One week ago I wrote, "We should also seriously look into establishing bus-only lanes on key corridors like Western and Ashland and giving buses signal priority, both of which would reduce the traffic problems that eat up so much gas."
Today the CTA announced that it would receive $153 million of federal money to implement the first ten miles of a projected 100 mile system of bus-only lanes featuring signal priority, pre-paid boarding, and fixed stops every 4-5 blocks, in addition to several other initiatives.
This is wonderful news. Altho the plan is not a true bus rapid transit since it's not grade separated, bus-only lanes thruout the city is by far the most cost- and time-effective way to extend the system. Even on routes that arguable should be served by new rail lines, experimentation with dedicated bus lanes can serve as a first step forward.
The CTA said it would establish bus-only lanes on four key corridors, but has yet to specify what these would be. To start thinking about the possibilities, check out these numbers on the routes with the highest riderships, based on average 2007 weekday boardings (both local and express):
79th (32,847)
Ashland (31,527)
Western (29,904)
Cottage Grove (23,851)
Madison (22,309)
King Dr (21,582)
Clark (21,199)
If you count the various Lake Shore Dr buses together, ridership is highest in the city.
Obviously there are other factors to be taken into account, like how easy it would be to take a lane of traffic and how bad the congestion is right now.
Except the #6 express from Hyde Park to the Loop, I've never used any of these routes so I'm not too qualified to choose. But I would very much like to see Western included, as a first step toward the long-term goal of a Western Ave subway. The South Side, deprived as it is of transit, should also get at least one.
2008/04/29
2008/04/23
What is wrong with this country?
This graphic pretty much says it all:
Miles per gallon for new cars:
Japan 46
EU 43
China 36
USA 27.5
Miles per vehicle driven annually:
Japan 7097
EU 7829
USA 12,427
Consumption of oil since 1980:
Denmark -33%
Germany -20%
France -14%
Japan +0.2%
UK +2%
USA +21%
Ratio of American methods of commuting:
Bike 1
Walk 5
Transit 9
Carpool 21
Drive alone 154
Miles per gallon for new cars:
Japan 46
EU 43
China 36
USA 27.5
Miles per vehicle driven annually:
Japan 7097
EU 7829
USA 12,427
Consumption of oil since 1980:
Denmark -33%
Germany -20%
France -14%
Japan +0.2%
UK +2%
USA +21%
Ratio of American methods of commuting:
Bike 1
Walk 5
Transit 9
Carpool 21
Drive alone 154
2008/04/22
Is transit as green as it should be?
Cato Institute "scholar" Randal O'Toole recently published a report claiming to show that public transit produces about the same amount of carbon emissions per passenger mile as autos, and far more than hybrid cars. O'Toole argues that it would make far more sense to subsidize the purchase of hybrids than to keep investing in expensive new light rail systems, as many cities are doing now.
Libertarians, of course, hate public transit because it involves government planning in pursuit of the public good. So it's not surprising to find that O'Toole has deliberately distorted his data to make transit look bad. Even so, O'Toole has compiled a lot of very useful information comparing transit systems in different cities and raised an important question: are transit agencies doing as much as they should to reduce their carbon emissions? But before we get to that, let's look at why O'Toole's political agenda is so badly flawed.
O'Toole's data show that the average auto uses 3885 BTUs per passenger mile (only 3445 if you leave out SUVs and pick-ups), compared with 4365 for buses, 3465 for light rail, and 2600 for heavy rail. A Toyota Prius uses 1659 BTUs. When you average all this out, passenger cars use only one more BTU per passenger mile than transit does. And O'Toole argues that, since the fuel efficiency of cars is likely to rise rapidly in coming years and the number of light trucks will decline (probably fair assumptions if gas prices stay high), cars will soon be clearly better from a global warming perspective.
What O'Toole does not tell us (I had to email him to find out) is that the fuel efficiency numbers he's using for cars come from both urban and highway driving. This makes his comparison between cars and transit completely invalid. Cars are far more efficient on the highway, but the only kind of driving that transit replaces is the kind that involves frequently sitting in traffic and lots of stops and starts - urban driving. So O'Toole is comparing apples and oranges in an attempt to smear transit, meaning that despite the many problems with public transit, it is still far greener than driving.
Second, the biggest reason transit's already good numbers aren't higher is low ridership (as O'Toole acknowledges, most of the energy expended by buses and trains is used to move the vehicle so adding transit riders dramatically increases energy efficiency). It's not at all surprising that, with fuel prices held artificially low by a number of indirect subsidies, potential riders have chosen to drive rather than take transit (ridership figures and thus efficiency numbers have been steadily rising with the price of gas). So transit's efficiency numbers have in part been dragged down by decades of public policies favoring cars.
One big exception is the New York subway system, which is highly energy efficient because it has so many riders. And why are there so many riders? One of the main reasons is that the system is so big that it'll get you almost anywhere you want to go. Those cities only now building urban rail systems have low ridership in part because having only one or two lines is not very useful. It will take many years of investment before these systems are complete enough to attract enough riders to make them highly energy efficient. Yet O'Toole would end the process now, permanently crippling transit in these cities.
Finally, O'Toole ignores what may be the most valuable thing about transit from an environmental perspective - it makes possible a certain kind of very low impact lifestyle, namely urban living. People who live in urban areas not only drive less, they also walk more, have smaller living spaces to heat and cool, and take up less land. All of these cause far less greenhouse gas emissions than suburban-style living, but none of them show up in O'Toole's figures. Yet that kind of living is just not possible without a good rapid transit network, including rail. In Hyde Park or Cambridge I make most of my trips by bike or on foot, producing no greenhouse gases at all. That's just not possible in the suburbs, yet O'Toole's figures are incapable of reflecting the smaller environmental impact that dense development, facilitated by transit, makes possible.
Even without these considerations, it's not just the amount of energy used per passenger mile - it's also the total number of miles you need to move. People who take transit not only require less energy per mile, they also travel fewer miles overall because everything's closer together in the city. O'Toole's numbers don't include this either.
Okay, so O'Toole has both misrepresented the efficiency comparison of transit and autos, and he's ignored the key role that transit plays in making urban living possible. But if we just forget about his political agenda, he still gives transit advocates some useful information and ideas.
First, he points out that there's actually major variations in the efficiency of different cities' transit systems. The El is in the middle of the pack among heavy rail systems, a lot less efficient than New York (and Atlanta?!) but better than LA and some smaller systems like Cleveland. O'Toole doesn't explain these variations, but it's worth looking into.
Second, rail is far more efficient than buses. There are many reasons for this - rail technology is inherently more efficient, but the political imperative to extend bus service to all parts of cities even when ridership is very low is also a big factor. O'Toole makes some good suggestions for reducing buses' environmental impact, including switching to hybrid buses and using smaller buses on less popular routes (the CTA is doing both of these to a certain extent). We should also seriously look into establishing bus-only lanes on key corridors like Western and Ashland and giving buses signal priority, both of which would reduce the traffic problems that eat up so much gas.
The CTA could also follow New York's example by using green building and station design and getting actively involved in transit-oriented development. It's not enough that transit is already far greener than driving - there's a lot more progress to be made.
Libertarians, of course, hate public transit because it involves government planning in pursuit of the public good. So it's not surprising to find that O'Toole has deliberately distorted his data to make transit look bad. Even so, O'Toole has compiled a lot of very useful information comparing transit systems in different cities and raised an important question: are transit agencies doing as much as they should to reduce their carbon emissions? But before we get to that, let's look at why O'Toole's political agenda is so badly flawed.
O'Toole's data show that the average auto uses 3885 BTUs per passenger mile (only 3445 if you leave out SUVs and pick-ups), compared with 4365 for buses, 3465 for light rail, and 2600 for heavy rail. A Toyota Prius uses 1659 BTUs. When you average all this out, passenger cars use only one more BTU per passenger mile than transit does. And O'Toole argues that, since the fuel efficiency of cars is likely to rise rapidly in coming years and the number of light trucks will decline (probably fair assumptions if gas prices stay high), cars will soon be clearly better from a global warming perspective.
What O'Toole does not tell us (I had to email him to find out) is that the fuel efficiency numbers he's using for cars come from both urban and highway driving. This makes his comparison between cars and transit completely invalid. Cars are far more efficient on the highway, but the only kind of driving that transit replaces is the kind that involves frequently sitting in traffic and lots of stops and starts - urban driving. So O'Toole is comparing apples and oranges in an attempt to smear transit, meaning that despite the many problems with public transit, it is still far greener than driving.
Second, the biggest reason transit's already good numbers aren't higher is low ridership (as O'Toole acknowledges, most of the energy expended by buses and trains is used to move the vehicle so adding transit riders dramatically increases energy efficiency). It's not at all surprising that, with fuel prices held artificially low by a number of indirect subsidies, potential riders have chosen to drive rather than take transit (ridership figures and thus efficiency numbers have been steadily rising with the price of gas). So transit's efficiency numbers have in part been dragged down by decades of public policies favoring cars.
One big exception is the New York subway system, which is highly energy efficient because it has so many riders. And why are there so many riders? One of the main reasons is that the system is so big that it'll get you almost anywhere you want to go. Those cities only now building urban rail systems have low ridership in part because having only one or two lines is not very useful. It will take many years of investment before these systems are complete enough to attract enough riders to make them highly energy efficient. Yet O'Toole would end the process now, permanently crippling transit in these cities.
Finally, O'Toole ignores what may be the most valuable thing about transit from an environmental perspective - it makes possible a certain kind of very low impact lifestyle, namely urban living. People who live in urban areas not only drive less, they also walk more, have smaller living spaces to heat and cool, and take up less land. All of these cause far less greenhouse gas emissions than suburban-style living, but none of them show up in O'Toole's figures. Yet that kind of living is just not possible without a good rapid transit network, including rail. In Hyde Park or Cambridge I make most of my trips by bike or on foot, producing no greenhouse gases at all. That's just not possible in the suburbs, yet O'Toole's figures are incapable of reflecting the smaller environmental impact that dense development, facilitated by transit, makes possible.
Even without these considerations, it's not just the amount of energy used per passenger mile - it's also the total number of miles you need to move. People who take transit not only require less energy per mile, they also travel fewer miles overall because everything's closer together in the city. O'Toole's numbers don't include this either.
Okay, so O'Toole has both misrepresented the efficiency comparison of transit and autos, and he's ignored the key role that transit plays in making urban living possible. But if we just forget about his political agenda, he still gives transit advocates some useful information and ideas.
First, he points out that there's actually major variations in the efficiency of different cities' transit systems. The El is in the middle of the pack among heavy rail systems, a lot less efficient than New York (and Atlanta?!) but better than LA and some smaller systems like Cleveland. O'Toole doesn't explain these variations, but it's worth looking into.
Second, rail is far more efficient than buses. There are many reasons for this - rail technology is inherently more efficient, but the political imperative to extend bus service to all parts of cities even when ridership is very low is also a big factor. O'Toole makes some good suggestions for reducing buses' environmental impact, including switching to hybrid buses and using smaller buses on less popular routes (the CTA is doing both of these to a certain extent). We should also seriously look into establishing bus-only lanes on key corridors like Western and Ashland and giving buses signal priority, both of which would reduce the traffic problems that eat up so much gas.
The CTA could also follow New York's example by using green building and station design and getting actively involved in transit-oriented development. It's not enough that transit is already far greener than driving - there's a lot more progress to be made.
2008/04/07
New York wastes a historic opportunity
Global warming is probably the most important and urgent issue we face - a problem that will increase inequality, disease, involuntary migration, warfare, and starvation as people try to adjust to shrinking resources and more frequent weather disasters. While the rich countries will spend massively to deal with climate problems that could have been prevented (and I guarantee those funds will come out of social spending rather than military spending), the poor countries - which are going to bear the brunt of climate fluctuations and are least equipped to deal with it - will mostly fail to adapt. Expect millions of people to die or be displaced in places like Bangladesh and Africa. Fighting global warming is not just an environmental issue, it's also a social justice issue. Global warming will also cause mass extinctions among other species, and impose a terrible cost on future generations.
The response of those who have caused the problem - overwhelmingly the rich countries - has fallen far short of what's needed. While Europe and Japan have made halting, if inadequate, progress, the United States has actually obstructed global efforts while doing almost nothing at home. The Bush administration has been the biggest obstacle, but given the terror among legislators of being seen to raise the price of electricity or gas, it's not clear that even a liberal president would have made much progress.
That's why Bloomberg's congestion pricing proposal for New York was so heartening. Here was a politician stepping up to do exactly what's needed: raising the cost of driving and devoting the revenues to public transit. A massive coalition of environmentalist, labor, and business groups came out in support of congestion pricing, the City Council voted to endorse the plan, the governor and leader of the state senate signed on. Even so, the plan is now dead, killed by the speaker of New York's lower house without even a vote.
This is bitterly disappointing. New York could have led the way for the rest of the country, but instead we face another setback - and it's far too late in the game to once again be moving backward. I hope New Yorkers will punish their legislators at the polls, but it seems increasingly unlikely that global warming is going to be addressed until a popular and militant mobilization forces both the politicians and the public to face what they're doing. After all, politicians aren't stupid - congestion pricing didn't fail because of big oil, it failed because of popular support for car culture.
The response of those who have caused the problem - overwhelmingly the rich countries - has fallen far short of what's needed. While Europe and Japan have made halting, if inadequate, progress, the United States has actually obstructed global efforts while doing almost nothing at home. The Bush administration has been the biggest obstacle, but given the terror among legislators of being seen to raise the price of electricity or gas, it's not clear that even a liberal president would have made much progress.
That's why Bloomberg's congestion pricing proposal for New York was so heartening. Here was a politician stepping up to do exactly what's needed: raising the cost of driving and devoting the revenues to public transit. A massive coalition of environmentalist, labor, and business groups came out in support of congestion pricing, the City Council voted to endorse the plan, the governor and leader of the state senate signed on. Even so, the plan is now dead, killed by the speaker of New York's lower house without even a vote.
This is bitterly disappointing. New York could have led the way for the rest of the country, but instead we face another setback - and it's far too late in the game to once again be moving backward. I hope New Yorkers will punish their legislators at the polls, but it seems increasingly unlikely that global warming is going to be addressed until a popular and militant mobilization forces both the politicians and the public to face what they're doing. After all, politicians aren't stupid - congestion pricing didn't fail because of big oil, it failed because of popular support for car culture.
2008/03/24
Cook Dupage corridor comments
Don't forget to send in public comments on the Cook Dupage corridor transportation study - the deadline is March 31. Access the comment form here. My comments are below.
Also, the state legislature will be holding a number of public meetings in the next couple days to gather input on the state budget. Blagojevich's proposal dramatically underfunds transit - the previous capital bill funded highways and transit at a 2:1 ratio, Blagojevich would set the ratio at 10:1. If you have a chance, attend one of the meetings and demand adequate transit funding.
Chicago: South Side
3/25/2008, 5:30 p.m.
Kennedy-King College Theatre
6301 S. Halsted St., Chicago
Chicago: West Side
3/26/2008, 6:00 p.m.
Bethel New Life Auditorium
1150 N. Lamon St., Chicago
Chicago: North Side
3/27/2008, 6:00 p.m.
Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center
Olson Auditorium, 836 W. Wellington Ave., Chicago
Chicago: Southwest
3/27/2008, 6:00 p.m.
Oak View Community Center
4625 W. 110th St., Oak Lawn
Cook Dupage corridor comments
What do you think of the proposed transportation system, overall?
I strongly support the public transit components, and oppose the highway components. The current task is to make up for decades of underinvestment in transit and facilitate the Chicago region’s transition away from car dependence. Public funds are needed to prepare Chicago for the low-carbon future, which will cripple our economy if we don’t have good transit options in place. Emphasis must be placed on reducing traffic congestion by moving people onto transit, not by expanding roads that will be just as congested in ten years.
I am concerned about some specifics of the public transit components. Why has the Mid-City Transitway been proposed as a bus line rather than a new El line? Does the projected ridership of an extended Blue Line justify the costs? I am also concerned about priorities. In what order would these projects be built? I believe the Mid-City Transitway should be first in line. I also strongly urge the commission to make public key pieces of information, especially projected ridership of the different extensions and an explanation of why the Blue Line and Inner Circumferential Rail Line were proposed as rail while the MCT was proposed as BRT.
What do you think of the major projects included in the proposed system?
Elgin-O’Hare Expressway East Extension to O’Hare
I believe highway extensions should be the lowest priority - public funds should be invested first and foremost in public transit, which has suffered from underinvestment for decades but is far better in creating livable and sustainable cities.
DuPage J Line BRT (Bus Rapid Transit)
Mid-City BRT (Bus Rapid Transit)
I strongly support the Mid-City Transitway and believe it should be the highest priority because it would expand transit access to the densest areas under study, would provide a convenient link between O’Hare and Midway as well as transfers between the Blue, Green, Pink, Orange, and Red Lines, and would extend transit to a number of low income communities that are currently poorly served.
However, I wonder why the MCT has been proposed as a BRT rather than a new El line. It would have far more riders than the Inner Circumferential Rail Line, yet the ICR Line has been proposed as rail. Making the MCT a bus line might also hurt the prospects for high-density development in the neighborhoods it serves, and would make it impossible to service high riderships. What are the ridership figures reviewed by the commission? The MCT has the potential to greatly improve transit in Chicago and extend high-density development to large parts of the city, but this opportunity may be lost if we settle too easily on BRT.
I-355 BRT (Bus Rapid Transit)
Inner Circumferential Rail Line
As stated above, I wonder why this O’Hare-Midway link has been proposed as rail, while the higher ridership Mid-City Transitway has been proposed as a bus line. The ICR Line seems like a useful addition, but should be a lower priority than the Mid-City Transitway.
I-290 HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle) Lanes
I oppose the widening of highways, which only encourage further reliance on cars. These funds should be devoted to public transit, not more subsidies to cars.
I-290 BRT (Bus Rapid Transit)
Blue Line Extension
Given the low density of the suburbs, I am concerned that the potential ridership of a Blue Line extension may not justify the costs. I would like to see ridership figures, and would also like to hear more details about how far apart stops would be and how often the line would run. It might make more sense to build a BRT line that connects with the Blue Line. I’m not opposed to an extension, I just don’t think the public has been given enough information to justify the expense.
Other Comments:
I am concerned that the opportunities for public input have been too few thus far. I hope that the commission will provide much more information about why it made the proposals it did, and give the public many more opportunities to participate in this important plan.
I thank the commission for its work and applaud the cooperation demonstrated by the many public officials involved in the process. I hope that unified planning will continue in this spirit of cooperation, because our region will suffer terribly if it cannot expand transit options before carbon taxes and rising gas prices make car-only transportation systems obsolete.
Also, the state legislature will be holding a number of public meetings in the next couple days to gather input on the state budget. Blagojevich's proposal dramatically underfunds transit - the previous capital bill funded highways and transit at a 2:1 ratio, Blagojevich would set the ratio at 10:1. If you have a chance, attend one of the meetings and demand adequate transit funding.
Chicago: South Side
3/25/2008, 5:30 p.m.
Kennedy-King College Theatre
6301 S. Halsted St., Chicago
Chicago: West Side
3/26/2008, 6:00 p.m.
Bethel New Life Auditorium
1150 N. Lamon St., Chicago
Chicago: North Side
3/27/2008, 6:00 p.m.
Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center
Olson Auditorium, 836 W. Wellington Ave., Chicago
Chicago: Southwest
3/27/2008, 6:00 p.m.
Oak View Community Center
4625 W. 110th St., Oak Lawn
Cook Dupage corridor comments
What do you think of the proposed transportation system, overall?
I strongly support the public transit components, and oppose the highway components. The current task is to make up for decades of underinvestment in transit and facilitate the Chicago region’s transition away from car dependence. Public funds are needed to prepare Chicago for the low-carbon future, which will cripple our economy if we don’t have good transit options in place. Emphasis must be placed on reducing traffic congestion by moving people onto transit, not by expanding roads that will be just as congested in ten years.
I am concerned about some specifics of the public transit components. Why has the Mid-City Transitway been proposed as a bus line rather than a new El line? Does the projected ridership of an extended Blue Line justify the costs? I am also concerned about priorities. In what order would these projects be built? I believe the Mid-City Transitway should be first in line. I also strongly urge the commission to make public key pieces of information, especially projected ridership of the different extensions and an explanation of why the Blue Line and Inner Circumferential Rail Line were proposed as rail while the MCT was proposed as BRT.
What do you think of the major projects included in the proposed system?
Elgin-O’Hare Expressway East Extension to O’Hare
I believe highway extensions should be the lowest priority - public funds should be invested first and foremost in public transit, which has suffered from underinvestment for decades but is far better in creating livable and sustainable cities.
DuPage J Line BRT (Bus Rapid Transit)
Mid-City BRT (Bus Rapid Transit)
I strongly support the Mid-City Transitway and believe it should be the highest priority because it would expand transit access to the densest areas under study, would provide a convenient link between O’Hare and Midway as well as transfers between the Blue, Green, Pink, Orange, and Red Lines, and would extend transit to a number of low income communities that are currently poorly served.
However, I wonder why the MCT has been proposed as a BRT rather than a new El line. It would have far more riders than the Inner Circumferential Rail Line, yet the ICR Line has been proposed as rail. Making the MCT a bus line might also hurt the prospects for high-density development in the neighborhoods it serves, and would make it impossible to service high riderships. What are the ridership figures reviewed by the commission? The MCT has the potential to greatly improve transit in Chicago and extend high-density development to large parts of the city, but this opportunity may be lost if we settle too easily on BRT.
I-355 BRT (Bus Rapid Transit)
Inner Circumferential Rail Line
As stated above, I wonder why this O’Hare-Midway link has been proposed as rail, while the higher ridership Mid-City Transitway has been proposed as a bus line. The ICR Line seems like a useful addition, but should be a lower priority than the Mid-City Transitway.
I-290 HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle) Lanes
I oppose the widening of highways, which only encourage further reliance on cars. These funds should be devoted to public transit, not more subsidies to cars.
I-290 BRT (Bus Rapid Transit)
Blue Line Extension
Given the low density of the suburbs, I am concerned that the potential ridership of a Blue Line extension may not justify the costs. I would like to see ridership figures, and would also like to hear more details about how far apart stops would be and how often the line would run. It might make more sense to build a BRT line that connects with the Blue Line. I’m not opposed to an extension, I just don’t think the public has been given enough information to justify the expense.
Other Comments:
I am concerned that the opportunities for public input have been too few thus far. I hope that the commission will provide much more information about why it made the proposals it did, and give the public many more opportunities to participate in this important plan.
I thank the commission for its work and applaud the cooperation demonstrated by the many public officials involved in the process. I hope that unified planning will continue in this spirit of cooperation, because our region will suffer terribly if it cannot expand transit options before carbon taxes and rising gas prices make car-only transportation systems obsolete.
2008/03/22
The dark side of congestion pricing
If you follow transportation politics, you will have heard awhile ago that the Bush administration has been strongly promoting congestion pricing over the last year by disbursing funds to cities willing to expand their use of road tolling. The highest-profile initiative is New York's plan to start charging a fee for cars and trucks to enter Manhattan below Midtown, but federal money will also go to new efforts in Seattle, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Miami. (If you live in New York, by the way, right now is crunch time for the congestion pricing initiative so call your representatives in the legislature and on City Council to ask for their support.)
I admit that as I've been reading about the administration's backing for congestion pricing I never gave much thought to why a viciously reactionary regime would be pursuing policies that I strongly support. This article explains it all, and it's just as bad as we should have assumed it would be.
Basically, free market ideologues/corporate shills (they're one and the same) in the Department of Transportation have come up with a fiendishly clever plot to privatize the roads while starving transit, leading to big profits for the companies that they work for in between stints making transportation policy. Philosophically, they see roads not as a public good but as something to be rationed according to how rich you are, like any other commodity. This is why they've been promoting congestion pricing and other kinds of tolling. After establishing the principle of user fees on roads, phase two is to sell public roads to corporations, which can drive fees even higher for their own profit. The third key component is to starve public transit so people won't have any alternative but to use the privatized roads.
I should have known that the Bush administration would come up with a way to make the transportation system even worse: just as dependent on cars, but squeezing corporate profits out of everyone at the same time. The effects are already being felt - the money to fund the congestion pricing initiatives came from diverted pork barrel spending, some of which (although probably not much) financed public transit in small cities - including my hometown, which now has to rely on volunteers with cars to replace some buses. The number of major new bus and rail projects on track to get federal funding has fallen from 48 in 2001 to 17 this year. And, as Chicago residents know, the privatization of roads is a growing trend.
The best story in the article is the conflict over how a DC subway extension to Dulles airport should be done. The Department of Transportation threw a temper tantrum when Virginia decided to use a public agency to build it using toll road money instead of selling the toll road to Macquarie Holdings, a company that the general counsel at the Federal Highway Administration used to work for. The Department of Transportation killed the subway extension. Macquarie and the notorious Carlyle Group are now circling the project like vultures.
The alternative to the Bush administration's dystopian future is not, as some politicians in the article would have it, to stick with roads free and numerous. The transportation system should be a public good, it should not be commodified - but the environmental and public health costs of using it must be borne by those responsible. Congestion pricing should be a key component of shifting people away from cars and onto transit, which should also remain a public good. Ironically the Bush administration might be starting us down that path by pushing congestion pricing - but only if the next president makes a serious effort to fund the expansion of transit systems across the country.
McCain is a long-time opponent of Amtrak and has helped the Bush administration try to dismantle it, and many of McCain's advisers are free market fundamentalists like the people who run the Department of Transportation, but it's hard to predict who would actually end up making policy in a McCain administration. There is some reason to think that both Clinton and Obama would be more supportive of transit, but since they're both centrist opportunists, the political climate in the country would probably be the biggest factor in shaping their policies. Even tho transit use keeps setting records and the price of gas keeps going up, political support is still pretty anemic. It's going to depend on citizens pressuring the politicians or nothing will get done.
I admit that as I've been reading about the administration's backing for congestion pricing I never gave much thought to why a viciously reactionary regime would be pursuing policies that I strongly support. This article explains it all, and it's just as bad as we should have assumed it would be.
Basically, free market ideologues/corporate shills (they're one and the same) in the Department of Transportation have come up with a fiendishly clever plot to privatize the roads while starving transit, leading to big profits for the companies that they work for in between stints making transportation policy. Philosophically, they see roads not as a public good but as something to be rationed according to how rich you are, like any other commodity. This is why they've been promoting congestion pricing and other kinds of tolling. After establishing the principle of user fees on roads, phase two is to sell public roads to corporations, which can drive fees even higher for their own profit. The third key component is to starve public transit so people won't have any alternative but to use the privatized roads.
I should have known that the Bush administration would come up with a way to make the transportation system even worse: just as dependent on cars, but squeezing corporate profits out of everyone at the same time. The effects are already being felt - the money to fund the congestion pricing initiatives came from diverted pork barrel spending, some of which (although probably not much) financed public transit in small cities - including my hometown, which now has to rely on volunteers with cars to replace some buses. The number of major new bus and rail projects on track to get federal funding has fallen from 48 in 2001 to 17 this year. And, as Chicago residents know, the privatization of roads is a growing trend.
The best story in the article is the conflict over how a DC subway extension to Dulles airport should be done. The Department of Transportation threw a temper tantrum when Virginia decided to use a public agency to build it using toll road money instead of selling the toll road to Macquarie Holdings, a company that the general counsel at the Federal Highway Administration used to work for. The Department of Transportation killed the subway extension. Macquarie and the notorious Carlyle Group are now circling the project like vultures.
The alternative to the Bush administration's dystopian future is not, as some politicians in the article would have it, to stick with roads free and numerous. The transportation system should be a public good, it should not be commodified - but the environmental and public health costs of using it must be borne by those responsible. Congestion pricing should be a key component of shifting people away from cars and onto transit, which should also remain a public good. Ironically the Bush administration might be starting us down that path by pushing congestion pricing - but only if the next president makes a serious effort to fund the expansion of transit systems across the country.
McCain is a long-time opponent of Amtrak and has helped the Bush administration try to dismantle it, and many of McCain's advisers are free market fundamentalists like the people who run the Department of Transportation, but it's hard to predict who would actually end up making policy in a McCain administration. There is some reason to think that both Clinton and Obama would be more supportive of transit, but since they're both centrist opportunists, the political climate in the country would probably be the biggest factor in shaping their policies. Even tho transit use keeps setting records and the price of gas keeps going up, political support is still pretty anemic. It's going to depend on citizens pressuring the politicians or nothing will get done.
2008/03/19
Cheney is a comic book villain
Nice.
Raddatz [ABC News]: Two-third of Americans say [the Iraq war i]s not worth fighting.
Cheney: So?
Raddatz: So? You don’t care what the American people think?
Cheney: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.
Raddatz [ABC News]: Two-third of Americans say [the Iraq war i]s not worth fighting.
Cheney: So?
Raddatz: So? You don’t care what the American people think?
Cheney: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.
2008/03/17
Supreme Court captured by business
This is a good article on how the Chamber of Commerce helped push the Supreme Court from an ally of consumer groups thirty years ago into the body that recently struck down a lawsuit against the maker of faulty medical equipment. The author draws an interesting distinction between the professional classes - largely content with existing inequalities and a state that genuflects before capitalists - and the majority of the population, increasingly angered by corporations and the ever-increasing gap between themselves and the rich. Yet political elites remain responsive only to the professionals. This just points up once again what the left needs to be doing: creating strong grassroots groups and democratic businesses. Without the organizational and financial power that businesses draw on just as a matter of routine operations, the left is hopelessly outmatched. Which is why we're stuck with candidates like Clinton and Obama.
2008/03/11
Western expansion
There was some big news for Chicago in the paper two weeks ago, but no one seemed to notice. A committee of suburban mayors and county commissioners presented an ambitious proposal for long-term transit improvements on the far West Side and in the western suburbs. The plan calls for the Forest Park Blue Line to be extended up to 13 miles along the Eisenhower, to the Yorktown Mall in Lombard, and for three new north-south transit lines to make it easier for rich people from the suburbs to take transit into the city, for poor people to take transit to their degrading jobs in the suburbs, and for everyone to make intersuburban commutes.
One of those three lines is the Mid-City Transitway, proposed as a bus rapid transit (BRT) line. The other two are a rail line between O'Hare and Midway thru the suburbs, and a BRT line connecting Schaumburg, Elmhurst, Oak Brook, Naperville, and other far west suburbs. A fourth BRT line even further west and widening of the highway are also being considered. (This is the best news article - the Tribune article wasn’t worth much. The preliminary recommendations can be found here.)
The plan would be expensive - between $5.5 and $8 billion dollars - and would probably take a couple decades to complete assuming the money could be found. It’s also well back in the line of transit expansions - the Circle Line, airport express, and extensions of the Red, Orange, and Yellow Lines are all much further along. But it’s still a big deal - the plan is a product of an exceedingly rare cooperative spirit among suburban and county officials, and it would be a big step forward in the transit capacity of the Chicago area. The Cook-DuPage corridor is a major location of jobs but currently has almost no transit options outside the two Metra lines that run a couple miles north and south of the Eisenhower. The Mid-City Transitway, which I’ve argued for before, would be a particularly important expansion of service to fairly dense low-income neighborhoods that have limited transit access.
In fact the Mid-City Transitway seems far more worthy than the Circle Line, and ten billion times better than the airport express line, which should be eliminated altogether from expansion plans. But do we want a bus rapid transit line for the MCT, or should we fight for an El line? Any thoughts on the pros and cons? As for the Blue Line extension, there's still a lot of details we don't know - how far apart the stops would be or how high ridership would be in a comparatively low-density area. What do yous think about the proposals for the suburbs? The only proposal on the table that seems obviously bad to me is widening of the Eisenhower.
The commission website is here. They're accepting public comments until March 31, which can be sent to lenskiw@rtachicago.org (download a public comment form here and send it as an attachment). They're also holding public meetings, but the one in Chicago was yesterday - others are listed on the website.
One of those three lines is the Mid-City Transitway, proposed as a bus rapid transit (BRT) line. The other two are a rail line between O'Hare and Midway thru the suburbs, and a BRT line connecting Schaumburg, Elmhurst, Oak Brook, Naperville, and other far west suburbs. A fourth BRT line even further west and widening of the highway are also being considered. (This is the best news article - the Tribune article wasn’t worth much. The preliminary recommendations can be found here.)
The plan would be expensive - between $5.5 and $8 billion dollars - and would probably take a couple decades to complete assuming the money could be found. It’s also well back in the line of transit expansions - the Circle Line, airport express, and extensions of the Red, Orange, and Yellow Lines are all much further along. But it’s still a big deal - the plan is a product of an exceedingly rare cooperative spirit among suburban and county officials, and it would be a big step forward in the transit capacity of the Chicago area. The Cook-DuPage corridor is a major location of jobs but currently has almost no transit options outside the two Metra lines that run a couple miles north and south of the Eisenhower. The Mid-City Transitway, which I’ve argued for before, would be a particularly important expansion of service to fairly dense low-income neighborhoods that have limited transit access.
In fact the Mid-City Transitway seems far more worthy than the Circle Line, and ten billion times better than the airport express line, which should be eliminated altogether from expansion plans. But do we want a bus rapid transit line for the MCT, or should we fight for an El line? Any thoughts on the pros and cons? As for the Blue Line extension, there's still a lot of details we don't know - how far apart the stops would be or how high ridership would be in a comparatively low-density area. What do yous think about the proposals for the suburbs? The only proposal on the table that seems obviously bad to me is widening of the Eisenhower.
The commission website is here. They're accepting public comments until March 31, which can be sent to lenskiw@rtachicago.org (download a public comment form here and send it as an attachment). They're also holding public meetings, but the one in Chicago was yesterday - others are listed on the website.
2008/03/10
Bike safety ordinance up for a vote
Update The bike safety ordinance was passed today - good job everyone who called (altho, since Daley supported it, it was probably a done deal anyway). Daley defended bike messengers and then, in his inimitable style, offered some advice to everyone: "You have to be careful if you are reckless."
The Chicago city council will be voting on this ordinance Wednesday. Don't know if it will have any effect, but at the very least it's a good symbolic move. Call your alderman now.
From the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation:
The Chicago city council will be voting on this ordinance Wednesday. Don't know if it will have any effect, but at the very least it's a good symbolic move. Call your alderman now.
From the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation:
The ordinance would fine motorists up to $500 for endangering a bicyclist. It identifies specific behavior, including:For fun, check out the incredibly high levels of vitriol that drivers direct at bikers in these comments.
- Requiring a minimum of three feet of clearance while passing bicyclists
- Prohibiting a motorist from opening a door into moving traffic, reducing the danger of “dooring”
- Raising the fines for vehicles parked in bike lanes or marked shared lanes
- Requiring motorists to yield to oncoming bicyclists when turning left, which prevents a “left hook” crash
- Prohibiting motorists from turning right in front of a bicyclist, which prevents a “right hook” crash
- Requiring motorists to exercise due care for bicyclists in addition to pedestrians
2008/02/27
Letter to the editor, re: Nader and popular support for progressive policies
To the editors:
In your harangue against Ralph Nader (Chicago Tribune editorial, "Irrelevant at any speed", 2008 February 27), you suggest that issues like single-payer health insurance and reducing the military budget are being ignored by the major presidential candidates because they "don't see sufficient public support for them". Five minutes on the internet would have proved you wrong.
In an October 2003 Washington Post-ABC News poll, 62 percent of respondents preferred "a universal health insurance program, in which everybody is covered under a program like Medicare that's run by the government and financed by taxpayers." Polls have consistently shown that overwhelming majorities of Americans believe health coverage is a right that should be guaranteed by the government, and large majorities are also willing to pay higher taxes to accomplish this goal. Yet single-payer health insurance, if done right, would actually lower overall health costs and simultaneously accomplish universal coverage. Just ask any other rich country - they all cover all their citizens, and they all pay less for comparable levels of care.
As for military spending, a March 2007 Gallup poll found that 43 percent of respondents think the U.S. spends too much on its military, compared with 20 percent who think military spending is too low and 35 percent who say it's about right.
Clearly there are high levels of popular support for progressive solutions, which is even more remarkable in light of the fact that mainstream politicians and the media ignore them. Perhaps Nader is right after all - progressive policies are suppressed not because of popular indifference but because powerful interests like the health
industry and military lobby have a stranglehold on our politics.
In your harangue against Ralph Nader (Chicago Tribune editorial, "Irrelevant at any speed", 2008 February 27), you suggest that issues like single-payer health insurance and reducing the military budget are being ignored by the major presidential candidates because they "don't see sufficient public support for them". Five minutes on the internet would have proved you wrong.
In an October 2003 Washington Post-ABC News poll, 62 percent of respondents preferred "a universal health insurance program, in which everybody is covered under a program like Medicare that's run by the government and financed by taxpayers." Polls have consistently shown that overwhelming majorities of Americans believe health coverage is a right that should be guaranteed by the government, and large majorities are also willing to pay higher taxes to accomplish this goal. Yet single-payer health insurance, if done right, would actually lower overall health costs and simultaneously accomplish universal coverage. Just ask any other rich country - they all cover all their citizens, and they all pay less for comparable levels of care.
As for military spending, a March 2007 Gallup poll found that 43 percent of respondents think the U.S. spends too much on its military, compared with 20 percent who think military spending is too low and 35 percent who say it's about right.
Clearly there are high levels of popular support for progressive solutions, which is even more remarkable in light of the fact that mainstream politicians and the media ignore them. Perhaps Nader is right after all - progressive policies are suppressed not because of popular indifference but because powerful interests like the health
industry and military lobby have a stranglehold on our politics.
2008/02/23
Heads up on Nader
Looks like Nader will be announcing a presidential run when he appears on Meet the Press tomorrow.
The vitriol from the liberals has already started. I doubt that Nader will have much of an effect on this election, since the Democrats will go all out to keep him off ballots and smear him in public, while the media will only talk to him about his chances for acting as a spoiler.
Nader will be the only high-profile candidate addressing hugely important issues like the need for single-payer healthcare, the ridiculous size of the military, and the continuing domination of corporate power over our lives. Yet I've become very disillusioned with him since the 2000 election. Certainly not for "costing Gore the election" (Gore won the election - the Supreme Court and electoral college were the real forces that cost him the election). The problem is that Nader never followed up with the real strength of his candidacy - getting disaffected people organized and involved in grassroots struggles. In 2004 Nader didn't even run on the Green Party ticket, further weakening the effort to build a real electoral alternative.
Even so, in the arguments that will follow Nader's announcement I'll definitely be defending his right to run and the importance of raising the issues he'll concentrate on. And most important, I'll remind those who hysterically condemn Nader that they should be spending their time instead demanding instant runoff voting, a simple electoral reform that would eliminate the spoiler problem and make our political system more democratic.
The vitriol from the liberals has already started. I doubt that Nader will have much of an effect on this election, since the Democrats will go all out to keep him off ballots and smear him in public, while the media will only talk to him about his chances for acting as a spoiler.
Nader will be the only high-profile candidate addressing hugely important issues like the need for single-payer healthcare, the ridiculous size of the military, and the continuing domination of corporate power over our lives. Yet I've become very disillusioned with him since the 2000 election. Certainly not for "costing Gore the election" (Gore won the election - the Supreme Court and electoral college were the real forces that cost him the election). The problem is that Nader never followed up with the real strength of his candidacy - getting disaffected people organized and involved in grassroots struggles. In 2004 Nader didn't even run on the Green Party ticket, further weakening the effort to build a real electoral alternative.
Even so, in the arguments that will follow Nader's announcement I'll definitely be defending his right to run and the importance of raising the issues he'll concentrate on. And most important, I'll remind those who hysterically condemn Nader that they should be spending their time instead demanding instant runoff voting, a simple electoral reform that would eliminate the spoiler problem and make our political system more democratic.
2008/02/07
Suburbs still a haven of selfishness and racism
Probably the biggest obstacle in America to an environmentally sustainable society (other than maybe meat-eating) is the low density of our cities. There are a handful of high-density cities built in the 19th century, but the fastest-growing cities like Atlanta, Houston, Phoenix, and Las Vegas are almost completely composed of sprawl, and even the dense cities are surrounded by their own sprawling (and rapidly-growing) suburbs.The main problem is that building and maintaining sprawl is an incredibly inefficient use of resources. It takes more land and covers it with concrete, strip malls, and TGIFridays; it uses more raw materials to build and heat so many one-family homes and to extend the roads, sewers, and electrical lines; and worst of all it requires that cars be the main form of transportation. Public transit is only feasible under conditions of high density, when ridership is high enough to sustain regular bus and train routes, while walking or biking the extended distances of the suburbs is usually not realistic for many people.
Long Island is the birthplace of sprawl, where the first true suburbs emerged after World War II. It is also an unusually progressive suburban area, electing more Democrats than Republicans and county leaders who argue for denser, more vertical development. But the impulses that have always led people to move to the suburbs - a desire for a big home with access to good schools and a neighborhood without any minorities or poor people - are still strong even there, even in the face of an impending crisis in housing affordability. A recent survey found that
Fifty-nine percent of Long Islanders could never imagine themselves living in an apartment. Asked which type of neighborhood they preferred — one where you could walk to stores or one that required driving — 56 percent said they would rather drive. Meanwhile, only 7 percent agreed that “creating ethnically and economically diverse neighborhoods” was the major advantage of building more affordable housing. Asked what the worst disadvantage was, 20 percent said “bringing in the wrong kinds of people.”If I were optimistic I'd say that once we get a carbon tax or its equivalent, a lot of this problem would go away. If the price of fossil fuels started to reflect their real social costs, the building of new sprawl would cease, cities like Houston or Phoenix would collapse economically and become the Detroits of the next generation, and high-density development would take off. But reading comments on Chicago Tribune articles related to transit, as I am wont to do, makes me think otherwise. Here's a fairly typical example, which the comment service identified as originating in Oak Brook, Illinois (errors of spelling and spacing preserved):
Maybe you can send all the illegals from your state [he is responding to a poster from California] and they can drive the buses and trains for $2.00 HR! Never mind we have way to many already!I hope the CTA goes down the toilet if you cant run a business with the money you have shut down we in the burbs are tired of bailing out Chicago! I'm lucky i dont buy anything in the collar counties so the only money they will ever get from is the money i cant control them from getting!I will be moving shortly from crook state!The heady mix of antitax selfishness and anti-immigrant racism is pretty telling, and I think once the attack on car culture and sprawl starts taking off the backlash will only get worse. My fear is that we might be facing a new culture war, not over religious issues (fundamentalists may even prove to be allies), but over the sacrifices needed to combat global warming and the particular brand of anti-egalitarian, neoliberal individualism that could be called the ideology of the suburbs. It's a confrontation that will have to be made at some point, but I'm worried that getting bogged down in it might fatally delay urgent steps needed to control greenhouse gas emissions.
2008/01/30
Electability?!
Edwards is out of the race, so what do we do now? On one level it makes no difference - the most important task, as it always has been, is to organize grassroots support for progressive policies and start creating democratic businesses. Edwards wasn't a true progressive anyway - an Edwards victory would have left us in a better position to push our policies, but we would have still had to organize to hold him to his word.
But it's also worth thinking about the electability issue. I find it distasteful, because I've always believed that we should vote for people who are actually giving us something we want, not just taking it away at a slower rate. But we tried the "heightening the contradictions" approach in 2000, and Bush actually fit the bill much better than expected. I thought he'd be marginally worse than Gore, but he (or rather the people actually deciding his policies) exceeded all expectations. So what about those contradictions? All the anti-Bush outrage didn't produce a new radical movement. Instead it's gone into wonkish blogging and great enthusiasm for candidates whose policies are somewhat better than Gore's were, but fundamentally of the same reformist/capitalist/imperialist nature.
So maybe it's time to try a corporate Democrat again, and hope that this time we've learned from the shocking passivity of the left during the Clinton '90s. The question then is - would Clinton or Obama be more likely to beat McCain?
I'm pretty sure Clinton would lose to McCain. The right wing's amazing and completely irrational hatred of her is the one thing that could effectively unify it behind a candidate it doesn't really like. Meanwhile, McCain appeals strongly to independents and probably some Democrats. McCain's big potential weakness is Iraq - if things start going badly again his consistent support for the war would hurt him. Except Clinton also voted for the war, came late and unconvincingly to oppose it, and is also very right-wing on other foreign policy issues like Iran.
Obama's foreign policies are pretty much the same as Clinton's, but the popular perception of them is not. If the war became an issue again, it would tremendously help Obama against McCain. Obama is also very attractive to independents and would probably hold Democrats together better. Unlike Clinton, Obama is likely to draw large numbers of politically disengaged people into the election, which would also probably increase the Democrats' gains in Congress. The far right, without the Clinton demon to rally against, would turn out in fewer numbers. I think Obama would probably beat McCain pretty easily.
I'm certainly not arguing that people in liberal states like New York, Illinois, or California should vote for Obama on election day. If the Democrat doesn't win those states, he or she has no hope of winning the election, so go ahead and vote Green. But voting for Obama on February 5 is worth considering. I just don't know if I can bring myself to do it.
But it's also worth thinking about the electability issue. I find it distasteful, because I've always believed that we should vote for people who are actually giving us something we want, not just taking it away at a slower rate. But we tried the "heightening the contradictions" approach in 2000, and Bush actually fit the bill much better than expected. I thought he'd be marginally worse than Gore, but he (or rather the people actually deciding his policies) exceeded all expectations. So what about those contradictions? All the anti-Bush outrage didn't produce a new radical movement. Instead it's gone into wonkish blogging and great enthusiasm for candidates whose policies are somewhat better than Gore's were, but fundamentally of the same reformist/capitalist/imperialist nature.
So maybe it's time to try a corporate Democrat again, and hope that this time we've learned from the shocking passivity of the left during the Clinton '90s. The question then is - would Clinton or Obama be more likely to beat McCain?
I'm pretty sure Clinton would lose to McCain. The right wing's amazing and completely irrational hatred of her is the one thing that could effectively unify it behind a candidate it doesn't really like. Meanwhile, McCain appeals strongly to independents and probably some Democrats. McCain's big potential weakness is Iraq - if things start going badly again his consistent support for the war would hurt him. Except Clinton also voted for the war, came late and unconvincingly to oppose it, and is also very right-wing on other foreign policy issues like Iran.
Obama's foreign policies are pretty much the same as Clinton's, but the popular perception of them is not. If the war became an issue again, it would tremendously help Obama against McCain. Obama is also very attractive to independents and would probably hold Democrats together better. Unlike Clinton, Obama is likely to draw large numbers of politically disengaged people into the election, which would also probably increase the Democrats' gains in Congress. The far right, without the Clinton demon to rally against, would turn out in fewer numbers. I think Obama would probably beat McCain pretty easily.
I'm certainly not arguing that people in liberal states like New York, Illinois, or California should vote for Obama on election day. If the Democrat doesn't win those states, he or she has no hope of winning the election, so go ahead and vote Green. But voting for Obama on February 5 is worth considering. I just don't know if I can bring myself to do it.
2008/01/29
Partial breach in the news blackout on meat and the environment
I've written before about the media's suppression of news on the important link between meat and global warming (here and here). Since then the blackout has remained pretty solid - a Lexis-Nexis search turned up plenty of discussion in the newspapers of Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, but only one major opinion article from the Los Angeles Times (2007 October 15) and no news articles.
This weekend, The New York Times finally published a full account of these findings, as well as a comprehensive list of the many other ways the livestock industry ravishes the environment: Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler.
The article was in the Week in Review section, so the prohibition on treating meat-related environmental destruction as news still stands, but the article is an outstanding summary of the issue. I encourage everyone to email it to anyone who might benefit.
There is clearly a lot of hunger for news on this topic - the article rose to the number 2 spot on The Times's most emailed list before falling to number 3 right now (Times readers just can't get enough of those vapid JFK-Obama comparisons). We'll have to see if there's any follow-up on the news reporting side, or if other news outlets follow The Times's lead.
The author stops well short of calling on people to stop eating meat, and in fact manages to avoid using the word vegetarianism entirely. This may be the best way to communicate with meateaters, and I won't argue against anything that reduces the number of animals tortured and killed. Even so, I'm concerned that what could become a growing movement to eat less meat for environmental reasons might completely ignore the issue of speciesism.
This weekend, The New York Times finally published a full account of these findings, as well as a comprehensive list of the many other ways the livestock industry ravishes the environment: Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler.
The article was in the Week in Review section, so the prohibition on treating meat-related environmental destruction as news still stands, but the article is an outstanding summary of the issue. I encourage everyone to email it to anyone who might benefit.
There is clearly a lot of hunger for news on this topic - the article rose to the number 2 spot on The Times's most emailed list before falling to number 3 right now (Times readers just can't get enough of those vapid JFK-Obama comparisons). We'll have to see if there's any follow-up on the news reporting side, or if other news outlets follow The Times's lead.
The author stops well short of calling on people to stop eating meat, and in fact manages to avoid using the word vegetarianism entirely. This may be the best way to communicate with meateaters, and I won't argue against anything that reduces the number of animals tortured and killed. Even so, I'm concerned that what could become a growing movement to eat less meat for environmental reasons might completely ignore the issue of speciesism.
2008/01/20
Meat and cars increase hunger
Periodically you hear the antimeat argument that, because you have to feed around 10 times as much grain to livestock to produce the same amount of calories as if you just ate the grain directly, we could solve world hunger if we stopped eating meat and sent the resulting surpluses to the hungry. That's a lousy argument, because the cause of world hunger is not global shortages, but inadequate distribution to the hungry caused by market forces and wars.
Well, it was a lousy argument till now. Because over the last several years global shortages have appeared in key crops, a development partly caused by meat. As the price of key foods like corn and cooking oil have risen, popular unrest is starting to boil over around the world. The past several months have seen food riots in Guinea, Indonesia, Mauritania, México, Morocco, Pakistan, Senegal, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. Food is getting more expensive in the US too, as discussed here.
The causes are complex, as detailed in this fine article. But there's no question that the two great enemies of the environment - meat and cars - are also key culprits in rising food prices. Basically, the increasing demand for meat and auto fuel is straining global food markets - grain is needed to feed factory farmed animals and can also be converted into ethanol; edible oils are turned into biodiesel. At the same time, higher petroleum prices are driving up the cost of shipping food around the world.
The rising prices build on each other: America's asinine corn ethanol subsidies have led many farmers to switch away from soy in favor of planting corn, which lowers the supply of soy oil and puts pressure on an already tight market in edible oils, themselves being diverted to biodiesel. Most tragic, all these developments threaten to make global warming even worse - corn ethanol probably adds more greenhouse gases than it avoids and tropical rainforests in Malaysia and Indonesia are being burned to clear the way for palm oil plantations, releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide in the process.
Americans still aren't feeling the pinch too badly, but people in countries like México depend heavily on cheap corn, while people in Asia get a large number of their calories from cooking oils. Higher prices for these people don't mean cutting expenses by seeing one less movie every other week, it means spending less by going hungry.
So now, possibly for the first time, the desire of the world's best-off to eat meat (and drive cars) is directly causing the world's poorest to go hungry. Commodity prices are notoriously volatile, so it's too early to tell if this is an aberration or a permanent problem that will get worse with time. But even if a sudden drop in the price of oil takes some of the pressure off momentarily, the trends driving food price inflation - high rates of both meat-eating and driving in the rich countries and rapidly increasing rates of the same in China and India - are probably here to stay. If global warming wasn't enough reason to make some big changes, how about the prospect of global food conflict?
Well, it was a lousy argument till now. Because over the last several years global shortages have appeared in key crops, a development partly caused by meat. As the price of key foods like corn and cooking oil have risen, popular unrest is starting to boil over around the world. The past several months have seen food riots in Guinea, Indonesia, Mauritania, México, Morocco, Pakistan, Senegal, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. Food is getting more expensive in the US too, as discussed here.
The causes are complex, as detailed in this fine article. But there's no question that the two great enemies of the environment - meat and cars - are also key culprits in rising food prices. Basically, the increasing demand for meat and auto fuel is straining global food markets - grain is needed to feed factory farmed animals and can also be converted into ethanol; edible oils are turned into biodiesel. At the same time, higher petroleum prices are driving up the cost of shipping food around the world.
The rising prices build on each other: America's asinine corn ethanol subsidies have led many farmers to switch away from soy in favor of planting corn, which lowers the supply of soy oil and puts pressure on an already tight market in edible oils, themselves being diverted to biodiesel. Most tragic, all these developments threaten to make global warming even worse - corn ethanol probably adds more greenhouse gases than it avoids and tropical rainforests in Malaysia and Indonesia are being burned to clear the way for palm oil plantations, releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide in the process.
Americans still aren't feeling the pinch too badly, but people in countries like México depend heavily on cheap corn, while people in Asia get a large number of their calories from cooking oils. Higher prices for these people don't mean cutting expenses by seeing one less movie every other week, it means spending less by going hungry.
So now, possibly for the first time, the desire of the world's best-off to eat meat (and drive cars) is directly causing the world's poorest to go hungry. Commodity prices are notoriously volatile, so it's too early to tell if this is an aberration or a permanent problem that will get worse with time. But even if a sudden drop in the price of oil takes some of the pressure off momentarily, the trends driving food price inflation - high rates of both meat-eating and driving in the rich countries and rapidly increasing rates of the same in China and India - are probably here to stay. If global warming wasn't enough reason to make some big changes, how about the prospect of global food conflict?
2008/01/13
Poverty and the election: More polemics on Obama vs Clinton
Lorrie Moore's op-ed today is the counterpoint to Gloria Steinem's deeply flawed argument for privileging gender over race while ignoring class and voting for Hillary Clinton. The first third of Moore's op-ed is the best opinion piece I've read in the mainstream media about the election. For a brief, shining moment, "likability", "change", "experience", the latest polls, and incessant campaign advice from so-called political analysts disappear, replaced by a harsh reminder that politics is actually a matter of life and death. Moore is the first person I've seen who raises what is probably the most urgent social issue in the country - poverty and its connections to institutionalized racism. This is a theme ignored by all the candidates except John Edwards (chastised as being too harsh by those so-called political analysts the few times they bothered to mention his candidacy), but Moore does not mention Edwards.
Moore also reminds us of what the Clinton years were like - something that many have forgotten or are too young to remember. There were a few big initiatives - the killing of around a million Iraqis thru sanctions and bombings, a variety of airborne war crimes in Yugoslavia, Sudan, and Afghanistan, military aid to state terrorists in Turkey, Colombia, and elsewhere, an unprecedented neoliberal offensive to remove all limits on the power of capital, an end to the last few guarantees to a basic standard of living. But mostly the Clinton presidency was an era of minute poll-tested policies designed to buy the electoral support of the middle class while avoiding the central problems of the time - global warming, deindustrialization, poverty, skyrocketing inequality of wealth, race and gender discrimination, punitive criminal justice laws and the drug war, rising numbers of uninsured coupled with rapid increases in the cost of healthcare, the crippling debts of the global south, the unchecked power of corporations.
In other words, the Clinton approach was to combine major negative policies with a paralysis of low expectations on central social problems. There is good reason to think a Hillary Clinton presidency would replicate this pattern - a point made nicely by Frank Rich, who notes that Clinton's top campaign strategist is a pollster - the same man who helped make the 1996 presidential election primarily about school uniforms and V-chips.
After pounding home the execrable Clinton legacy, Moore shifts gears and argues that the worst-off social group in the country is not girls but boys.
But wait a minute. Why are these boys doing so badly? Is it because they don't have any role models in national politics? Moore herself knows the answer:
The solutions are pretty straightforward: end drug prohibition or at least decriminalize drugs. Make it illegal to discriminate against felons in employment and allow them to vote. Sever education financing from property taxes and equalize funding across neighborhoods. Harshly penalize predatory commercial practices. Undertake massive investment in job creation and infrastructure in the poorest neighborhoods.
Is Obama supporting these kind of policies? This may come as a surprise to the progressives who have low expectations of Obama, but to a certain extent he is. There's a huge hole in the part of the proposal where an end to drug prohibition should be, and the job creation section seems far too weak, but Obama actually has a pretty good list of policies that would constitute a decent start to addressing the issue.
The problem is that Obama has intentionally excluded any discussion of poverty from his campaign, which continues to be built around empty rhetoric and biography. Can we really expect Obama, if elected, to spend any of his political capital pushing expensive programs to help the systematically disenfranchised underclass? If progressive forces remain silent, or demobilize in the wake of the election, I think the answer is an obvious "no".
But here's the difference with Clinton: she doesn't even have a poverty proposal. And if she ever did try to push an antipoverty agenda, she'd be tarred as an unreconstructed liberal. Ironically, Clinton is the least liberal candidate but is popularly identified as the most liberal, making it even harder for her to push good policies even if she wanted to. Obama, precisely because he is campaigning as a post-partisan candidate, would probably have more room to advance liberal policies if he were so disposed.
We shouldn't kid ourselves - to the extent Obama's policies are progressive, it's because the mood of the country is progressive and he was afraid of losing support if he didn't match Edwards's proposals. And we certainly shouldn't settle for Moore's terribly naive optimism that simply having a black man in the White House will save the victims of poverty. But if we get organized before a President Obama takes office, we have a shot at ending up with positive reforms. The chances seem much smaller if we face a President Clinton.
Moore also reminds us of what the Clinton years were like - something that many have forgotten or are too young to remember. There were a few big initiatives - the killing of around a million Iraqis thru sanctions and bombings, a variety of airborne war crimes in Yugoslavia, Sudan, and Afghanistan, military aid to state terrorists in Turkey, Colombia, and elsewhere, an unprecedented neoliberal offensive to remove all limits on the power of capital, an end to the last few guarantees to a basic standard of living. But mostly the Clinton presidency was an era of minute poll-tested policies designed to buy the electoral support of the middle class while avoiding the central problems of the time - global warming, deindustrialization, poverty, skyrocketing inequality of wealth, race and gender discrimination, punitive criminal justice laws and the drug war, rising numbers of uninsured coupled with rapid increases in the cost of healthcare, the crippling debts of the global south, the unchecked power of corporations.
In other words, the Clinton approach was to combine major negative policies with a paralysis of low expectations on central social problems. There is good reason to think a Hillary Clinton presidency would replicate this pattern - a point made nicely by Frank Rich, who notes that Clinton's top campaign strategist is a pollster - the same man who helped make the 1996 presidential election primarily about school uniforms and V-chips.
After pounding home the execrable Clinton legacy, Moore shifts gears and argues that the worst-off social group in the country is not girls but boys.
The political moment for feminine role models, arguably, has passed us by. The children who are suffering in this country, who are having trouble in school, and for whom the murder and suicide rates and economic dropout rates are high, are boys — especially boys of color, for whom the whole educational system, starting in kindergarten, often feels a form of exile, a system designed by and for white girls.Designed by and for white girls? Moore provides no evidence for that, and it seems pretty implausible to me. Given the level of segregation in this country, most boys of color don't even go to school with any white girls. I'm even more troubled by Moore's refusal to admit that gender inequality remains a huge social problem in the US. But her point that boys of color are faring worst in our society seems pretty fair (altho Moore's failure to mention girls of color even once seems motivated exclusively by her polemical anti-Clinton, pro-Obama aim). So if you buy the idea that a president who belongs to an oppressed social group might somehow alleviate that oppression - even if his or her policies do not address it at all - then Moore seems to be on pretty solid ground in endorsing Obama.
But wait a minute. Why are these boys doing so badly? Is it because they don't have any role models in national politics? Moore herself knows the answer:
their families [have been] torn apart by harsh economics and a merciless criminal justice system. Why does it seem to be the Republicans who are more vocal about reforming our drug laws? Why has no one in the Democratic Party campaigned to have felons who have served their time made full citizens again?I'm not sure where she's getting the idea that Republicans are calling for the reform of the drug laws, but otherwise this is a pretty good summary. Deindustrialization and the flight of capital that accompanied the creation of the suburbs robbed these communities of their jobs. The enforcement of drug prohibition, targeted primarily at people of color, and punitive rather than rehabilitative criminal justice laws imprisoned a large percentage of the community. Exploitative landlords and banks and criminally negligent public housing agencies and school systems ground these communities into the dirt. The explosion of violence surrounding the drug trade and the emergence of gangs as surrogate families ravished these communities, and left most of their young men with felony records that made it impossible for them to reintegrate into society.
The solutions are pretty straightforward: end drug prohibition or at least decriminalize drugs. Make it illegal to discriminate against felons in employment and allow them to vote. Sever education financing from property taxes and equalize funding across neighborhoods. Harshly penalize predatory commercial practices. Undertake massive investment in job creation and infrastructure in the poorest neighborhoods.
Is Obama supporting these kind of policies? This may come as a surprise to the progressives who have low expectations of Obama, but to a certain extent he is. There's a huge hole in the part of the proposal where an end to drug prohibition should be, and the job creation section seems far too weak, but Obama actually has a pretty good list of policies that would constitute a decent start to addressing the issue.
The problem is that Obama has intentionally excluded any discussion of poverty from his campaign, which continues to be built around empty rhetoric and biography. Can we really expect Obama, if elected, to spend any of his political capital pushing expensive programs to help the systematically disenfranchised underclass? If progressive forces remain silent, or demobilize in the wake of the election, I think the answer is an obvious "no".
But here's the difference with Clinton: she doesn't even have a poverty proposal. And if she ever did try to push an antipoverty agenda, she'd be tarred as an unreconstructed liberal. Ironically, Clinton is the least liberal candidate but is popularly identified as the most liberal, making it even harder for her to push good policies even if she wanted to. Obama, precisely because he is campaigning as a post-partisan candidate, would probably have more room to advance liberal policies if he were so disposed.
We shouldn't kid ourselves - to the extent Obama's policies are progressive, it's because the mood of the country is progressive and he was afraid of losing support if he didn't match Edwards's proposals. And we certainly shouldn't settle for Moore's terribly naive optimism that simply having a black man in the White House will save the victims of poverty. But if we get organized before a President Obama takes office, we have a shot at ending up with positive reforms. The chances seem much smaller if we face a President Clinton.
2008/01/07
On voting for people based on their anatomy or melanin
I think it's worth raising the question, as Naureen does, of how such a symbolically loaded thing as electing the first woman president or the first black president would affect American culture and even culture in other countries. (Naureen supports Clinton because she thinks electing her would strengthen the fight against misogyny, but she doesn't explain why electing Obama wouldn't have the same effect on racism.)
I've already written about my fear that an Obama presidency might actually make race inequality worse. What about a Clinton presidency? Clinton, like Obama, periodically panders to reactionary forces by casting herself in traditional gender terms. Last October she famously taunted her opponents, saying, "if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen. And I'm very much at home in the kitchen." Yet her aggressive style probably does more to undercut traditional gender expectations than her obviously calculated attempts to play into those norms reinforces them. We should, however, be careful here. Do we really want to promote unprincipled triangulation and ruthless power-grabbing as the alternative to feminine docility?
In the Obama post I didn't give any consideration to the possibility that having a black man in the White House might give blacks themselves greater confidence to confront racism and capitalism, or that it might reduce the incidence of racism in white people (if only among younger white people). The same positive cultural effects on gender issues might be a result of a Clinton presidency.
At the same time, either a Clinton or Obama presidency - both likely to govern as centrists at home and as liberal imperialists abroad - might reduce the capacity of progressive forces to mobilize against their conservative policies. It might also inflame patriarchal or racist forces and increase identity polarization (this seems more likely under a Clinton presidency given the powerful and widespread personalized hatred of her - nothing similar has emerged around Obama). Whether this would be good or bad is hard to say.
How these things play out culturally is probably too complex to predict. So I think it should be less of a factor in our decisionmaking than the imperative to undertake popular mobilization and push progressive issues on whoever is the next president.
I also think it's about time the left stops using identity politics as a central organizing principle. We should recognize that identity-based inequality is still a thriving part of our culture and resolutely oppose that. But unless our goal is a society composed of a finite number of rigidly-defined identity groups that individuals "should" belong to based on their genetic heritage, we should also be criticizing the facile prescribed identities that so animated the left in the '90s.
I've already written about my fear that an Obama presidency might actually make race inequality worse. What about a Clinton presidency? Clinton, like Obama, periodically panders to reactionary forces by casting herself in traditional gender terms. Last October she famously taunted her opponents, saying, "if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen. And I'm very much at home in the kitchen." Yet her aggressive style probably does more to undercut traditional gender expectations than her obviously calculated attempts to play into those norms reinforces them. We should, however, be careful here. Do we really want to promote unprincipled triangulation and ruthless power-grabbing as the alternative to feminine docility?
In the Obama post I didn't give any consideration to the possibility that having a black man in the White House might give blacks themselves greater confidence to confront racism and capitalism, or that it might reduce the incidence of racism in white people (if only among younger white people). The same positive cultural effects on gender issues might be a result of a Clinton presidency.
At the same time, either a Clinton or Obama presidency - both likely to govern as centrists at home and as liberal imperialists abroad - might reduce the capacity of progressive forces to mobilize against their conservative policies. It might also inflame patriarchal or racist forces and increase identity polarization (this seems more likely under a Clinton presidency given the powerful and widespread personalized hatred of her - nothing similar has emerged around Obama). Whether this would be good or bad is hard to say.
How these things play out culturally is probably too complex to predict. So I think it should be less of a factor in our decisionmaking than the imperative to undertake popular mobilization and push progressive issues on whoever is the next president.
I also think it's about time the left stops using identity politics as a central organizing principle. We should recognize that identity-based inequality is still a thriving part of our culture and resolutely oppose that. But unless our goal is a society composed of a finite number of rigidly-defined identity groups that individuals "should" belong to based on their genetic heritage, we should also be criticizing the facile prescribed identities that so animated the left in the '90s.
2008/01/04
After the caucuses
It's disappointing that John Edwards's solidly progressive campaign was beaten by Barack Obama's huge advantage in money, Obama's adulation among the media, and the surprising popular enthusiasm surrounding his contentless mantra of hope and change. Edwards is basically finished now. Despite winning second place, the media only talked about the first- and third-place finishers. The only chance Edwards had of breaking thru the media's indifference and hostility was by pulling an upset in Iowa. The media don't have much interest exploring corporate domination of politics or policies that might mitigate poverty or global warming, but they will respond to a big story in the horse race.
The good news is that Hillary Clinton was beaten even more badly than Edwards. The Democratic establishment's candidate lost in Iowa, where the establishment candidate is generally safe. Morever, she lost to a black man in one of the whitest states in the country, and she was even outpolled among women (Clinton got 30 percent versus Obama's 35 percent). However, Clinton is still ahead in the polls for the New Hampshire primary, which will be held January 8.
But does any of this matter to progressives? Obama's policy proposals are nearly identical to Clinton's, and both are tied into very similar networks of political and economic power (Obama's are based in Chicago rather than New York). Obama, like Clinton, is campaigning on platitudes and biography rather than the progressive reforms that might build momentum for positive legislative change after the election.
Despite the overwhelming similarities, on policy Obama is probably still preferable. His foreign policy advisers are demonstrably less bloodthirsty than Clinton's - even if the whole lot remain American supremacists. Obama has stated his willingess to meet directly with the leaders of America's designated enemies, while Clinton has criticized him for doing so and said that using nuclear weapons against Iran should remain an option. A final, far more significant difference is that Obama has called for the abolition of nuclear weapons while Clinton has avoided any clear statements on the issue.
If we could trust Obama to follow thru on even these few commitments, he would obviously be preferable to Clinton. But even tho Obama's voting record in the Illinois and US Senates has been fairly liberal, his policy initiatives have been pretty lackluster and there's no evidence he has any particular loyalties to a progressive agenda. My impression is that Obama is an opportunist - even his community organizing stint on the South Side might best be seen as Obama positioning himself for an anticipated run for mayor of Chicago (keep in mind those were the days of Harold Washington, when being an organizer would have made sense as a way into politics).
Nevertheless, Obama seems more open to a progressive agenda than Clinton, who remains rigidly attached to centrism in her own peculiar blend of elitist ideology and opportunism. If a popular movement for single-payer healthcare, high carbon taxes, or the abolition of nuclear weapons arose, I expect Clinton would be hostile but Obama might well be supportive. Obama may have the same DLC-type associations as Clinton, but Clinton grew completely out of those networks and has flourished within their warm embrace for twenty years, while Obama is still fairly new to politics and his loyalties may still be fluid.
We should also keep in mind the incredible popular enthusiasm Obama has generated. The sight of a politician summoning huge crowds and drawing previously nonvoting constituencies into the electorate hasn't been seen for forty years. If Obama wins the nomination and the election and chooses to pursue liberal policies, he has the potential to form a powerful new progressive majority. Under the right circumstances, this majority might even take the lead and push Obama onto a truly left-wing path. I think it's obvious that a similar scenario under a Clinton presidency is laughable.
I admit that a surging radical politics associated with Obama is pretty unlikely. But in strong contrast to the previous three elections of my adult life, 2008 presents us with some hope - because Obama as (potential) nominee is not a priori hostile to the progressive agenda and because the political climate in the country is so much better (talk of universal healthcare, for example, was strictly avoided by Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry). With Obama we have about an even chance of turning things around - depending entirely on how strong popular forces are. With Clinton there is no such chance.
Progressives should use the election to mobilize people into grassroots organizations that present the Democratic nominee with hard and fast demands on healthcare, global warming, foreign policy, immigration, and poverty. They should make clear that Obama's rhetoric of unity disguises the antidemocratic forces that are a central component in his campaign. And they should prepare for the real fight, which is over the direction of the country once the new president, whoever it is, takes office.
The good news is that Hillary Clinton was beaten even more badly than Edwards. The Democratic establishment's candidate lost in Iowa, where the establishment candidate is generally safe. Morever, she lost to a black man in one of the whitest states in the country, and she was even outpolled among women (Clinton got 30 percent versus Obama's 35 percent). However, Clinton is still ahead in the polls for the New Hampshire primary, which will be held January 8.
But does any of this matter to progressives? Obama's policy proposals are nearly identical to Clinton's, and both are tied into very similar networks of political and economic power (Obama's are based in Chicago rather than New York). Obama, like Clinton, is campaigning on platitudes and biography rather than the progressive reforms that might build momentum for positive legislative change after the election.
Despite the overwhelming similarities, on policy Obama is probably still preferable. His foreign policy advisers are demonstrably less bloodthirsty than Clinton's - even if the whole lot remain American supremacists. Obama has stated his willingess to meet directly with the leaders of America's designated enemies, while Clinton has criticized him for doing so and said that using nuclear weapons against Iran should remain an option. A final, far more significant difference is that Obama has called for the abolition of nuclear weapons while Clinton has avoided any clear statements on the issue.
If we could trust Obama to follow thru on even these few commitments, he would obviously be preferable to Clinton. But even tho Obama's voting record in the Illinois and US Senates has been fairly liberal, his policy initiatives have been pretty lackluster and there's no evidence he has any particular loyalties to a progressive agenda. My impression is that Obama is an opportunist - even his community organizing stint on the South Side might best be seen as Obama positioning himself for an anticipated run for mayor of Chicago (keep in mind those were the days of Harold Washington, when being an organizer would have made sense as a way into politics).
Nevertheless, Obama seems more open to a progressive agenda than Clinton, who remains rigidly attached to centrism in her own peculiar blend of elitist ideology and opportunism. If a popular movement for single-payer healthcare, high carbon taxes, or the abolition of nuclear weapons arose, I expect Clinton would be hostile but Obama might well be supportive. Obama may have the same DLC-type associations as Clinton, but Clinton grew completely out of those networks and has flourished within their warm embrace for twenty years, while Obama is still fairly new to politics and his loyalties may still be fluid.
We should also keep in mind the incredible popular enthusiasm Obama has generated. The sight of a politician summoning huge crowds and drawing previously nonvoting constituencies into the electorate hasn't been seen for forty years. If Obama wins the nomination and the election and chooses to pursue liberal policies, he has the potential to form a powerful new progressive majority. Under the right circumstances, this majority might even take the lead and push Obama onto a truly left-wing path. I think it's obvious that a similar scenario under a Clinton presidency is laughable.
I admit that a surging radical politics associated with Obama is pretty unlikely. But in strong contrast to the previous three elections of my adult life, 2008 presents us with some hope - because Obama as (potential) nominee is not a priori hostile to the progressive agenda and because the political climate in the country is so much better (talk of universal healthcare, for example, was strictly avoided by Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry). With Obama we have about an even chance of turning things around - depending entirely on how strong popular forces are. With Clinton there is no such chance.
Progressives should use the election to mobilize people into grassroots organizations that present the Democratic nominee with hard and fast demands on healthcare, global warming, foreign policy, immigration, and poverty. They should make clear that Obama's rhetoric of unity disguises the antidemocratic forces that are a central component in his campaign. And they should prepare for the real fight, which is over the direction of the country once the new president, whoever it is, takes office.
2008/01/02
Hard numbers on healthcare
The completely unacceptable performance of the American healthcare system has been widely recognized for at least 30 years. So it's baffling that politicians and the media have almost completely ignored the experience of a dozen other industrialized countries whose approach to healthcare has produced far better results.
Baffling, that is, until we recognize what following the lead of the other rich countries would entail - the almost complete elimination of private insurance providers and perhaps private pharmaceutical companies as well. The health industry is one of the richest in the nation, with plenty of money to corrupt politicians and threaten them with massive hostile propaganda campaigns if the lure of campaign contributions is inadequate. Since the media are too timid to venture beyond the incredibly narrow mainstream political debate, there has been almost no attention to the experience of other countries that spend significantly less per person on healthcare yet manage to insure everyone.
Winning a single-payer health insurance system, which in practice would mean extending Medicare to everyone in the country, is one of the most urgent political issues we face. So it's extremely important to counter the widespread ignorance and misconceptions among Americans about government-provided healthcare in the other rich countries. Here are some hard numbers that demolish the idea that private insurance is superior to single-payer in any way.
A survey of Australia, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Britain, and the US found that the US spends twice as much per capita ($6697) as even the second-highest spending country (Canada, $3326). The other countries spend even less - New Zealand spends only one-third as much as the US. This disparity is even more shocking in light of the fact that even with our astronomical healthcare expenses we leave 16 percent of the population without coverage, while the other countries cover everyone.
What about the results of the health system? I looked at the WHO's health statistics for Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Britain, and the United States - all have universal, government-provided healthcare except the US. The US is last in life expectancy - as many as 6 years behind the leaders. The US had the highest infant mortality rate (7 per 1000 live births) - South Korea was 6 deaths per 1000 live births and the other countries were between 3 and 5 deaths per 1000 live births. Per capita number of doctors varied - France and Germany had the highest, Australia, Canada, Britain, and the US were in the middle, and Japan and Korea had the lowest.
A survey of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, Japan, Britain, and the United States gives some more information. The US had the highest number of years lost to diabetes and circulatory and respiratory diseases, as well as the largest number of deaths due to surgical or medical mishaps.
In terms of overall opinions on healthcare, Americans are less satisfied than those with universal healthcare (see the first study). 16 percent of Americans said there were only minor problems in the health system, while 34 percent said the health system should be completely rebuilt. In the other countries, around 25 percent believed their health system had only minor problems (42 percent in Netherlands), while only 15 percent or so called for fundamental changes.
Confidence in the likelihood of receiving good-quality care was about the same in countries with universal healthcare as it is in the US (it was slightly lower in Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and Britain, about the same in Australia, and much higher in Netherlands). Wait times for surgery in the US were shorter than other countries (except Germany, which was significantly shorter than the US), but the differences were not overwhelming. Even Canada and Britain, the worst performers, held 85 percent of surgeries in under 6 months - and this relatively poor performance might be because of recent conservative attempts in both countries to reduce medical spending.
Another study assigned rankings to the health systems of Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Britain, and the United States. Rating the countries on "right" (effective) care, safe care, coordinated care, patient-centered care, access, efficiency, equity, and capacity to promote healthy lives, the US scored last or second-last in all categories except right care (the US's strong performance in preventive medicine was responsible for this single bright spot).
In 2000 the WHO ranked all the health systems in the world. Here are some of the rankings: France (1), Italy (2), Japan (10), Britain (18), Germany (25), Canada (30), Australia (32), US (37). Costa Rica was 36, Slovenia was 38. Cuba was 39.
(Also check out this Paul Krugman column, which tears apart the standard arguments in favor of private insurance.)
The conclusions are inescapable: the US spends by far the most money per capita on health care in the world - 2 to 3 times more than other rich countries. Yet the US leaves 1/6 of the population uninsured while the other rich countries cover everyone; the US's health indicators are no better and often worse than those countries with universal coverage; and Americans are less satisfied with their health system than are people with government-run systems. What makes our healthcare system operate so poorly?
The main reason is that private health insurance is a remarkably inefficient way to deliver health insurance. Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, notes that we spend "almost a third of every health care dollar on administration and paperwork generated by the private health insurance industry" while "[c]ountries like Canada spend about half that much on the billing and paperwork side of medicine". An even more relevant comparison is Medicare - America's own government-run insurance program for the elderly, which would be extended to everyone under single-payer insurance. Compared with the 30 percent administrative costs of private insurers, Medicare's administrative costs are significantly lower - between 2 and 5 percent depending on how they're figured.
Why is Medicare so much more efficient than private insurers? One reason is that Medicare doesn't spend millions of dollars on advertising and the ridiculous pay packages of HMO corporate executives. At least as important, Medicare benefits from economies of scale. The US has hundreds of private healthcare bureaucracies duplicating each other's work and paying thousands of employees to figure out how to deny care to sick people. Other countries do the paperwork through a single comparatively efficient government agency, with no profit incentive to deny care.
By Woolhandler's calculations, Medicare for everyone would save so much money that we could extend coverage to the 47 million uninsured and still have enough money left over to improve the coverage of those currently underinsured. So single-payer should be a no-brainer - it should look good to those who want to help their fellow Americans struck down by horrible illnesses, but it should equally appeal to those who simply want to stop spending so much on healthcare. The only reason we're denied this obvious solution is the tremendous power of the private healthcare lobby. It's up to us to organize and apply as much pressure as needed to convince our representatives to implement the only efficient and ethical answer to the healthcare crisis.
Baffling, that is, until we recognize what following the lead of the other rich countries would entail - the almost complete elimination of private insurance providers and perhaps private pharmaceutical companies as well. The health industry is one of the richest in the nation, with plenty of money to corrupt politicians and threaten them with massive hostile propaganda campaigns if the lure of campaign contributions is inadequate. Since the media are too timid to venture beyond the incredibly narrow mainstream political debate, there has been almost no attention to the experience of other countries that spend significantly less per person on healthcare yet manage to insure everyone.
Winning a single-payer health insurance system, which in practice would mean extending Medicare to everyone in the country, is one of the most urgent political issues we face. So it's extremely important to counter the widespread ignorance and misconceptions among Americans about government-provided healthcare in the other rich countries. Here are some hard numbers that demolish the idea that private insurance is superior to single-payer in any way.
A survey of Australia, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Britain, and the US found that the US spends twice as much per capita ($6697) as even the second-highest spending country (Canada, $3326). The other countries spend even less - New Zealand spends only one-third as much as the US. This disparity is even more shocking in light of the fact that even with our astronomical healthcare expenses we leave 16 percent of the population without coverage, while the other countries cover everyone.
What about the results of the health system? I looked at the WHO's health statistics for Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Britain, and the United States - all have universal, government-provided healthcare except the US. The US is last in life expectancy - as many as 6 years behind the leaders. The US had the highest infant mortality rate (7 per 1000 live births) - South Korea was 6 deaths per 1000 live births and the other countries were between 3 and 5 deaths per 1000 live births. Per capita number of doctors varied - France and Germany had the highest, Australia, Canada, Britain, and the US were in the middle, and Japan and Korea had the lowest.
A survey of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, Japan, Britain, and the United States gives some more information. The US had the highest number of years lost to diabetes and circulatory and respiratory diseases, as well as the largest number of deaths due to surgical or medical mishaps.
In terms of overall opinions on healthcare, Americans are less satisfied than those with universal healthcare (see the first study). 16 percent of Americans said there were only minor problems in the health system, while 34 percent said the health system should be completely rebuilt. In the other countries, around 25 percent believed their health system had only minor problems (42 percent in Netherlands), while only 15 percent or so called for fundamental changes.
Confidence in the likelihood of receiving good-quality care was about the same in countries with universal healthcare as it is in the US (it was slightly lower in Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and Britain, about the same in Australia, and much higher in Netherlands). Wait times for surgery in the US were shorter than other countries (except Germany, which was significantly shorter than the US), but the differences were not overwhelming. Even Canada and Britain, the worst performers, held 85 percent of surgeries in under 6 months - and this relatively poor performance might be because of recent conservative attempts in both countries to reduce medical spending.
Another study assigned rankings to the health systems of Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Britain, and the United States. Rating the countries on "right" (effective) care, safe care, coordinated care, patient-centered care, access, efficiency, equity, and capacity to promote healthy lives, the US scored last or second-last in all categories except right care (the US's strong performance in preventive medicine was responsible for this single bright spot).
In 2000 the WHO ranked all the health systems in the world. Here are some of the rankings: France (1), Italy (2), Japan (10), Britain (18), Germany (25), Canada (30), Australia (32), US (37). Costa Rica was 36, Slovenia was 38. Cuba was 39.(Also check out this Paul Krugman column, which tears apart the standard arguments in favor of private insurance.)
The conclusions are inescapable: the US spends by far the most money per capita on health care in the world - 2 to 3 times more than other rich countries. Yet the US leaves 1/6 of the population uninsured while the other rich countries cover everyone; the US's health indicators are no better and often worse than those countries with universal coverage; and Americans are less satisfied with their health system than are people with government-run systems. What makes our healthcare system operate so poorly?
The main reason is that private health insurance is a remarkably inefficient way to deliver health insurance. Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, notes that we spend "almost a third of every health care dollar on administration and paperwork generated by the private health insurance industry" while "[c]ountries like Canada spend about half that much on the billing and paperwork side of medicine". An even more relevant comparison is Medicare - America's own government-run insurance program for the elderly, which would be extended to everyone under single-payer insurance. Compared with the 30 percent administrative costs of private insurers, Medicare's administrative costs are significantly lower - between 2 and 5 percent depending on how they're figured.
Why is Medicare so much more efficient than private insurers? One reason is that Medicare doesn't spend millions of dollars on advertising and the ridiculous pay packages of HMO corporate executives. At least as important, Medicare benefits from economies of scale. The US has hundreds of private healthcare bureaucracies duplicating each other's work and paying thousands of employees to figure out how to deny care to sick people. Other countries do the paperwork through a single comparatively efficient government agency, with no profit incentive to deny care.
By Woolhandler's calculations, Medicare for everyone would save so much money that we could extend coverage to the 47 million uninsured and still have enough money left over to improve the coverage of those currently underinsured. So single-payer should be a no-brainer - it should look good to those who want to help their fellow Americans struck down by horrible illnesses, but it should equally appeal to those who simply want to stop spending so much on healthcare. The only reason we're denied this obvious solution is the tremendous power of the private healthcare lobby. It's up to us to organize and apply as much pressure as needed to convince our representatives to implement the only efficient and ethical answer to the healthcare crisis.
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