Tomorrow marks the end of the longest and most expensive presidential campaign in our history. I've cast my ballot, confident that I made the better choice and believing that the man is wrong. So is the other guy. The most profound errors - the errors in ethics, in judgement and perhaps most of all the errors of Christian belief - the most profound errors are in the places where the two men agree.
They have been telling us for over a year now that we need to grow the economy. Americans accept this as truth. A growing economy has been associated with good things like reduced poverty and unemployment and perhaps that's correct. But it is the worst kind of fallacy to believe that the only way to feed the hungry is for Americans to buy more stuff.
Growing the economy is a fancy way to say "sell more stuff". With few exceptions (the arts and education for example) this means increasing the production, consumption and removal (trash) of even more stuff. It means more abuse of our planet. It means more focus on what we have leaving less room to think about who we are.
Yes, in the past unemployment has dropped and access to basics of food and housing has increased in times of economic growth. When did we begin to believe that economic growth is the only way to achieve those goals?
There are other ways, many that have been tried and proven. We know that Americans collectively have plenty of resources to take care of us all. What if those with more than enough worked fewer hours and gave those other hours (and the pay to go with them) to someone who is unemployed? What if instead of spending our money on stuff we spent it on people - artists and artisans, local farmers who produce food less efficiently but more healthfully and with more quality than big conglomerates?
Here's another huge fallacy: Medical costs will continue to rise and the solution lies within the medical system. Yes, there are things we could fix is healthcare, but real reductions in costs will happen when Americans aren't as sick. Eat right and exercise seem like personal choices, not government business, but the government has been involved in those choices for decades. Our tax dollars go to pay large corporate farms to produce cheap, unhealthy foods including white grains and sugar. Even our produce spends days (about a week) in trucks and warehouses losing most of its health value. If those same dollars were directed to local farmers reducing the cost of local, healthy food, of course more people would eat it.
By the same token, government thinks nothing of spending billions on roads, generally without bike lanes and only inefficient pedestrian systems, while failing to find money for the public transit systems that encourage walking and clean up our air.
We fund public schools that require children to sit all day. We buy these children meals that would make any nutritionist cringe. We reduce recess and PE and ever increase the hours children are expected to spend sitting and pushing a pencil - both at school and for homework.
These are the causes of increased healthcare costs as much as any changes within the healthcare system itself.
The biggest fallacy of all is this: "If you elect the right man president, he will cause the economy to grow." Economists are pretty sure this isn't true. Even if he had the full support of congress and a really good crystal ball (of which the latter seems more likely), the president's influence on the economy is less than many other factors including politics and war in the Middle East, economics in Europe, growth in China and even the weather.
Now the time of taking sides and winning and losing is coming to a close. American's obsession with who is right and who is wrong can be less central to our conversations. Now is the time to look seriously at the world we have and imagine the world that can be. Let's put the full power of American creativity and strength to work. Let's put the fallacies to rest and get serious about finding real, long term solutions to the problems of poverty, unemployment and health. Along the way I bet we'll manage to do better for the environment, education and family relationships as well.
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