From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (Harel Barzilai)
Subject: RE: How USA-Today Lies
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: ?
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 02:13:59 GMT

Rich Winkel forwarded me Martillo's response to the last part (4) of
the "How USA-Today Lies" posts.

The earlier parts reveals how the propaganda about the "US feeding the
world" was in fact a case of government subsidies to agribusiness;
"aid" for grain to be fed to cattle while people starve; was massively
skewed toward the developed countries while the most wretchedly poor
and starving see very little of this "huge US food export", etc.

In part (4), taken from the recently released and excellent reference
work, _We're Number One_, I put up some charts showing the the U.S. is
"number one" in being having the *least* (%GNP) development aid, of
which is has the *second lowest* percent going to LDCs (Least
Developed Countries) where the world's most massive poverty and hunger
is, of all 19  western industrialized nations.

Mr. Martillo contends that "the presentation is misleading" because of
what Chomsky accurately terms the massive "Third World at home" which
Martillo evidently recognizes.

Mr. Martillo provides no hard counter-evidence for his contention that
were domestic "aid" programs in each of the countries taken into
account, "the US comes out ahead by far."

In fact Mr. Shapiro's _We're Number One_ is an excellent source for
the vital statistics -- for example infant mortality, or for example
the child poverty rate, or for example the elderly poverty rate  --in
all three instances, the U.S. is the "number one" worst of all the
western industrialized nations; in the later two cases, it is twice as
bad as the "second-place" worst nations. [see below for info about
We're Number One].

Judging from these key indicators, the United States corporate-welfare-
state comes by far *behind* the other industrialized nations in
"domestic aid programs" as well.

Granted, results do not equal amount spent -- a key example is that
the U.S. is the *only* western industrial nation of the nineteen such
in the world without a universal National Health Care program.

Ideological dogma about "inefficient bureaucracies" versus "efficient
market [read: profit] -driven" health care systems, in fact the U.S.'s
far less efficient a "system" than the [Canadian model or UK model,
for example] single-payer national health care systems -- and it is
widely recognized that a Canadian-style system would actually *save*
dozens of billions of dollars per year, including by the GAO which adds:

** [1] The General Accounting Office [GAO] stated in a 1991 report that
** "If the universal coverage and single-payer features of the Canadian
** system were applied in the United States, the savings IN
** ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS ALONE would be MORE THAN ENOUGH to finance
** insurance coverage for the millions of Americans who are currently
** uninsured. There would be ENOUGH LEFT OVER to permit a reduction, or
** possibly even the elimination, of co-payments and deductibles" [In
** These Times, June 26-July 9, 1991. My added emphasis]
** 
** The article also notes that "In 1970 both Canada and the U.S. spent
** about 7.4 percent of their gross national products on health care. By
** 1989, The U.S. spent 11.6 of its national income on health and Canada
** only 8.9 percent. Yet in Canada more health care service was delivered
** per person than in the U.S., according to a recent report by the U.S.
** General Accounting Office"


There are deep institutional reasons for the landscape presented in
_We're Number One_ and elsewhere, with the U.S. representing an
extreme amoung the industrial capitalist countries in terms of the
control of the political and economic arena by the special
corporate/economic-elite interests who use their power in our
profit-base economy to suit their private ends at public expense.

The large corporations in the business of selling mass-audiences to 
client advertiser companies -- i.e., the `Free Press' -- provide us
with our models of the Truth, reality be damned, under which Doctrine
we are Standing Tall, doing Everything We Can for the third world at
home, and Feeding The World as U.S. taxpayers subsidize agribusiness
and 40,000 children starve in the world each day.

Send the 1-line message

GET CHOMSKY VICTORS2 ACTIV-L 

to LISTSERV@MIZZOU1.BITNET for _The Victors: Part II_ which sheds more
light on this; other articles of intererest similarly available:

  OXFAM    HONDURAS  Oxfam's Bulletin on "Why Farmers Go Hungry"
  CHOMSKY  VICTORS1  Who won Cold War? Encyclopedic survey of domains
  CHOMSKY  VICTORS2  of the Cold-War `victors';why aren't people there
  CHOMSKY  VICTORS3  celebrating? conditions there, incl. vs. EastBloc
  E-EUROPE C-AMERIC  Comparisons and contrasts by Guat. journalist

Harel



**                        =======================
**                         T a k e n   F r o m :
**                        =======================
**   - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
** _We're Number One, Where America Stands -- and Falls -- in the New
** World Order_ by Andrew L Shapiro.
**  New York, May 1992, Vintage Books, a division of Random House.
** $10 paperback. ISBN 0-679-73893-2
**  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
** [Transcribed by jhwoodar@well.sf.ca.us (Joe Woodard)]
**
**      ``America is becoming a land of private greed and public squalor.
**     This book is an indispensable road map through the wreckage. The
**     facts it reveals will startle you. They may depress you. But
**     ideally they'll fire you up to help rebuild this nation.''
**
**                          -Robert B. Reich, author of The Work of Nations
**
**                  [And now, future Clinton Labor Secretary,
**                  we might add. --HB]
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