Happy Shiny People? Not in the United States


Gallup published the findings of its on-going health and well-being survey and discovered that Americans would be happier and healthier if they lived in Denmark. Using the same poll, 83% of Danes are not just happy and healthy, they are thriving. Compare that to the United States were just 49% of people are thriving while nearly as many people are struggling (47%) if not actively suffering (4%).

This probably comes as no news to Americans who are in the middle of a presidential election that likely won’t rid the White House of the Republican menace and enduring yet another slide in home valuations amid economic slow down, sky-rocketing gasoline prices and steadily increasing food prices. Americans know that it sucks to be them, and if they didn’t after Barack Obama set them straight on their “bitterness” problem that manifests in a complusive need to go to church, legally arm themselves and talk smack about immigrants, well now they do.

And if you are thinking that this might be some worthless study that some pointy domed researcher at Harvard will parse into a best-selling self-help tome to secure his tenure and meet Oprah, you would be correct in thinking so as there is plenty of precedent – but still very wrong. The researchers hope that their findings which can be broken down by occupation, commute time and exercise habits, will help employers better understand what they can do to create happier and healthier workers. And if that isn’t enough to give the thinking person nightmare visions of the future, there is the further hope that these same statistics could even be used to compare health and happiness by ZIP code, creating quite a measuring stick for future generations of politicians.

Excuse me? There is happiness to be found as a cog in the great wheel of capitalism while being political pawns of Satan?

And it gets better.

“There’s never been anything quite like it,” said Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize winner in economic sciences.

“You’re getting details about what it’s like to live in this country,” said Kahneman, a Princeton University professor brought in by Gallup to discuss the potential uses for the data. “What is the experience of the weekend? What is the experience of the weekday for someone who is sick and has to go to work in the morning? We are going to learn a great deal about what are the determinants of actual happiness.”

Determinants of actual happiness? Weekends. They make most people happy whereas having to go to work sick – not so much. They need to break down data to figure this out? Yes. The answer is yes because it’s not about people being happy and healthy and thriving. It’s about corporations making profits for shareholders and politicians manipulating the masses sedated with “happiness”. Kind of Matrix-y, don’t ya think? Find out what people want and plug them into it.

The World Goes Hungry


Well maybe no one in the industrialized world of you and me is facing the prospect of having to eat dirt to quell an empty belly, but there is definitely a problem here as prices rise and by all accounts will continue to do so until 2009 when the actual food shortages that plague developing countries like China and Vietnam begin to hit us closer to our own waistlines.

An interesting article in this week’s Time outlines what seems to be a pretty modest plan for turning this latest global crisis around: a reduction of cash incentives that already have farmers using 17% of their plantable land to grow corn for biofuel and the gas tank instead of human consumption in addition to a call for an international effort to supply farmers in poor countries with high quality seed and fertilizer (a program that has already worked in Malawi).

Time’s plan calls for a modest amount of cooperation, sacrifice and about $10 billion dollars (to be collected from the have nations and give to the really-don’t-have-anything-to-eat nations), but in my opinion it will be the first two criteria rather than the last that will be hardest for some western countries to give. Already the U.S. Congress is ready to chuck the baby with the bath water while farmers protest their innocence, and even though biofuels were never a good idea, it bears noting that our Senators and Representatives adopted the idea with no more thought than they are giving to axing it. Reactionary as usual, the loss of ethanol is going to ding the U.S. economy every bit as much or more than rising food prices, and it won’t correct the short term problem of this year or probably next. Congress can dismantle the ethanol incentives in the blink of an eye, but corn can’t be grown nearly as fast.

Food shortages are not going to go away simply because biofuels can’t feed us. We’ve mismanged our farmlands to the point that we have robbed them of the minerals needed to grow nutritious food. The food we eat is nutritionally void to the point where minerals and vitamins have to be added to those grains that are processed. Fertilizers can make bankrupt soil farmable but they can’t put nutrition into the food that is grown. That comes only from healthy earth and our soil is laden with nothing but man-made chemicals and environmental waste.

My husband thinks it is time we got serious about gardening and learned to can our produce, and with bread over five dollars (CAN) a loaf, breadmaking is in our future as well. Growing some of our own produce and making breads will not solve food shortages in Asia or bring prices down here, but it is something we can do for ourselves and maybe that is a solution after all.

Insuring Our Children’s Health


Health care is a calamity in the United States. Tens of millions of people, mostly women and children, are without the means to see a doctor for preventative medicine as well as treatment for illnesses and accidents. Why? Health insurance was irrevocably wedded to employment after WWII when the government restricted businesses ability to compensate their worker monetarily. Businesses began to use health insurance as a way to attract and keep the workers they needed. Today’s workers find themselves in a much chillier climate with health insurance being limited, dropped or not offered at all by businesses desperate to maintain healthy profits as opposed to healthy workers. Women and their children are especially hard hit by this as they are more likely to be working part time jobs or for small businesses and benefits like health insurance are not available to them. Even two income middle-class families are hard hit by the co-pays and payroll deductions for the coverage they are able to get through their employment. With medical costs sky-rocketing, people find themselves paying more and more for less and less coverage.

And then there are the catastrophes that no family expects. The catastrophic illness of a breadwinner or child. Chronic illnesses that are perfectly treatable but too expensive to do so without insurance. Terminal illnesses. Most Americans are one disastrous illness or accident away from losing everything and this is mainly due to inadequate health insurance or none at all. For these people federally funded programs like Medicaid and CHIPS were created but due to Congressional underfunding, states have to limit those who can participate. There are long waiting lists and some people are forced to quit jobs in order to qualify for these programs – a Catch 22 if ever there was one.

My late husband qualified for Medicaid – barely – due to the nature of his very rare illness, but I have to say that I wish I hadn’t had to take that assistance. I will forever feel like I failed because I couldn’t take care of him myself. Being a part of any type of government assistance program, from my perspective, is not something the majority of people seek out. I found my dealings with social workers and Medicaid frustrating and soul-crushing. I don’t know that I can ever really put into words just how damaging it was at a time when I was already going through one of the worst experiences – watching my husband die. But I would have done anything to make his last months better and I “sucked it up” and did what needed to be done. I was lucky. We qualified. Thousands of people are told every day that they don’t. They make a few hundred or thousand dollars a year too much. There are waiting lists and they must get in line. Or, the worst of all, the program has been cut due to lack of funds.

If you have a minute, check out some of the stories and articles at Moms Speak Up. Leave a comment. Tell a story. Send a quick email to your state senator or representative. We are one of the wealthiest nations in the world and we are not taking care of our children or our desperately ill. We can do better.