From: harelb@math.cornell.edu
Newsgroups: alt.activism
Subject: How USA-Today Lies -- post-addendum
Date: 12 Jan 93 03:39:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #N:9301120337.AA06335@poly.math.cor:-84458640:000:5086
Nf-From: math.cornell.edu!harelb    Jan 11 19:39:00 1993


From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (Harel Barzilai)
Subject: How USA-Today Lies -- post-addendum


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Topic 517	How USA-Today Lies (4)	Response  1 of  1 
harelb 
(at math.cornell.edu)	(From News system) 
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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