[I lost this in one of gmail's cascades of emails.] raghu wrote: > First of all, I don't buy these productivity and other economic > statistics. There are far too many externalities they don't account > for.
Then why did you cite an economic statistic [http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/trends/us/] earlier in this thread? > Sure, of course the US working class deserves a decent standard of > living just like anyone else. But it is no use pretending that a > lifestyle based on over-consumption is (a) worth fighting to preserve > or (b) sustainable. You really haven't convinced me that the US working class is engaging in over-consumption that's unsustainable (and that you haven't absorbed the elite pundit mentality and the IMF-style program, that always wants to lower workers' living standards). Having suffered from stagnant incomes during the last 25+ years or so, how can they be doing so? Asad's point that people in the US are eating the _wrong things_ makes much more sense to me. > To take just one example, the US "working class" cannot continue to > eat the kind of food it is presently eating. Why do we have to ignore > this while talking about the inflation in health-care costs? Why can't > we talk about both and how the kind of food Americans are getting is a > product of the same process that is making health-care unaffordable to > them? Sure that does involve saying some things that the average > American probably doesn't want to hear e.g. no you can't get so much > red-meat at such cheap prices, because that is the product of a > barbaric and destructive factory-farm system. But so what? The discussion about what people eat in the US has been going on for a long time. It's not like you are starting it. I've talked about, though not on pen-l. People have also been talking about red meat and its true cost (see FAST FOOD NATION, for example, by Eric Schlosser). There are even movies on the subject, including the unfortunate fictional version of Schlosser's book. In any event, the high cost of medical care in the US -- including its abundant inflation rate -- is mostly due to gross inefficiency. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
