Yes, That's what I've been saying all along Ed. It's not just the children, it's the steady drain of the society and the reversion to class as a definition of culture. It's always been underneath but the founders covered it hoping it would die but instead it sprouted and WWII and the Neo-Cons who basically are German/Austrian brought their version of things here and interpreted the whole story from a perspective that is very Hollywood and California. Most people think of California as Hippies and Democrats but the whole conservative movement sprang from the California Universities in the 1960s (Think the Hoover Institute at Stanford) with people like Samuel Lipman (Poli-sci Berkeley) and friends meeting the Leo Strauss bunch with Milton Friedman from the (Rockefeller) "University of Chicago" group. What is not said is that Obama was a Univ. of Chicago professor. Much of the complaints with him seems cultural. On and on but frankly I'm tired of it all. I'm getting old and tired of being right only to find that everyone goes "Golly, how did that happen?" I've got my work cut out for me trying to develop a tradition Indigenous University here in upstate on our Stompgrounds land. How to do that without the rich folks in America. That's the issue with everything from culture to medicine to politics. :>))
REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2010 2:08 PM To: [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: Re: [Futurework] FW: U.S. 30th in global infant mortality I'm currently reading Jacob Hacker's & Paul Pierson's "Winner-Take-All Politics" which documents very large shifts in income and wealth in the US from the 1970s to the present. The richest one percent of the population saw their income rise by nearly 260%. Populations below the top one percent also saw their incomes rise but by far lesser amounts. I've only read about a third of the book, but it's already very evident that one of the major causes of the rich getting richer is the increasing connectedness between wealth and politics in the US -- i.e. I'll help you get elected if you fight to clear out some of the rules that prevent me from getting richer. What Hacker and Pierson seem to be saying is that politicians who are elected to serve the common good have in many cases become special interest lobbyists. I don't know what this has to do with the place of the US in global infant mortality, but I'd be willing to bet that the children of the rich have a much better chance of surviving than the children of the poor. Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Spencer" < <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]> To: < <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]> Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2010 1:25 PM Subject: [Futurework] Re: FW: U.S. 30th in global infant mortality > > Mike G. wrote: > >> Further evidence of the downward drift. > >>> <http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5A30PM20091104> http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5A30PM20091104 >>> >>> U.S. 30th in global infant mortality >>> [snip] >>> >>> "One in 8 births in the United States were born preterm, compared >>> with 1 in 18 births in Ireland and Finland," added the report, > > Not enough info in the forwarded Reuters piece to infer much of > anything. What's the cause of so many pre-term births? Smoking has > declined in the referenced period: > >>> "The percentage of preterm births in the United States has risen 36 >>> percent since 1984." >>> >>> Smoking and alcohol abuse can lead to pre-term birth but so can >>> fertility treatments resulting in multiple births. > > and big-bore fertility tech is expensive, not for the statistical > masses. Is the US way high on booze intake? Street drugs? > Prescription drug pandemic? American generic angst is more > foetus-hostile than Finnish generic depression? > > So something is there, yes, but it isn't clear just what. > > Tongue in cheek, one might say that, in the brave new century of the > victorious capitalist reincarnation of Homo Economicus, in the > interest of efficiency, babies are getting made by trying to make 9 > women pregnant for one month and then the team is downsized to 6, 7 or > 8 participants. > > BTW, entertaining piece by Douglas Coupland in Saturday's Toronto > Globe & Mail, "A Radical Pessimist's Guide to the Next 10 Years". 45 > quotable squibbs with attendant marginalia. > > "The middle class is over. It's not coming back." Considering that > every Saturday G&M for a decade or more has had numerous ads each week > for machine shops, tool and die works, machine tool companies, > precision fabricating shops and the like being auctioned off, I > believe it. The businesses, large and small, that make the tools and > machines for production are, so to speak, the liver of the middle > class. The liver is large, largely unnoticed, robust and you can even > live with half of it excised. But a defunct or moribund liver is > immanent death. The loss of some consumer product companies is bad > but the loss of the machine tool industry is catastrophe. > > > - Mike > > -- > Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~. > /V\ > <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] /( )\ > <http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/> http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^ > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] > <https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework> https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework >
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