What's at Stake?

Every four years, millions of people are opposed to independent and third party presidential candidacies because it's not the time and "there's too much at stake." Many say the "status quo" under one party is much preferable to the destruction of our country under the other. They focus on what differences there are between the two corporate candidates and downplay the differences between both candidates and anything resembling the interests of the American people. It's important to remember what's at stake in our elections and in our country. Ralph Nader recently described some of what I believe is at stake regardless of which corporate candidate wins, and by extension what people are saying they are willing to live with in supporting candidates who betray our interest.

This is excerpted from a 2008 speech at Princeton. You can view the whole speech here. Any emphases, etc. are mine. If you find any errors in my transcription, please let me know so I can correct them.

The only way we can improve our world is to face up to reality, is to face up to the torment that is affecting this world of ours, because we can always justify and rationalize our futility, can we not? By in effect saying, “oh, you know that’s, that’s beyond us, it’s too overwhelming.” And then we don’t analyze how it has come to be in order to motivate us toward the solutions or toward at least addressing these problems.

So when someone says to you, three billion out of the six billion people in this world are living on two or one dollars a day, is that too abstract? Well then somebody says, well you know the 350 richest people in the world have wealth equivalent to the combined wealth of the bottom three billion people in the world. How does that affect you? How does it affect you that in the year 2000 Bill Gates’ financial wealth was equivalent to the combined financial wealth of the bottom 115 million people in America who were essentially, in terms of their net worth, almost broke? How does that affect you?

How does it affect you to run through the following statistics that don’t have a human face? That because we don’t have universal health care in this country, we don’t have single payer, which is far more efficient and allows you free choice of doctor and hospital—this is essentially government insurance and private delivery of health care under competitive framework—that 18,000 people a year in this country die because they can’t afford health care according to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science, a pretty conservative figure, which means hundreds of thousands get sick or don’t get diagnosed in time every year. What does that do to you?

What does it do to you to know that 3,000 people died on 9/11, and that is essentially less than three weeks’ total of the number of Americans who die from workplace related disease and trauma in the United States, week after week after week, according to OSHA, estimate. What does it say to you to know that over 200,000 people in this country die because of hospital and medical negligence and because of side effects of drugs and hospital-induced infections, which is a terrible epidemic. The Centers for Disease Control estimates 200 to 250 people a day die from hospital-induced infections and there aren’t many antibiotics left that can deal with resistance [???]. Now, what does it mean to you to learn that 65,000 people according to EPA die from air pollution in this country?

What does it mean to you that under the Clinton-Gore Administration sanctions, economic sanctions were imposed on the people of Iraq—military sanctions is one thing, economic sanctions that damage civilian life is a crime under international law, and a distinguished task force of physicians estimated 500,000 children in Iraq died as a result of those embargos of critical material, including chlorine which of course is critical to drinking water purity, microbial control. What does it, what does it do to you?

What does it do to you to know that hundreds of thousands of students are being ripped off under the student loan rackets? Sallie Mae in particular. They basically—fundamental example of government-guaranteed capitalism, where they can rip you off with abandon, with fine-print contracts that even law schools don’t analyze to protect their law students taking such loans. And if you don’t pay and they can’t collect, they can go to Uncle Sam for a guarantee, government guaranteed capitalism. What does it say that universities and colleges, until very recently, were not alert to these deceptions and frauds that often track students decades after they graduate. They got into a debt spiral which they couldn’t get out of, and because they’re in a debt spiral their credit rating wasn’t very good and many of them couldn’t get certain jobs as a result, and where were the universities to basically say we’re not gonna take these freebies and these junkets in the financial aid offices from these student loan corporations.

What does it do to you to know that 13 million children in this country go to sleep hungry, everyday, in this country? What does it do to you to know that 45 million workers, one-third of the entire workforce, make under 10.50 an hour before deductions, many of them working fulltime and with side jobs and they don’t have health insurance? What does it do to you to know that the GDP in this country is at least 20 times per capita productivity greater than 1900? In 1900 there was poverty, but when you have an economy that has increased its productivity per worker 20 fold, why is there any poverty in this country? What is the disconnect between the relentless increase in paper wealth, in GDP and 80% of the workers of this country falling behind. Where we have an economy almost double the size of 1970 and yet, in inflation adjusted terms, the peak wage in this country was in 1973—it still is the peak wage in this country, 1973, adjusted for inflation—just barely, after all these years may be slightly surpassed, but with the home sub-prime mortgages it doesn’t look like it’s gonna be anytime soon.

What does it mean to you that the head of Wal-Mart, with his rubber stamp board of directors, made 11-12,000 dollars an hour, 8 hours a day last year, when he had the majority of the workers were making 6 ½, 7 ½, 8, 9, 9.50 an hour. Just think of that. Think of that. What does it mean to you that you’re likely to go into the pattern all too often of prior Princeton graduates and have your exquisite talents trivialized because it pays well, where you have exquisite talents but you’re not working on the major problems affecting the world? That’s one reason our Princeton Class of 1955 started Princeton Project ’55, ‘cause we didn’t want Princeton students who could get 20 job offers from Wall Street to Houston, we didn’t want them not to have an option to develop their civic skills on real serious problems of injustice in one city or community after another, during the summertime or for one year fellowships after this...

…Now, imagine if thousands of classes, 30 years out from graduation did something like Project ’55, how many opportunities there would be for you not to have your skills trivialized…how many opportunities there would be for you before the trajectory of your redundant bureaucratic, whether corporate or public, routine lives kicked into place. That you could use your 20s and not waste your 20s, often getting over personal hang-ups you should have taken care of when you were teenagers, that would use your twenties to break ground because your twenties are the most creative decade of your life, you’ll have more wisdom and judgment and experience later on, but it’s in your 20s that you’re gonna ask the impertinent questions, you’re gonna pioneer, you’re gonna see what level of courage you’re gonna have, to connect with your own professional skills. That’s what you have to look forward to. A society that does not allow its most talented people to work on its most serious problems, a society that has been commercialized, corporatized, merchandized, trivialized, into a caricature of itself. And if you open up the panorama of reality, you will see that never in the history of the world has a society piled up more wealth, not necessarily empirical wealth, look at our public works, and how they’re crumbling—a society that’s piled up more wealth than any society in history and has not transferred and distributed that wealth for the well-being of the majority of its people, and its income disparity and wealth disparity is getting worse and worse, where 1% of the richest people in this country have wealth equivalent to the bottom 95%. And so I’m giving you these broader statistical representations of reality without necessarily going into case studies which could be really heart wrenching, because I just want you to ask yourself, are you getting angry? What’s your level of social indignation? What happens when you do get angry? Do you have an outlet?