What Does Finland Have That We Don’t Have?

By Ed Raymond
Staff Writer
When July 4th comes around we always hear a great deal about American “exceptionalism”: “The greatest country in the world,” “We have the best medical care in the world,” “The strongest military in the world,” and so on and so on, using those superlatives ad nauseum.  A typical letter-to-the-editor in USA Today shouts the gospel of this exceptionalism:

Still the Greatest Nation
“Despite our problems with unemployment, immigration and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, we are still the greatest nation in the world. Our freedom of choice is our greatest strength. We are free to speak for or against whatever we believe in; free to work for another or create our own business; free to come and go wherever we please; free to worship alone, in our communities, or not at all; free to get an education; and free to vote.

“In recent years we may have been the world’s biggest consumers, but we have also been among the biggest contributors of money, labor, military, and humanitarian support, medical assistance, and technology. Life will not defeat us. We view any failure as something to learn from our next success. We have so many reasons to stand together and stand proud.”

[From Alwine L. Canning, Lincoln, California]
Now this is a real feel-good message, and frankly is a “skosh” more realistic than most letters on historic days. (A “skosh” is defined as being smaller than a centimeter and larger than an angstrom.)  I am often accused of being “negative” about our great country, picking on the greedy, selfish rich and the incompetent, ill-educated, and often lazy poor. But I make an effort to always try to make my main theme “We can do better.”

In his letter Canning says we are “free to come and go.”  Have you tried to go to Cuba lately? At one time it was illegal for U.S. citizens to visit Cuba, but that ruling was challenged in the Supreme Court, which determined that it was OK for us to visit Cuba. 

But the boys in D.C. had another angle. The feds said it was OK to visit Cuba but one could not spend any money there. Ever try to visit a foreign country and not spend any money?  If you spend money representing a corporation you may be fined up to $1,000,000. If you spend money as an individual, you may be fined up to $250,000. 

I once had to spend some time in Cuba courtesy of U.S. Marine Corps just before Fidel Castro led the revolution. Believe me, Havana and the rest of Cuba is not worth 250,000 bucks. But we are totally free to go there—if I have read the Constitution right. No, Alwine, we are not “free to come and go.”
Other Holes in the American Dream
Canning writes we are free to get an education. The problem is education is very expensive. But most states dictate that children between the ages of six to sixteen must be in school. Both elementary and secondary schools dream up splendid new fees each year because politicians have no interest in funding education until six months before an election.

Want to play football or be in the band or join the debate club? $300, please. If a high school graduate, you are “free” to get a degree at Lawrence College that will cost you about $75,000 a year or one at the University of Minnesota that will set you back about $11,000 for the first year and a 15 percent increase in tuition each year for the next millennium.

Canning claims that the U.S. is one of the biggest “contributors” of money, labor, military and humanitarian support, including medical assistance and technology. I wish these patriotic braggarts would do their homework.

The Center for Global Development ranks the top 22 developed and wealthiest nations based on these factors: their dedication to policies that benefit poor nations, how the country is living up to its promises to help poor countries, and whether they are living up to their potential to help. They are also judged on how they use their resources to further trade, investment, foreign aid, and other linkages to the development of third world countries. 

Mr. Canning, the U.S. ranks 17th in the 22 judged, behind Portugal, Belgium, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, Finland, Austria, Spain, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden (#1!). I don’t think that would put us among the ranks of the “biggest contributors.”

Canning also brings up our military “contributions.” We do contribute a helluva lot to world instability by leading the world in weapons sales and providing “free arms” to friendly countries. We spend over $700 billion a year on “defensive” and very “offensive” weapons, more than the rest of the world combined.

We always seem to be creating weapons for use in the last great war instead of the counter-insurgency ones we are involved in. The new F-35 fighter plane is now running about $118 million a copy. For that price we can put 40 unmanned Predators armed with Hellfire missiles in the air over Afghanistan and Nogales and blow up anything that looks like a cocaine factory or a terrorist training camp.

Supreme Court Conservatives: “Foreigners Are All Stupid. We Can’t Learn From Them.”
We have at least four Supreme Court justices—Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and John Roberts—who feel Americans are so exceptional and bright that we cannot learn anything from court decisions made in other countries.

I think this is absolutely hilarious. Here we depend on many of the greatest European and Asian philosophers, statesmen, scientists, and authors for the threads that hold our political, moral, and religious quilt together, but we can’t learn anything from studying their court decisions? This is crazy, demeaning, and American ugly and stupid.
In a public debate with Justice Stephen Breyer, Justice Scalia said we shouldn’t pay any attention to decisions made by foreign judges because “We don’t have the same moral and legal framework as the rest of the world, and never have. If you told the framers of the Constitution that what we’re after is to, you know, do something that will be just like Europe, they would have been appalled.” 

I guess Scalia has the same psychic channeling as Pat Robertson, only Pat talks directly to God once a week and Scalia to Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and George Washington whenever he needs “original” guidance on the meaning of the Constitution.

I happen to think Scalia is bonkers with his idea of originalism, or what Jefferson really meant back in 1789. Do you think it makes sense to use the capabilities of an 18th century one-shot musket to determine gun laws involving a 2010 assault rifle than can fire 700 rounds a minute?

Scalia has called judges who feel we have an evolving Constitution “idiots.” Anyone who would consider laws governing the use of airplanes using a buckboard, burro, or camel as the basis for his decision really assumes the “idiot” mantle.
Every Country Has Something “Exceptional” About It
I was listening to an expert in wind and solar power on NPR expound on the fact that citizens in the United States had invented most of the equipment and processes in these two energy fields, but were falling behind many industrialized countries in the economic development of these energy sources.

We tend to develop things very important to mankind, but then we ship the good jobs overseas where our global corporations can find the cheapest labor. They don’t care.  They’re making good money overseas and can stack it in tax havens before wiring what’s left home.

It’s sad that the most innovative and imaginative industrial power in the world has slipped so much that our largest export is used cardboard to China. We have a lot of excess cardboard from the packages full of Chinese products sold in this country—and those ships returning to pick up other loads in Asia have plenty of space.
Little Finland Makes Big Things
Every country has something exceptional about it. Finland, with a population of 5.2 million, has done a number of things which make it exceptional.

It has a literacy rate of 100 percent. The U.S. rate is 86 percent. It now ranks first in the distribution of broadband because it has financed the installation of a computer and the Internet in every home in the country. Furthermore they will maintain and upgrade the equipment. The Finns have realized the Web is the secret to universal education and communication. It’s time we do. We rank 16th in computers per head of population now. When Lurch of Crawford won the vote of Scalia in the 2000 election we were third in the world.

I think it’s also fascinating that in a country of 5.2 million there are 4.7 mobile cellular phones. Maybe the Finns get a terrific deal from the world’s largest producer of cell phones, their neighbor Sweden.

But what intrigues me most is why Royal Caribbean International contracted with a Finnish shipyard to build the two largest cruise ships ever built. I would appreciate having geopoliticians, economists, bankers, and Royal Caribbean give an answer. The purchasing power parity per family is well over $30,000 in Finland so labor is not cheap.

The two ships are 1180 feet long, weigh 220,000 tons, are 20 stories high, and carry over 6000 passengers. Both of them are engineering marvels. They don’t need tugboats to dock because the three propellers swivel 360 degrees on independent bearings. Six huge diesel generators power the electric motors that actually power the ship at about 22 knots. The ship’s captain is able to move the ship in any direction just by moving a joystick forward, backward, or sideways. Why didn’t we think of that? Or did we?
Is Some of Our “Exceptionality” Going Counter-Clockwise Down a Maelstrom?
 
Warren Buffett, the sage of Omaha and the second richest man in America, once said this about the responsibility of the rich: “If you’re in the luckiest one percent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 percent.” (The top one percent received 24 percent of the nation’s total income over the last three years. And Buffett’s tax bracket is lower than his secretary’s.) 

We have 1.2 million workers who will lose all unemployment benefits this month because of the Senate’s failure to act because Republicans say they won’t add to the deficit.

Meanwhile our financial casinos operating with credit default swaps and derivatives create billionaires overnight. John Paulson, hedge fund manager for his firm, made $1.25 billion in one morning in 2007—and $4 billion for that year. (His tax rate is the same as Buffett’s.)

While our gamblers play roulette, shell games, and craps on Wall Street, the rest of the world is cleaning our expensive clock in some technological or medical area. The French, who already have the best medical care in the world according to the World Health Organization, have developed an artificial heart that in the future will be a permanent replacement for a diseased heart. Spanish doctors just completed a total face transplant—including the eyelids and eyelashes.

Is our “greatness” ending up in a ship transporting our used cardboard to China? Are we going down the toilet singing “The land of the free and the home of the brave?”
Questions and comments: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)