America: land of innovation, of the can-do spirit, of Yankee ingenuity.
Americans were the first people in the world to declare independence from an empire -- and get away with it. Americans dug the Erie Canal, reversed the flow of rivers, invented powered flight and the skyscraper, harnessed the power of the atom, sent men to the moon and brought them back alive. We supplied the world with an abundance of food and high-quality manufactured goods. We defeated fascism, take credit for having defeated communism, co-founded the United Nations, absorbed tens of millions of immigrants and made a single people out of many. We are one goddamn amazing country.
Or at any rate, we were. Something happened to us around 30 years ago. Suddenly, things seemed so awfully difficult. Preposterous, even. Reducing poverty? Building a 200-mpg automobile engine? Signing the Kyoto Protocols? Manufacturing consumer goods domestically? Fighting crime and terrorism without recklessly abrogating civil liberties? Forget it. It's too hard. Too inconvenient. Too unprofitable. Too much of a hassle. Or it might mean that we had to follow the same rules as every other country, that our specialness didn't render us exempt.
We've turned into Emo Nation, for crying out loud.
And other countries are owning us. Though we bristle when anyone suggests that we're no longer No. 1, the fact is, it's been a long time since we even tried to be in any meaningful way. We've allowed ourselves to be out-manufactured, out-innovated, out-grown and out-democratized. We can't give our legendary wealth away fast enough, and we've apparently forgotten how to create more of it. Sure, we can still bust stuff up with the best of them, but when it comes to big ideas, whether philosophical or technological, we're no longer a fearless leader but a hesitant, grumbling follower.
We can do better.
There are certain things we can and should do that are difficult, yes, but not impossible, because other countries are doing them or have done them already -- or because we did them ourselves, once upon a time. We have the knowledge, the power, the skill; all we need is the will. Accomplishing 10 of these things would go a long way toward restoring America's reputation for imagination, determination and common sense -- not to mention our own collective self-esteem.
1. Adopting the metric system
Overton Window status: Radical
Invented in 1799, the metric system had been adopted by the entire industrialized world by the 1980s, when it was embraced by the last three holdouts, Australia, Canada and South Africa. Oh, wait, did I say "the entire industrialized world"? In fact, there were four holdouts, not three: The United States remains the only industrialized nation not to use the international system, clinging to the ironically yet tellingly named "imperial system," a holdover from the 19th-century United Kingdom. Even more ironically, according to a U.S. law passed in 1988, the metric system is the "preferred" system of the United States. Problem is, American businesses and consumers prefer not to use it, and no one's making them. Business complains that the final conversion would be too costly, consumers that it would be too confusing. Yet both critiques held just as true for the forced conversion to digital broadcasting, a transition that will have taken only four years from legislation to final implementation and that, frankly, means a hell of a lot less for the United States in its future as a global trade partner and generally science-clueful nation. (Could Americans' resistance to metric units spring from the same source as their unwillingness to accept the theory of evolution?) Considering that the only other holdouts in the world are Liberia and Myanmar, two desperately impoverished countries known mainly for their brutal military dictators and use of child soldiers, it's about time the United States chose to place itself in more enlightened company -- and join the rest of the world in the 21st century.
2. Switching to a dollar coin and ditching the penny
Overton Window status: Radical
As pointed out in a recent diary, the world is facing a shortage of key metals used in manufacturing, particularly the manufacturing of electronics. Two of these are zinc and copper. The U.S. Mint estimates that there are more than 200 billion pennies in circulation; each of these 2.5-gram pennies contains 2.4375 grams of zinc and 0.0625 grams of copper. That's nearly 500,000 metric tons of zinc and more than 100,000 metric tons of copper sitting in empty peanut butter jars and plastic trays next to the cash register, doing nothing but being worth 20 coupons clipped out of the newspaper. Yet this paltry value is apparently enough to make Americans think that any attempt to round prices to the nearest nickel (about 20 billion in circulation, tying up another 75,000 metric tons of copper and 25,000 metric tons of nickel, and almost as pointless) would be shameless thievery, an abominable violation of the sacred American belief that all money that passes through our hands belongs to us. (Never mind that amounts would be rounded up as often as they'd be rounded down, allowing everyone to break even in the end. The government may give, and we shall accept its gifts, but it had better not ever take away.) Well, as absurd as it may be to point out when we cheerfully spend $343 million a day on the war in Iraq, every one of those pennies costs 1.26 cents to make, costing the federal government $93 million a year so that we can fill our penny jars and plastic trays and think we aren't being ripped off.
In the Eurozone, Belgium and the Netherlands have already eliminated not only their 1-cent coins (worth more than our penny) but also their 2-cent coins; Finland never distributed those coins at all. The United Kingdom eliminated its half penny -- the equivalent of a U.S. penny at today's exchange rate -- in 1984. An Australian cent is about equal in value to a U.S. cent; Australia eliminated its 1- and 2-cent coins in 1991. New Zealand went a step further: It eliminated its 5-cent coin (worth 4 U.S. cents) in 2006.
Meanwhile, a dollar bill, while technically worth 16 times the paper it's printed on, stays in circulation only 12 to 18 months; bills in general last no more than two years before they're pulled out of circulation. Coins, on the other hand, last for decades before they must be replaced. They work better in vending machines than bills -- an important consideration, as the cost of vended things approaches $1 -- and a dollar today is worth the equivalent of just a quarter 30 years ago. Paper banknotes weren't originally intended for everyday spending: they were invented so that people wouldn't have to carry around sacks full of coins to conduct transactions that exceeded everyday spending. In 1862, when the United States first adopted a standard paper currency, the lowest value deemed worthy of banknote treatment was $1 -- worth the equivalent of $23 today! The burden of routine use is supposed to fall on durable coins, not on flimsy bills.
So why doesn't the United States follow the lead of the Eurozone (highest-value coin €2, equivalent to slightly more than US$3), the United Kingdom (£2 = US$4), Canada (CA$2 = US$2), Australia (AU$2 = US$2), New Zealand (NZ$2 = US$1.50) and Japan (¥500 = US$5) in replacing its lowest-denomination paper banknote with a coin? For just one reason: Because American retailers complain that they don't have room for it in the cash register till. There are only four spaces for coins, and one of those spaces is taken up by the precious penny. It's past time to acknowledge what inflation has done to our currency and shift everything in the till one space to the left, if not two (after a few years, we wouldn't even miss the second digit after the decimal point).
3. Sincere commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Overton Window status: Radical
In 1948, 48 member countries of the United Nations voted in favor of this proclamation, composed by John Peters Humphrey of Canada with the assistance of former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, among others. It was composed, in the tradition and spirit of the U.S. Bill of Rights, as the free world's response to the atrocities committed by the Nazi government in Germany during World War II. In these respects, it has to be said that the Declaration is a direct product of the American conception of civil liberty.
And yet there are freedoms in this declaration which the United States has never actively promoted, let alone enshrined in law: that "everyone has the right . . . to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment . . . to equal pay for equal work [and] to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity" (Article 23); that "everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services" (Article 25); that "education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms" (Article 26); and that "everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized" (Article 28).
There are freedoms in this declaration which the United States has either tacitly or actively undermined in other nations: that "everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person" (Article 3); that "no one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence" (Article 12); that "all are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law" (Article 7); and that "everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives," and "the will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections" (Article 21).
And there are freedoms in this declaration which the United States has defended in the past but has recently, shamelessly, begun to violate: that "no one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest [or] detention" (Article 9); that "everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him" (Article 10); and that "everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association" (Article 20) and "the right to freedom of opinion and expression" (Article 19).
Since it was merely a declaration and not a treaty, the UDHR is not binding on the countries that ratified it and is not "the supreme law of the land" under the U.S. Constitution. However, if America wishes to be taken seriously as the "leader of the free world," it should behave as if the UDHR were the supreme law of the land, even to the extent of codifying the declaration into law. Otherwise we're little more than the bloviating, self-important successor to the British Empire, selectively imposing our moral standards at gunpoint around the world while tracking mud all over them when it suits our convenience. Confucius said, "To see what's right and not do it is cowardice." The UDHR spells it out right in front of our eyes, if we have the moral courage to see it.
4. Becoming multilingual
Overton Window status: Radical
One of my favorite recent Daily Kos stories is GOP, the Know-Nothing Party by smintheus. In it, he quotes Barack Obama:
"Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But understand this. Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English -- they'll learn English -- you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about, how can your child become bilingual? We should have every child speaking more than one language.
You know, it's embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe, and all we can say [is], 'Merci beaucoup.' Right? You know, no, I'm serious about this. We should understand that our young people, if you have a foreign language, that is a powerful tool to get a job. You are so much more employable. You can be part of international business. So we should be emphasizing foreign languages in our schools from an early age, because children will actually learn a foreign language easier when they're 5 or 6 or 7 than when they're 46, like me."
So why aren't we multilingual? In essence, because we don't have to be. English is the dominant discourse in our sphere of activity, meaning the discourse (language + dialect + usage + referential background) used by those who hold the strings of power, those who make the rules. We have only two immediate neighbors, one that shares our dominant discourse and one that is powerless and insignificant compared to us. We don't need to know the languages of immigrants; they need to know our language, because we have power and they do not. The elitism dripping from this monolingual attitude is enough to leave a permanent stain on the floorboards. (Though it's only fair to point out that monolingualism isn't always elitist per se: some of the most stubbornly monolingual students I've known as a teacher have been African-American students who speak their own vernacular discourse fluently but show as little interest in mastering the dominant discourse, "Standard English" -- without which they may never have access to real political and economic power -- as in Spanish or any other foreign language.)
We have been told time and time again that we live in a "global economy." Is this nothing more than code for having to swallow Third World working conditions and living standards, or does it mean that we are not in fact an island, that we are not above all other nations but beside them, and that in order to be part of this world community, we need to show that we recognize their discourses as having the same value as our own?
5. Fully funding passenger rail and mass transit
Overton Window status: Radical
The government bribes Americans to drive their cars, through grossly lopsided incentives. The U.S. Department of Transportation pays 80 to 90 percent of the cost of local highway projects but no more than 50 percent of mass transit projects. Highway projects are approved by default, mass transit projects only at the behest of representatives in Congress. Highway funding is not capped, so states and localities don't have to compete for it; mass transit funding is, so they do. Highway projects are not required to show that they will be "cost-effective"; mass transit projects are. New mass transit projects cannot be approved without showing that they will serve low-income communities, reduce emissions, improve air quality, maintain a certain cost per operating mile and be supported by existing land use (which, in this country, is usually designed for cars, not transit). Highway products do not have to serve low-income communities or maintain a certain cost per operating mile, are invariably supported by existing land use, and generally increase emissions and degrade air quality -- yet are nearly always rubber-stamped. State funding priorities are similarly biased in favor of highways and against public transportation. And the disparity is even worse between air travel (heavily subsidized by the federal government) and Amtrak (expected to cover all its operating expenses through ticket sales).
Unfortunately -- forgive my directness, please -- our abject dependence on the private automobile to get us around, intensified by the absence of any alternative in too many American communities, let alone a convenient and attractive one, is destroying the necessary conditions for human life on this planet. Americans did drive four and a half billion fewer miles in April 2008 than they did in April 2007, the first year-to-year decrease on record; unfortunately, this represents a reduction of only 1.8 percent, and it's almost certainly caused by a pinch in Americans' wallets, not their consciences. This may be our only moment to effect a swing in transportation funding priorities. To borrow from the old lefty bumper sticker, "What if our schools got all the money they needed and the Air Force had to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber?": What if mass transit were subsidized to the point of being free to riders (don't scoff -- former New York State Commissioner of Transportation James Larocca once proposed just that), new projects were automatically approved and paid for from the same $40 billion fund that now lines the landscape with new highway lanes, and every new road construction or expansion project had to show that it could pay 100 percent of its maintenance costs through tolls before it received a dime? What if air travel were nationalized, and the money that used to reward airline executives for their enlightened stewardship were diverted to the construction of transcontinental bullet trains?
Four-dollar-per-gallon gasoline has gotten many Americans to rethink what they drive and how much they drive, but it hasn't yet persuaded even a sizable minority to reconsider having to drive; all the policy focus is on how to get those dratted gas prices down again so that the cage we've built for ourselves can be comfortable again. I believe gas will have to reach approximately $9 per gallon for Americans to conclude that they need to get out of the cage. We can't wait until then to contemplate alternatives; when that moment comes, we need to have the alternatives in place already. "Transportation choice" must be our new frame.
6. Imposing a top marginal tax rate of 60 percent
Overton Window status: Unthinkable
I'm not a Christian, but I believe that the Gospel of Luke had it right: "From everyone who has been given much, much will be required, and from the one who has been entrusted with much, even more will be asked." In one of the most prosperous periods of this country's history, the 1950s and 1960s, the federal government required 70 to 90 percent of top-bracket earnings in income taxes. (Note that this isn't the same as demanding 70 to 90 percent of income, only income above a certain line.) Today, we demand far less: only 35 percent of top-tier earnings.
All the talk around tax policy revolves around "middle-class" this and "middle-class" that, but "middle-class" is no longer a useful concept, being a semi-archaic holdover from 18th-century England which means simply that one isn't a hereditary noble or a landbound serf. (No wonder most Americans believe they fall into this category, whether they earn $20,000 or $200,000 a year.) Let's set this ill-defined term aside, then, and focus on the three things that we really mean when we talk about our financial circumstances: security, flexibility and opportunity. There's a line below which we lack what we need to live with dignity: call this poverty. Just above this line, we can meet our basic needs, but we lack security (the ability to deal with emergencies and know that one's situation is stable), flexibility (the ability to make changes to one's living habits) and opportunity (the means to expand the range of one's life): call this subsistence. Further up the income scale, we acquire more security, more flexibility, more opportunity, so that we can make many economic choices without anxiety: call this comfort. Finally, at the top, there's complete security, maximum flexibility, unlimited opportunity: call this luxury.
We shouldn't be taxing households in poverty, we should be helping them out of it, so a just tax code would levy no tax on income below the poverty line (and would surely include an Earned Income Credit through which many such households would receive something back). For households living in subsistence, our goal as a nation should be to provide more security, flexibility and opportunity than they have now; we should ask something in return, to create a sense of ownership in the national project, but not enough to stress them -- say, 5 percent of subsistence-level earnings. Households living in comfort can afford to pay more; I believe 25 percent of comfort-level earnings is reasonable. (Again, this isn't 25 percent of all income, just 25 percent of comfort-level income -- say, income above $38,000 a year for a single earner. Earnings between $18,000 and $38,000 would be taxed at the 5 percent subsistence rate.) It's the households living in luxury, however, that have captured the overwhelming majority of the profits on this nation's two-decade gains in worker productivity. Employees gave and gave, and they got not a damn thing back except adjustable-rate mortgages that are threatening to strangle them. The segment of society living in luxury will whine and wheedle and bluster and bully and cry bloody murder. Let them. And when they're done, hand them the bill for 60 percent of their income above the "luxury line" ($125,000 seems like a good cutoff for a single earner).
The right-wing foundations will declaim that such a confiscatory rate will shred the fabric of our economy. They're full of it. We not only survived with a 90 percent top-margin rate in the 1950s, we thrived. And if we're ever going to dig our way out of the hole in our economy created by the Iraq War, the money has to come from somewhere. Let's start by hitting up those Americans who still have some. Sixty percent is workable and just.
7. Moving forward on the abortion issue
Overton Window status: Unthinkable
Of all the issues in American politics, none more closely resembles a Punch-and-Judy show, with each side hoping to achieve permanent victory via the "smoking crater" method. But Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel -- we've all read Hegel, right? -- reminds us that history doesn't work like that. When two ideas clash, one never utterly defeats the other; the expectation that this can be achieved leads not to progress but to Belfast. Ideally, what happens instead is a synthesis that grows out of the two ideas (called thesis and antithesis) and overcomes the tension between them.
The Declaration of Independence posits a natural, inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those who oppose abortion rights believe that a fetus is human and has a right to life, while generally dismissing the pregnant woman's right to liberty. Those who support abortion rights believe that a woman's right to liberty is paramount and reject the notion that a fetus has a right to life.
I submit that both sides are right in the positive and wrong in the negative. A fetus is human, by virtue of its DNA, and has a right to life; a pregnant woman is also human (something many "pro-lifers" seem to forget) and has a right to liberty. Sometimes these rights, like countless other rights, are going to conflict. And it's the role of the law, as in countless other conflicts, to find the line where one right supersedes the other.
Of course, the advancement of the debate would be helped along greatly by the abandonment of weasel words, euphemism, and absurdly reductive and dismissive arguments, of which both sides are guilty. A fetus is not a "baby," any more than a toddler is a teenager, and to refer obliquely to abortion rights as "the right to choose" is mealymouthed and trivializing, as if one were talking about choosing an outfit or an entrée. A pregnant woman is not just an ambulatory incubator, and a fetus is not just a wart. We should reject any argument that would characterize a human fetus as having less humanity than a raccoon, as well as any that would broadly condemn abortion in every instance as "murder" despite the volumes of case law condoning killing in the defense of other rights, or in the name of mercy.
We've had 30 years of this slugfest, 30 years in which both sides have sought relentlessly to narrow the definition of who gets to enjoy basic human rights. As Americans, particularly considering both our historic advocacy of human rights and our lousy track record at assessing who should possess them and who shouldn't, we ought to be erring toward broadening that definition. The way out of this quagmire is clear, and only ideology -- the desperate fear of conceding even the tiniest point to the other side -- keeps us from following it.
8. Achieving equal educational opportunity
Overton Window status: Unthinkable
I'm going to invoke Barack Obama yet again, this time from his book The Audacity of Hope: "We wouldn't tolerate schools that don't teach, that are chronically underfunded and understaffed and underinspired, if we thought that the children in them were like our children."
I have taught in the inner-city and in some of the richest communities in the nation. An eighth-grader in a Chicago public school is lucky to get gym more than one day a week. Not only do eighth-graders in Chicago's North Shore suburbs get daily gym, in one district, the baseball field is flooded in the winter so that students can learn ice skating and hockey. One North Shore district offers junior high schoolers a choice of painting, photography, ceramics, vocal music, instrumental music, drama and musical theater; urban students are lucky if they still get art. In some city schools, students are forbidden to bring backpacks to class because they might contain weapons. In one wealthy school, they're forbidden to bring backpacks to class because they're distracting and heavy; the students leave them hanging open from pegs on the outside of their lockers.
These differences are absurd and unjust -- but so much about our public schools is absurd and unjust. Inexperienced teachers are hurled into the most difficult, thankless and unforgiving situations, while experienced teachers are rewarded for their seniority with the easiest assignments. Why? Because wealthier districts, where most students arrive at the door prepared to learn, receive the most applications and demand the top candidates from the pool, while inner-city schools, where students' acute emotional and material needs tend to push academics aside, must choose from the most idealistic and the most desperate. The most money goes where there's least need; the least money goes where there's the greatest need. And, disgustingly, we're content with this state of affairs, as long as our kids are getting an adequate education ("adequate" being defined quite differently depending on whether we live in poverty, subsistence, comfort or luxury).
Aside from this willful, inhumane blindness to others' circumstances, the No. 1 problem hurting our public schools is their chief method of funding: property taxes. Property taxes are lousy both coming and going. They're a regressive tax that clobbers people on fixed incomes and encourages absentee owners to let properties sit vacant or fall into disrepair; at the same time, they provide the least revenue where the most repair is needed. School funding really should be decoupled from geography altogether, but most urgently, it must be decoupled from the property tax. State equalization formulas don't do nearly enough. There needs to be a uniform statewide education fund that first provides a baseline of funding per regular and special-education student -- taking into account the cost of gym, arts, foreign languages, libraries and technology as well as school administration and support services such as nurses and social workers. On top of that, additional money should be allocated on a need basis toward capital improvements and anti-crowding initiatives -- the behavioral problems that plague inner-city schools would be dealt with best, in my opinion, by drastically smaller class sizes, yet these are the schools where you're most likely to find 35 or 40 students crammed into a single room. (Think back to those old films that modeled a nuclear reaction using mousetraps and ping-pong balls, and you'll get an idea of what those classrooms tend to be like.) If you can't put fewer students in the room with each teacher, then make damn sure the teacher is an ace, not a nervous newbie overseen by capricious and unsupportive administrators. When every student in every classroom in every school is in a fit environment for learning, then, if they want, rich districts can spend as much money as they like to ice the cake.
The primary obstacle to equal educational opportunity can be summed up in one sentence: Affluent communities don't want to share. Well, they have a point in one respect: I don't believe that their property taxes should be siphoned off to aid other communities. But the property tax is so inherent a part of the problem that I'm not sure the problem can be solved without finding another, more equitable primary source of funding elsewhere. And, you know, I don't want to force North Shore families to give up their kids' ceramics classes. I'd like to see South Side and West Side kids have access to ceramics classes too. But morally, what we have to do first is make sure that every district has the minimum it needs -- and I'm not talking a bare minimum, but a minimum that would be acceptable to everyone. To borrow an idea from John Rawls, if a school isn't good enough for you to send your kid there, it's not good enough for anyone else's kids, either. We should not be satisfied until every school is good enough.
9. Keeping people out of prison
Overton Window status: Radical
As a society, we dislike crime, but we don't dislike it that much. That is, we're not especially interested in making sure it doesn't happen; we'd rather let it happen, then punish the hell out of whoever did it. Every time we're given the choice, it seems, we favor punishment over prevention. As a result, the United States incarcerates both a larger number (2.3 million) and a higher percentage (751 per 100,000) of its population than any other nation in the world. Yes, we even beat Russia and China, as well as -- in percentage terms -- Syria, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Cuba and Myanmar, some of the most notorious police states in the world. And we do this even though it's fairly obvious that prison serves little or no rehabilitative purpose, instead immersing inmates in a pressure-cooker stew of authoritarian and street values -- not exactly a recipe for functioning at a high level in mainstream society.
Assuming that our high incarceration rate reflects a proportionally high crime rate, why do we have so much crime? America is sometimes portrayed as a society that relishes and glorifies violence, and that's true of at least a couple of the folkways that make up our nation, which traditionally have been inclined to settle scores violently. But America isn't unique in having quick-tempered honor cultures, even among Western industrial democracies; yet Ireland imprisons only 76 out of every 100,000 citizens, and Italy, 75. What are these countries doing to suppress criminality that we're not? This question, rather than the breathless headlines of the local TV news, is what should keep us up at night.
Of course, crime isn't solely an outgrowth of violent culture; it's also a rational (though unlawful and immoral) response to a perceived lack of legitimate opportunities. In many cases, this perception is real. Take census data on commuting times and plot it on a map of Chicago, and you'll see a huge swath of the South Side where the average commute takes more than 40 minutes. What that tells you is, this is where the jobs aren't. Violence may be deeply ingrained in our culture, but deliberate deprivation of opportunity doesn't have to be. The mistake is in thinking that with one or two minor incentives, such as property tax write-offs or expedited development permit approvals, the free market will create jobs where there's a demand for them. That's not how the market works. Jobs are not a product, labor is a product, and as long as I can remember, except for a brief anomaly in the late 1990s, it's been a buyer's market. Inner-city job creation (and let's not kid ourselves -- the inner city is where we're finding most of our prison inmates) is something that has to be undertaken deliberately, as a matter of policy, and as a sincere priority. Yes, the cost of doing this right would be astronomical -- but so is the cost of holding 2.3 million Americans in prison.
The roadblock here seems to be people's unwillingness to spend money on the poor -- in the public mind, the undeserving poor, those folks with no morals and no work ethic who break everything you give them. This is why you get postcards from your Congressmen asking you to check off whether you consider "helping the middle class" a top policy priority, never asking the same about helping the poor: We all want the poor to have better lives, but not if it means we have to contribute. I have to ask how moral it is to dangle jobs out of people's reach, offer them only the most cheaply built shelter and public facilities, and lay all the blame for their condition on them. To prevent crime, attack the reasons behind it: lack of economic opportunity, lack of adequate education, lack of community investment (financial and emotional), police aloofness and brutality that pits community against authority and causes concerned and cooperative citizens to be ostracized as "snitches." And make the consequences of crime logical, not merely punitive: drug treatment for drug possession, restitution for property crimes, apologies of action for violent crimes. Surely we can think of better ways of persuading convicts not to commit future crimes than forcing them to attend a university of violent criminality.
10. Implementing universal, nationalized health insurance
Overton Window status: Acceptable
Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights enumerates a right to medical care. This right is so easily provided for, and so many ways have been found to do it, that our failure to do so is a national embarrassment. Of all the goals I've discussed here, this is the only one that already enjoys overwhelming popular approval. So what's stopping us? The profit motive -- an insurance industry desperate to protect its cash cow, no matter how many American lives and livelihoods it costs.
Americans are finally developing a resistance to the FUD tactics of the insurance industry, particularly the weasel phrase "socialized medicine." We know by now that the system can be formed without nationalizing the health care delivery system; there's nothing wrong with it that doesn't stem directly from what's wrong with health insurance. As models, we have the VA, we have Medicare, we have Canada, France, Germany. (I personally like the French system best, but the German arrangement may be more politically palatable to Americans.) The only thing left is for American legislators to catch up with the will of the American people. We're not the ones whining that it can't be done. We believe it can, and we're tired of waiting for it. This one is now in the hands of our legislative "leaders" -- those hesitant, grumbling followers who guard our interests against the difficult, the inconvenient, the unprofitable, and the rules that everyone else has to follow.