Carats, Carrots, And American Exceptionalism

By Ed Raymond
Staff Writer

Carats, Carrots, And American Exceptionalism

Rome didn’t fall in a day and neither will we, but the evidence is piling up rapidly that the country with the largest debt in the world is gradually losing its dominant position in many fields. And many Americans just don’t seem to give a damn. Evidence: The quarterly earnings of our major luxury retailers have trouble staying within the chartlines. Nieman-Marcus, Tiffany, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Movado are all breaking records. As one economist put it, “The rich during our deepest recession can still splurge on the carats they wear. Meanwhile, the working class wonders whether they will be able to buy carrots for their next meal.”  WalMart, our most popular and successful discount carrot retailer, is suffering sales declines in carrots throughout its United States stores.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, who has turned years of political “public service” into enough private wealth to maintain a $250,000 account at Tiffany, must have used information gained from his 2009 conversion to Catholicism to come up with this recent gem: “I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time my grandchildren are my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.” Aw, Newt, you were always known for your moderation.

Reading Organs, Guts, Tea Leaves, And The Stars

The Romans knew their empire was imploding. Chicken guts told them so. The Romans practiced haruspicy, the inspection of entrails, organs, and other juicy parts of animals and birds to read the future. The priests and soothsayers did not leave us their secrets of divination, even if they did check out excrement on occasion. We read newspaper entrails and TV guts to see what the future holds for us. The Romans might have had more reliable sources. The first decade of our millennium did not start well. We elected a president who never had to learn any survival techniques because he knew he was just smart enough to trade his father’s name for meals and rooms. Then Lurch’s wealthy handlers bought enough members of Congress to pass huge tax cuts for themselves. Bank account Nirvana was here.

But then Osama’s boys hijacked our airplanes and flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Then we had to bomb Afghanistan back into the Stone Age because Osama’s boys had trained there. The trouble was the Afghans were still in the Stone Age. Lurch played the Crawford village idiot by turning a six-week war into one we are still trying to get out of ten years later at over $2 billion a week. Then Lurch decided to save the world from Saddam Hussein because he had “weapons of mass destruction” —er “someplace.” Of course, Saddam was a bad guy, but among the 20 most murderous tyrants in the world I’m not sure Saddam would even rank in the middle. But co-president Dick Cheney thought we should get Iraq’s oil. After eight years, will someone please tell me what we have “won” in Iraq? The Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds are still killing each other every day while we are getting ready to catch the last bus out of Baghdad.

Even while putting two wars on the credit card, George decided to buy senior votes with a cockamamie Medicare Part D drug prescription scheme. Let’s give them expensive prescription drugs that Medicare cannot negotiate prices for and leave them a big “surprise doughnut hole” when they are suckered into the program. And here’s the credit card. From that time forward Big Pharma owned Congress lock, stock, and stripped us down to barrels. Premiums for Part D have gone up 57 percent since 2006 and are expected to increase a minimum of 10 percent a year for the next decade. The drug companies are giddy all the way to the bank and back.

Now we have killed Osama but he has bankrupted us in our stupidity. We deliver our troops by air to his killing grounds for his pleasure. It saves his own frequent flyer miles and we have to spend $1 million per year to keep one pair of boots on the ground in far-away places. Insane is the only word that applies. But this is just preliminary evidence of our rapid decline.

Grover Norquist’s Bathtub Is Now Large Enough To Drown An Empire

The two wars, the prescription drug benefit on our grandchildren’s cuff, the no-new-tax pledges of ignorant and on-layby Congressmen is evidence enough for an indictment. What is happening to the United States in the world is enough to declare us guilty of self-destruction. The evidence is rapidly accumulating we are our own suicide bombers.

First, it’s the little things done by little people. California is filled with nuts, both in the groves and in the cities, but I think this move by the Burbank City Council is evidence we are in rapid decline. The City Council is considering cutting in excess of $500,000 in city services, stripping fire and police departments and city libraries. But it is very willing to give a $2 million loan to the city golf course because it is “too big to fail!” Close the libraries but keep the golf course open! Talk about priorities.

Then it’s the big things done by big people who should have known better. Fred Wilpon, the owner of the New York Mets, invested in 480 separate accounts with his buddy Bernie Madoff. The day Bernie did his Wall Street “perp walk” for the edification of the little guy, poor Freddie and his investment club dropped $550 million into the city sewers.

Then we have had Minnesota cities, catching the free market casino idea, invest public money in prisons run by private contractors. We Minnesotans now have over 3,000 empty jail cells in the state eating up maintenance funds. Could this be called the Minnesota prison bubble miracle?

Guess Where The United States Is On The “Happiest Nation” List

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development Better Life Index has developed eleven measurements of quality of life to determine which nation has the happiest people. The criteria include housing, income, jobs, community, education, the environment, health, work-life balance, and life satisfaction. Here are the top ten countries:

1. Denmark—Danes have highest sense of friendship and community and 97 percent indicate they have friends and family for close support. Danes also exhibit a leisure-friendly society, spending an average of 16 hours per week in leisure activities. Danes receive a full-year of paid maternity leave.

2. Canada–-With universal health care, 88 percent of Canadians report they are in good health, the highest among countries surveyed. Almost 90 percent have high school diplomas, the highest rate in the world. Canada’s literacy rate is the highest and they have the lowest rate of reported assaults.

3. Norway–-The average worker among the 34 surveyed countries works 1,739 hours per year. Norwegians work 1,400 hours but have the second highest disposable income among the 34. Only 3.4 percent have been unemployed more than a year.

4. Australia—Has the highest voter turnout among eligible voters. They live two years longer than the average of 34 countries. Good health care. Australia’s tobacco consumption is the lowest in the world.

5. The Netherlands—Ninety-one percent are satisfied with their lives. The Dutch spend 70 percent of their day on personal care, eating and sleeping, and leisure. The Dutch have aggressive gender equality laws, including pay and work hours.

6. Sweden—The Swedes have the best air quality of all industrialized nations. Only .01 percent of the population work more than 50 hours. They have a very high transparency policy when drafting government regulations.

7. Switzerland—Scores relatively high in all measurements. The Swiss have the second highest life expectancy and the highest employment rate. Has excellent incentives to employ pregnant women.

8. Finland—The Finns lead the world in education criteria. The government furnishes each residence with a computer and wireless broadband–and maintains it. They have the second highest reading skills in the world, behind only South Korea. Teachers are respected and teaching is one of the most sought-after professions.

9.  Israel—Jews are well-satisfied with life but their quality of life measurements are the lowest among the top 20. They work longer hours than most but have the fifth highest family income in the top ten.

10. Austria—Unemployment is slightly over one percent.  They employ the system of “labor hoarding” to eliminate layoffs. They require workers to work part-time and to share job shifts. But everybody works.

The United States on the happiest list? Not even in the top 20!

Are We Innovative?

In his January State of the Union address President Barack Obama used the words “innovation” or “innovate” in sentences like this one: “The first step to winning the future is encouraging American innovation.”  We all know we will not beat the world making cars, TVs, and appliances. The Indians and Asians will have us for lunch. So, how are we doing in “innovating?”  The Information and Technology & Innovation Foundation has surveyed the world and determined we are no longer #1. In fact, we are sixth in using venture capital for research and eighth in registering new patents. The ITIF also rated the top 40 countries in innovation capacity between 1999 and 2009 in areas such as government funding for basic research, tax policies, and education. The United States came in dead last. We are being blown away by the Koreans, Indians, Chinese, and Germans.

We Are Exceptional, But In What?

We lead the world in the difference between CEO and average worker pay with a ratio of 460-1. Canada is second at 35-1.  Our richest 0.1 of 1 percent receive almost 8 percent of the U.S. total income.  Rich Frenchmen are second at 2.8 percent.  Military expenditures? We spend $700 billion per year. China is second at less than $100 billion. We lead the world in prisoners per 100,000 population with 725. Italy is second at 80 per 100,000. Lead the civilized world in murders? You betcha–at 4.2 murders per 100,000 population. France is next at 1.5 murders per 100,000. We rank 34th in the world in quality of health care, but we spend almost twice as much of GDP at 17 percent ($7,400 per capita) than France with universal care spends at 10 percent of GDP. Great Britain has universal care and only spends 8 percent of GDP. Our infant mortality is double that of other industrialized countries. We have 20 percent of our children living in poverty. Great Britain is second among the richest countries at 8 percent. We even lead the industrialized world at 8 percent of population experiencing homelessness between 1990 and 2006. Italy was second with less than 4 percent. (These statistics were gathered by the Institute For Local Self-Reliance.)

We often hear politicians boasting we have the richest country in the world. Congressmen claim we have the best health care in the world. Maybe we do. But the bottom 90 percent have not received a raise in 30 years so they can’t afford health care insurance. Even Warren Buffett says the rich won the U.S. class war about ten years ago. Each year Buffett auctions off his attendance at lunch for charity, but he insists on giving no stock tips during that annual event. This year the top lunch bid was $2.6 million. I wonder how comfortable the two billionaires were at lunch. Isn’t there something obscene about a $2.6 million lunch while 20 percent of our children are living in poverty? Or is it just “unseemly?”

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