Gene's Blog

Investing in our future. OUR future.

September 18th, 2007 | by gene |

Tonight I’m going to start with a story. A real story. A real sad story. Then, I’m going to talk about that a bit. What it really means. And more.

Federal Investment in Children Expected to Weaken by 2017

WASHINGTON, D.C. September 10, 2007—Federal investment in children is likely to decline markedly within the next decade, according to a new Urban Institute study for the Partnership for America’s Economic Success. The share of the federal budget for programs that enhance kids’ future productivity or income—by improving education, promoting good health, supporting parents’ ability to work, and more—is forecast to drop from 1.6 percent of the gross domestic product in 2006 to 1.3 percent by 2017, under current policies.

The decline would be even steeper but for increased federal spending on children’s health care, an aspect of the budget that report authors Eugene Steuerle, Gillian Reynolds, and Adam Carasso attribute largely to spiraling medical costs rather than to deliberate investment in children and their futures.

In “Investing in Children,” the authors note that spending for future proceeds and well-being, as opposed to spending on current consumption, has long been recognized as a primary driver of economic growth. “In an increasingly knowledge-based economy, investment in human capabilities rises in ever-greater importance,” write Steuerle, Reynolds, and Carasso. Nonetheless, the researchers find, domestic spending is likely to rise by about $647 billion by 2017, with less than half of 1 percent of the increase going to investment in education and research.

The report’s authors point to large federal programs with built-in growth mechanisms to explain why the slice of the federal budget pie assigned to investment in children is so slim. “Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid do not require annual appropriations and the benefits they pay grow automatically each year with changes in wages, life expectancy, and medical costs. Programs that invest in children seldom grow or expand by design. Increasing investment in kids’ programs is a much more difficult process,” observe Steuerle, Reynolds, and Carasso.

The researchers conclude, “Reorienting the budget toward investment in children is one way of trying to both increase their future well-being and to give them greater economic capacity to finance the programs that support their parents’ and grandparents’ needs.”

“Investing in Children” charts U.S. federal spending on investment in total and for children from 1965 to 2017. It was written by C. Eugene Steuerle and Gillian Reynolds of the Urban Institute and Adam Carasso, formerly with the Institute and now with the New America Foundation, and is available at http://www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=411539. Funding was provided by the Partnership for America’s Economic Success, a project of the Pew Charitable Trusts.

The Urban Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy research and educational organization that examines the social, economic, and governance challenges facing the nation.

The point of this is insanity defined. Only worse. Doing LESS of the same thing and expecting better results is far worse than simply repeating the follies of the past and expecting the same results. And BETTER is what they, meaning our political leadership, is going to TELL us they are doing. That, my friends, is called spin. And it how the political game of “find the pea” is played. You SAY one thing while doing another and hope your lips are moving fast enough so that the people don’t catch on that there was NEVER a pea in play in the first place. The pea, they have safely tucked away someplace for their own supper, it isn’t on the table, it isn’t under the shell and it certainly isn’t going to better our children’s lives. 2017? Really, does anyone REALLY think it is going to take that long? Does no notice things like:

U.S. has second worst newborn death rate in modern world, report says

CNN) — An estimated 2 million babies die within their first 24 hours each year worldwide and the United States has the second worst newborn mortality rate in the developed world, according to a new report.

American babies are three times more likely to die in their first month as children born in Japan, and newborn mortality is 2.5 times higher in the United States than in Finland, Iceland or Norway, Save the Children researchers found.

Only Latvia, with six deaths per 1,000 live births, has a higher death rate for newborns than the United States, which is tied near the bottom of industrialized nations with Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia with five deaths per 1,000 births.

“The United States has more neonatologists and neonatal intensive care beds per person than Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, but its newborn rate is higher than any of those countries,” said the annual State of the World’s Mothers report.

The report, which analyzed data from governments, research institutions and international agencies, found higher newborn death rates among U.S. minorities and disadvantaged groups. For African-Americans, the mortality rate is nearly double that of the United States as a whole, with 9.3 deaths per 1,000 births.

Sub-Saharan Africa remains the worst place in the world to be a mother or child, with Scandinavian nations again taking the top spots in the rankings by the Connecticut-based humanitarian group.

Sweden heads the list, with Niger last. (10 worst and best)

The “Mothers’ Index” in the report ranks 125 nations according to 10 gauges of well-being — six for mothers and four for children — including objective measures such as lifetime mortality risk for mothers and infant mortality rate and subjective measures such as the political status of women.

Charles MacCormack, president and CEO of Save the Children, said the report card “illustrates the direct line between the status of mothers and the status of their children.”

“In countries where mothers do well, children do well,” he said in a written statement accompanying the report.

But each year, according to the report, more than a half-million women die as a result of pregnancy and childbirth difficulties, 2 million babies die within their first 24 hours, 2 million more die within their first month and 3 million are stillborn.

Why are we worried about 2017? Isn’t THIS amount of carnage enough to pay attention to now? Not to mention, the 50,000 children around the world who die of starvation each and every day. That is 35 dead children a minute. Now. While worldwide policies allow an additional 353,000 births per day. One in 7 them condemned before they’ve taken their first breath. I want to quote a bit from CWG, book 1, here:

On page 49, God, in response to Neale’s question about God wanting the world to exist as it does, replies, “I am saying that the world exists the way it exists – just as a snowflake exists the way it exists – quite by design. You have created it that way – just as you have created your life exactly as it is.

I want what you want. The day you really want to end hunger, there will be no more hunger. I have given you the resources with which to do that. You have all the tools with which to make that choice. You have not made it. Not because you cannot make it. The world could end hunger tomorrow. You choose not to make it.

You claim that there are good reasons that 40,000 people a day must die of hunger. (gene inserts, this was written in 1995, the numbers are even more horrifying today) There are no good reasons. Yet at a time when you say you can do nothing to stop 40,000 people a day from dying of hunger, you bring 50,000 people a day into your world to begin a new life. And this you call love. This you call God’s plan. It is a plan which totally lacks logic or reason, to say nothing of compassion.

I am showing you in stark terms that the world exists the way it exists because you have chosen for it to. You are systematically destroying your own environment, the pointing to so-called natural disasters as evidence of God’s cruel hoax, or Nature’s harsh ways. You have played the hoax on yourselves and it is your ways which are cruel.

Nothing, nothing is more gentle than Nature. And nothing, nothing has been more cruel to Nature than man. Yet you step aside from all involvement in this; deny all responsibility. It is not your fault, you say, and in this you are right. It not a question of fault, it is a matter of choice.

…The world is in the condition it is in because of you, and the choices you have made, or failed to make. (Not to decide is to decide) The earth is in the shape it’s in because of you, and the choices you have made, or failed to make.

Choices. That is what this all comes down to you know. We choose to come up with ever more inventive, and expensive ways, to kill each other. We subvert each others way of life, we pay lip service to the appreciation of the variety of cultures and traditions we enjoy on this planet. But we do nothing to stop the carnage of hate. We do nothing to make use of the tools we have to understand each other, to reach out our hand to each other in love and with goodwill. The Urban Institute is worried about 2017. I am worried about 2007. We must learn to appreciate our differences, to understand each other, to find a common language of love with which we can begin to heal our planet, our selves and each other. It is past time we grew up. We have been locked in a perpetual stage of adolescent angst and rebellion for the entire recorded history of this planet. Not even the teachings of the most gentle persons to walk the earth have been able to help us make better choices about how we treat each other. It is time we began listening to a higher calling than that clarion call to hatred. It is time we began listening to the quiet voice within, that which says it is WRONG that these children be born only to die within days, which says it is morally reprehensible to spend money that could be used to better lives, to provide education, health care and housing for all this worlds children on weapons that will bring naught but heartbreak to families all around the planet we share. We must learn again the meaning of the word SHARE. There is enough, we have enough resources to do this tomorrow, God was clear about that in book 1 and in book 2 he offers a plan to do that very thing. But we’d have to give up one thing. Just one. Fear. Of each other. We’d need to reduce military spending by a fraction, restrict ourselves to self-defense only, work globally together to enforce peace, and spend the savings on our future, our children’s future, our planet’s future. We can do this we only need choose.  So, can we start that conversation now, please? much love, :^) gene

If today brings even one choice your way
choose to be a bringer of the light :^) gene