Unemployment, profits, and inequality kill

The next time someone disputes the idea that capitalism kills, suggest they consider these examples:

The effects of austerity and unemployment in Greece.

As the head of Greece’s largest oncology department, Dr. Kostas Syrigos thought he had seen everything. But nothing prepared him for Elena, an unemployed woman whose breast cancer had been diagnosed a year before she came to him.

By that time, her cancer had grown to the size of an orange and broken through the skin, leaving a wound that she was draining with paper napkins. “When we saw her we were speechless,” said Dr. Syrigos, the chief of oncology at Sotiria General Hospital in central Athens. “Everyone was crying. Things like that are described in textbooks, but you never see them because until now, anybody who got sick in this country could always get help.”

The New England Compounding Center, the pharmacy at the heart of a national meningitis outbreak in which 25 people have died, 313 more have fallen ill and as many as 14,000 people are believed to have been exposed.

A federal inspection of a company whose tainted pain medicine has caused one of the worst public health drug disasters since the 1930s found greenish-yellow residue on sterilization equipment, surfaces coated with levels of mold and bacteria that exceeded the company’s own environmental limits, and an air-conditioner that was shut off nightly despite the importance of controlling temperature and humidity. . .

Instead of producing tailor-made drugs for individual patients, as the law allowed, the company turned into a major drug maker that supplied some of the most prestigious hospitals in the country, including ones affiliated with Harvard, Yale and the Mayo Clinic, all with minimal oversight from federal regulators.

And, finally, the effects of life disparity on life expectancy [pdf].

• Most of the gains in life expectancy are the result of reducing disparities in how long people live, by averting premature mortality.
• Progress in reducing death rates for people who live longer than average has had little effect on life disparity levels and has contributed only modestly to life expectancy gains.
• The countries that have been most successful at reducing premature mortality enjoy the highest life expectancies and the greatest equality in individuals’ lifespans.

Unfortunately, these examples show that the unemployment, profits, and inequality associated with capitalism kill. We can certainly do better than this.

Money is speech

 

Obama and Romney are on pace to each raise more than $1 billion with their parties by Election Day.

From the beginning of 2011 through Oct. 17, Mr. Obama and the Democrats raised about $1.06 billion, and Mr. Romney and the Republicans collected $954 million, including some money for the party’s Congressional efforts, setting up 2012 to be the most expensive presidential campaign in history. . .

The overall totals do not include hundreds of millions of dollars being raised and spent by “super PACs” and other outside groups, mostly to benefit Mr. Romney and other Republicans. Groups aligned with Mr. Romney have spent $302 million on campaign advertising that they are required to disclose to the F.E.C., compared with about $120 million for groups aligned with Mr. Obama. Tens of millions of dollars more has been spent on issue advertisements whose precise costs are difficult to measure.

What should you do when students want to read Ayn Rand?

I sometimes wonder how I should respond when students express an interest in reading Ayn Rand.

The first thing I do is remind them that Atlas Shrugged is a novel, a work of fiction. Then I encourage them to go ahead and read Ayn Rand, if they haven’t already done so in high school.

My thinking is pretty much along the lines of what Obama said in this interview with Rolling Stone magazine:

Have you ever read Ayn Rand?
Sure.

What do you think Paul Ryan’s obsession with her work would mean if he were vice president?
Well, you’d have to ask Paul Ryan what that means to him. Ayn Rand is one of those things that a lot of us, when we were 17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood, we’d pick up. Then, as we get older, we realize that a world in which we’re only thinking about ourselves and not thinking about anybody else, in which we’re considering the entire project of developing ourselves as more important than our relationships to other people and making sure that everybody else has opportunity – that that’s a pretty narrow vision. It’s not one that, I think, describes what’s best in America. Unfortunately, it does seem as if sometimes that vision of a “you’re on your own” society has consumed a big chunk of the Republican Party.

Chart of the day

source

One out of four economically active Spaniards is now without a job—which means that the number of unemployed Spaniards has reached a historic high of 5,778,100.

Con todo, la peor noticia para el mercado laboral español no se encuentra en los datos que ha publicado el INE, está en el futuro inmediato. El tercer trimestre del año -y el segundo- conforman la mejor época del para el empleo. La temporada turística, el buen tiempo y las sustituciones estivales animan las contrataciones en el sector turístico y en la construcción. A partir de ahora, comienza el invierno climatológico… y laboral. Y eso se traduce en un deterioro de la situación. ¿Seis millones de parados? Acabar con casi 5,8 millones de parados el verano en plena recesión y sin señales de mejoría, es casi una garantía de que pronto se superará es fatídica cifra.

And since the summer tourist season generally represents the best time for jobs in Spain, the future looks even darker.

Cartoon of the day

Special mention