Smart, Stiglitz, the Watchdog and Canada

Gil Smart’s Sunday News Column “Black clouds, green shoots” is pleasant, farsighted, and foreboding.

However, it sent the Watchdog to Wikipedia to look up “Dystpoia”, to wit:  “A dystopia (from Ancient Greek: δυσ-: bad-, ill- and Ancient Greek: τόπος: place, landscape) (alternatively, cacotopia,[1] or anti-utopia) is, in literature, an often futuristic society that has degraded into a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian. Dystopian literature has underlying cautionary tones, warning society that if we continue to live how we do, this will be the consequence. A dystopia, thus, is regarded as a sort of negative utopia and is often characterized by an authoritarian or totalitarian form of government.”

Smart observes:  “Displaced American workers are then told they /we need more education — we all have to increase our skill sets to compete! But that assumes those who once might have attained a middle-class lifestyle through factory work are capable, financially and intellectually, of acquiring these new skill sets. And even if we all become high-tech wizards — wizards in places like India and China will still be willing to do the job for less than the average American.

“Living standards, then, will continue to fall — except for the privileged few. They, in turn, will continue to utilize the full-bore propaganda of the national media, but especially the likes of Fox News, to get the citizens to accept these new circumstances as the new normal; not only inevitable, but just and good.”

Yes, desirable economic development in Asia does generate competition for American labor.  (Better to compete in trade than fight wars.)  Also of major import is the depletion of our nation’s supply of raw materials and growing dependence on other nations for oil  (which has more than doubled in price over the past decade) and other commodities, most recently in the news being ‘rare earths’ on which China, by supplementing its own ample supply with control of sources abroad, has virtually cornered the market.

Yet much of our nation’s problems are self inflicted.  In “Freefall, Free Markets and the Sinking of the Global Economy”,  Noble award winner in Economics Joseph Stiglitz points out “With America absorbed in its fruitless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and dealing with the aftermath of its financial crisis, China has much of the globe to itself.  America may have built the mightiest armed forces in the world, but the $4.7 trillion spent on defense during the past decade is money that could have been used to create a stronger economy and extend the country’s economic influence.  Economics is the science of scarcity:  the United States spent its money one way, China chose to spend it another.  It is, perhaps, too soon to render judgment, but it increasingly appears that America made a strategic blunder.”

But Stiglitz doesn’t point to the worse of it!  The estimated Gross Domestic Product for 2009 is $14.12 trillion.  Let’s assume it amounted to $120 trillion over the past decade.   We spend at least 5% more on health care than any other advanced economy (with poorer results), so we can add 5% x $120 trillion = $6 trillion in health care waste compared to the $4.7 trillion spent on defense.   Since perhaps $2 trillion of the military cost would have been a reasonable figure for defense without endeavoring to police the world, we can see that our health care system wastes 2 ½ times more than the military-industrial complex (and perhaps costs as many lives.)

When President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the Military Industrial complex, he might just as well have included the Health Care Industry which thwarts reforms that would upgrade care and reduce our costs  in line with other advanced industrial nations.

There is no way that the USA can pull itself up by its boot straps while wasting say 8% of its Gross Domestic Product, the amount that wiser countries such as China are investing for long term benefits.

President Barrack Obama came to office determined to extract the nation from foolish wars and to meaningfully reform health care.  The Great Recession he inherited and obstructionism from the Military Industrial Complex and the Health Care Industry  have thwarted his economic aspirations and chained him to Afghanistan and a worldwide ‘police’ presence.

Sadly but realistically, here is a question four youths face:   Why not move to Canada which has a reasonably well functioning health care system, has no bloated military, a relatively civil culture,  and sits on top of one of the world’s best supply of commodities?