This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream media. Today we look at the US military-industrial complex, health care in emerging nations, and poverty in the US 50 years after President Lyndon Johnson declared a "war on poverty."
The National Security State
What we used to term the military-industrial complex has grown far beyond President Eisenhower's deepest concerns when he warned us against it in his farewell speech in 1961. In a January 5 post, Tom Engelhardt re-imagines national security as a proselytizing warrior religion. As Engelhardt writes: "The expansion of Washington’s national security state -- let’s call it the NSS -- to gargantuan proportions has historically met little opposition....At a cost of nearly a trillion dollars a year, its main global enemy consists of thousands of lightly armed jihadis and wannabe jihadis scattered mainly across the backlands of the planet....No matter how you cut it, the NSS is a Ripley’s Believe It or Not of staggering numbers that, once you step outside its thought system, don’t add up. The U.S. national defense budget is estimated to be larger than those of the next 13 countries combined -- that is, simply off-the-charts more expensive. The U.S. Navy has 11 aircraft carrier strike groups when no other country has more than two....It is creating a jet fighter that will be the most expensive weapons system in history. Its weapons makers controlled 78% of the global arms market in 2012.... After all, if the twenty-first century has taught us anything, it’s that the most expensive and over-equipped military on the planet can’t win a war. Its two multi-trillion-dollar attempts since 9/11, in Iraq and Afghanistan, both against lightly armed minority insurgencies, proved disasters." Calling the NSS a remarkable failure, he concludes that the national security state "has made other options ephemeral and more immediate dangers than terrorism to the health and well being of Americans seem, at best, secondary. It has pumped fear into the American soul. It is a religion of state power."
Health Care
As we struggle here in this country supporting our overblown military budget while looking for ways to cut the social safety net and deny access to affordable health insurance to the more vulnerable in our society, it's interesting to look at the approach to health care in developing countries. James Akazili and Charlotte Soulary write in January's Le Monde Diplomatique that "In an unequal 21st-century world, access to healthcare is key to fighting poverty and ensuring social cohesion." They describe the growing focus on Universal Health Care in the developing world. The World Health Organization, the UN General Assembly and the World Bank have come out in support of Universal Health Care (UHC). "Governments are taking action: China, Thailand, South Africa and Mexico are some of the first emerging economies scaling up public investment in health, and many low-income countries, especially in Africa, have introduced free healthcare policies as a first step towards universal coverage." With the need for UHC generally acknowledged, the discussion now is focusing on finance mechanisms. The authors warn against a one-size-fits-all approach in financing the health care system. "According to the WHO, only eight low-income countries will be in a position to fully finance UHC from domestic resources in 2015. More long-term and predictable aid is vital, to help build effective public health systems and also to improve public financial management and taxation systems so that countries can become self-sufficient."
In another Le Monde Diplomatique article, Carina Vance writes of the prominent place that health care has in Ecuador's new (2008) constitution. Article 32 of the Ecuadorian constitution states: “Health is a right guaranteed
by the state and whose fulfillment is linked to the exercise of other
rights, including the right to water, food, education, sport, work,
social security, a healthy environment and everything that promotes
well-being." The result: "Ecuadorians are benefitting from an unprecedented redistribution of
wealth. This historic effort has allowed public health to become a key
factor in social justice. The increase in the number of hospitals and
healthcare centres throughout the country has given millions of patients
access to services from which they had been excluded, because of
distance, poverty, discrimination or lack of information."
Poverty in America
Fifty years ago in his State of the Union address, President Lyndon Johnson declared an "unconditional war on poverty" - a war, he said, the "richest nation on Earth can afford to win....We cannot afford to lose it." A Mother Jones post on January 8 looks back at the distance we've come in combatting poverty in the years since. "Johnson's administration went on to design "Great Society" initiatives, including a permanent food stamp program, Medicare and Medicaid, Head Start, which provides early education to low-income kids, and increased funding to public schools....The war on poverty helped raise millions above the poverty line. During Johnson's years in office, the poverty rate dropped from 23 percent to 12 percent." The article presents charts that show how the social safety net has reduced poverty, the steep decreases in elderly and child poverty, the lack of progress in preventing "deep poverty" (half the poverty line - i.e., those living on an income of less than $11,775 a year for a family of four), the number of Americans living on $2/day, the cost of living in various American cities, and the continuing racial disparity for the poorest 20%. The authors (Erika Eichelberger, Jaeah Lee, and AJ Vicens) conclude "So have we won the war on poverty? If it means that the lives of millions of Americans in poverty have improved under the Great Society programs, yes. But by no means have we attained Johnson's goal of 'curing' poverty. The poverty rates of certain demographic groups remain stagnant and racial disparities are as wide as ever."
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