enough to do that work and make those incentives high enough for those folks to do that work again."
If housing were a "right" (God forbid), I suppose folks like myself could be forced to provide housing to other people at below my own cost!
Never gonna happen.
I'd collect the insurance on those places first.
What happens when government gets into the housing market?
Just check out NYC, where the City of NY is the city's biggest slumlord and has been that for over thirty years now!
Some of the worst buildings in the City of NY are City owned.
WHY?
Because they dared to challenge the economic equivalent of the law of gravity - supply & demand.
Rent control laws and tenant favorable housing corts have made owning rental properties a losing proposition for most NYC landlords, so they simply began abandoning their buildings, starting back in the mid-1960s, accelerating through the seventies and eighties, until NYC was the biggest slumlord of all.
The 20th Century proved that no form of government directed economy (Socialism) can work. We've proven it here as well, where NYC's vacancy rate pre-rent control was always around 5%, post-rent control it's been below 1%.
In the days of higher vacancy rates, the tenant, like any customer, was truly king. Landlords offered extras, like fresh paint, even a month's free rent to entice would-be tenants.
All that ended when the government got involved in the housing industry.
NONE of us have a "right" to any commodities, not to housing, to food, etc.
We do have a "right" to enter into a peaceful, mutual exchange with various food vendors and renters or housing sellers...exchanges that benefit not only both sides of the exchange, but benefit the overall economy and the community as well.
There is no such an exchange possible when government enters the market.
Hi JMK - thanks for stopping by.
Income inequality is not necessarily a bad thing - although those who are poor may disagree. It's not the inequality that is bad, but the lack of opportunity which is causing our growing inequality problem. If you are poor, and must work as much as possible, how can you possibly boot strap to a better paying job? How can you survive the economic impact of illness - you don't. You become worse off with each passing year.
Take a look at the quality of life index for the Europeans, they've got us beat in that regard. Perhaps their economy is "backwards" because they are not as interested in material things as we are.
Anyway, the last that I checked the Euro is out performing the dollar and many European economies are growing at a faster rate than ours, not to mention Japan (another country with socialized medicine) I don't think that you can such make a clean sweep about the European economy, they’re doing pretty good across the pond.
Here is some information from the EU website:
"The EU is expected to create six million new jobs in the three-year period, helping reduce unemployment from a peak of 9.0% at the end of 2004 to 8.7% in 2005 and 8.1% in 2007. EU inflation will increase slightly to 2.3% this year due to oil prices before coming back to 1.9% in 2007. "
Now, if you compare our employment rates with Europe (see my last post Abstract Economic Growth) you might change your mind. The Europeans count all of their unemployed, we do not.
The EU is doing fine though, yet they provide job security, healthcare and a social safety net. Why don't we?
I agree that some skills are more valuable than others, and that freedom is taking responsibility for our own lives.
I'm not suggesting that anyone get's a free ride, I'm suggesting that they get more help.
You wrote:
" That is, liberty = full personal responsibility and freedom from government coercion, especially "well-meaning coercion," where government dares to harm some, in order to benefit others (i.e. any form of wealth redistribution)."
Are you forgetting Thomas Jefferson's estate tax? In a letter to Joseph Milligan on April 6, 1816, Thomas Jefferson explicitly suggested that if individuals became so rich that their wealth could influence or challenge government, then their wealth should be decreased upon their death. He wrote, "If the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dangerous to the State, the best corrective is the law of equal inheritance to all in equal degree..." -- the estate tax.
Jefferson was not the only one to support some sort of wealth distribution. The concept of progressive taxation is a form of wealth distribution.
I'd like to finish this later, I need to make the trek home before the traffic picks up. You made several points that I haven't covered yet, so I'll be back later.
Funny cartoon, and there might me some truth; but I cannot agree with you on the degree of healthcare delivered in the US. In Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Hospital has people from around the world that travel for treatment here.
When you bring up statistics of Europe and basically are trying to make the point of how much progress they have made while we have not: be it medicine or unemployment. Van, when you are at the bottom there is only one direction to go… up! Europe can’t get worse, well. As the implications of the Muslim riots are still in the hands of the jury I think it is premature to place them ahead of us.
And shall I go with the assumption it is getting so much better, and that we are so low ranked in the world why is it that we are forced to give money to the UN to go to poverty stricken states around the world? We better stop doing all that work in Africa and take care of our own first.
But we can't do that because then the world complains that the rich Americans don't care about the world. We didn't do enough for the earthquakes in the mid-east, for the tsunami, etc.
Let's keep all our money here and let the world cope while we fix and take care of ourselves, with OUR money. Then in a few years go back to sending money overseas. But if they are improving so fast, make them take over for a hundred years to give us a break.
Van, the fact is that most Western European economies are basket cases, with few exceptions. Generally the more market based economies are stronger.
For instance, France has double digit unemployment rates across the board, over 25% for those 18 to 25 and over 50% for their Third world immigrants.
Germany is embarking on abandoning the traditional "European economy" and seeking to Americanize their economy, cutting back on vacation time and increasing the work week (they've got a long way to go up from their current unproductive 32 hour work week).
Government produces no wealth whatsoever. Whatever wealth exists within ANY economy is solely produced by the private sector.
Long ago, Nobel Laureate in Economics Freidrich Hayek proved that the "Command economy" or government run economy CANNOT work, in his work The Road to Serfdom...a great book.
I'm sure it's tempting to some folks to believe that "government could, if there was the will, provide for all its citizen's basic needs."
First of all, it CAN'T.
Second, even if by some stroke of magic, it could, it would be immoral.
I used to build decks on the side and I hired guys to work straight time, no benefits for then $100/day.
NEED is what motivated most of those guys to do those jobs, so it's really in all our best interests that the ONLY path out of need be provided by work - for that's how all the tough jobs (banging nails and digging dirt, gets done).
If government COULD provide for all our needs and DID so, it would undercut the foundation of the market based economy and make getting that work done infinitely harder...and that would be morally wrong.
Where we seem to agree is that yes some skills are more valuable than others and people should be able to get "help" (I'd say in the form of educational loans etc), and I'd presume you'd also oppose the "cartelization" of American industry, where the major players in each area are allowed to swallow up their competitors and merge together to form a small number of mammoth companies that act as a unified cartel - that does harm to the consumer and to the economy overall.
We seem to disagree over the workability of the Command economy (democratic Socialism) - you seem to hold out hope that it could work, while I'm convinced it can't and over the viability of the European economy - France has made it so hard to get rid of incompetent employees that companies hire very few new ones each year, thus France's double digit unemployment rates.
Europe's workforce is not even competitive with America's, let alone the developing world's.
Jefferson feared GOVERNMENT, so of course he rightly feared that it would eventually be the monied interests that sought to increase the size and scope of government and he rightly sought to undermine their ability to do so.
Of course, even Hamilton, an avowed federalist (one who supported a larger role for government than Jefferson did) opposed any government assistance for the residents of a Massachussetts town destroyed by floods and storms.
Hamilton's reason was positively Jeffersonian - "The government cannot have the power to take from the many to help the few."
I, by and large, agree with such principles today. If anything we need to rein government in and keep it from engaging in all this Unconstitutional social programming that's been so much a part of government since the mid-20th century.
The progressive income tax is a terrible comparison, Van. Not only did EVERY one of America's Founders oppose ANY kind of income tax, so did the vast majority of America's pols up through the mid-20th Century.
Look, I even oppose the Flat tax as anti-productivity.
Sure, a flat tax would be fairer, after all, 25% of $50,000 is proportionately the same as 25% of $100,000 or $500,000, BUT taxing income, in effect, punishes productivity.
The best tax, in my opinion, would be some form of consumption based tax, NOT a VAT, but a NRST (National Retail Sales Tax), see http://www.fairtax.org for more information on that.
Van, opportunity is like education - it's ultimately what you make of it. People develop at different rates. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, some great people started off pretty slowly in life.
I'm all for more "help" in the form of more educational loans, etc, but pretty down on government taking care of people because that tends to mire the recipients in dependent poverty.
JMK - Boy, where to begin....
I think that one of the fundamental difference between how you and I is how we see the world and what is meant by a good economy?
We use the same words, however, we pour in different meanings.
"Generally the more market based economies are stronger"
I suppose what this depends on what you mean by stronger. I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that you believe that the economy is meant to be served by the people, in short we completely depend on the market driven economy to all of our needs.
While I believe that the economy is meant to serve our needs, in fact people drive the economy - workers, consumers, investors -- in that order.
So what you mean by stronger and what I mean by stronger may be mutually exclusive.
I see our economy as being week on many levels. We have the highest poverty rates of any industrialized nation ( and growing), we have the highest trade imbalances and deficits of any industrialized nation (and growing), we have higher death rates due to illness than many European nations (and growing), we have the highest bankruptcy rates due to illness (and growing), and we lag in education across the board. These elements affect and produce our economy - they will make it stronger or weaker. The fact that our stock markets are doing well is not as much of a factor since our market will improve when the cancer rate increases, or when we go to war - in fact the bond and commodities market improved after the 9/11 attacks - Gold and Oil commodities went way up.
So the markers that you and I use for judging a good economy are very different.
Second, I'm not advocating a Command Economy in the strict sense. I'm advocating a mixed environment, one that puts people (workers) over profit. The pendulum has been swinging towards the market driven society for some time now, I think that it's time to swing back to a people driven economy. By that I mean rebuilding our infrastructures, industrial base, roads, expanding education, providing basic health care, etc. The government is the only entity that can help with this.
You may be throwing out the baby with the bath water when you say,
"We seem to disagree over the workability of the Command economy (democratic Socialism) - you seem to hold out hope that it could work, while I'm convinced it can't and over the viability of the European economy - France has made it so hard to get rid of incompetent employees that companies hire very few new ones each year, thus France's double digit unemployment rates."
Context is determinative, and the context for the riots and protests where that the French government moved to strike the rights of these workers without any public discourse. The laws were passed without public dialog. This is what angered the French workers. As I've said before, they will strike a compromise, but changing a law such as the employment law with out public discourse and debate is undemocratic. There is no denying that France is experiencing slow economic growth and high unemployment - higher than our number of employment eligible workers who are not working.
But these are trends. There is no reason to think otherwise. Also, France and most of Western Europe are realizing that they cannot have open borders and expect to maintain a middle-class lifestyle. This is a mistake that we should learn from. Their employment markets are saturated with low skilled workers, and therefore there are not enough jobs to go around. I hope that we do not continue to make this mistake.
The founders opposed an income tax, but again consider the context. They had tariffs to pay for government services. Which is better?
I'm not so sure that you are correct about Jefferson fearing government, from my readings he was more fearful of moneyed interests than big government. We may have to disagree about that.
I am very glad to hear you say this:
"I'm all for more "help" in the form of more educational loans, etc, but pretty down on government taking care of people because that tends to mire the recipients in dependent poverty."
I completely concur, providing that they are very low interest. I would also like to see more small business grants, currently we issue about 100,000 per year
As usual I enjoy your comments. You are a worthy opponent.
MD - Thanks for that thoughtful reply.
John Hopkins may be a terrific hospital, but the facts about our healthcare delivery model for the majority of unemployed are difficult to deny.
That said, the only reason that I am critisizing my country is becaus I know that we can do better. And, according to Zogby so does over %70 percent of Americans (think that we can do better at delivering healthcare to the uninsured).
As I pointed out in the post Abstract Economic Growth, our economy is not doing so great either. Yes, I know that the numbers look good, stock markets are high and steady, and there are more millionaires now than 5 years ago, but this does not translate into solid economic growth for working families.
We can do better at creating more good paying jobs too. Have you been to the DOL website? The "hot jobs" are mostly low paying service positions.
At least we agree that America should come first, at least for now anyway. Waylen Jennigs has a new song out. In it he complains that we should rebuild America before rebuilding other countries - I tend to agree.
How can we continue to support developing nations if we do not have the economic base necessary to do so?
I don't consider you an opponent Van, as we, like most well intentioned people, want the same things and only differ on how to best go about getting them.
Certainly there is no doubt at all about what really drives an economy (ANY modern economy) and that is investors, consumers and workers - and in that, particular order, because it's capital (from investors) that drives the engine of commerce, consumers that reward the most efficient (cost effective and high quality) enterprises with their business and finally workers who supply a necessary commodity - to wit, LABOR.
There is also no doubt about the fact that America's Founders, especially the two most famous anti-federalists (anti-centralized government) Jefferson and Franklin feared government.
They knew that government (ALL governments) are innately predatory and they sought protections for the most vulnerable minority - wealthy, entreprenurial, property owners, as that has been the most envied and persecuted class throughout human history.
Up until the American experiment, virtually all governments on earth were tyrannical disctatorships (mostly Monarchies) and they simply forced the productive class (the inventors and innovators) to distribute their ideas via government for arbitrary and capricious reward, if rewarded at all.
The genius of America's Founders is that they inherently knew that a representative democracy was a dicey proposition, most people are both politically and economically ignorant and wish to stay that way.
That's why they formed a Constitutional Republic and made the Bill of Rights the First Ten Amendments to that Constitution. The Bill of Rights serves ONLY ONE purpose - to shackle and restrict government power, government action at every turn and enshrine individual rights, so as to make clear what government COULD NOT DO.
They knew that a Constitution would eradicate a Monarchy, but they rightly feared that once a given group was successful they'd no longer wish to have to compete and fight to hold onto the hard won ground they'd already gained. They knew that it would be the wealthy, who'd eventually seek to expand government so as to regulate smaller, more innovative and more mobile competitors out of the marketplace and assure both themselves and their less competitive offspring their current, hard won status.
And to the Founder's credit, that did NOT happen until around 1913, when monied interests sought to privatize the Central Bank (via the Federal Reserve Act), which privatized a responsibility previously entrusted solely to Congress by the Constitution, while simulataneously impeding wealth creation by high earning Americans via the graduated income tax that you previously lauded.
The truly wealthy and the "investor class" (those who earn most or all of their money via investments and speculation) DON'T pay income taxes. Those folks pay a flat rate Capital Gains tax!
The real "Golden Rule" is "He who has the gold, makes the rules."
It may not be ethical, or even moral, but it's both a very real reality AND the reason why governments, especially represntative democracies, are prone to ultimately BELONG TO the monied interests.
Politicians NEED money to run campaigns far more than they need promised votes.
Hell, money buys votes.
Look at the current energy crisis as an example, many people naively insist on NOT BELIEVING what is right in front of them - that the so-called environmental groups actively work FOR the interests of big energy.
What's better for big energy than a reduction of supply amidst rising world demand?
NOTHING.
A reduced supply against increased demand = higher prices to offset that demand against the relative scarcity of the product.
The environmental lobby has consistently opposed nuclear power, the gasification of coal, the building of new refineries, new drilling off America's coastal waters and in the Arctic National Wildlife Area (ANWA), even winter drilling that would pose no risk to the natural habitat of that area.
The real reason for all that is that these groups are bought and paid for by big energy. The naive volunteers may not know it, nor the equally naive public, but those who run them...and get the checks, surely do.
That enviro agenda is big energy's agenda - create artificial shortages of their primary product (oil) and reap the profits as the price for that product skyrockets in the face of increased world demand (by India and China) versus the artificial scarcity caused by our own self-imposed shortages.
If Exxon-Mobil openly espoused that strategy, everyone would see it for what it is, a naked attempt by the multi-national energy CARTEL to rape the world's consumers via artificial shortages amidst increasing world demand for oil, but when it's couched in enviro-friendly terms by nice College professor types, it takes on an entirely different hue.
What at first appears to be an anti-business cause, is in reality a stealthy means of increasing the profits of those huge bunsinesses at the consumers expense.
As I said, most people are not only ignorant when it comes to politics and economics, they insist on remaining so.
Jefferson and Franklin saw this and sought many ways to deal with it, such as "limiting the franchise (the vote)," by restricting it to property owners, whom they knew would always be more opposed to both power grabs by government and the covert actions of their fellow property owners to use government to leverage greater wealth and marketshare for themselves.
In a democracy, even a representative democracy within a Constitutional Republic, such as ours, the public is almost always its own worst enemy.
Hi JMK - I don't really consider you an opponet (in the literal sense) either. In fact, we agree on many things.
Also, I've learned a great deal by hearing your perspective.
I wonder though if your point of view of the fathers is based on the book by socialist Charles Beard, published in 1913 -- a book titled "An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States."
This book has been the the standard for what the Founding Fathers had in mind since it was published. Both Liberal and Conservative historians use it as a reference -- including Howard Zinn.
But there are other works which suggest a different perspective.
Bernard Bailyn suggests in his brilliant 2003 book "To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders" that they couldn't hold a candle to the true aristocrats of England.
With page after page of photographs and old paintings of the homes of the Founders and Framers, Bailyn shows that none of those who created this nation were rich by European standards. ) Most were average, middle or upper middle class by todays standards. – you can learn more about the founders mythologiy by reading Hartman’s book – unequal protection.
When American colonists declared independence from England in 1776, they also freed themselves from control by English corporations that extracted their wealth and dominated trade. The Boston Tea party was executed because a British Tea company wanted to dump imported tea into our markets, thereby eleminiating the tea industry compitition in the colonies. From the begining or our Republic we have been fighting monied interests. The Bill of Rights and the Constitution will protect the minority as long as the interests of the minority will not hurt the majority.
I think that we see history here from two different perspectives.
That aside, You wrote:
"And to the Founder's credit, that did NOT happen until around 1913, when monied interests sought to privatize the Central Bank (via the Federal Reserve Act), which privatized a responsibility previously entrusted solely to Congress by the Constitution, while simulataneously impeding wealth creation by high earning Americans via the graduated income tax that you previously lauded."
I would actually argu that that monied interests hi-jacked our government in 1883 when the corporation was granted the "rights of person" and allowed to use the Constitution as a vehicle for so-called free speech (unlimited campaign contributions)
In my opinion, this act by the Supreme Court opened the doors to political and corporate coruption. That is not to suggest that corporations did not use back rooms deals to get the favor of politicians, but after the
Until the case of Santa Clara County vs Southern Pacific Railroad the corporation was given the right of a person under the 14th Ammendment - enacted to protect freed slaves from the interests of former slave owners and wealthy land owners.
The problem here is that corporations have no soul to save and no body to incarcerate.
Prior to this the corporate charter was very limited. They were granted for a brief time, corporations could only engage in activity associated to their charter, they could not purchase another corporation and owners and managers were responsible acts on the job.
These provisions do not sound like they were established by a wealthy elite. In fact, they were established to protect the majority from a minority.
The Constitution and Bill of Rights attempt to balance the interests of all parties, poor and wealthy.
Your point on he who has the gold is well taken - "The real "Golden Rule" is "He who has the gold, makes the rules."
I believe that Clean Elections will change or at least balance the inequity of power some. The system takes the monied interests out of campaigns so that politicians can get to the business of serving the common good, not just the monied intersts.
You Wrote:
"In a democracy, even a representative democracy within a Constitutional Republic, such as ours, the public is almost always its own worst enemy."
Yes, there was quit a bit of paranoia after Shey's Rebellion, but this did not last. In fact I've read Jefferson on how important an informed citizenry is. He strongly believe in the freedom of the press, so much that he subsidized it - one of the first subsidies in fact.
Anyway - great points. I hope that I covered it all.
One attitional point. I do not support limiting the corporate charter some how or going backwards to the pre-1883 period of no limited liability.
I support Clean Elections as an alternative to corporate influence on our legislature.
I must confess that I haven't read either Baird or Bailyn, I probably should, though often I take the background of the person writing the piece into account, which can be bad - I expect to almost always disagree with a Socialist on most issues.
A Socialist and I may indeed agree that the Liberty espoused by America's Founders is inherently unfair and puts the less educated, the less motivated and the mentally, emotionally and physically handicapped at a disadvantage, though I'd simply reply, "Well, life itself is unfair and it's not our job to make it more fair."
In fact, it's doubtful we'd be able to ever come to an agreement on how to define what is "fair."
So, it's not that Individualism (individual Liberty/Responsibility, along with a very limited government) is perfect, not at all, it's simply the best of a bunch of poor, or imperfect alternatives.
I've not intended to infer that all of America's Founders were rich, quite the contrary, only that they were all property owners and as such, ALL property owners see that THAT group is often the most hated, the most envied and the most persecuted under "the typical human condition" (tyranny).
They sought protections for property and made private property a cornerstone of the Constitution and they limited government action at every turn with the Bill of Rights.
We certainly COULD and perhaps SHOULD go back and look at the expansion of the Corporate Charter into something it was not designed to be, BUT if we're going to limit Corporate contributions (free speech), we must also limit the contributions (free speech) of ALL such amorphous groups, from Trade Unions to Environmental groups, to Political Action Committees. If that were done consistently along a broadbased parameter like that, it would probably be to the best.
Clean elections could only be a cure-all IF the public, even the "voting public" were both well-informed and interested in the issues of the day.
The reality is that the vast majority of the population (even the voting public) has little interest in politics or economics and thus has very little real understanding of the issues of the day.
That's why it's not at all uncommon to hear people laud a President during good times, as though the President created them.
During the late 1990s I heard many people who actually worked in the financial services sector lauding Clinton over the booming economy of the late 1990s.
Those people were economic idiots! No President makes an economy better or worse. Even Congress, which controls all the spending has a very limited effect. Sure they COULD tank the economy by raising tax rates, and they COULD ease pressures with tax cuts and interest rate reductions (via the Fed), but the ultimate arbitor is the INVESTOR.
It's "investor confidence" that drives the Stock Market, crazy as that sometimes seems, just as it's "consumer confidence" that drives the retail markets.
Now, I generally liked Bill Clinton and I certainly liked some of the things he did (he helped pass seven of the ten planks of Gingrich's "Contract With America"), even his getting us involved in the Balkans on what turned out morally to probably be the wrong side (we sided with the Albanian Muslims who actually began the genocide in that region by slaughtering thousands of Christian Serbs in Kosovo in the mid-1990s. Milocevic's Serbs merely responded in kind and on a larger scale)...I supported that incursion because the Albanian oil pipeline overrode the moral issues of that conflict, at least from a purely "American perspective," at least in my view it did.
Still, I knew that the booming economy of the late '90s was a mirage. I became more and more convinced of that as I watched every TV, every TV in every firehouse and every TV in every Diner I visited tuned to the Finance Channels.
I cashed out in 1999 and was lucky I did. If I was really smart I would've invested in long term oil futures at that time, the way Lee Raymond of Exxon-Mobil did, but I wasn't that smart. All I knew was that something was wrong and some reading made me aware of the recent changes at the SEC that allowed greater flexibility in margin purchases (always a risky proposition) and an easing of the IPO strictures - thus the flooding of the market with new start-ups (IPOs) that typically traded at hundreds and in some cases even thousands of times their P-E ratio (price-earnings ratio).
In that same vein, at the current time I'd consider shorting oil futures, long term of course, as the price increase has, if not peaked, certainly hit the high end and pressure will definitely be brought to bear to bring those prices down - whether its through alternative fuels or alternative technologies, or even more drilling within and around the Continental U.S.
I think a person shorting oil futures five years down the line could make a killing, though that's as much a risk right now as was BUYING oil futures and betting they'd rise, when oil was selling at $10/barrell at that time.
At any rate, the average citizen/voter who blames the group in the WH for the current high oil prices (and that includes most people and even most of the media/journalists today) proves that the vast majority of the people are woefully misinformed, which is NOT at all surprising considering how woefully misinformed most of the media is!
We've allowed our own domestic production of oil to be limited by "environmental concerns," while the world demand for oil, spurred on by tremendous growth in both India and China, has exploded - THE RESULT has been a lower/decreasing domestic supply (thus our importing more oil every year) amidst higher/increasing demand which equals HIGHER PRICES.
It's really just as simple as that.
We (we the people) have been our own worst enemy AGAIN. First, we curtail domestic oil production by supporting a dubious environmental agenda (akin to hitting ourselves over the head) and then, when prices go up due to shrinking supply in the face of increasing demand, we get mad at the very people who've urged us to stop hitting ourselves in the head all along.
THAT'S insanity, Van and "We the people" have been guilty of it...and clean elections won't cure that. Clean elections won't cure intransigent ignorance on our parts.
I agree that it is difficult to determine what the meaning of fair is.
But we can collectively agree that fairness is an important virtue and should be strived for. This has been the root behind the Pursuit of Happiness since our beginning; at least from my perspective.
Besides, I do not want to live in a society where I have to step over a handicap beggar to enter a court house.
We can collectively decide that it is fair not to discriminate against those who are less fortunate.
There is an inherent self interest here too; I could lose both of my legs at any time. Without some degrees or attempt at fairness, I would likely become a beggar at the court house - just a thought.
Clean elections would only work if it includes limiting the contributions of all special interests groups. The monied interests could still contribute, but the amount would be the same as any other donor -- a $5 check.
Boy, that will be the day!
I hear this contention a lot:
"We've allowed our own domestic production of oil to be limited by "environmental concerns"
But I do not see a lot of evidence for it. In fact, most of what I've found is that the oil companies are voluntarily closing the refineries. I could be wrong on this, but one of my sources is Consumer Reports. They have no reason to be partisan.
Anyway, I agree that there are many ignorant people, mostly due to the media. I don't see a solution for that anytime soon. As long as the media is part of the corporate conglomerate, it will continue to provide homogenized news.
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