July 14, 2017

The comings and goings of the Trumps and Clintons are but skillful distractions from the grave issues afflicting our country and the world: climate change, the global water crisis, the flat-out refusal of the world’s nuclear powers to eliminate humanity’s sword of Damocles, the lack of commitment to a concrete timetable to stop using nuclear fission and fossil fuels to generate electricity, the demise of Aristotelian democracy –and above all- the abysmal inequality of wealth and income.

None of them are ever on the agenda of any administration –regardless of party affiliation. Instead, they purport to tackle consequences, not causes. Take for instance, health care. One reason why it’s necessary to tax the rich to subsidize the poor is because the latter can’t afford the stratospheric premiums and deductibles, a function of inequality. The same applies, of course, to all other services for the poor, a phenomenon formerly the exclusive domain of minorities.

Another example is the housing crisis. The government’s exposure –through Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA and VA, among others- to the $10 trillion real estate market is roughly $9 trillion. That means the government’s interest in it is congruent to the banks, investors and homeowners. They all want and need ever-higher prices.

That’s absurd. In California for instance, there are no cities of comparable size between Greater Los Angeles and the Bay Area. Furthermore, surprisingly, Eureka (estimated 2017 population: 26,727) is the largest town between San Francisco and Portland, Oregon. Prices are high not because there’s no vacant land to build on but because the supply of housing is kept artificially low to keep prices high. In other words, the economic system itself is cannibalizing our children and grandchildren. Despite nonexistent job security and low wages, they’re expected to simultaneously take out enormous non-dischargeable student loans and pay outrageous housing prices or rents. No wonder household formation is as low as it is and muffled, compressed dissatisfaction permeates the country. For the first time in our history over 50% of women live alone, and with only 5% of the world’s population, the United States consumes 80% of the world’s opioids.

Then there’s the South China Sea. An enormous percentage of the world’s trade passes through it, no argument there. What kind of trade? Surely it’s not that we’re protecting our exports –we hardly make anything anymore. It’s our dual-use, strategic imports that matter. We are now dependent on factories that American industrialists moved from the U.S. to Asia, a self-inflicted wound. Now we are in the position of having to contain and subdue China, a country 10,000 miles away with four times our population, incomparably lower college costs, and a GPA growing at 6% per year. To say the least, a daunting task.

There’s a silver lining. The G-19 countries that purportedly support the Paris Agreement have a golden opportunity to persuade the U.S. to hop back on board; not with ineffective rhetoric but with deeds. All they have to do is commit to a specific timetable to use hydrogen from the ocean instead of fission and fossil fuels to make water and electricity. As described in Plan A, that should do the trick.