Blessed be,
Joel
We've been well and truly sold on the idea of the individual; 55 percent of Americans under the age of thirty think they will end up being rich.* And if you're going to be rich, what do you need anyone else for? You can see the political results of Looking Out for Number One in the deterioration of all the institutions of our common life. America, once the healthiest nation on earth, now ranks twenty-seventh, below all the nations of Western Europe and even countries like Cyprus and Costa Rica. Our public education system used to be the envy of every nation, but we now lag behind twelve of the eighteen developed nations in fundamental literacy skills; 16 percent of our fifteen-year-olds fall below standard educational benchmarks, compared with 2 percent of Japanese and 5 percent of Canadians. Modern environmentalism was invented in the United States - we pioneered everything from national parks to clean-air legislation - but an index prepared by Columbia University found that America ranked 51st of 142 nations in environmental sustainability. We have the highest percentage of our population in prison. Spending on public works, such as highways and bridges, is falling; more parks and libraries are closing than opening. The Economist recently tried to sum up all such measures into a single quality-of-life index. Even though America trails only Luxembourg in gross domestic product per person, it comes in thirteenth in total quality of life.** And that's now. It would be hard to argue that any of these trends shows much promise for generations yet to come; in any case, the future is beyond the immediate scope of a hyper-individualized life.
Our commitment to this hyper-individualism allows us to tolerate, and even celebrate, inequality so gross that it's almost as much farce as tragedy. The gap between the rich and everyone else is not a cause for concern, but for celebration; its beneficiaries are often hailed as our exemplars. Trump! In 1973 the CEOs of large corporations earned thirty-five times as much as the average worker; now they earn two hundred times as much.*** "Sometime in the late 1970s," observes the journalist Jim Lardner, "our economy began to ... send most of its rewards to those who already had the most. The result is a concentration of income and wealth that is not only higher than it has been since the 1920s, but higher than that of any of the world's other populations." And the further result is that the more and more Americans no longer live in the rich world; instead, they struggle to get by.****
It's hard for most of us to really take this in. We've believed for a very long time that America stands tallest among nations. In 2003, Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, was offering his usual oblique testimony to the Congress about the state of our economy. Accustomed to deferential treatment, he was doubtless surprised when Congressman Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, challenged him. "I think you just don't know what's going on in the real world," Sanders said, offering statistics about inequality and insecurity among Americans. Greenspan replied, in the way that has shut up most of us, "Congressman, we have the highest standard of living in the world."
"Wrong," said Sanders. "Scandinavia has a higher standard of living." Indeed, it does, as do many other European countries and Japan - places were individualism is less hyper.
For a moment, Greenspan was at a loss. Well, he finally said, "we have the highest standard of living for a country our size." Which is true, since the only more populous nations on earth are China and India, and Indonesia and Brazil follow us on the list.*****
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McKibben, Bill. Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. Holt, 2007. pg. 102-4.
* Pete Engardio, "Nice Dream If You Can Live It," Business Week, September 13, 2004.
** Laza Kekic, "The World's Best Country," Economist, http://www.economist.com/theworldin/internationl/displayStory.cfm?story_id=33722495&d=2005; "Quality of Life in the U.S. and Progressive Politics" (August 7, 2005), http://www.dailykos.com
*** Frank, Luxury Fever, p. 33
**** James Lardner, "What's the Problem?" in Lardner and Smith, In-equality Matters, p. 15
***** William Blum, "Letter from America," Ecologist, October 2003.
