Where does the United States stand in relation to other countries in standard of Living? Here’s our placement.
UN Development Index 15th
Human Poverty Index 16th
The Economist’s Quality of Life Index 13th
This is not very impressive. We have an incredible amount of money, power and resources in this nation – 13th at best?
How did this happen?
James Pilant
P.S. If you click on the graph, it goes to full size. jp
I like most people like being told how smart I am. The next best thing to being told how smart you is to find agreement with your ideas. Here’s agreement with my thoughts. I get a certain guilty pleasure putting it up. This is a book review from the web site – Audiobooks Today Blog. Once I discovered the web site, I immediately favorited it. I’m not an audio book guide preferring to read but the book reviews are wonderful. You would enjoy it.
THE BETRAYAL OF AMERICAN PROSPERITY by Clyde Prestowitz is a chilling examination of why the American Century is over, and how emerging countries like China will own the 21st. It unravels the history of our giving up production while increasing our consumption of imports, and what this portends for the U.S. unless a radical change of course is undertaken now, (and Americans get back to work doing what they once did six decades ago). Ominously, few in America act as if our affluence or standard of living will ever change, and instead continue to look to the government for bailouts while watching ball games on TV, yet when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner visited Beijing University in 2009—and told students there that the dollar was safe—their response was that THEY LAUGHED. Not only are our remaining high tech jobs moving overseas, along with the plants that make computer chips, but service jobs are moving to India too. To top it off, even as our infrastructure is failing and our debt is increasing, our baby boomers are now starting to retire in record numbers, expecting the government to help support them. Narrated by Erik Synnestvedt, the audiobook pulls no punches in attacking the shrug-away “don’t worry” attitude of the Bush administration, and a universal shortsightedness that focused on quarterly statements while muleishly wearing blinders about the future. Unless we start exporting something other than soda and cigarettes, Prestowitz reveals, Americans will soon be forced to give up the “something for nothing” mantra that has characterized our accumulation of debt on the backs of “third world” producers (including cheap oil for much longer) as they acquire “first world” status from us by owning all our industries.
Like me, the author finds the policies of the United States to be disastrous over the long term. Soon, a visitor to South America, no matter what nation, will notice the obvious similarities to our nation except some of them have much better statistics. What I mean by statistics is infant mortality rate and life span. Some of these nations has overtaken us in these areas.
This country is 38th in life expectancy. The United States of American is second rate in life expectancy in comparison to Costa Rico (and Cuba).
Just great. What’s next? A high infant mortality rate?
Oops! We’re 33rd. For every 1,000 births in this country, more than six children die. Guess who we’re behind this time? Cuba and Slovakia.
There’s 195 countries on the list. I wonder with our infrastructure disintegrating and our hospital system headed toward disaster, how low we can go. Maybe we can hit a round number like 100? What do you think?
James Pilant
The guys at Foreclosureblues are hard workers and well informed. They have dubbed the current crisis, Robo-gate. I like it!
This is their update on the situation. It’s thoroughly excellent. It’s a good summary. It is worthy of your time.
James Pilant
via Foreclosureblues
(Bizarrely, enough, the British are envious of our Fair Use provisions, and the article begins with praise for the American doctrine. This is bizarre, because there are current proposals in Congress to butcher these protections.)
“Over there, they have what are called ‘fair-use’ provisions, which some people believe gives companies more breathing space to create new products and services.
“So I can announce today that we are reviewing our IP laws, to see if we can make them fit for the internet age. I want to encourage the sort of creative innovation that exists in America.”
The six month review will look at what the UK can learn from US rules on the use of copyright material without the rights holder’s permission.
It will also look at removing some of the potential barriers that stand in the way of new internet-based business models, such as the cost of obtaining permission from rights holders and the cost and complexity of enforcing intellectual property rights in the UK and internationally.
If only we had the kind of forward looking leadership here to encourage a lessening of our over protections of copyrights (SEVENTY years plus the life of the author). What genius thought that was appropriate protection? Why should a publishing company hold those kinds of rights for so long? The only answer is that the publishing industry has a tremendous influence over legislation.
What that means in practice is that hundreds of thousands of works that should have passed into the public domain are lost to time, discarded by libraries, thrown away by owners who don’t realize their value, or simply decay into the dust. These things could be preserved for every future generation of Americans by web sites like Project Gutenberg.
But because of the rapacious greed of American companies and their minions in the Congress, a good sized chunk of American’s intellectual heritage is discarded like used toilet paper.
Imagine the writers and the thinkers who thought they were creating a legacy for their fellow citizens to be frustrated by the shallow fundraising of the the flag waving hypocrites of the American Congress. It is hard to think of more disgusting show of influence than these well financed companies and the Congress of the United States laying waste to American ‘s past for the long green.
James Pilant
Simon Johnson writes in the web site, the Baseline Scenario, about the Obama Administration’s protection of banks and failure to hold the mega financial institutions to standard of law and justice.
The premise – and central mistake – of the Obama administration in 2009-10 can be summed up in what the president said to leading bankers on that fateful day, March 27, 2009: “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks”.
The organizing notion then, provided by Larry Summers and presumably Tim Geithner, was that the “responsible” administration would protect global megabanks from “dangerous” populists, in return for cooperation and better behavior. This kid gloves strategy turned out to be a very bad bet – not only is it far from best practice with regard to handling failed financial systems (there must be consequences for executives and shareholders, at the very least), but it also allowed banks and their close allies to bounce back to profitability and use that cash (underwritten by the taxpayer) to oppose the administration on financial reform and, according to credible public reports, to funnel large amounts of money into various “populist” anti-administration midterm campaigns.
The article calls for White House support for Elizabeth Warren and the new agency to protect consumers from the depredations of financial predators. I strongly support that.
I want you to understand that I come to criticize the Obama Administration reluctantly but their actions make a mockery of ethics, of doing the right thing, and of carrying out their obligations to the law.
James Pilant
This is a shorter, more carefully revised version of my earlier “My Students” posting.
One of the things I like to teach my students is that they have no intellectual inferiority in regard to the Ivy League schools.
On the face of it, that may sound ridiculous, but it is not.
A great many of these heavily lauded (and immensely well paid) graduates of the schools blessed by the establishment have participated wholly and happily in the greatest financial debacle in history. Their well honed degrees disguised their incompetence, their stupidity, their lack of intellectual depth and their overwhelming sense of entitlement.
The fact that so many of these Ivy Leaguers journey off to cash in their degrees and their honor in various financial firms is a black mark against our educational system. You see, we depend on this system to produce the scholars, the politicians, and all those various professions which make nations function with honor and purpose. Instead we get a rush of graduates toward a predatory system of financial institutions.
My students would try to take care of their fellow citizens never forgetting where they came from and the struggle they must make to simply get a job in the current market. They deserve better. Nevertheless, from this crop is my hope, that these people, these individuals working to better themselves will be the leaders of tomorrow, not the children of the elite, not the well favored few, but my students.
It is not a matter of free will or gumption that keeps my students from being as successful as those. It is a well ingrained attitude, a lack of expectations, and a consistent contempt and suspicion of the educated. We can do better. We, the citizens, have a responsibility to our children to act the part of guides and supporters. I do not mean the blind support given whatever the merits. I mean a willingness to encourage excellence and the hard, difficult job of not submitting to the idea that some people are better. They are better when they prove it. My student can prove their excellence.
But learning is not just a matter of schooling. It is a life long endeavor. Most people stop when they put that piece of paper on the wall. But that is all they are, paper, wood pulp. If my students are to change this state, this country, and this world, there must be support and dedication to a lifetime of learning. A person who continues the task of development, of becoming, is inferior to no learner on earth, whatever their degree.
There are books and as long as there are books – as long as the great works of mankind – are readily available, any human being can become educated and developed. Any individual can build the power of understanding, a basic command of the ideas that govern this society, and a sense of purpose in their lives. But we have to believe. My students need that. My students need to walk in a community where people believe they are just as good, just as smart and just as capable as students from anywhere in the world.
All they have is the power of their minds and the determination of their hearts. If they only believe.
James Pilant
The bankers know exactly whom to blame for the housing collapse and foreclosure fiascos. It’s you — the devious American homeowner who wickedly borrowed the easy money they had on offer.
Jane Bryant Quinn writing for CBS Money Watch –
No blame to the lenders who dreamed up high-risk mortgages and doled them out to anyone with a pulse. No blame to mortgage brokers and bankers who misled customers into signing up. No blame to Wall Street for whisking risky loans into securities falsely labeled as “Triple-A safe.”
No, you’re the problem, for deliberately borrowing more from the innocent, trusting bankers than you could afford. And now, in foreclosure, you’re whining about a few false robo-signatures on documents that the lenders use to evict. You’re simply plotting get out of paying what you owe. “People aren’t taking responsibility for their own actions,” the self-righteous bankers tell each other at their watering holes. Kick ‘em out of their homes and let’s move on.
Talk about not taking responsibility. The bankers see the specks in their borrowers’ eyes and deny the logs that are in their own. On the field of honor, the entire financial industry has melted away.
I was planning to write something today along these very lines. She already did it, and it is much easier for me to put her stuff in a blog and justly praise her for it than for me to re-invent the wheel.
Great writing!
James Pilant
From the Benjamin Franklin biography by John Torrey Morse, Jr., page 39.
In another enterprise Franklin shrewdly enlisted the boon-companion element on his side, with the result of immediate and brilliant success. He began as usual by reading a paper before the Junto, and through this intervention set the people thinking concerning the utter lack of any organization for extinguishing fires in the town. In consequence the Union Fire Company was soon established, the first thing of the kind in the city. Franklin continued a member of it for half a century. It was thoroughly equipped and efficiently conducted. An item in the terms of association was that the members should spend a social evening together once a month. The example was followed; other companies were formed, and fifty years later Franklin boasted that since that time the city had never “lost by fire more than one or two houses at a time; and the flames have often been extinguished before the house in which they began has been half consumed.”
Franklin does not go out with an idea convinced in advance of its success. He carefully tests his ideas with a chosen audience. The Junto was an association he created of other capable young men. They came together to discuss ideas, exchange information, and to lobby for their interests. The idea for an organization to fight fires made abundant sense but he tested it in front of this chosen audience to gauge its reception.
The Junto gave him a testing ground for his ideas. He could get feedback in a safe environment. If his idea was not well thought out, it will not be reported. If successful, he can then take an idea which has passed muster in an intelligent practical organization and test it out in the community.
One of the things that gets us in trouble is pride. Franklin in his autobiography admits that vanity (pride) was key to much of his success. That he is able to recognize that and give it due credit is amazing. Most of us spend our lives lying about ourselves to everybody including and particularly ourselves. Pride has it proper place as Franklin realizes. But when you have to much you tend to over reach.
The idea for a fire company is so obviously good, it would have been easy to bypass the testing steps. It would have been easy just to expect the idea to sell itself. After all, isn’t everyone afraid of fire and hadn’t the city almost burned down twice within memory? But he still kept to the process of testing and development building a successful execution from the ground up.
Watch how Franklin takes even the best of his ideas and carefully works them into reality. How many of us once convinced of an idea can proceed intelligently and cautiously to build consensus for it? No, generally we tell everyone how great it is and reflect astonishment when disagreed with. We can learn from Franklin’s example.
There is certainly an ethical element in the level of respect he is demonstrating in this process for other opinions, the thoughts and ideas of the other members. He is recognizing the importance of these other individuals in the community. He is celebrating their importance, communicating clearly the importance of their thoughts and their support.
He doesn’t just sell an idea. He build allies, develops friendship and allows others to mature and develop by being his friends and associates.
Can you do that?
James Pilant
This is an AP report about one woman’s struggle to stay in her home.
Next time someone says, “They knew what they were signing!” – Ask them, “Should the banks should have to abide by their agreements?” Because what we are seeing across this country over and over and over again are banks renegotiating the loans, making a deal, and then foreclosing anyway.
Where do we go to find the bank’s personal responsibility?
James Pilant
From Yahoo Music Blog, The Amplifier –
What’s the value of a song? Jammie Thomas-Rasset has spent the last few years in court debating that question. The Minnesota mother of four is being penalized for illegally downloading and sharing 24 songs on the peer-to-peer file-sharing network Kazaa in 2006, but how much she owes the record labels has been in question. The jury in her third trial has just ruled that Thomas-Rasset should pay Capitol Records $1.5 million, CNET reports, which breaks down to $62,500 per song. It’s a heavy penalty considering the 24 tunes would only cost approximately $24 on iTunes, which was Thomas-Rasset’ argument, too.
I know it’s wrong to download and share songs. But does that kind of unethical act merit this kind of overwhelming response? I don’t think so.
Is the recording industry biting itself with this kind of nonsense? Yes, it is.
How will that be felt? I don’t know. But I can’t believe that when you do something stupid over and over again, that you won’t get hurt.
Burying a Midwestern mom in insurmountable debt isn’t the best publicity move, so rather than argue the labels are entitled to the cash, the RIAA has sought to make this trial into a cautionary tale for anyone considering illegally downloading music — a reminder that there are penalties. But as the constantly declining weekly Nielsen SoundScan sales figures demonstrate, nothing seems to have deterred music fans from stealing rather than purchasing songs and albums.
This case is potent symbol of how the lawsuit has drifted from defending the poor and helpless into a tool for crushing corporate opponents.
James Pilant
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.