They love to tell us we live in the GREATEST COUNTRY ON EARTH... but like VICTORY IN IRAQ they never bother to explain what exactly that phrase means. Greatest.... greatest what? Greatest land mass? Greatest economy? Greatest quality of life? Greatest number of millionaires? Greatest concentration of wealth? Greatest military power? Greatest nuclear power?
I think we all agree life here is generally good. Certainly beats the crap out of Haiti or Yemen or Sudan or Zimbabwe. Hell, we are nowhere near Nigeria in mortality rates (~20%) from botched abortions. Here abortion is still legal and safe. There it is illegal. However, when I was growing up we set the bar a little higher. We talked about the strength of our economy ... although we worried about the national debt. We talked about the strength of our schools ... although we worried about the Russians and the Japanese. We talked about our overall health... and didn't worry about much of anything. Well, Russia has turned into a kleptocracy, Japan is suffering a long-term economic funk (after a real estate bubble like ours) and now we learn, life expectancy is decreasing in America for men and women...
This is not some trivial statistical blip. This month's Harvard Magazine, a publication generally targeted to alumni of Obama's alma mater, has a cover article titled, Unequal America: The growing gap. Now I am sure Barack is busy these days reading policy papers, newspapers and the occasional blog (let's hope). That leaves little time to browse through alumni rags. So let me help by summarizing the main points of the article so we can develop some new talking points to drive the health care debate.
4 percent of American men and 19 percent of American women can expect their lives to be shorter than or, at best, the same length as those of people [who lived] in their home counties 20 years ago.
That's right, ladies. 1 out of 5 of you is going to die at a younger age than the woman who lived in your house or apartment 20 years ago. For the older working-class women who may still be harboring thoughts of voting for McCain to punish Obama, all I can say is you might want to think about voting early by absentee ballot. Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you won't be living as long as you thought.
Now, I know everyone is asking the same question I had, "Why is this happening?" That's a good question, and the folks at the Harvard School of Public Health are just as interested in the answer as you and me. Here's the short version:
The United States no longer boasts anywhere near the world's longest life expectancy. It doesn't even make the top 40... scholars find further cause for concern in the pattern of health disparities. Poor health is not distributed evenly across the population, but concentrated among the disadvantaged.
Not surprisingly, the poor tend to get sicker and die sooner than the rich. However, in the US the gap between rich and poor is wider than most other developed nations and it is getting wider...
Culturally, we are different from our European or Asian counterparts. Americans tend to have a much higher tolerance for the inequality. We focus more on equality of opportunity, and less on equality of outcomes. Of course, we know that a lot of the so-called "equal opportunity" is chimerical, but nevermind that for the moment. Just accept there is a major cultural difference here that has been fostered by the neo-social Darwinism of the Republican elites.
The distribution disparity has been rising steadily since the Reagan administration and has reached historic proportions. We haven't seen numbers like this since right before the Great Depression. There are a number of ways you can look at this... income, wealth, ownership. You can pick different sources of data... IRS estate filings (because people tend to lie less about those than actual 1040 filings), census numbers, SEC numbers. But all agree the disparity has grown to dramatic proportions.
If you look at income, the top 1% are taking home about 20% of the money. In contrast, during the 60s and 70s, they took home a meager 10% of the money.
If you look at wealth, the top 1% own about 40% of everything, while the bottom 40% share 1% of everything... many of them actually have NEGATIVE equity. In other words, they owe more than they have and are worth more dead than alive. Fortunately for them, they get to increase their value sooner than rich folks.
Americans at the 95th income percentile or higher can expect to live nine years longer than those at the 10th percentile or lower.
Think about that for a second. What have you done in the last nine years? Graduate from school? Get a nice job? Get married? Watch your kids grow up? Wipe all that out... and you get a sense of the impact of what we are looking at here.
This isn't just a health care issue.
Research indicates that high inequality reverberates through societies in multiple levels, correlating with, if not causing, more crime, less happiness, poorer mental and physical health, less racial harmony, and less civic and political participation. Tadx policy and social welfare programs, then, take on importance far beyond determining how much income people hold onto. The level of inequality we allow represents our answer to a very important question... What kind of society do we want to live in?
Here's an interesting aside to all this: The societies with greatest inequality tend to be in the "New World" and former colonial holdings of European nations. As one scholar notes, "These are socieites built on conquest, many of them on slaver. A lot of the inequality may just be the legacy of those things." This of course, brings us right back to the notion of "equal opportunity" and whether it is as real and pervasive as we like to believe.
When a society is starkly divided along racial or ethnic lines, the affluent are less likely to take care of the poor... Internationally, welfare systems are least generous in countries that are the most ethnically heterogeneous. Those US states with the largest black populations have the least generous welfare systems.
When viewed across a variety of measures, countries, cultures, and political systems a startling finding emerges:
Great gaps between rich and poor may...hurt democracy and rule of law if elites prefer dictators who will protect their interests, or if the disadvantaged turn to a dictator who promises to ignore property rights.
The article goes on to say "this doesn't seem possible in a democracy such as the United States, where each citizen's vote carries the same weight regardless of income." That is almost funny. The obvious question this raises is, "Why do low income voters consistently vote against their own self-interest?" Turns out, policy decisions and candidate platforms are driven by more than voter numbers. When it comes to political participation, the data shows that campaign donations are at least as influential as voters are. And that, my friends, is where we have an historic opening in this election cycle. Not only do we have the numbers in terms of voters, we also have the edge in terms of campaign donations. Put those together and we are unstoppable -- but only if we act. So here's your chance!
Bottom Line: The difference between the "haves" and "have nots" is one of them gives and the other one doesn't. It's true McCain has hundreds of "have more" millionaires willing to donate money to a campaign that promises to continue the policies that got us into this mess, but we have millions of people able to donate hundreds of dollar to a campaign promising a change. If that is something you want to be a part of, then vote. But don't just vote at the ballot box, vote with your wallet. You don't have to give a lot, just often. Keep it small. I suggest $20.08 as a good number if you want to any hope of a better health care plan for you or your loved ones. If you have looked at the cost of healthcare these days, you know that is a bargain. Some of you may think that 20 bucks isn't going to uy you a whole lot of anything. To you I say, it's not the 20 bucks but the 8 cents that will make the difference. Why the extra eight pennies? Simple, because change matters.