A lot of times in political discourse it feels like neither party is speaking the same language, because there seems to be no real communication going on. Individuals of different political persuasions seem to talk past each other, unable to even agree on the most basic of concepts. I believe that the primary reason we have such a vast communicative disconnect is that many of the basic concepts and policy areas at the hearts of political debates can be viewed from so many different angles. For example, depending on your background and ideological bent, the word government regulation can evoke completely opposite emotions and thought processes. If you are an individual who feels that the government has mistreated them, the idea of more government regulation will likely feel wrong, whereas a person who depends upon government assistance will understand a very different connotation. This fundamental chasm of connotation and meaning is central to the bloodthirsty nature of modern political discourse. Instead of free exchange of ideas, we have shouting matches of stock phrases; instead of political parties coalesced around a collection of ideas, we have warring clans. When the very words of the debate have divergent meanings for each party, we can have no dialogue, just two simultaneous soliloquies.
It's amazing how two different definitions of a concept can coexist that agree in most situations, but diverge greatly in policy matters. I think that an individual's conception of what "the economy" is shapes their opinion on how to fix it. The economy is an interesting concept: everyone agrees that it is broken, everyone agrees that unemployment has run rampant, and everyone agrees that we cannot afford to continue at our current rate of entitlement spending, but there is almost no agreement on what to do. I think this is because conservatives primarily view the economy as business while liberals primarily view the economy as labor. The two concepts frequently overlap - usually what's good for business is also good for labor, and vice versa. (As Mitt Romney put it, "What's good for the goose is good for the gander.") For instance, when businesses see increased profits, they can expand revenues, hire more workers, develop new technologies, etc. This is all great news for labor, because there are more available jobs, likely higher wages, lower prices for consumers, etc. This is great for the government too, because it expands the tax base (by creating new jobs, thereby creating new taxpayers), and adds directly to revenue by increasing the taxable revenue of the business and the income of the owners. So in many cases, pro-business policies translate to the greatest good for the masses. This is the conservative thinker's solution to the economic crisis: all we have to do is spur on growth, and the deficit problem will be eradicated through a broader tax base and increased private-sector profits. They argue that taxes are merely taking money out of the hands of investors who would use that money to accelerate growth, thus taxes are anti-growth, in the mind of a conservative. (I've never understood exactly where they think the tax money goes... does it magically just disappear into the IRS?)
Liberals understand the economy very differently. They see the millions of unemployed and know the economy is broken without having to glance at GDP growth or stock indexes. It is not simply a game of numbers, where we need to get the nation into the black, it is a game of human lives and suffering. The losers in the competitive market game are not seen as drains on society, but rather as victims of a systemic illness. All throughout this crisis, we have seen the profits of large corporations and banks rise, while real human damage is being done all across America. The unemployed and the dispossessed are giving up, while the upper class is widening the income gap. I see this as a fundamental failure of pro-growth economics, it fails to take into account the real human pain that occurs when programs and spending are cut, even if growth occurs. Think about what is more important: if you have a job, or if you have food. I understand that food assistance programs and subsidized housing have a negative effect on our economy, but the economy simply does not matter that much. To me, the health of the economy is never more important than the health of the citizenry, and this includes the most impoverished among us. It is not ethical to argue that the destructive nature of the capitalist system we have in place is counterbalanced by the increased profits of businesses. We must consider policy in terms of its human impact, not solely in terms of its economic impact.
This brings me to my fundamental point. Conservatives argue about strategies to improve the economy, and they mean strategies to help businesses, which invariably results in making the rich richer. What we need to consider instead are strategies to eradicate homelessness, ensure that every man, woman, and child has enough to eat every day, promise our elderly that they will always have social security, and provide jobs to our legions of unemployed, regardless of the economic impact. If a policy would hurt oil profits in the name of providing prison beds, I'm all for it. If big pharmaceutical companies lose profits so that new road construction can start, so be it. The wealth of the nation does not always correspond to the wealth of its inhabitants. All I'm saying is to look past the numbers and look at the people. You may have the most efficient plan to balance the federal government (although I don't believe their pro-growth policies will amend the deep imbalances inherent to the system), but the effect it has on the people of the nation is not mere collateral damage. Cuts to Medicare and Medicaid are not "savings," but are tragic losses to many people. These are life or death matters to the people who need these government programs, not a question of profits or losses. It's pretty hard to care about the debt crisis if your family is starving, isn't it?
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Basic Needs
Humans are animals. For all our vanity and pretense, we are animals to the core. Especially in the Western tradition, we are fond of envisioning ourselves as embodied minds - the mind is the higher plane of existence, whereas the body is merely something to be sustained. I would like to posit instead that we are thinking bodies: the body does more than house the mind, but sustains, informs, and grows the mind. Shifting one's perspective from embodied minds to thinking bodies moves the emphasis from rationality to corporeality, from logic to sensuality. And this brings us to food.
Even if that last distinction seems arbitrary to you, I'm sure you can admit the central importance in life of food. Most of my everyday life is concerned with food, whether that is reminiscing about the delicious breakfast I had that morning, or (more likely) daydreaming about my next meal. I am incredibly fortunate, and I try to keep my blessings at the forefront of my mind every day. I have never gone a day in my life where I haven't been able to eat to my satisfaction, and there is perhaps no greater privilege I can ask for. My certainty in sustenance has allowed me to focus my life on everything but my basic needs. I have been able to pursue music, academics, athletics, friendships, and countless other activities that would have taken the back seat to hunger, had I not been as fortunate. Satisfaction of hunger, the most basic primal need, always comes first. I have been unbelievably lucky, and for that I am thankful.
For many Americans, however, this is simply not the case. Imagine that you are a mother, unable to provide for her children and herself, who forgoes dinner so that her kids can eat. This is the greatest sacrifice: denial of basic needs for one's self in order to serve her children. Imagine that you are a child who worries each night whether he or she will go to bed hungry, who worries if he or she will be able to eat a lunch at school. How important can math class seem when your stomach is growling? When you are hungry, your biology is urging you to pursue food however possible. The pursuit of food rarely coincides with studies of trigonometry or European history. Poverty and hunger are the central issues that define our failed educational system. It is incumbent upon those of us lucky enough to enjoy privilege to provide for those who cannot enjoy the same liberties. Life is simply not the same when you body is screaming for food, when your children ask you if there will be dinner on the table that night. It is unreasonable and immoral to hold those families to the same standards that we hold well-nourished families. It shows a complete misunderstanding of our animal and basic nature.
Perhaps this last point needs further elaboration. One popular archetype spread about in the right wing is that of the welfare queen. Reagan popularized the term (without basis in reality, I might add) during his candidacy and presidency. The idea is that there are countless women out there (almost always imagined as black or Hispanic, another issue deserving attention), who are taking advantage of the welfare system. I've even heard arguments that low-income women are out there "just having babies" for the social security benefits. Really? I don't even know where to start with this argument: it is too misinformed, too xenophobic, too vain, too envious to even tackle in a systematic nature. I'll start with the idea that people are having children for the social security benefits. Have you ever witnessed a pregnancy? Labor may be the greatest pain a human being can go through in their life - I don't buy the argument that many low-income women are just popping out babies left and right for a few extra bucks. The insinuation that they are doing illustrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how difficult pregnancy is. It is also a disservice to lower-income and minority women, the implication being that they don't love their children, but view them as a means for profit.
Furthermore, it's not as though the social security benefits and welfare we provide for low-income individuals outweighs the cost of raising a child. A child places immeasurable strain on a family, as well as great pressure on the budget. This strain is scarcely alleviated by the pittance we allow these young mothers. Additionally, we cannot allow a few bad apples to ruin the batch. I'm sure there are a few women out there who do take advantage of the system in whatever way possible. This may be true, and it does cost American taxpayers money. But the solution is not to dissolve and destroy the whole system, because that unduly punishes the families who were doing things the right way. Plenty of good, hardworking individuals use welfare to provide for the families in ways they otherwise would not be able to. To rob them of this assistance in order to punish that small minority who is taking advantage of the system would be criminal. Let me repeat this: to punish those who are suffering in order to level justice against a few cheaters is a crime against humanity. The last point about welfare that I would like to make is that the children have no choice in the matter. Whether my parents are good and honest people or evil and dishonest people is no choice of mine. I was "created equal," just like everyone else. So why should my peers live in the lap of luxury, while my parents' benefits are slashed left and right in the name of efficiency? If I am a child, what do I care about the efficiency of the economy, or the fairness of the system? All I know is that my stomach is screaming for sustenance and I am not receiving it. Even if a "welfare queen" somehow popped out five kids "just for the benefits," that family deserves to receive government assistance. The children did not choose to be born into that circumstance, they are just struggling to survive. To deny assistance to children, based on no actions of their own, is undemocratic, unamerican, and immoral. This should be a fundamental question that is held in mind on all public policy issues: how does this policy affect the children? Regardless of the actions of the parents, if you believe in the values of the Declaration of Independence, you must recognize the necessity of providing for our nation's youth.
This brings me to a recent congressional vote about food stamp benefits. In our frenzy about budget deficits and debt, we are cutting many programs that should not be cut. A recent bid to preserve $4.5 billion in SNAP (food stamps) assistance failed the Senate by a margin of 33-66. This shows how out of touch our Senate has become. By a two-thirds margin, the senate decided to cut necessary funds that would put dinner on the table for many innocent and unknowing children. In this article:Food Stamp Vote in Senate, it is noted that "the decrease would amount to about $90 a month for an affected family, representing a quarter of its food budget." This is a quarter of a family's food budget who already qualifies for food assistance. This is kicking a man while he is already down. The family is struggling to make ends meet and provide for their children, and we want to remove another quarter of their food budget? This disgusts me in the most basic way. How can we, on the one hand, expect our children to succeed in schools, expect the parents to just "go out and get a job," when they are starving? The reality that most congressional deals are brokered over expensive Washington dinners is a tragic and cruel irony, especially when they adopt policy that robs many Americans of basic necessities. The national debt is not because of welfare, but because of stupidly low tax rates (the lowest they've been in 80 years except for a brief year and a half period in the Reagan years), because of higher-than-Cold War levels of defense spending, and because of a global economic depression that has taken its toll on all developed nations. To cut welfare in the interest of national debt is clear class warfare - not the imagined variety that "job creators" scream and whine about. The total government spending in this year is about $3.7 trillion, and this policy would save about $4.5 billion dollars. That is a grand savings of .1%. Are point one percent savings worth the immeasurable pain this would put on many already-struggling Americans? Budgets are all about priorities, and to cut food for such a microscopic savings demarcates exactly where our lawmakers' priorities are. And it is made all too painfully clear to many hungry Americans where our politicians priorities are not. Food assistance should be made a priority. It is really hard to care about anything else when you are starving. I propose a society where the right to food is held alongside the other fundamental and inalienable American rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It's pretty damn hard to pursue happiness when you are starving.
Even if that last distinction seems arbitrary to you, I'm sure you can admit the central importance in life of food. Most of my everyday life is concerned with food, whether that is reminiscing about the delicious breakfast I had that morning, or (more likely) daydreaming about my next meal. I am incredibly fortunate, and I try to keep my blessings at the forefront of my mind every day. I have never gone a day in my life where I haven't been able to eat to my satisfaction, and there is perhaps no greater privilege I can ask for. My certainty in sustenance has allowed me to focus my life on everything but my basic needs. I have been able to pursue music, academics, athletics, friendships, and countless other activities that would have taken the back seat to hunger, had I not been as fortunate. Satisfaction of hunger, the most basic primal need, always comes first. I have been unbelievably lucky, and for that I am thankful.
For many Americans, however, this is simply not the case. Imagine that you are a mother, unable to provide for her children and herself, who forgoes dinner so that her kids can eat. This is the greatest sacrifice: denial of basic needs for one's self in order to serve her children. Imagine that you are a child who worries each night whether he or she will go to bed hungry, who worries if he or she will be able to eat a lunch at school. How important can math class seem when your stomach is growling? When you are hungry, your biology is urging you to pursue food however possible. The pursuit of food rarely coincides with studies of trigonometry or European history. Poverty and hunger are the central issues that define our failed educational system. It is incumbent upon those of us lucky enough to enjoy privilege to provide for those who cannot enjoy the same liberties. Life is simply not the same when you body is screaming for food, when your children ask you if there will be dinner on the table that night. It is unreasonable and immoral to hold those families to the same standards that we hold well-nourished families. It shows a complete misunderstanding of our animal and basic nature.
Perhaps this last point needs further elaboration. One popular archetype spread about in the right wing is that of the welfare queen. Reagan popularized the term (without basis in reality, I might add) during his candidacy and presidency. The idea is that there are countless women out there (almost always imagined as black or Hispanic, another issue deserving attention), who are taking advantage of the welfare system. I've even heard arguments that low-income women are out there "just having babies" for the social security benefits. Really? I don't even know where to start with this argument: it is too misinformed, too xenophobic, too vain, too envious to even tackle in a systematic nature. I'll start with the idea that people are having children for the social security benefits. Have you ever witnessed a pregnancy? Labor may be the greatest pain a human being can go through in their life - I don't buy the argument that many low-income women are just popping out babies left and right for a few extra bucks. The insinuation that they are doing illustrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how difficult pregnancy is. It is also a disservice to lower-income and minority women, the implication being that they don't love their children, but view them as a means for profit.
Furthermore, it's not as though the social security benefits and welfare we provide for low-income individuals outweighs the cost of raising a child. A child places immeasurable strain on a family, as well as great pressure on the budget. This strain is scarcely alleviated by the pittance we allow these young mothers. Additionally, we cannot allow a few bad apples to ruin the batch. I'm sure there are a few women out there who do take advantage of the system in whatever way possible. This may be true, and it does cost American taxpayers money. But the solution is not to dissolve and destroy the whole system, because that unduly punishes the families who were doing things the right way. Plenty of good, hardworking individuals use welfare to provide for the families in ways they otherwise would not be able to. To rob them of this assistance in order to punish that small minority who is taking advantage of the system would be criminal. Let me repeat this: to punish those who are suffering in order to level justice against a few cheaters is a crime against humanity. The last point about welfare that I would like to make is that the children have no choice in the matter. Whether my parents are good and honest people or evil and dishonest people is no choice of mine. I was "created equal," just like everyone else. So why should my peers live in the lap of luxury, while my parents' benefits are slashed left and right in the name of efficiency? If I am a child, what do I care about the efficiency of the economy, or the fairness of the system? All I know is that my stomach is screaming for sustenance and I am not receiving it. Even if a "welfare queen" somehow popped out five kids "just for the benefits," that family deserves to receive government assistance. The children did not choose to be born into that circumstance, they are just struggling to survive. To deny assistance to children, based on no actions of their own, is undemocratic, unamerican, and immoral. This should be a fundamental question that is held in mind on all public policy issues: how does this policy affect the children? Regardless of the actions of the parents, if you believe in the values of the Declaration of Independence, you must recognize the necessity of providing for our nation's youth.
This brings me to a recent congressional vote about food stamp benefits. In our frenzy about budget deficits and debt, we are cutting many programs that should not be cut. A recent bid to preserve $4.5 billion in SNAP (food stamps) assistance failed the Senate by a margin of 33-66. This shows how out of touch our Senate has become. By a two-thirds margin, the senate decided to cut necessary funds that would put dinner on the table for many innocent and unknowing children. In this article:Food Stamp Vote in Senate, it is noted that "the decrease would amount to about $90 a month for an affected family, representing a quarter of its food budget." This is a quarter of a family's food budget who already qualifies for food assistance. This is kicking a man while he is already down. The family is struggling to make ends meet and provide for their children, and we want to remove another quarter of their food budget? This disgusts me in the most basic way. How can we, on the one hand, expect our children to succeed in schools, expect the parents to just "go out and get a job," when they are starving? The reality that most congressional deals are brokered over expensive Washington dinners is a tragic and cruel irony, especially when they adopt policy that robs many Americans of basic necessities. The national debt is not because of welfare, but because of stupidly low tax rates (the lowest they've been in 80 years except for a brief year and a half period in the Reagan years), because of higher-than-Cold War levels of defense spending, and because of a global economic depression that has taken its toll on all developed nations. To cut welfare in the interest of national debt is clear class warfare - not the imagined variety that "job creators" scream and whine about. The total government spending in this year is about $3.7 trillion, and this policy would save about $4.5 billion dollars. That is a grand savings of .1%. Are point one percent savings worth the immeasurable pain this would put on many already-struggling Americans? Budgets are all about priorities, and to cut food for such a microscopic savings demarcates exactly where our lawmakers' priorities are. And it is made all too painfully clear to many hungry Americans where our politicians priorities are not. Food assistance should be made a priority. It is really hard to care about anything else when you are starving. I propose a society where the right to food is held alongside the other fundamental and inalienable American rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It's pretty damn hard to pursue happiness when you are starving.
Friday, June 15, 2012
Competition and Cooperation
I was tempted to title this post "competition vs. cooperation," because it is all too easy to think in terms of opposition and division, but that would have run counter to my point - that competition simply cannot explain everything. Competition is the central focus of our society: we idolize athletes who compete at the highest levels, we push our children into competitive sports at earlier and earlier ages, we educate our students to succeed in a competitive market economy, and we praise the "free" market for maximizing competition. It is as if competition, in and of itself, is an intrinsic virtue that can solve all problems. In fact, Mitt Romney has recently been praising privatization in higher education, a venture with dubious results, as this article points out:http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/06/when-privatization-doesnt-work.html. But this blog post is not really about the private-public divide, but more about our mindset and understanding of how the world works.
If all your life has been spent in competitive ventures, it is very difficult to extricate yourself from those mental confines. All of your life has been reduced to a mad dash to the top, where your social relations are divvied into winners and losers, your accomplishments have been tallied as victories and defeats, and each success is merely the launching pad for your next battle. This is essentially the model of the world that we are teaching our children. It is reflected in every level of our society, and is fundamentally undemocratic, un-American, and oppressive. Consider the so-called solutions to our broken education system over the last decade: Bush proposed a "No Child Left Behind Act," which had the brilliant idea of penalizing struggling schools and rewarding successful schools. Thus, kids are driven to succeed on standardized tests, even at the expense of their own education, in order to procure funding for their school district. Kids are being taught every day that the only reason they are learning their material is to pass some stupid test that some bureaucrats decided would measure how "smart" they are. This "solution" has been excoriated in the literature on educational methodology, due to the increased emphasis on measurement and the lack of emphasis on real learning, cooperation, growth, or education. As long as we redefine academic success to meet some sort of metric, we can fool ourselves into believing that our educational system isn't broken. But it is.
Worse yet, what does President Obama do with his educational reform? He essentially doubles down on Bush's policy, extending the benefits for succeeding school and worsening the penalties for those who are struggling. We have a fractal pattern of competition in education, and it doesn't work on any level. In each classroom, students fight to be the top of the class, to get that A+, to be the teacher's pet, because that is all they are ever taught to do. Within a school, teacher's are being assessed on the abilities of their students; hence, teachers are encouraged to teach to the test, to cheat, to do whatever it takes to make their students appear the best. They are not incentivized to teach the best, just to appear the best. Among schools, principals fight for ratings and designations of success, because they know that is where the money comes from. The districts compete for fewer and fewer state resources, and the states are so strapped for cash that they all come crawling to the federal government. The federal government's solution is to exacerbate the causes and worsen the problem at every level. Teaching competition as the only mode of thought encourages superficial learning, rote memorization, teacher appeasement, cheating and dishonesty. One only needs to look at the rampant cheating scandals that have surfaced in Chicago, Boston, LA, NY, and other major metropolises to see the effects of merit-based education. It simply does not work.
This is the same model that Mitt Romney is praising in higher education. It is dangerous, it does not work, and it simply robs our students of the very thing they believe they are receiving: an education.
It is not only in education that competition is a dangerous paradigm; its effects are much more pervasive than that. In prisons and in health care, competition leads to a denial of service, rather than improved service. It is a more profitable, therefore a more competitive, business model to provide the least service at the lowest cost to the most people possible. This business model may provide the best results to the most people in certain industries, like manufacturing or technology, but surely one can see how it would fail in prisons or in health care. The health care firm that denies coverage to an individual is improving their competitiveness, but at what cost? While the health care company is avoiding a loss in their pocketbook, they are prolonging or worsening real pain and suffering for an individual. This is literally sickening. The most competitive health package is one that provides the illusion of grandeur, but drops the client at the first sign of an expensive health condition. Turning now to prisons, I cannot see how it is a good idea to turn over the incarceration system to private incentives and private hands. Doing so represents a complete disavowal of our duties to our citizenry, prisoner or free. Cost-cutting procedures in a private incarceration facility do not keep public safety at the forefront of thought, but focus on the bottom line. To compensate, prisoners are held in more vicious and restrictive conditions, which seems to me to be a clear infringement upon their constitutional rights. The state should be the steward of all of its citizens, whether or not they have committed a criminal infraction. The idea that a person should make a profit off of another's incarceration is base and immoral. It is akin to slavery: the more people that are not free, the more profitable a business for the prison owner. This is disgusting.
Yet many still persist in their idolatry of competition, despite of all the "collateral" damage. I recently watched an interview Jon Steward did with Edward Conard, who was infuriating if only for his obstinacy. The premise of Conard's argument is that America must provide incentives for innovation, and that competitive free market incentives are the only method for doing so. Despite many arguments to the contrary, he persisted in his view that financial incentives are the only effective incentive for engendering innovation. His myopic view of the world is formed by a life spent in the financial sector - where all is profit and loss, winners and losers, boom and bust. The problem with a competition-based economy is that there are exponentially more losers than winners, by the very nature of the game. He claims that innovation and the improved commodities we now over-produce outweigh the massive human loss of the market economy. I disagree. I do not see how an I-pod is worth the life of a worker in China, or how my Nike basketball shoes are worth hundreds of times the wages factory workers receive in the Philippines. I reject the idea that having Microsoft and Boeing as successful American corporations is worth the millions of Americans who are out of work, underemployed, hungry, unhappy, and struggling. The despair of millions is not outweighed by the trendy baubles we grow so attached to.
Competition spurs alienation, isolation, anxiety, and causes a host of extraneous problems that are often forgotten about in conventional economic analysis. Competition is great at creating vast holdings of wealth that are kept in a small circle of plutocrats and oligarchs. This translates to economic data that shouldn't be read as representative of national prosperity, such as GDP growth or stock prices. The reality is this: I don't give a shit if GDP grows by one half or one percent, and I don't care if the NASDAQ falls another 100 points. What matters to me, and to the vast majority of Americans outside of the investment class, is how the economy serves me locally. Are there enough teachers employed in our schools? Are there enough police officers on the streets? Are there enough fire fighters and emergency workers? Are our hospitals amply employed? Do we have infrastructure growth and development? Can I find a job without sacrificing my ethics or individuality? None of these questions can be answered by looking at the health of the national economy. It is simply because of the myopic view of the top as the best: and the financial sector, being the focus of our economy, is frequently misconstrued as the most important. The financial sector is the pinnacle of competitive energy, and is also the source of the most waste and human damage. Competition must not be taught as a paradigm, nor held up as some sort of economic fix-all. It is only through concerted effort - which can only be accomplished together - that America can overcome this crisis. We must ask ourselves if the system we live in is representative of the values we claim to uphold. In my view, it clearly falls short.
If all your life has been spent in competitive ventures, it is very difficult to extricate yourself from those mental confines. All of your life has been reduced to a mad dash to the top, where your social relations are divvied into winners and losers, your accomplishments have been tallied as victories and defeats, and each success is merely the launching pad for your next battle. This is essentially the model of the world that we are teaching our children. It is reflected in every level of our society, and is fundamentally undemocratic, un-American, and oppressive. Consider the so-called solutions to our broken education system over the last decade: Bush proposed a "No Child Left Behind Act," which had the brilliant idea of penalizing struggling schools and rewarding successful schools. Thus, kids are driven to succeed on standardized tests, even at the expense of their own education, in order to procure funding for their school district. Kids are being taught every day that the only reason they are learning their material is to pass some stupid test that some bureaucrats decided would measure how "smart" they are. This "solution" has been excoriated in the literature on educational methodology, due to the increased emphasis on measurement and the lack of emphasis on real learning, cooperation, growth, or education. As long as we redefine academic success to meet some sort of metric, we can fool ourselves into believing that our educational system isn't broken. But it is.
Worse yet, what does President Obama do with his educational reform? He essentially doubles down on Bush's policy, extending the benefits for succeeding school and worsening the penalties for those who are struggling. We have a fractal pattern of competition in education, and it doesn't work on any level. In each classroom, students fight to be the top of the class, to get that A+, to be the teacher's pet, because that is all they are ever taught to do. Within a school, teacher's are being assessed on the abilities of their students; hence, teachers are encouraged to teach to the test, to cheat, to do whatever it takes to make their students appear the best. They are not incentivized to teach the best, just to appear the best. Among schools, principals fight for ratings and designations of success, because they know that is where the money comes from. The districts compete for fewer and fewer state resources, and the states are so strapped for cash that they all come crawling to the federal government. The federal government's solution is to exacerbate the causes and worsen the problem at every level. Teaching competition as the only mode of thought encourages superficial learning, rote memorization, teacher appeasement, cheating and dishonesty. One only needs to look at the rampant cheating scandals that have surfaced in Chicago, Boston, LA, NY, and other major metropolises to see the effects of merit-based education. It simply does not work.
This is the same model that Mitt Romney is praising in higher education. It is dangerous, it does not work, and it simply robs our students of the very thing they believe they are receiving: an education.
It is not only in education that competition is a dangerous paradigm; its effects are much more pervasive than that. In prisons and in health care, competition leads to a denial of service, rather than improved service. It is a more profitable, therefore a more competitive, business model to provide the least service at the lowest cost to the most people possible. This business model may provide the best results to the most people in certain industries, like manufacturing or technology, but surely one can see how it would fail in prisons or in health care. The health care firm that denies coverage to an individual is improving their competitiveness, but at what cost? While the health care company is avoiding a loss in their pocketbook, they are prolonging or worsening real pain and suffering for an individual. This is literally sickening. The most competitive health package is one that provides the illusion of grandeur, but drops the client at the first sign of an expensive health condition. Turning now to prisons, I cannot see how it is a good idea to turn over the incarceration system to private incentives and private hands. Doing so represents a complete disavowal of our duties to our citizenry, prisoner or free. Cost-cutting procedures in a private incarceration facility do not keep public safety at the forefront of thought, but focus on the bottom line. To compensate, prisoners are held in more vicious and restrictive conditions, which seems to me to be a clear infringement upon their constitutional rights. The state should be the steward of all of its citizens, whether or not they have committed a criminal infraction. The idea that a person should make a profit off of another's incarceration is base and immoral. It is akin to slavery: the more people that are not free, the more profitable a business for the prison owner. This is disgusting.
Yet many still persist in their idolatry of competition, despite of all the "collateral" damage. I recently watched an interview Jon Steward did with Edward Conard, who was infuriating if only for his obstinacy. The premise of Conard's argument is that America must provide incentives for innovation, and that competitive free market incentives are the only method for doing so. Despite many arguments to the contrary, he persisted in his view that financial incentives are the only effective incentive for engendering innovation. His myopic view of the world is formed by a life spent in the financial sector - where all is profit and loss, winners and losers, boom and bust. The problem with a competition-based economy is that there are exponentially more losers than winners, by the very nature of the game. He claims that innovation and the improved commodities we now over-produce outweigh the massive human loss of the market economy. I disagree. I do not see how an I-pod is worth the life of a worker in China, or how my Nike basketball shoes are worth hundreds of times the wages factory workers receive in the Philippines. I reject the idea that having Microsoft and Boeing as successful American corporations is worth the millions of Americans who are out of work, underemployed, hungry, unhappy, and struggling. The despair of millions is not outweighed by the trendy baubles we grow so attached to.
Competition spurs alienation, isolation, anxiety, and causes a host of extraneous problems that are often forgotten about in conventional economic analysis. Competition is great at creating vast holdings of wealth that are kept in a small circle of plutocrats and oligarchs. This translates to economic data that shouldn't be read as representative of national prosperity, such as GDP growth or stock prices. The reality is this: I don't give a shit if GDP grows by one half or one percent, and I don't care if the NASDAQ falls another 100 points. What matters to me, and to the vast majority of Americans outside of the investment class, is how the economy serves me locally. Are there enough teachers employed in our schools? Are there enough police officers on the streets? Are there enough fire fighters and emergency workers? Are our hospitals amply employed? Do we have infrastructure growth and development? Can I find a job without sacrificing my ethics or individuality? None of these questions can be answered by looking at the health of the national economy. It is simply because of the myopic view of the top as the best: and the financial sector, being the focus of our economy, is frequently misconstrued as the most important. The financial sector is the pinnacle of competitive energy, and is also the source of the most waste and human damage. Competition must not be taught as a paradigm, nor held up as some sort of economic fix-all. It is only through concerted effort - which can only be accomplished together - that America can overcome this crisis. We must ask ourselves if the system we live in is representative of the values we claim to uphold. In my view, it clearly falls short.
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