Meanwhile, Oklahoma, with a very similar population to Kansas, has lost 1.8 times as much funding per capita from the federal pouch s Kansas: (1) about 1 million children could have been fully insured, (2) nearly 700 elementary schools could have been constructed, or (3) 100,000 affordable housing units could have been built.
Missouri, while less hard hit than Oklahoma by redirected or misdirected federal funding, still might have done the following with its moneys: (1) insured upwards of 630,000 children, (2) built over 800 new elementary schools, or (3) constructed over 72,000 affordable housing units.
Meanwhile, if we look at the two most populated states on this section of the I-35 and I-70 corridor, Illinois and Texas, we see the following. (1) Texas and Illinois together could have insured 5 to 6 million children, (2) from 5 to 6 thousand new elementary schools could have been constructed, or (3) 600,000 affordable housing units could have been built.
Instead, the U.S. has a horrible housing economy largely due to (a) bad government priorities in congress and the executive branch—and (b) the fact that investment banks and lending houses have been looking for ways to make money for the energy boomers, mutual-funders, and others (who have money to put away or invest) by manipulating the market and ignoring protection measures for over a decade.
Instead, the American housing market is in its worst state since the great Depression.
Instead, tens of millions of Americans go around with out insurance.
Instead, America’s schools and roadway infrastructure are crumbling. (Klein points out that charter schools were part of the Chicago school’s approach to developing Chile’s economy under Pinochet. It is the approach used under W. Bush in the U.S. and especially in New Orleans after the Katrina Disaster.)
Certainly, some cynics will note that various tax moneys were returned at the local level to these states by
(1) the expensive and ill-planned endless-war-on-terror industrial contractors contractors and
(2) the energy boom that accompanied the Iraq War.
However, that sort of analysis is a crude (and inhuman or at least undemocratic) way to promote positive and proper priorities in funding America now, in the past, or in the future!
Moreover, since peoples lives are at stake in war and weapons, it won’t do anyone any good to be cynical.
We don’t have the time to slow down as cynics call us to do, and we need to confront the status quo. We need to use analysis like NPP provides to swing thinking investors and bankers to shift their local and national levels of priorities.
In summation, if one takes this point of view of simply saying that war, weapons, and high fuel prices are part- and parcel of America’s future in capitalism, I invite them to read Naomi Klein’s recent book, The Shock Doctrine.
Klein responsibly de-links capitalism and democracy.
Her theory and analysis is light-years more accurate and salient than cynics or Bush’s advisers have to offer in terms of how democracies and economies function or don’t function together.
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