As in, Left Behind
Let’s start with an economic problem so obvious many people don’t think about it: water. We can’t live without it, and neither can people who live in developing nations. It should be but isn’t obvious that if your life is focused on basic necessities like boiling and filtering your water, you aren’t focused on productivity. A thousand million people do not have access to safe drinking water, and the problem is getting worse. Even though there are inexpensive things that can be done to improve water quality and supplies, it is expensive to make an entire country’s water supply safe. Private money, thought to be the solution, is not forthcoming. And forgive me for thinking that is a blessing in disguise. Water is too important for a profit motive to be involved.
Another thing we can’t do without — but you probably think about it from time to time — is healthcare. People who are ill generally have trouble doing their jobs well, assuming they can work at all. Well, there’s good news and bad news. It turns out that most Americans get roughly equal healthcare, regardless of race or status. Unfortunately that care is mediocre. I love these last two paragraphs:
Health experts blame the overall poor care on an overburdened, fragmented system that fails to keep close track of patients with an increasing number of multiple conditions.
Quality specialists said improvements can come with more public reporting of performance, more uniform training, more computerized checks and more coordination by patients.
So the problem is too many departments and too much work, but the solution is another department that makes more work. Right.
Now on to an underutilized resource in the United States, ironic considering how commonly it is found, the female labor pool. The summary: “We’re so far behind the rest of the world in commonsense, pro-women and pro-family policies that we don’t need to reinvent the wheel to figure out what works…. The returns on investing in working families are high.”
It’s hard to have an economy when the world is coming apart. Some people have been saying for decades that ecologically friendly initiatives would hurt the economy. They are wrong. There is a lot of money to be made developing and selling green technology. And besides, if we destroy the planet, there will be no more economy.
Have you ever tried really hard to figure something out — a song title, how to solve a problem, why something works the way it does — only to have the answer mysteriously pop into your head hours or days later, usually while relaxing or thinking about something completely unrelated? You almost certainly knew your body requires regular rest, but it turns out your mind needs rest too! Time you take to relax might be the most productive time of all. And Americans don’t take very much time off at all.
So just maybe the world would be a better place if everybody had access to safe drinking water and quality healthcare, if every family could count on maternity leave, affordable childcare and other support services, if we had access to more “green” technology, and if we could just all take a break now and then.
In closing, How to get a Conservative to Lie.
Well done!