ParisTampaBlog

What does common sense have to say about some of the problems that currently plague our country? Regarding perhaps the five most talked about, if not most critically important issues or problems that we currently face, there is probably little or no disagreement in regard to goals — we pretty much agree on what we want:

— An expanding economy with robust job growth.
— A slowing if not stoppage of our abuse of the natural environment, along with greater use of clean energy sources, and with greater protection of the other plant and animal species with which we share spaces on the earth.
— A high quality public educational system with few or no achievement gaps and school dropouts.
— A reasonably priced system of quality health care for all.
— A stable, if not democratic Middle East.

In regard to means, in regard to how to address and solve these problems, however, there’s little or no agreement. But, and more to my point, the approaches taken by our government in Washington to all five problems defy common sense.

Isn’t it a fact that job growth, an increase in the numbers of jobs and workers out there, will only result from job openings created by new business start-ups, as well as from existing businesses growing their work forces to increase production? But from the words and actions of the politicians in Washington that’s not what’s uppermost on their minds when they talk about promoting job growth.

Instead of just getting out of the way of the country’s entrepreneurs, instead of actively supporting them with favorable tax policies and other initiatives, the government in Washington does little to promote new job growth and, with much of the available stimulus money, protects instead the jobs and wages of public employees, those hundreds of thousands employed by the schools, those millions making up our nation’s town, city, and state work forces, the very ones who are in the business of producing nothing at all in respect to growing the country’s wealth.

What does common sense say about our energy policies? I’ll leave to the side whether global warming is based on common sense or not. This year in Florida, and in Europe, one would say it’s not.

Common sense does tell us that cleaning up the environment, clean air, clean water, species protection, that all these and others are worthy goals.  And there is no question that we ought to be actively developing new and clean energy sources, and furthermore that we ought to be growing our highly depressed, or non-existent system of mass transit, including at the very least high speed rail lines between our major coastal cities. However, not believing in common sense when it comes to solving problems, the members of Congress go on, if not actively undercutting, dragging their feet in respect to both clean energy and mass transit.

The story is much the same in regard to our system of public education. On the one hand nearly anyone who looks closely at our public schools must see that there are tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of young people there who are falling through the cracks, completely failing to acquire the knowledge and skills they need to either obtain a good paying job or go on to further education following, as the case may be, their leaving or graduating from high school.

I find it incredible that no one, or nearly no one, questions our keeping these young people in school where they are clearly not learning. For too many of them school, or at least what goes on in the place we call school, is clearly not right for them. So why do we keep them in school in defiance of common sense? Aren’t there better educational opportunities that we could provide for them, activities in which they could succeed, and from which they would not want to dropout? Common sense would say there were.

And furthermore haven’t we learned anything about our schools from the nearly endless series of failed school reform movements of the past 50 years or so? For these reform movements have done little or nothing to change the schools for the better in ways that counted. So why haven’t we heard the message that the failed reforms are sending us, that schools as presently structured are not the right places for many of our young people. Common sense, no?

For health care there is one common sense solution, and that is the so-called single payer system. This single reform would eliminate the thousands of health insurers (hence, I suppose, much of the opposition) as well as most of the now tons of costly administrative paper work demanded by the insurers and their handlers in government.

To actually go ahead and make this change, that which we’re not about to do, would be like Alexander’s cutting the Gordian knot with one fell stroke. That was a mythic stroke for all time, but evidently not one to be repeated in the present?

But doesn’t common sense say, let’s get on with it, let’s move on to a single payer system? In France the single payer system is popular and effective (see this article by Matt Welch, the editor-in-chief of reason magazine who recounts his experiences in the French health care system, very similar to my own experiences in that country). And those countries who are closest to us in many if not most other respects, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Sweden, all have single payer systems.

Why in regard to health care do we go on defying common sense? Medicare, a single payer system, is doing well by the aged (ask those who enjoy it). Sure there are problems with Medicare, and even more with Medicaid, but why aren’t we working on those problems, trying to make single payer work for us, rather than devoting all our time and efforts (as in the present Senate bill) to other, unnecessary problems and issues while attempting to preserve by hook or by crook the present system and all its faults, even extending this flawed system to others now without health insurance but who may not even want it (the young and healthy)?

Finally, there is the attempt, yet another government program in defiance of common sense, begun by George Bush Junior, to extend by force of arms our form of liberal democracy to Iraq, Afghanistan, and at some future time perhaps, Iran.

Common sense should have told Bush and his advisers that those countries were not ready for liberal democracy, and that such a vain attempt on our part would never be worth what it would cost us in treasure and lives. The voices of common sense were there. There were a few who were speaking out against our going to war. But the politicians in Washington, as usual, were not listening, not interested in those voices.

This entry was posted on March 11, 2010 at 11:10 am and is filed under Idle Thoughts. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.