Why do we in America constantly tell children that they can be whatever they want to be? When asked what they want to be when they grow up, large percentages of adolescent boys reply that they want to be a professional athlete. We generally encourage our children to set their aspirations high, at President or professional athlete, at Astronaut or movie star. Such aspirations are wonderful in that they challenge children to reach for lofty goals, but the reality is that a tiny percentage of us will ever attain such positions.
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Category: Society
New Orleans, Build Upward
To the extent that any development in New Orleans makes sense, vertical development makes sense. New Orleans historically was a narrow sliver of a city curving along the banks of the Mississippi, where the only liveable high ground in the city was to be found. Historical neighborhoods like the French Quarter, Warehouse District, Faubourg Marigny, and Central Business District are thus densely developed areas with a majority of structures possessing multiple floors. Even Uptown New Orleans, a primarily residential area, possesses many multi-family homes and multi-floor homes built on relatively compact lots.
Why then are so many in neighborhoods across New Orleans and the metro area fighting vertical development? As developers trot out plans for high rise condominium and apartment buildings as a means to rapidly increase the housing supply, many neighborhood groups and even the city council are fighting to curtail growth. But what other options exist in a city that has an average elevation somewhere between zero and ten feet below sea level? High rise towers provide a much greater level of protection to residents and their property; many living in existing modern high rises experienced relatively little property damage even from Katrina. Since downtown New Orleans predates the automobile era, it also possesses human-sized blocks perfect for dense, pedestrian friendly redevelopment.
While the historical character of New Orleans’ architecture should be preserved in redevelopment, many projects are being sidelined due to height restrictions, minimum parking requirements, and other zoning restrictions. But if New Orleans is to accelerate the recovery and redevelopment process, its politicians and citizens will have to accept that higher density development is the only viable route forward. Vertical development can help minimize the threat posed by future storms while rapidly increasing the area’s housing stock. Let’s hope that the powers that be accept this and move projects to fruition with the expediency that true recovery dictates.
America’s Broken Universal Health Care
The United States provides universal health care. Sound laughable? It’s true: all individuals in America, whether citizens, immigrants, or tourists, are entitled to government subsidized care in the event of medical emergency. While the uninsured may not be able to get a routine doctor’s appointment, they are guaranteed life saving surgery and medical intervention, regardless of cost. Indeed, care for indigents can occasionally run into the hundreds of thousands per year, as they repeatedly return to the emergency room for treatments of illness caused by chronic diseases like diabetes. The US spends roughly 75 billion annually on treating the nation’s 40+ million uninsured; the situation among alcoholics in Seattle has become so absurd that they are being given housing and routine medical care, since this decreases the cost of treating them in emergency situations.
Perhaps it is no surprise then that America spends a larger percentage of its GDP on health care than almost any other nation, and yet it lags on a wide range of health indicators, including overall life expectancy. How did such a situation emerge? Largely by accident, it turns out. In 1986, the EMTALA was passed by Congress, denying hospitals the right to refuse critically ill patients. Federal and state governments partially reimburse providers for costs incurred for this treatment through Medicaid and Medicare. Unfortunately, critical care is provided without any cost-benefit analysis whatsoever; it is considered a criminal act to withhold treatment from elderly, terminally ill patients, even if it would extend their life by a matter of weeks.
As US healthcare costs continue to spiral upward at rates often double and triple that of overall inflation, the situation becomes increasingly untenable. But what are the alternatives to America’s current system?
1. Remove required treatment burdens from hospitals, leaving the burden of care to individuals, charities, and local and state government.
2. Provide routine medical care to the uninsured, eliminating the treatment gap for the uninsured.
3. Require all Americans to buy insurance, or to pay a healthcare tax to pay for the implied insurance provided by emergency rooms.
4. Begin to consider rationing publicly funded health care based on cost-benefit analysis, taking into account a procedure’s likelihood of success, its cost, the patient’s age, and other factors.
Option 1 is politically infeasible for an industrialized nation, and is included only for completeness. Providing routine medical care to the uninsured, as in option 2, would expand America’s current system to be more similar to European systems of comprehensive universal public health care. Nations like the UK and Canada ration non-critical care within their systems in order to control costs; the very notion of health care rationing is anathema in the US currently, making public dialogue on public universal care close to impossible. Australia, meanwhile, has a hybrid healthcare system which includes public insurance for all while enabling private care to co-exist, potentially providing a model for US healthcare reform.
Massachusetts has begun a program similar to that outlined in option 3, in which all residents without insurance are required to purchase insurance or pay a tax to subsidize the emergency coverage that all residents receive. Poor residents are provided with assistance to pay for an insurance policy, enabling all residents to acquire coverage. This system provides the benefit of extending coverage across the population, while forcing everyone to contribute, thus averaging out costs across healthy and less healthy individuals. Since the system provides a net increase in medical coverage, however, it will result in increased costs over time.
This brings us to option 4, the unspeakable in the American health care dialogue: rationing. In practical terms, medical decision-makers find it difficult to discuss the notion of saving $100,000 by not performing a procedure, even if it has a 1 in 1,000 chance of success. Cost-benefit based rationing of care is not a solution to the problems of health care access. Rather, it is an eventuality that will have to be confronted, as public expenditure on health care cannot forever grow faster than the economy. Until then, America’s broken universal healthcare system will continue to plod along, destined to hit the wall when we just can’t find another dollar to keep 95 year-old vegetables alive another minute.
Crazy AND Competent
Why aren’t there more terrorist attacks in the United States? Or in other developed countries, for that matter? With the exception of Israel, which is involved in an ongoing conflict and is surrounded by hostile states, terrorism is still relatively rare in the industrialized world. In many developing nations, on the other hand, from Latin America to Africa and Asia, terrorism and irregular conflict are commonplace. Most of these conflicts have a political root, and internal political stability clearly prevents this kind of ongoing insurgency within the United States. There is another safety net protecting the US, however: there simply aren’t that many individuals in the United States that are both crazy enough AND competent enough to execute a real terrorist plot.
The US market economy provides an amazing wealth and diversity of opportunity for a striving individual; one need look no further than the Mexican border to see that millions desire the opportunity to participate in the US employment market. The great majority of individuals competent enough to even contemplate a terrorist plot find themselves engaged in a productive career path from high school onward. The US, like any place on Earth, also has its share of individuals that harbor destructive or anti-social thoughts, and occasionally even plans for terrorism. Most in this group have no capability to execute on their dangerous ideas, and generally have nothing more than hate-filled invective stewing about in their heads.
Who then is left to cause terror in the homeland? There certainly are skilled and competent individuals in the United States who dislike US policy, and who may even harbor destructive plans. Even within this group, only very rarely will an individual choose to sacrifice the good life of America for the risk incumbent in prosecuting an act of terror. In the US, Timothy McVeigh is a rare example of such an individual. Among the millions of annual visitors to the US, the 9/11 hijackers represent a similarly rare breed.
All of this doesn’t mean that the US government can just drop its guard in securing the nation. Rather, it means that an intelligence-based approach is the only viable option for ferreting out the minority of minorities that is intent on causing harm. With the FBI, CIA, and NSA woefully understaffed in areas such as Arabic translation, it looks like we have a long ways still to go in catching that rare and elusive beast: the terrorist.
A trailer is not a gun show!
I grew up on a country road outside the small town of Leesville, LA. At the entrance to the road was a trailer where a friend of mine used to live. Some time after he moved away, the trailer became “Bunn & Sons Gun Shop,” with a red arrow painted to indicate the “gun show” around back. Why was a gun show in continuous operation behind a trailer on my road?
I didn’t know it at the time, but it turns out that the “gun show” was a response to the Brady Bill, enabling Bunn & Sons to use a loophole in the bill to sell handguns without a mandatory background check. Now, since this was the rural south, folks would always complain about how somebody was trying to take away their 2nd amendment rights. What is the actual text of the 2nd amendment?
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. – Bill of Rights, Amendment II
Reading these words, and interpreting them literally, it seems that the second amendment protects the right of the people to bear arms as part of a well-regulated militia. While the NRA would like to delete the first clause of the Amendment, it defines the right in the context of a militia, as noted in this summary at Thomson Findlaw.
The courts have clearly decided that the right to own a tank, rocket-propelled grenade launcher, or even a sawed-off shotgun is not necessarily protected under the 2nd Amendment. In the US v Miller, 1939, the Supreme Court Justice McReynolds wrote,
“In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a ‘shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length’ at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.”
Federal firearms regulations also regulate the sale and transfer of firearms through the aforementioned Brady Bill and other legislation. Until recently, they also banned an entire class of semi-automatic weapons known as assault weapons.
Back to Bunn & Sons, and their “gun show”: all Bunn may have been trying to do was increase his business by removing the hurdle of an electronic background check from the sales process. In a larger context, the NRA has fought to keep the private-sale loophole available, in order to eliminate the background check process where possible. But why is the NRA so afraid of background checks? They argue that the overwhelming majority of American gun owners are law abiding citizens; then why not subject gun sales to the same level of scrutiny placed on prescription drug sales? For better or worse, guns are a part of American culture, and European-style gun restrictions will not and should not take place here. But with the advent of instant background checks, is it too much to ask that we control gun sales at least as much as we control sales of heart medication?
Global warming is real; should you care?
There is little scientific dispute at this point that global warming is occurring, and that humans are causing some part of it, as even the Competitive Enterprise Institute (a conservative free enterprise think tank) is now willing to admit. The remaining question: just how big a problem is global warming, and what are the consequences if we do nothing? An Inconvenient Truth makes it appear that Florida will be underwater sometime soon if we sit idly by. Reality, at least as scientists currently understand it, probably lies somewhere between Al Gore’s doom-saying and CEI’s laughable slogan, “CO2: We Call It Life.”
Of all the potential effects of global warming, rising sea levels are thought to have the most catastrophic consequences. If the Greenland ice sheet or a large part of Antarctica really do melt, the resulting 20 foot rise in sea levels would destroy the majority of the world’s great cities and displace billions of people. But how long will a rise of 20 feet, or even two feet, take at current rates of warming and ice melt? Realclimate.org summarizes recent research here, wherein the most aggressive estimates indicate that Greenland’s ice sheet melting is increasing sea levels by up to 0.57mm per year. But if Greenland continues melting at that rate, it will take one thousand years to raise sea levels one foot!
Even an order of magnitude increase in ice melting would only cause sea levels to rise a foot by 2100. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report’s most aggressive estimate calls for a three foot sea level rise by 2100; this estimate includes significant ice melt. While this scenario has significant implications for coastal cities, it is not apocalyptic, and it also represents an outlier prediction compared to most climate models. It seems then that we should care about global warming in the very long term, but it is unlikely to have a significant impact during our lifetime. There are dozens of environmental and social issues that deserve greater present concern, including the AIDS pandemic and infectious diseases like tuberculosis and malaria, which continue to kill tens of millions annually.
At the same time, it wouldn’t hurt to take some simple steps to curb CO2 emissions growth. The CEI and others complain that it is impossible to curb CO2 emissions growth without hurting the economy. On the contrary, prudent shifts in government policy can reduce emissions while increasing growth. If the United States were to fund all highway construction with gasoline taxes, for instance, this would pass the costs of car travel directly on to the end consumer – which increases economic efficiency while decreasing emissions. I’ve written previously about applying the gas guzzler tax fairly, so that consumers are not rewarded for buying large SUVs instead of large cars. Finally, ending the huge subsidies to the oil, gas, and coal industries would make alternative energy more competitive, while saving taxpayers billions.
Detaining terrorists, or any foreigner?
The United States Constitution and its common law judiciary protect the writ of habeas corpus, a means by which an unlawfully imprisoned individual can petition for release from detainment. Habeas corpus is considered among the most important protections against wrongful imprisonment, so important that it is part of the main body of the Constitution, predating even the Bill of Rights. Why then did Congress attempt to take this right away from individuals living in the United States in the recently-passed bill on detainee treatment?
According to the Military Commissions Act of 2006, Senate bill S.3930 (House H.R. 6166), “No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.”
Non-citizens of the United States, including permanent residents, could therefore be held indefinitely by the government without ever being provided any of the rights we cherish here in the US. No right to an attorney, no right to a trial, nor even the right to be taken before a judicial body of any sort. If the United States government mistakenly designates a non-citizen as a terrorist, they could theoretically be held until death without having ever seen any aspect of legal or even military justice!
How does such a provision increase the security of the United States? If the government has evidence against an individual, why not allow that evidence to be brought before a judge, or even a military court, to decide whether continued detainment is warranted? If there is a need to temporarily hold potential terrorists before bringing them before a court, then why not establish a 90-day holding period? This would surely be Constitutional, and would enable the state to fight terror while preserving individual rights.
The current form of the Military Commissions Act is repugnant and un-American in its current form, and it is probably also unconstitutional. It is far worse to take away an individual’s right to contest detainment than it is to practice mock executions, forced nudity, and other forms of interrogation banned in the same Act. After all, the latter may humiliate, but do limited permanent damage, while there are few punishments worse than a life imprisonment without a conviction.
The Earth is not 10,000 years old
The evolution versus creationism debate has resurfaced over the last few years in the US, primarily as a result of numerous local school boards’ decisions to modify biology curricula to include more creationism-oriented education. Gallup polls conducted in recent years indicate that as many as 45% of all Americans believe in the that God created the Earth and humans within the last 10,000 years. This belief is particularly interesting since the science underpinning the geological age of the Earth is the same science responsible for much of modern technology.
One of America’s foremost strengths is its respect for individual beliefs and belief systems. If 45% of America wants to believe that the world is flat or that babies come from storks, that’s perfectly acceptable. Unfortunately, since technological advancement is founded upon a scientific understanding of the universe, a belief in the soundness of basic science is almost a prerequisite to further study in science and engineering fields.
The principles of radioactive decay that are widely used in geological dating are part of the same physics used to create the atomic bomb and subsequent nuclear devices. Do those who believe the Earth is 10,000 years old refute the existence of nuclear weapons, or deny that 15% of US electrical power comes from nuclear power plants? Perhaps modern medicine is also not of much interest to the young-Earth crowd, as radioactive isotopes and related electromagnetic phenomena are used there as well.
If a plurality of America doesn’t believe in the underpinnings of modern technology, perhaps it’s understandable why the US is falling behind other nations in its education of scientists and engineers. America’s long term position as the center of innovation is further threatened when individual and personal beliefs invade the science classroom. American scientists, engineers, and educators have to do a better job at making clear that without science, modern technology’s comforts cannot be had.
I want to be a Farmer
The Census Bureau has reclassified farmers and ranchers as management, with only farm workers officially classified as being in the farming, fishing, or forestry occupations. And according to the USDA, farm households earned 10% more on average than non-farm households. Farming seems like a great business to be in! But if farmers are doing so well, why do we pay them $30 billion per year in subsidies?
Over two hundred dollars in taxes per working American were paid to American farmers last year. On top of that, we protect our farmers from foreign competition in many markets, leaving the American consumer to pay double or triple world prices for commodities like sugar. Meanwhile, the average wheat farm receives twenty grand a year in direct cash payments.
It seems that we American taxpayers have been forking over extra grocery money so that farm management can earn above-average incomes! Proponents claim that American farmers are the most competitive in the world; why not let them compete, saving us on taxes and at the grocery store to boot? Reducing farm subsidies will end a cherished way of life, subsidy-supporters respond. If farming is so cherished as a traditional American way of life, then why does the Census report that only 0.7% of the population is involved in it? Most farm workers are Hispanic immigrants – so exactly what kind of “traditional farming” do farm subsidies mean to protect?
In international negotiations, the Bush administration, like others before it, has always tied reduction in our subsidies to reduction in other nations’ subsidies. Even absent EU cooperation, the US should move forward to slash subsidies and open agriculture markets. Altruistic motives notwithstanding, we should do this simply to save our taxpayers and consumers money.
If America were able to cut subsidies and open agricultural markets, it might just find another problem going away: illegal immigrants wouldn’t want so desperately to come to the US if they could sell us their produce from their home countries.
Why won’t anyone buy an American car?
Ford and GM, the two remaining US-headquartered automakers, remain mired in seemingly endless losses, and point to union compensation and health care costs as the sources of their problems. Toyota and Honda are doing quite well, by contrast, and have remained as profitable as ever. Ford and GM complain about costs, but they don’t mention that their competitors manufacture their vehicles either in Japan, Germany, or right here in the US – all high wage locations. Japan and Germany generally require companies to provide more benefits to workers than the US, hardly giving their car companies a cost advantage.
Might the problem be that Americans don’t want to buy American cars? Ford and GM have been steadily losing market share for years, a trend briefly halted by the SUV craze, but which has now accelerated as consumers look to foreign makers for efficient vehicles. Outside of the truck segment, Ford and GM simply don’t seem to have any products that anyone wants.
How did that become the case? Toyota, Nissan, and other foreign automakers do a significant amount of vehicle design for the US market here in the US. Does this mean that Ford and GM are incapable of hiring good designers? Many “foreign” cars like the Toyota Camry are now made in the USA; how then can there be such a perceived reliability gap between domestic and foreign car models?
Using the same talent pool, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, and others have run circles around the Detroit club. It’s gotten so bad that the governor of Michigan is openly recruiting investment by foreign automakers. It’s not that Americans don’t buy American cars; they buy plenty of cars made in America by companies with Japanese (or German) owners. Perhaps this is just the case of two companies with terrible management, bloated bureaucracy, and glacial efforts at restructuring.
Unless you’re loyal to their brands, don’t despair over troubles that Ford and GM brought on themselves. Hey, chances are you’re driving an Accord by now anyway.
True Cost - Analyzing our economy, government policy, and society through the lens of cost-benefit 