check out Steven Hill's EuropesPromise.org-- new Sat. am breakfast club book discussion club forming!...

Hi all...


Go out and buy Steven Hill's http://www.EuropesPromise.org book (released just this year) asap, folks...


...and meet us: Palace Diner (194 Washington St. in Poughkeepsie) for our new book discussion club!...


We're starting a new Breakfast Club meeting-- Saturday mornings at 10:30 am after our WHVW shows...


[recall Steven Hill on Democracy Now-- http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/12/europes_promise ]


Pass it on...


Joel
[new cell: 444-0599]
home: 876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net


[yes, these Sat. morning mtg.'s @ Palace Diner will also function as weekly Dutchess Media Watch too;
e.g.-- addressing front page of yesterday's PoJo attacking unions again as special interests-- pathetic;
also-- http://dutchessdemocracy.blogspot.com/2009/12/re-costa-rica-sweden-dalai-lama-happy.html ]


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These seven are from Steven Hill's new must-read http://www.EuropesPromise.org book itself:


[reality check: Obama not even close to socialism-- while responsible capitalism working in Germany; we have to wait 'til 2525 for common sense policies doing great in Europe to happen here?...hope not!]


Fact: "In terms of taxes, it turns out Europeans don't pay any more than most Americans if we factor in the entire tax burden of federal, state, local, real estate, and social security taxes, as well as the out-of-pocket fees, deductibles, premiums, and tuition that Americans pay in addition to their taxes in order to receive the same level of workfare supports that Europeans have."
[see http://www.EuropesPromise.org ]


Fact: "Many of the things Europeans receive for their taxes-- health care, a university education, a decent retirement, child care, and parental leave, for example-- are hardly discretionary; they are necessary to enjoy a basic level of security and comfort. But Americans have to pay extra for those services and benefits. In short, when you sum up the total balance sheet you discover that many Americans pay out just as much as Europeans, but we receive a lot less for our money."
[see http://www.EuropesPromise.org ]


Fact: "Much more than America, Europe is based on real "family values", and unlike America it is not timid or stingy about spending its wealth to support those values. Indeed, Europe spends at least 25 percent more per capita than the U.S. on workfare supports, and three times more on families, according to OECD figures."
[see http://www.EuropesPromise.org ]


Fact: "In the United States, public spending on old age care is nearly 25 percent less per capita than in Europe, but private spending on old age care is nearly three times higher per capita, because Americans mostly self-finance their own senior care."
[see http://www.EuropesPromise.org ]


Fact: "According to a Federal Reserve study, the wealthiest 10 percent of people in the United States now owns 70 percent of the wealth, and the wealthiest 1 percent owns more than the bottom 95 percent, compared with Germany, where the top 10 percent owns 44 percent of the wealth.
[see: "Richest 2% Hold Half the World's Assets" by Chris Giles (Financial Times 12/6/06):
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1206-01.htm ]


Fact: "The ratio of CEO pay to average manufacturing employee pay is 475:1 in the United States, compared with 24:1 in Britain, 15:1 in France, and 13:1 in Sweden; even in nonmanufacturing sectors in the United States, the average CEO earns more in one day than the average worker earns all year."
[see http://www.EuropesPromise.org ]


Fact: "While the top income-tax rate in the United States is 35 percent, the numbers are a bit misleading. 'People coming from the U.S. to the Netherlands focus on that difference, and on that 52 percent,' said Constanze Woelfle, an American accountant based in the Netherlands whose clients are mostly American expats. 'But consider that the Dutch rate includes social security, which in the U.S. is an additional 6.2 percent. Then in the U.S. you have state and local taxes, and much higher real estate taxes. If you were to add all those up, you would get close to the 52 percent.'"
[see: "Going Dutch" by Russell Shorto (NYTimes magazine 4/29/09):
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/magazine/03european-t.html ]


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Recall these two pertinent gems from Yes magazine back last December as well:


"Why Is Costa Rica Smiling?" by Lisa Gale Garrigues
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/climate-action/why-is-costa-rica-smiling


"Putting the Science of Happiness Into Practice" by John de Graaf
http://www.yesmagazine.org/yes/happiness/putting-the-science-of-happiness-into-practice


[why are we here in U.S. so low on http://www.HappyPlanetIndex.org , folks?]


...and this one from Yes magazine April 2nd from Scott Gast too!...

[great example for us here in NYS-- if not Dutchess if state refuses to do this!]

"Maryland Launches Genuine Progress Indicator"
http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/maryland-launches-genuine-progress-indicator

[scroll down to very bottom to see these, folks]

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These five are from Amy Goodman's Feb. 12th interview with Steven Hill on Democracy Now:


Fact: "Europe itself only has a deficit-to-GDP ratio of about six percent, compared to the United States, which has a deficit-to-GDP ratio of ten-and-a-half percent."
[see: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/12/europes_promise ]


Fact: "Europe has the largest economy in the world-- almost a third of the world's economy. In fact, it's almost as large as the United States and China's economy combined. Europe has more Fortune 500 companies (179) than China (less than 39) and the United States (140) combined. It has more small businesses, that produce two-thirds of the jobs, compared to in the United States where small business produces about only half the jobs. However you want to measure it, the European economy is robust, and it's vibrant."
[see: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/12/europes_promise ]


Fact: "Childcare for two children in the United States is about $12,000 per year for a family in the United States. In Europe, you're paying a thousand to maybe $2,000 per year for that same childcare."
[see: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/12/europes_promise ]


Fact: "Europeans have lowered their ecological footprint to half that of the United States, even though they have the same standard of living. The average American uses twice as much carbon, twice as much electricity as your average European, and over four times as much carbon as someone from China or India. Europe is really leading the way is on its use of environmental technologies, green technologies, green design, conservation technologies and renewable technologies, that are being implemented in a much more widespread fashion in Europe."
[see: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/12/europes_promise ]


Fact: "Germany was the first to develop a practice known as co-determination to put some regulations around corporate power, where the- you know, every corporation has a board of directors, but in Germany 50 percent of those board members are elected by the workers. In Sweden a third of the board members are elected by the workers. It would be as if Wal-Mart were required by law to allow its workers to elect 50 percent of its board of directors. It's almost unimaginable from the American point of view. And yet, here you have major economies in Europe that actually do this on a fairly regular basis, and yet most Americans have never even heard about this."
[see: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/12/europes_promise ]


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These five are from Thomas Geoghegan's March 2010 "Consider the Germans" piece for Harper's:


Fact: "Even as we in the United States fall more deeply into the clutches of our foreign creditors, Germany has somehow managed to create a high-wage, unionized economy without shipping all its jobs abroad or creating a massive trade deficit, or any trade deficit at all. the dollar is dropping, and we still can't compete with Germany. Even as the Germans outsell the United States, they manage to take six weeks of vacation every year. They're beating us with one hand tied behind their back."
[see: http://www.newheadnews.com/harpersGeoghegan/index.html ]


Fact: "The big three building blocks of German social democracy are the works council, the co-determined board, and Germany's regional wage-setting institutions. There are thousands of clerks and engineers in Germany who now are (or a few years ago were) elected officials, with real power over other people. They are responsible for other people. They are responsible for running the firm. They make up a powerful leadership class that represents the kind of people- low-income, low-education-who don't have much of a voice in the affairs of other industrialized countries."
[see: http://www.newheadnews.com/harpersGeoghegan/index.html ]


Fact: "Co-determined boards apply mostly to the largest companies, those with more than 2,000 employees. the clerks get to elect half the board: not a fifth, not a third, but half-the same number of voting directors that the hedge funds get to elect."
[see: http://www.newheadnews.com/harpersGeoghegan/index.html ]


Fact: "In a German firm, the workers are Cato-like guardians, able to look at all of the financial records and planning documents as if they owned the place. If a company wants to start a plant abroad, the workers can pressure the board to plow some money back into a German plant or provide a ten-year employment guarantee. Or they can fight to get a better owner. It's not just the arguing: it's the fact that they can be in the boardroom watching, or in the back room rifling through the files."
[see: http://www.newheadnews.com/harpersGeoghegan/index.html ]


Fact: "Workers in Germany can't stop outsourcing-- but they can cut deals. In the United States, people don't even know the plant is closing until management calls a meeting and ushers everyone out under armed guard. With works councils and co-determination, everything in the firm gets discussed, rather than the CEO going to the mountaintop without ever seeing a worker and deciding to pull the plug."
[see: http://www.newheadnews.com/harpersGeoghegan/index.html ]


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From http://www.newheadnews.com/harpersGeoghegan/index.html ...


Harper's Magazine
March 2010 p. 7-9
NOTEBOOK
Consider the Germans
By Thomas Geoghegan

Come on: is the West really in such decline? Yes, we can sit here on our island continent and gloom about the rise of China, as our elite now like to do. Or we can go out into the world and start competing like the Europeans. For here's a strange fact: since 2003, it's not China but Germany, that colossus of European socialism, that has either led the world in export sales or at least been tied for first. Even as we in the United States fall more deeply into the clutches of our foreign creditors-China foremost among them-Germany has somehow managed to create a high-wage, unionized economy without shipping all its jobs abroad or creating a massive trade deficit, or any trade deficit at all. Sure, China just pulled slightly ahead of Germany, but that's mostly because the euro has soared, making German goods even more expensive, and world trade has slumped. Meanwhile, the dollar is dropping, and we still can't compete with either nation. And even as the Germans outsell the United States, they manage to take six weeks of vacation every year. They're beating us with one hand tied behind their back.

Why is Germany beating us? It's tempting to say it's because we beat them. After all, we helped put a major component of the German model in place, which is the role that German workers have in running their firms. After World War II, we had a problem: Who would keep watch over all the German businessmen who had supported Hitler? We couldn't put them all in jail. Back in that New Deal era, we and our allies were quite willing to put workers on the boards to keep an eye on businessmen. Still, the idea of works councils was not invented by Americans. In fact, it had its origins in Weimar Germany. And now Germany is the country, out of all countries, including Communist China, in which workers have the greatest amount of control over (dare I say it) the means of production.

Okay, it's not that much control. But it's enough to make the German system a rival form of capitalism. And because German workers are at the table when the big decisions are made, and elect people who still watch and sometimes check the businessmen, they have been able to hang on to their manufacturing sector. They have kept a tool-making, engineering culture, which our own entrepreneurs, dreamily buried in their Ayn Rand novels, have gutted. And now, thanks in large part to these smart structural decisions, Germany is not only competitive, it's rich. Although it's unlikely that even the most liberal of American politicians would ever use a phrase like "worker control"-much less describe people who work as "workers"-it might still be worth at least considering what would be involved in emulating the German model.
Let me here cart out the big three building blocks of German social democracy: the works council, the co-determined board, and Germany's regional wage-setting institutions. If I were teaching a class, I'd put these up on the blackboard and talk about them at the beginning of every class. "What do I mean by the German model? I'd like to see hands." No one knows. So I give the answer: "It's the works council, the co-determined board, and the wagesetting institutions."

Everyone in class groans. Whatever does that mean?


Well, the works council is simple in theory, though hard for an American to take in. Let's say you work at the Barnes & Noble at the corner of Clybourn and Webster avenues in Chicago. You may be just a clerk, no degree. (In Germany, you'd have a certificate in bookstore clerking, but in the United States there's no need.) Still, you could be elected to a works council at this store. That means you help manage the place. You help decide when to open and close the store. You help decide who gets what shift. On layoffs and other issues, the employer must reach an agreement with the works council. So you may ultimately decide whether Ms. X is to be laid off or fired. How did you get into this kind of "management"? Barnes & Noble had no say in it. You were elected by your fellow workers. You went out and campaigned: "Elect me."


The result is that there are thousands of clerks and engineers in Germany who now are (or a few years ago were) elected officials, with real power over other people. They are responsible for other people. They are responsible for running the firm. They make up a powerful leadership class that represents the kind of people-low-income, low-education-who don't have much of a voice in the affairs of other industrialized countries.

If that's a works council, what's a co-determined board? These apply mostly to the largest companies, those with more than 2,000 employees. We now leave behind the bookstore at Clybourn and Webster and try to imagine all of Barnes & Noble, the whole company. Way at the top, in the boardroom, where you expect to bump into Robert Rubin, the clerks get to elect half the board: not a fifth, not a third, but half-the same number of voting directors that the hedge funds get to elect.

Of course there's a catch! Under German law, if the directors elected by the clerks and the directors elected by the shareholders are deadlocked, then the chairman can break the tie. And who picks the chairman? Ultimately, just the shareholders. So capitalism wins by one vote, provided the stockholders, the bankers, and the kids from Goldman Sachs all vote in a single bloc. But the clerks still have a lot of clout. If the shareholders are divided on whether "A" or "B" should be the next CEO, the clerks get to pick the king. "A" is CEO but he owes his job to the clerks. By the way, the clerks have all this power without owning any shares! In this stakeholder model, they need only act on their interests as "the workers."


With works councils and co-determination, everything in the firm gets discussed, rather than the CEO going to the mountaintop without ever seeing a worker and deciding to pull the plug. "Wait," people say to me. "You mean co-determination keeps jobs from going abroad?" No, they can't stop a sale.


They can't stop outsourcing. But they can cut deals. "Conditions-that is my motto," is how one worker-director put it in an issue of my favorite German magazine, Mitbestimmung. In the United States, people don't even know the plant is closing until management calls a meeting and ushers everyone out under armed guard. But in a German firm, the workers are Cato-like guardians, able to look at all of the financial records and planning documents as if they owned the place. If a company wants to start a plant abroad, the workers can pressure the board to plow some money back into a German plant or provide a ten-year employment guarantee. Or they can fight to get a better owner. It's not just the arguing: it's the fact that they can be in the boardroom watching, or in the back room rifling through the files. Doesn't your own behavior change when you think Cato is watching you? Well, it's true for managers too. That's why there is still a manufacturing sector in Germany.

Given the influence of the works council and a co-determined board, what remains for Germany's many powerful unions? They do the bargaining over wages and pensions but at a macro level, with a federation of all the big bookstores, not just Barnes & Noble but Borders as well. This is the German model of regional or multi-employer bargaining. We negotiated wages this way in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s, but no more. I doubt many Americans under forty even know what I mean by regional wage-setting institutions, and yet they are probably the single most important way in which Germany is "socialist."

This system is much in decline even in Germany, but it still has a huge egalitarian effect. The goal, never quite reached, is that every Barnes & Noble, every Borders, everywhere in the covered area, pays the same wage for the same type of work. Wages are not set person by person or shop by shop.


They're the same, everywhere, as much as possible. The result, from an American perspective, is a shocking transparency: in Germany the ideal is that everyone knows what everyone else is making. By contrast, who knows what Barnes & Noble pays in Chicago, or Borders in Joliet? In the German system, people can find out what other people are getting, and their unions in turn can demand the same.


The private export sector is the most unionized part of the German economy (even more than the public sector). And it is understood to be the vanguard, the industry on the front lines of the global economy. So if the engineers at ThyssenKrupp get a 3 percent raise, then certainly the clerks should get a 3 percent raise. Soon everyone in Germany is getting 3 percent! In a complicated and limited way, the whole country can have a voice, if not a vote, in what takehome pay they receive. Unification with low-wage East Germany has made this leveling tougher, but people in Germany can still actually talk about "wage policy" and "wage objectives." There's a national conversation, unknown here, as to how much everybody should get.


All my life as a labor lawyer I have read the same thing in The Economist, about the United States and its wonderful labor-market flexibility. What they mean is: Unlike the Germans, U.S. working people are completely powerless. But it's precisely because of our labor-market flexibility that we can't compete. Our workers have been flexed right out of their high-wage, high-skill jobs and into low-wage, low-skill jobs. That's bad for the workers, of course, and it's also bad for the economy. The German model-with worker control built into the very structure of the firm-keeps bosses and workers in groups, rubbing elbows with each other, and sometimes just elbowing. It creates a group interaction that over time builds and protects what economists like to call human capital, especially in engineering and quality control. It's precisely this kind of valuable capital that our atomizing "flexible" labor markets are so good at breaking up and dispersing.


Yes, there's much to like about the U.S. model. In global competition, the United States has almost every comparative advantage over Germany. We spend vastly more on basic research than the Germans do. We have much more land, more labor, more capital, much higher levels of formal education. But with our flexible labor markets we cannot develop human capital or knowledge to wean ourselves away from turning out crap and leaving the high-skill manufacturing to the Europeans. The one great comparative advantage of Germany is that it is a social democracy. Germany has its problems, and I take them seriously. But I'm also sure that German companies will lead the next industrial revolution, the "green" one, while we in the United States will merely watch.
If you ask most Democrats and their think-tank minions how to help our powerless middle class, they have no answer except to send even more of them to college, where with luck they get out being only $50,000 or so in debt. As for the high school graduates who make up the base of the party, we effectively tell them: You're finished. There's no role for high school graduates in our version of the global economy. In Germany, these same high school graduates could be sitting on a corporate board. Skeptical readers will say: Oh, but that's Europe, it's socialism, something like that is not possible here. I think it's quite possible.

I now have stopped underlining and re-reading Wolfgang Streeck's great 1996 essay, "German Capitalism: Does It Exist? Can It Survive?" Still, I recall his central, disheartening point that the German model, with its works councils and the rest, was simply too hard to replicate in other countries. In the end, global capitalism would force Germany itself into our simpler, top-down Anglo-American model.

But it turns out, at least in the European Union, that other countries are now keen on experimenting with co-determination and works councils.

"Co-determination is our biggest export," a former official in the German government told me. As it spreads through Europe, we may come to understand the German model as not just a rival but a better form of capitalism. It only takes a change in law. Maybe we'll decide one day, simply out of patriotism, that we have no other choice.


Is it likely? No. Is it possible? Yes. At any rate, it's just nonsense that "Europe's way" and "our way" can never be the same. We may have messed up our part in globalization, but we still have time to fix things. It may be even easier in this wired world to exercise our greatest privilege as Americans-to astonish ourselves by being American and making a European idea of democracy our own.


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>From http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/12/europes_promise ...


Author Steven Hill on "Europe's Promise: Why the European Way Is the Best Hope for an Insecure Age"

Despite fears of the euro's future amidst Greece's economic collapse, author Steven Hill of the New America Foundation argues the United States still has much to learn from Europe's social and economic policies. We speak to Hill about his new book, Europe's Promise: Why the European Way Is the Best Hope for an Insecure Age. [includes rush transcript]


Guest:
Steven Hill, author of Europe's Promise: Why the European Way Is the Best Hope for an Insecure Age. He directs the Political Reform Program at the New America Foundation, and his previous books include 10 Steps to Repair American Democracy and Fixing Elections: The Failure of America's Winner Take All Politics.

JUAN GONZALEZ: We turn now to Europe, where the economic crisis in Greece has raised fears about the future of the euro. On Thursday, the European Union reportedly approved a deal to help rescue Greece from its debt problems. The European leaders made no promises of aid and emphasized that Greece must cut its budget deficit by four percent this year. Greece's deficit is at 12.7 percent, more than four times higher than eurozone rules allow.
But the Greek government's cost-cutting proposals have met with significant domestic resistance. A national public sector strike Wednesday brought services to a halt, and unions said the austerity measures amounted to a war against workers.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, our next guest thinks some of the gloom in Brussels and Athens might be misplaced and argues that the United States still has much to learn from Europe's social and economic policies. Steven Hill is the author of Europe's Promise: Why the European Way Is the Best Hope for an Insecure Age. He directs the Political Reform Program at the New America Foundation. His previous books include 10 Steps to Repair American Democracy and Fixing Elections: The Failure of America's Winner-Take-All Politics. Steven Hill joins us now from Washington, DC.

Welcome to Democracy Now! First talk about the crisis in Greece and Europe's response.


STEVEN HILL: Well, the crisis there is-the world has gone through a huge economic shock, and we're seeing, and are going to continue to see, various aftershocks that we're seeing not only in places like Greece, but we've seen in California, where I actually live, where you had a state that is 14 percent of the GDP of the United States that also was threatening to default and ended up having to issue IOUs in order to pay its debts. And so, these are the sorts of things that are occurring in Europe, as well.

What's different in Europe is that, in the United States we're used to the federal government being a backstop for states, for example, whereas in Europe there's really not a tradition of any other states, like Germany and France, which are the stronger partners in the European Union, being a backstop for a country like Greece. And so, that's what a lot of the back-and-forth discussion that we're seeing right now, a lot of the anxiety. But just recently, it looks like France and Germany have in fact agreed to be sort of a financial backstop. And as a result, the markets have calmed, and order has returned, so to speak.


But what's being lost here, of course, is what happens to people when these sorts of things happen. And just like we're seeing in California, layoffs, furloughs. The city of Los Angeles just laid off a thousand people. This is the type of thing that is going to affect Greece to some extent.

But I think it's also important to keep a broader perspective about this. Greece is only two percent of Europe's economy. Europe itself only has a deficit-to-GDP ratio of about six percent, compared to the United States, which has a deficit-to-GDP ratio of ten-and-a-half percent, and California, which is 14 percent of the American economy. So there's analogies here that go on both sides of the Atlantic.


JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, in your book, you posit that most Americans are not really aware of the enormous change in direction capitalism has taken in Europe since World War II. You actually say at one point, "The European Union is an entirely new species of human organization, the likes of which the world has never seen. It marks a new evolutionary stage in supranational development in the way it links and closely integrates entire regions of nation-states economically and politically." How does this work now in this particular situation of the Greek crisis? And what do you think is the most important lesson that Americans must learn about how the European Union is dealing with its economic crises?


STEVEN HILL: Well, I mean, for example, while Greece is going through this deficit issue, the people there all still have healthcare. You know, Greece has universal healthcare for all, unlike in the United States or California, where you have millions of people that have no healthcare at all. They have a much more generous support for workers who get laid off. They have paid parental leave, paid sick leave. They have more generous retirement, more vacations. And, you know, whereas Americans, when we go through this, really don't have any of that at all. And that's still present in Greece and in other countries of Europe throughout any kind of crisis like this. They start trimming a little bit at the edges, but even so, what remains is still far more than what any American would enjoy.


But the thing that's important to realize is that these sorts of things have been portrayed as something that undermines the European economy vis-à-vis the American economy. But, in fact, when you really look at the numbers, there's no truth to it whatsoever. Europe has the largest economy in the world. It's almost a third of the world's economy. In fact, it's almost as large as the United States and China's economy combined. Europe has more Fortune 500 companies than China and the United States combined. It has more small businesses, that produce two-thirds of the jobs, compared to in the United States where small business produces about only half the jobs. And so, however you want to measure it, the European economy is robust, and it's vibrant.


But what Europe has managed to do is to figure out how do we harness this ability of capitalism to create wealth, because there's no question that capitalism creates a lot of wealth, but there's an outstanding question here of what do we do with that wealth. Whose pockets does that money go into? Europe has figured out a way to harness this wealth and create a more broadly shared prosperity that all of their people enjoy, and even in the midst of an economic crisis like this, whereas the United States, we're still trying to figure it out. We can't even figure out how to give healthcare to all our people or to get sixty votes in the United States Senate, you know, where the filibuster has gone wild. So, in many, many ways, Europe is doing fine through this crisis, where we in the United States here are really having difficult times.

JUAN GONZALEZ: One of the things you also raise is the-how Europe decided after World War II basically not to demilitarize, but to certainly reduce its expenditures on armies and on weapons, and this has enabled it to be able to provide a better life for its citizens. Could you talk about that to some extent?


STEVEN HILL: Certainly. Europe was a military-a place of military warring nations for centuries. And after the utter destruction of World Wars I and II, the politicians of Europe-interestingly, the conservative politicians of Europe, people like Konrad Adenauer from Germany and Winston Churchill from the UK-they decided that it was time to quit pouring their nations' wealth into the military machines they had been and to start pouring it into their people. So a movement emerged for what was called then the "social market economy"-in my book, I call it "social capitalism"-to start taking the resources of their free markets and plowing it back into developing their people, giving things like, for example, free or nearly free university education, which Europe still has today, whereas, you know, in the United States students are paying increasingly amount for tuition. Having childcare, in the United States, childcare for two children is about $12,000 per year for a family in the United States. In Europe, you're paying a thousand to maybe $2,000 per year for that same childcare. And so, Europe plowed it back into these things in order to develop these things for their people.


And they also did other things that I think is of great interest that many people in the United States have not heard about. In order to, in a sense, put some regulations around corporate power, Germany was the first to develop a practice known as co-determination, where the-you know, every corporation has a board of directors, but in Germany 50 percent of those board members are elected by the workers. In Sweden a third of the board members are elected by the workers. It would be as if Wal-Mart were required by law to allow its workers to elect 50 percent of its board of directors. It's almost unimaginable from the American point of view. And yet, here you have major economies in Europe that actually do this on a fairly regular basis, and yet most Americans have never even heard about this.


AMY GOODMAN: Steven Hill, can you explain who the PIGS are?

STEVEN HILL: The PIGS are the name that's being given to-it's an acronym for Portugal, Italy or Ireland, depending on who's using it, Greece and Spain. And this is the feeling-the group that they've put together of countries that they feel may default on the loans that they have in order to fund their budget deficits. You know, it's-certainly, whenever you have the big budget deficits that these countries have run up-but I should mention that the United States has run up a budget deficit almost as large. Our deficit-to-GDP ration in the United States is 10.5 percent, compared to 12.7 percent in Greece. Not that much different. But still, it's of concern.

Yet I think it's being a bit overblown, because as long-what's new here is that France and Germany and the other countries that are more healthy economically are being asked to be backstops for their fellow nations in the eurozone that are not doing as well. But again, this is something that, in the United States, the federal government does for states here all the time already. It's really a matter of what does Europe do, going forward. And what Europe is saying, with the recent news, is that the better-off countries are going to agree to be that backstop for what's being called the PIGS, such as Greece and Portugal and others.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And when you say "backstop," what would that support entail?


STEVEN HILL: Well, it's not clear in the case of Europe, because they haven't released any details. But it could mean loans from the better-off countries to the other countries that aren't doing so well, just as, for example, the state of California is a state that, for decades, has-for every dollar in federal money it gives to Washington, DC, it only receives back about 80 cents on the dollar. Same with the state of Illinois, for every dollar it gives to the federal government, it only receives back about 80 cents on the dollar, whereas other states in the United States-states like Mississippi, Alabama, Alaska, for example-they're getting way more than a dollar from the federal government for every dollar they give. And so, whenever you have a union of any sort, there is a sense that we're in this together, and so the better-off help with the ones who aren't as well off.


But that's a new concept for Europe. I mean, we have to keep in mind that the European Union only came into force in 1992 with the Maastricht Treaty, and the full European Union twenty-seven nations only came into origin in 2004. So, compared to the United States, this is a rather new political entity. If you look back at America's history, it took about eighty or more years, from its time-our nation's founding in 1790, when the first government formed, it took about eighty years for the country to really congeal in any way to really say it wasn't just a collection of regions. And by that standard, Europe is actually ahead of the game.

And I think generally what's going on in Europe is going to turn out to be a positive, because it's going to make their union somewhat more tighter, and it's also-there's some silver linings here, where it's going to cause the euro to drop a little bit, which will be good for exporting nations like Germany and France. And for nations like the United States, which will make our dollar comparatively stronger, it's going to actually make our exports a little bit more difficult to Europe. So there's really pros and cons whenever you have a situation like this, depending on what side you're standing on.


AMY GOODMAN: Steven Hill, I was very interested in your last chapter, "Will Europe Survive?" on "The Challenges of Immigration," "A European Civil Rights Movement Aris[ing]-Sort Of" and "The Dilemma of Population Decline: 'Where are all the children?'"

STEVEN HILL: Right. Well, these are the big challenges of Europe. Both immigration as well as-it's a handful of countries; it's not all countries in Europe. Predominantly Germany, Italy and Spain, where you see population decline. But other countries like France, Britain, Ireland, Sweden and others are actually at what they call replacement level, where they're not really declining.


But in terms of integration, the conclusion, briefly, that I came up with is that Europe doesn't have an immigration problem. In fact, it needs a certain degree of immigration. What Europe has is an integration problem, and that you have there not just immigrants, but several generations of North Africans and Middle Easterners and others who have not been integrated very well. But I think it's also fair to say that Europe has been at this integration game for a lot less time than, for example, we have here in the United States. And so, it's taking time for them to recognize that they have a problem. They're now at the point where I think they recognize they have the problem, and they're mounting interventions. They're spending hundreds of billions of euros for various integration programs, you know, language classes, programs geared to help underserved communities to get the services they need, programs to help them develop economically. It's a work in progress. A lot of people have their crystal balls out trying to figure out what's going to happen. And I think it's fair to say that nobody really knows, but, you know, I think Europe realizes that it has to take this more seriously than it has, and it's moving forward with it.


JUAN GONZALEZ: And quickly, one question, the rise of Europe, as you point out, provides an alternative to the American form of capital - the US form of capitalism. But you also talk about the rise of the G20 as a new force, important force, in world economic policy versus the old G8 or G7. Could you talk about that?


STEVEN HILL: Sure. I mean, the world, in the post-World War II period, was of course dominated by the UN Security Council, and then that sort of became the G7, which were the wealthiest countries in the world, and the G7 included a few European countries, the United States, Russia, China and others. And so, now the G20 is expanding this. And it just makes sense. We're living more in a multi-polar world. Even Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has acknowledged that. And it makes sense to bring more people to the table to start talking about how to coordinate economic and political and environmental policies.


I mean, one of the ways in which Europe has really-is really leading the way is on its use of environmental technologies, green technologies, green design, conservation technologies and renewable technologies, that are being implemented in a much more widespread fashion in Europe, to the point where they've lowered their ecological footprint, as it's called, to half that of the United States, even though they have the same standard of living. I think the average American uses twice as much carbon, twice as much electricity as your average European, and over four times as much carbon as someone from China or India.


And so, these are the-really the challenges that face the world today, is how do we integrate the other countries of the world that haven't enjoyed in the wealth and prosperity-and many of them in the G20-and how do we allow the Chinas and the Indias and the Brazils to rise up in the world without burning up the planet in the process? And that's where, you know, I think the European way, as I call it in my book, really offers a model for how to do this, because both the way it has robust economies, it's figured out how to take that wealth and make it a broadly shared distribution, and do it all in a way that's as environmentally sustainable as possible. These are the types of things that all countries in the world need to do, looking forward, including the United States, where we're foot-dragging on so many of these areas. And I think Europe is really showing the way.


AMY GOODMAN: Steven Hill, we want to thank you very much for being with us. He directs the Political Reform Program at the New America Foundation. His latest book is called Europe's Promise: Why the European Way Is the Best Hope for an Insecure Age.


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From http://www.michaelmoore.com/books-films/facts/sicko ...


FACTS IN MIKE'S FILMS: SICKO

The productivity rate per hour in France is higher than in America.
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, France has a higher labor productivity (GDP per hour worked) than the United States. "OECD in Figures 2005, 2005/Supplement 1 at 84.
http://213.253.134.29/oecd/pdfs/browseit/0105061E.PDF
"Britain has yet to catch up with its rivals on productivity. Gordon Brown, the chancellor, has long wished to close Britain's productivity gap with other countries. It is proving a long haul. In 2004, output per hour worked was 19% higher in France, 15% higher in America and 5% higher in Germany than it was in Britain." "Poor show; International comparisons," The Economist, January 21, 2006.


Like Canadians and Brits, the French live longer than we do.
The 2006 United Nations Human Development Report's human development index states the life expectancy in the United States is 77.5, the United Kingdom is 78.5, France is 79.6, and Canada is 80.2. Human Development Report 2006, United Nations Development Programme, 2006 at 283.
http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/pdfs/report/HDR06-complete.pdf


Canadians live three years longer than we do.
The 2006 United Nations Human Development Report's human development index states the life expectancy in the United States is 77.5, and the life expectancy in Canada is 80.2. Human Development Report 2006, United Nations Development Programme, 2006 at 283.
http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/pdfs/report/HDR06-complete.pdf

Canadian "wait times" not nearly as long as some try to allege.
According to Statistics Canada, the official government statistical agency, "In 2005, the median waiting time was about 4 weeks for specialist visits, 4 weeks for non-emergency surgery, and 3 weeks for diagnostic tests. Nationally, median waiting times remained stable between 2003 and 2005 - but there were some differences at the provincial level for selected specialized services.Š 70 to 80 percent of Canadians find their waiting times acceptable" "Access to health care services in Canada, Waiting times for specialized services (January to December 2005)," Statistics Canada
http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/82-575-XIE/82-575-XIE2006002.htm
A recent study of emergency care in Ontario found that overall, "50% of patients triaged as CTAS I [most acute] were seen by a physician within 6 minutes and 86% were seen within 30 minutes of arriving at the [Emergency Department]. In contrast, the 50% of patients triaged as CTAS IV or V who were seen most quickly waited an hour or less, while 1 in 10 waited three hours or more. Understanding Emergency Department Wait Times: How Long Do People Spend in Emergency Departments in Ontario? Canadian Institute for Health Information, January 2007.
http://www.cihi.ca/cihiweb/dispPage.jsp?cw_page=reports_wait_times_bulletins_e
"Gerard Anderson, a Johns Hopkins health policy professor who has spent his career examining the world's healthcare, said there are delays, but not as many as conservatives state. In Canada, the United Kingdom and France, 'three percent of hospital discharges had delays in treatment,' Anderson told The Miami Herald. 'That's a relatively small number, and they're all elective surgeries, such as hip and knee replacement.' John Dorschner, "'Sicko' film is set to spark debate; Reformers are gearing up for 'Sicko,' the first major movie to examine America's often maligned healthcare system," Miami Herald, June 29, 2007.

Drugs in England only cost $10.
For much of 2006, the standard charge for a prescription was £6.65. "The cost of an NHS prescription in England is to rise by 15p to £6.65 from the start of April." "Prescription charge to rise 15p," BBC News, March 13 2006.
From April 1 2007 to present, the charge is £6.85. "There are many unacceptable inequities and anomalies in the present system. Although around four out of five prescriptions are exempt (see below for list of exempt categories), the price of a prescription (£6.85 from 1 April 2007) often hits those who cannot afford such charges. There are many people with chronic conditions who are not exempt and those on low incomes find it very difficult to pay. This causes a disproportionate levy on a limited section of the population." British Medical Association, "Funding - Prescription Changes," March 2007.
http://www.bma.org.uk/ap.nsf/Content/FundingPrescriptionCharges

In a study of older Americans and Brits, the Brits had less of almost every major disease. Even the poorest Brit can expect to live longer than the richest American.
"The US population in late middle age is less healthy than the equivalent British population for diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, myocardial infarction, stroke, lung disease, and cancer. Within each country, there exists a pronounced negative socioeconomic status (SES) gradient with self-reported disease so that health disparities are largest at the bottom of the education or income variants of the SES hierarchy. This conclusion is generally robust to control for a standard set of behavioral risk factors, including smoking, overweight, obesity, and alcohol drinking, which explain very little of these health differencesŠ Level differences between countries are sufficiently large that individuals in the top of the education and income strata in the United States have comparable rates of diabetes and heart disease as those in the bottom of the income and education strata in England." (See also Table 1 - for example, prevalence of diabetes among high-income Americans is 8.2 per thousand, while it's 7.3 among low-income Brits.) Banks, Marmot et al., "Disease and Disadvantage in the United States and in England," Journal of the American Medical Association, 2006;295:2037-2045.

A baby born in El Salvador has a better chance of surviving than a baby born in Detroit.
According to the United Nations Statistics Division, Population and Vital Statistics Report, the rate of infant deaths per thousand in El Salvador is 10.5. "Table 3, Live births, deaths, and infant deaths, latest available year, June 15, 2007."
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/vitstats/serATab3.pdf
According to the Michigan Department of Community Health, the rate of infant deaths for Detroit is 15.9 per thousand. "Number of Infant Deaths, Live Births and Infant Death Rates for Selected Cities of Residence, 2005 and 2001 - 2005 Average," Michigan Department of Community Health Web Site,
http://www.mdch.state.mi.us/pha/osr/InDxMain/Tab4.asp

French policy on childcare and household assistance for new parents.
According to the French-American Foundation comprehensive review of child care, "For non-working parents or parents who work part-time, haltes garderies (drop-in centers) provide part-time, occasional, and drop-in care. Haltes garderies are also subsidized (by municipality and the National Family Allowance Fund), with parents paying a portion of the costs based on a sliding scale (parents pay an average of $1 per hour). Š For working parents [there are] licensed family day care providers (assistants maternelles), licensed babysitters at home (social security costs and salaries subsidized by the National Family Allowance Fund)." Peer, Shanny., "The French Early Education System," French-American Foundation, November 13, 2003.,
http://www.eoionline.org/ELC/Presentations/Peer4.pdf

There is a company in France, SOS Medecins, which will perform doctor house calls at any time.
SOS Medecins has an English website, viewable here:
http://www.sosmedecins-france.fr/en/smf_en_present.htm.


In the U.S., health care costs run nearly $7,000 per person. But in Cuba, they spend around $251 per person.
United States health spending per capita is $6,697 per person according to Catlin, A, C. Cowan, S. Heffler, et al, "National Health Spending in 2005." Health Affairs 26:1 (2006). As with the number of uninsured, the number continues to increase and is projected to be $7,092 per capita in 2006, $7,498 per capita in 2007 and reaching $12,782 by 2016, according the Department of Health and Human Services Center for Medicare and Medicaid Expenditures, National Health Expenditures Projections 2006-2016,
http://www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalHealthExpendData/downloads/proj2006.pdf
The 2006 United Nations Human Development Report says Cuba spends $251 per capita on health care. (Human Development Report 2006, United Nations Development Programme, 2006.
http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/statistics/indicators/52.html)

In Cuba, access to health care is universal.
"Cuban dissatisfaction with their personal lives does not mean they are negative about the revolutionary government's achievements in health care and education. A near unanimous 96 percent of respondents say that health care in Cuba is accessible to everyone. Gallup polls in other Latin American cities have found that on average only 42 percent believe health care is accessible." Gallup/ Consultoría Interdisciplinaria en Desarrollo, "Cubans Show Little Satisfaction with Opportunities and Individual Freedom Rare Independent Survey Finds Large Majorities Are Still Proud of Island's Health Care and Education," January 10, 2007.
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brlatinamericara/300.php?nid=&id=&pnt=300&lb=brla

Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate and a longer average lifespan than the United States.
The 2006 United Nations Human Development Report's human development index states the life expectancy in the United States is 77.5, and is 77.6 in Cuba. Human Development Report 2006, United Nations Development Programme, 2006 at 283.
http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/pdfs/report/HDR06-complete.pdf


The United States is ranked #37 as a health system by the World Health Organization.
* "The U. S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country but ranks 37 out of 191 countries according to its performance, the report finds." "World Health Organization Assesses The World's Health Systems," Press Release, WHO/44, June 21, 2000.
http://www.who.int/inf-pr-2000/en/pr2000-44.html

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http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/maryland-launches-genuine-progress-indicator

Maryland Launches Genuine Progress Indicator
By changing their measurement of progress, Marylanders can see for themselves whether chasing the benefits of continued economic growth is worth the costs.
by Scott Gast
posted Apr 02, 2010

The Genuine Progress Indicator will count the benefits of economic growth separately from the costs—like forest uprooted in the name of housing development.
When it comes to economic growth, bigger is better. Or so says the mainstream wisdom. But more and more people—including, increasingly, governments—are realizing that equating growth with quality of life is to follow a broken compass toward a host of social and ecological problems. The state of Maryland is the latest government to look for a better way to measure progress: Governor Martin O'Malley's office recently announced the launch of the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), an alternative economic indicator that will allow the state to keep track of which activities actually contribute to quality of life—and which detract from it.

As University of Maryland researcher Dr. Matthias Ruth, with whom the state collaborated in the development of the GPI, told the UM NewsDesk, “The calculation of a Genuine Progress Indicator begins to correct the picture of how well-off we actually are. It counts as positive that which is actually positive—time spent with family, volunteer work in our communities, restoration of the environment, for example—and it subtracts the negative—time spent in our cars or loss of wetlands.”

The GPI will take into account 26 different quality of life indicators, putting price estimates, in dollars, on the negative—and positive—impacts of economic growth. The indicator considers, for example, the future costs of climate change and the strain of income inequality on social services; it also accounts for the value created by volunteerism and forest preservation. Taken together, the measurement should equip citizens and policymakers with a more clear-eyed picture of the costs and benefits of the state’s economic activity.

Already, the GPI is telling a very different story about the connection between economic growth and quality of life. A cross-sector partnership between the University of Maryland and several state agencies looked at data all the way back to 1960 and found that, by the early 1980s, Maryland’s growing gross state product (GSP—the state's version of GDP, the traditional measure of economic health) no longer reflected an increase in genuine progress. In other words, while economic activity increased, quality of life didn't. By 2000, GSP estimates were nearly 50 percent higher than what’s reported by the GPI—a measurement that, Ruth maintains, is closer to the real experience of citizens.

Looking Backward: Economics and the Cult of Yesterday

GDP and productivity don't measure what's really going on in the economy—or in people's lives.

Maryland can now use the GPI to forecast the impact of various future policy scenarios on the lives of residents. With full-tilt investments, for example, in things like green jobs, renewable energy, and compact urban planning, the GPI starts to outpace the GSP around 2025. By 2060, the difference between the two metrics is in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

The GPI is meant to complement the traditional economic indicator, the GSP, and is accompanied by a web-based interactive tool that allows Marylanders to forecast future scenarios for themselves.

Maryland isn’t the only government to reconsider its use of GSP (or gross domestic product, GDP, on a national scale) as a measure of progress. These indicators simply track the total amount, in dollars, of all the goods and services produced and paid for within an economy. A growing GDP has long been assumed to translate into new jobs, more wealth, and greater happiness—leading economists, politicians, and the mainstream media to scrutinize the jumping tick of dollar flow—but there’s a growing consensus that that’s not always the case. In 2009, for example, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France announced a new plan for that country to begin measuring social progress in terms of the happiness of its citizens. And Bhutan, in Southern Asia, has been reporting its Gross National Happiness since 1972—during which time, despite low per capita incomes, levels of clean drinking water, literacy, and life expectancy have been on the rise.

The notion of an alternative economic indicator has been kicking around sustainability circles for years. An early ancestor to the GPI emerged, probably not coincidentally, from the work of University of Maryland economist Herman Daly in the 1980s. Subsequent iterations have caught on in the United Kingdom, where the New Economics Foundation has published their Happy Planet Index, a measurement of “the ecological efficiency with which human well-being is delivered.”

According to its critics, the GDP is too blunt an instrument to be useful; it merely lumps together the frenzy of activity within an economy into a not-so-meaningful number that convinces us things are going well when they’re not. Without a means of separating economic good from bad, they say, undesirable events that stimulate the flow of money and stuff—like paving over a forest, spending a night in the hospital, or imprisoning a criminal—get lumped into the GDP and filed under “progress” as well. As Jonathan Rowe put it in a 2009 article for this magazine, “Sickness and the consequent medical treatment is good for the GDP. Health is not.”

Whatever the outcome of the GPI, Maryland should be applauded for taking a bold and transparent step toward a working relationship between nature, people, and the economy. No other state, in fact, has achieved anything quite like it.

Scott Gast wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Scott is an online editorial intern at YES!

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From http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/climate-action/why-is-costa-rica-smiling ...

Why is Costa Rica Smiling?
This Central American country tops the Happy Planet Index.
by Lisa Gale Garrigues
posted Dec 15, 2009

The New Economics Foundation's Happy Planet Index determined that Costa Rica is the greenest and happiest place in the world. The HPI considers three variables: happiness, ecological footprint, and life expectancy.

A child growing up in the Costa Rican countryside is surrounded by some of the most beautiful and biodiverse landscapes in the world. The government of this tiny Central American country aims to keep it that way. But preserving this land of tropical rainforests isn’t Costa Rica’s only accomplishment. The government ensures all citizens have access to health care and education, and the country actively promotes peace around the world. So when the New Economics Foundation released its second Happy Planet Index, a ranking of countries based on their environmental impact and the health and happiness of their citizens, the No. 1 spot went to Costa Rica, population 4 million.

The United States’ ranking: No. 114.

What can our neighbor to the south teach us about happiness, longevity, and environmental sustainability?

“Costa Rica enjoys a privileged position as a mid-income country where citizens have sufficient spare time and abundant interpersonal relations,” says Costa Rican economics professor Mariano Rojas. “A mid-income level allows most citizens to satisfy their basic needs. Government intervention in the economy assures that all Costa Ricans have access to education, health, and nutrition services.” Costa Ricans, he added, have not entered the “race for status and conspicuous consumption.”

Created in 2008, the Happy Planet Index examines sustainable happiness on a national level, ranking 143 countries according to three measurements: how happy its citizens are, how long they live, and how much of the planet’s resources they each consume. The HPI multiplies years of life expectancy by life satisfaction (as measured by the Gallup Poll and the World Values Survey), to obtain “Happy Life Years,” which are then divided by pressure on ecosystems, as measured by the ecological footprint. (The ecological footprint, in turn, measures how much land and water it takes to provide for each person.)

The Happy Planet Index “strips down the economy to what really matters,” says New Economics Foundation researcher Saamah Abdallah. It measures “what goes in, in terms of resource use, and the outcomes that are important, which are happy and healthy lives for us all. In this way, it reminds us that the economy is there for a purpose—and that is to improve our lives.”

Abdallah calls the importance of family, friends, and community “social capital.” People who live in countries with higher levels of material wealth often report less happiness than people in countries with less wealth but stronger social networks. According to the HPI, a Costa Rican has an ecological footprint one-fourth that of the average person in the United States.

The United States is one country where social capital is falling, according to a study conducted by the economist Stefano Bartolini.

“It is not surprising that social capital should be falling in the U.S.,” Abdallah says. “Americans work the longest hours in the Western world and have the shortest holidays. All their time is spent making money, rather than building social bonds, which are just as important to well-being.”

The Importance of Peace

Domestic and international peace has long been a priority in Costa Rica. In 1948, the country abolished its military, allowing it to spend more on health and education. Its University of Peace, established in 1980, offers a master’s degree in peace and conflict studies as well as ongoing workshops—like a recent one on corporate responsibility offered to international business executives.

In September 2009, the Costa Rican legislature created a Ministry of Justice and Peace, emphasizing the role of peace promotion and conflict resolution in preventing violent crime. Shortly afterward, the country hosted the 2009 Global Alliance Summit for Ministries and Departments of Peace, where representatives of 40 countries gathered to work on developing peace infrastructure in their own governments.

Central to Costa Rica’s promotion of peace is the Rasur Foundation, which organized the summit and lobbied for the creation of the Ministry of Justice and Peace. Rasur is a teacher in a Costa Rican poem who tells a group of children, “Before directing the lightning in the sky, we must first harness the storms in our own hearts.” Through its Peace Academy, the Rasur Foundation works with the Costa Rican Ministry of Education to introduce techniques of conflict resolution and “being peace” in Costa Rican schools.

Costa Rica’s Nobel Prize-winning president, Oscar Arias Sanchez, who attended the Summit, is quoted on the Foundation’s website:

“Peace is not a dream. It’s an arduous task. We must start by finding peaceful solutions to everyday conflicts with the people around us. Peace does not begin with the other person; it begins with each and every one of us.”

There is little difference in life expectancy across income levels, unlike in the United States.Costa Ricans are not only reporting happy lives, they are living long ones. In the second measurement of the Happy Planet Index, longevity, Costa Rica scored an average of 78.5 life years, compared with 77.9 for the United States. Some studies have suggested that Costa Rican men live longer than men anywhere else in the world. There is little difference in life expectancy across income levels, unlike in the United States. Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health have found an “enormous gap” in U.S. life expectancies, depending on race, income, location, and other factors.

Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula is one of the world’s “Blue Zones”—places where the inhabitants frequently live to be over 100 years old. The residents of these zones generally eat well, get plenty of exercise, and have a genetic predisposition to longevity. Nationwide, Costa Ricans benefit from a combination of government-run and private insurance options. Costa Rica promotes good health among its citizens even before they are born, sending doctors and nurses out into the countryside to provide prenatal care and teach parents how to raise healthy children.

Protecting the Landscape

It may be the greenest country in the world, but Costa Rica still struggles with how a country that relies on corporate investment for economic survival can demand that those same corporations abide by the country’s ecological guidelines.

The Costa Rican government’s promotion of peace and health for its citizens extends to a peaceful and healthy relationship to the planet. The size of its ecological footprint indicates that “the country only narrowly fails to achieve the goal of ... consuming its fair share of the Earth’s natural resources,” according to the Happy Planet Index.

Costa Rica has pioneered techniques of land management, reforestation, and alternatives to fossil fuels.

Spurred by rapid deforestation of its pristine rainforests due to logging and agriculture, the country began converting parts of its territory to national parks in the 1970s and prohibited the export of certain trees. Even so, by 1987, illegal logging, cattle ranching, and development had reduced the country’s rainforest from 73 to 21 percent of the landscape. So in 1996 Costa Rica introduced the Payment for Environmental Services Program (PES). Oil importers and water-bottling and sewage-treatment plants now have to pay a special tax to do business in the country, while other businesses contribute via a voluntary carbon-offset fee. The money is used to pay local people to protect the trees, water, and soil in their surrounding environment by abstaining from cattle ranching and illegal logging.

The PES program has had mixed results. In some areas, cattle ranching and illegal logging remain more profitable, and the government has had to scramble to raise enough money to finance the program. But overall, because of the country’s new environmental policies, including a massive UN-sponsored tree-planting program begun in 2007, more than half of Costa Rica’s territory is once again covered with rainforest.

In a further effort to go green, the country has banned oil drilling within its borders and invests heavily in renewable energy sources like hydroelectric, wind, and geothermal power, which now provide 95 percent of its energy. In the capital, San Jose, vehicles are permitted downtown only on certain days, depending on the license-plate number. A planned commuter train will also cut down on automobile pollution. The country has pledged to go carbon neutral by 2021, the year of its bicentennial.

“The position of Costa Rica is that we all have to make ourselves present on the issue of climate change,” said Gerardo Mondragón in a telephone interview with YES! Magazine. He is with Paz con La Naturaleza (Peace with Nature), an advisory agency to President Arias on ecological planning. “We want to get the message out that all countries have to support one another in this, and in particular, industrialized countries should support those countries who have clear initiatives.”

Critics of Costa Rica’s green policy, like Rachel Godfrey Wood of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, have pointed out that no amount of tree planting can completely undo the damage done by fossil fuels.

The Costa Rican conservation organization FECON posts regularly on its website about continuing ecological problems in Costa Rica: deforestation by landowners, pineapple plantations that cause soil erosion and pollute community drinking water with pesticides, and a new mining development in Las Crucitas that has local residents worried about cyanide poisoning in the region. Another controversy recently erupted in a region called Las Baulas, where environmentalists fear development will threaten the turtle population.

“We have to go slow,” Mondragón said of the environmental challenges still facing Costa Rica. “But we still have to let people know what’s happening.” He blamed the Las Crucitas mining project on antiquated laws that don’t give Costa Rica enough protection from environmental damage by companies working within its borders. “We need to change these laws so that development can proceed in a balanced way.”

As a stable democracy for the past century, Costa Rica has been considered a “business-friendly” country. Though large banana, pineapple, and coffee plantations have not disappeared, ecotourism and high-tech companies have increasingly invested in Costa Rica.

But a recent struggle between proponents and opponents of CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement that passed last year, highlighted divisions over the issue of liberalizing trade laws. In one camp are those such as President Arias, who support CAFTA because they believe it will bring additional foreign investment; in the other camp are those who fear trade liberalization and privatization will allow businesses to be unaccountable to Costa Rica’s labor or environmental regulations. The controversy over CAFTA illustrates an innate dilemma in Costa Rica’s green strategy: How can a country that relies on corporate investment for its economic survival demand that those same corporations abide by the country’s ecological guidelines? And what clout does it have in enforcing those guidelines?

No country, not even Costa Rica with its No.1 ranking, has reached the goal of “one planet living” that the creators of the Happy Planet Index believe we should all aspire to: consuming our fair share of the Earth’s resources. “We want nations, regions, and cities to assess how well they are doing based on well-being and environmental impact,” says Abdallah of the New Economics Foundation. “We would like to highlight the message that good lives need not cost the Earth and that ‘one planet living’ can actually mean a better life.”

Lisa Gale Garrigues wrote this article for Climate Action, the Winter 2010 issue of YES! Magazine. Lisa is a YES! Magazine contributing editor. She has written about Latin America for YES! Magazine, Indian Country Today, Pacific News Service, Tikkun, elatico.com, and other media.