I was recently going through some old files and came across an academic paper I wrote in 2009. I posited the question: what percentage of our Gross Domestic Product would it take to provide every American with adequate food, decent housing, clothing, the other necessities of life, and medical care?
The idea was for our society to treat all of us the way we treat ourselves and our families: we take care of the necessities before we spend money on anything else. Suppose we cared about every American the way we care about our loved ones and ourselves? What percentage of our income/production would that take?
Nineteen percent.
Those were 2009 numbers, and the Trump economy is worse now than it was then, but I imagine that the percentage isn't much larger. It's interesting to consider that we only need to spend one dollar out of every five on keeping ourselves fed, clothed, sheltered, and cared for. The rest, we can use to save the spotted grackle from extinction or blow up Iranian schoolgirls.
So I wonder why we have so many poor people. Is it because we have so many people who make thousands and thousands of times what it would take them to simply survive and thrive? And they fiercely resist any idea of giving any portion of that to help those who are less well off?
If only we ran our country the way we run our families.
