For some context, first, I'd like to place my own little life within the greater scope of the American arts scene. I was incredibly lucky to have parents who not only raised me with love and support and creativity and high expectations, but also the financial means to offer me the ability to take advantage of the opportunities that I had in dance. That being said, I worked through high school, and spent two years dancing for Carolina Ballet making less than minimum wage because in the middle of a recession, the arts are not an industry with money. I could -- and did -- make more tutoring AP Calculus at night for an hour than in a whole day working at the ballet in a career that I'd been training for actively since I was 8 years old. I am finally -- in my almost fifth year dancing full time -- making enough money to be completely independent, which is true simply because I moved to Europe, where I'm quite officially an employee of the "Marié de Toulouse" (the Mayor's office). So when I talk about how I believe government has an obligation to provide for its citizens in a few concrete arenas, I'm literally living my dream while making a living due to the support of arts organizations by a government, though turns out I had to move to France to find it. So, without further ado:
Government is not something to be scared of; instead, democracy's original form is one of hope, one where people willingly enter into a social contract in order to preserve and protect their essential rights and use collaboration to its best advantages. Most of the reasons that I'm proud to claim the American side of my heritage have to do with our ideals -- that people have the power of self-governance, and can create a system in order to protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all its citizens, designed to continually give individual citizens the ability to actively participate in their government. Of course, the reality accompanying those ideals has never been perfect -- "all" used to be only rich white men, and we've progressed slowly from there over the past few centuries, and still have a ways to go. Because the length of this post is quickly getting out of hand, I'm going to look at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as broad categories to guide the next few posts...
Life
I believe that providing life to your citizens means a deep commitment to ensuring that people have access to clean water, healthy food, and adequate health care. We've had a fair amount of success with getting clean drinking water to almost every corner of the country (bravo), though I'm sure there is lots to be said about the state of many of our rivers and lakes due to pollution, and hydrofracking is raising a new threat to the groundwater of surrounding communities. Luckily I don't know much about this, so I'll refer you to Gasland, the documentary about the natural gas industry that I haven't seen yet, and call it a night.
Healthy food is another issue -- the industrialization of farming has completely changed the landscape of food. Pesticides and chemical fertilizers are widely used on huge fields of one crop, depleting the soil of nitrogen and without diversity, opening ourselves up devastating consequences of disease. In a 2007 study put out by the University of Michigan, organic farming has been shown to be equally productive to conventional methods in developed countries, and much more productive in developing ones, without exposing farmers to crushing debts incurred by buying fertilizers and seeds that aren't natural to the region. Ivette Perfecto, one of the leaders of the study, was clear about how organic farming could produce enough to feed the world, while also limiting the damaging effects of conventional farming, such as "soil erosion, greenhouse gas emission, increased pest resistance and loss of biodiversity" (see http://ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=5936 for the summary of the study).
In addition to going organic, of course, is the dramatic need to eat (and consume in other forms) more locally. The number of miles food travels to our dinner plates is huge, making the whole industry more inefficient, expensive, and illogical than it needs to be. Government subsidies of some of the largest crops (ie corn and feed grains) make it easier for corporate farms to buy up smaller family farms, encourages a lack of crop diversity, and makes high-fructose corn syrup abundantly cheap, which in turn has shaped the processed food industry. Instead, people need to be actively participating in their own diets, taking responsibility for what they put in their bodies and what their money is supporting. Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution takes a look at the American food industry and education surrounding food, and is frightening -- elementary school kids who don't know what broccoli is, or a tomato, let alone where their meat comes from (hint: live animals, not the freezer section). The amount of meat that we (er, Americans, not me) eat, for that matter, is also incredibly unsustainable (and has ripple effects due to the methane gas produced by cows contributing to global warming, the huge amounts of grain going to feed cattle rather than humans, and the environmental impacts of the massive feedlots). So there are lots of cultural changes in how we eat and think about food that need to accompany legislative shifts toward supporting smaller independent farms and suppliers of local produce rather than massive farm conglomerates. (To learn more about the things we need to do, please check out Jamie Oliver's fantastic TED talk http://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_oliver.html about obesity and food education).
Obesity then can be our transition into talking about the healthcare system. I also believe that our society, through government as our collaborative commitment to supporting each other in mutually beneficial goals, benefits tremendously from healthy citizens and should be making every effort to support public health. Diet-related diseases are the biggest killer in the US, hands down. Around $150 billion a year is spent here on health care for diet-related problems, and that is set to double in the next ten years. Incredibly though, we have a cure for obesity, it's not cancer or AIDS or countless other diseases where there's nothing yet we can do to get rid of it completely. What we eat is killing us, and bankrupting the country -- in the whole debate about the national debt (which clearly included how the current social support programs have rising costs), was anyone talking about how to make people healthier, and therefore less expensive to care for? If so, I missed it, but surely there are some serious dollar amounts worth investing now to campaign for a healthier nation (keep at it, Michelle Obama).
I believe that providing life to your citizens means a deep commitment to ensuring that people have access to clean water, healthy food, and adequate health care. We've had a fair amount of success with getting clean drinking water to almost every corner of the country (bravo), though I'm sure there is lots to be said about the state of many of our rivers and lakes due to pollution, and hydrofracking is raising a new threat to the groundwater of surrounding communities. Luckily I don't know much about this, so I'll refer you to Gasland, the documentary about the natural gas industry that I haven't seen yet, and call it a night.
Healthy food is another issue -- the industrialization of farming has completely changed the landscape of food. Pesticides and chemical fertilizers are widely used on huge fields of one crop, depleting the soil of nitrogen and without diversity, opening ourselves up devastating consequences of disease. In a 2007 study put out by the University of Michigan, organic farming has been shown to be equally productive to conventional methods in developed countries, and much more productive in developing ones, without exposing farmers to crushing debts incurred by buying fertilizers and seeds that aren't natural to the region. Ivette Perfecto, one of the leaders of the study, was clear about how organic farming could produce enough to feed the world, while also limiting the damaging effects of conventional farming, such as "soil erosion, greenhouse gas emission, increased pest resistance and loss of biodiversity" (see http://ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=5936 for the summary of the study).
In addition to going organic, of course, is the dramatic need to eat (and consume in other forms) more locally. The number of miles food travels to our dinner plates is huge, making the whole industry more inefficient, expensive, and illogical than it needs to be. Government subsidies of some of the largest crops (ie corn and feed grains) make it easier for corporate farms to buy up smaller family farms, encourages a lack of crop diversity, and makes high-fructose corn syrup abundantly cheap, which in turn has shaped the processed food industry. Instead, people need to be actively participating in their own diets, taking responsibility for what they put in their bodies and what their money is supporting. Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution takes a look at the American food industry and education surrounding food, and is frightening -- elementary school kids who don't know what broccoli is, or a tomato, let alone where their meat comes from (hint: live animals, not the freezer section). The amount of meat that we (er, Americans, not me) eat, for that matter, is also incredibly unsustainable (and has ripple effects due to the methane gas produced by cows contributing to global warming, the huge amounts of grain going to feed cattle rather than humans, and the environmental impacts of the massive feedlots). So there are lots of cultural changes in how we eat and think about food that need to accompany legislative shifts toward supporting smaller independent farms and suppliers of local produce rather than massive farm conglomerates. (To learn more about the things we need to do, please check out Jamie Oliver's fantastic TED talk http://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_oliver.html about obesity and food education).
Obesity then can be our transition into talking about the healthcare system. I also believe that our society, through government as our collaborative commitment to supporting each other in mutually beneficial goals, benefits tremendously from healthy citizens and should be making every effort to support public health. Diet-related diseases are the biggest killer in the US, hands down. Around $150 billion a year is spent here on health care for diet-related problems, and that is set to double in the next ten years. Incredibly though, we have a cure for obesity, it's not cancer or AIDS or countless other diseases where there's nothing yet we can do to get rid of it completely. What we eat is killing us, and bankrupting the country -- in the whole debate about the national debt (which clearly included how the current social support programs have rising costs), was anyone talking about how to make people healthier, and therefore less expensive to care for? If so, I missed it, but surely there are some serious dollar amounts worth investing now to campaign for a healthier nation (keep at it, Michelle Obama).
And then comes the insurance debate. Many of our healthcare problems are preventable, but are early treatment and diagnosis is inaccessible to the poor or uninsured. We end up spending many times more money treating a disease later (or in the emergency room) rather than preventing it up front (75% of all health care dollars are spent on patients with one or more chronic conditions, many of which can be prevented, including diabetes, obesity, heart disease, lung disease, high blood pressure, and cancer. Source: Health Affairs). The US spent $2.5 trillion dollars on healthcare in 2009, the most per capita in the world, yet is 43rd in infant mortality rate (approximately 30,000 infants die in the United States each year. The infant mortality rate, which is the risk of death during the first year of life, is related to the underlying health of the mother, public health practices, socioeconomic conditions, and availability and use of appropriate health care for infants and pregnant women. Sources: CDC and National Center for Health Statistics), and 47th in terms of total life expectancy. There are a lot of countries that you need to list before you get to number 43... For the home of many of the best medical care facilities in the world, we're clearly not doing things quite right. While our citizens are spending more time being sick, less time being productive, and missing chances to treat diseases early using less money and less time, the private insurance companies are taking home a hefty profit -- more than 20% of every dollar goes to insurance overhead costs, while simultaneously driving up hospital and physician administration fees (http://masscare.org/health-care-costs/overhead-costs-of-health-care/). Personally, I prefer the money that I spend on health care to be going towards making sure that I'm healthy. Surely it doesn't have to quite so complicated.
I'd love to hear your thoughts, read any articles you have to send my way, or hear more generally about how things are in your lovely lives. Thanks for indulging me, apparently I've been having some trouble expressing myself as fully as I want to be able to in French, because this can't have come out of nowhere ;)
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