Issue 1 - Summer 2012

1

International

The horace Mann review | vol. XXii

Issue of articles by past alumni and so on and son on and sonon and so

SUMMER 2012London School of Economics Assistant Professor Keyu Jin ‘00FEATURED

Volume XXII - Issue 1

ReviewTHE HORACE MANN

Daniel ElkindEditor-in-Chief

Spencer CohenExecutive Editor

Jacob Gladysz-MorawskiNicholas McCombe

Managing Editors - Design

Charles ScherrSenior Editor - Features

Ben DavidoffHead of Middle Division

Treshauxn Dennis-BrownSenior Editor - Domestic

Lizzy RosenblattSenior Editor - International

Nathan RaabSenior Editor - Economics

Vivianna LinSenior Editor - Science and Technology

Maurice FarberPhilip Perl

Sam RahminSenior Contibuter

Will EllisonCatherine Engelmann

Ben GreeneDavid HackelSam Henick

Jennifer HeonCaroline Kuritzkes

Isaiah NewmanSahej Suri

Jonah WexlerJunior Editors

Daniel BaudoinHannah DavidoffMihika KapoorMohit Mookim

Kelvin RheeAssociate Editors

Jacob HabermanHana Krijestorac

Henry LuoNamit SataraJacob ZuritaJunior Contibutors

ReviewTHE HORACE MANN

Gregory DonadioFaculty Advisor

The Horace Mann Review is a member of the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, the American Scholastic Press Association, and the National Scholastic Press Association. Opinions expressed in articles or illustra-tions are not necessarily those of the Editorial Board or of the Horace Mann School. Please contact The Re-view for information at [email protected].

For this issue of The Review, the first of Volume XXII and the 2012-13 school year, we asked a number of our past editors, as well as a collection of our current editors, to write about their views on current events issues of particular interest or significance to them. The magazine which resulted – the one which you are now reading – is an ideal example of everything The Review has stood for over the twenty-two years of its existence: thoughtful and rational discourse; the sharing of a broad range of stimulating and original ideas; a spirit of cooperation amongst writers and editors; and a common recognition of the importance of speaking out and becoming involved in the issues that shape the world we live in.

Over the years, our editors have shown The Review tremendous support as it has developed, and they have been proud to watch as each successive genera-tion of the magazine’s leaders has built upon the foundations that they themselves worked hard to construct. The warm response of our past editors to the concept of this first issue illustrates vividly the significance The Review has held in each and every one of their lives. To each and every student who chooses to become involved, The Review offers a chance to grow as a writer, as a thinker, as a teacher, and as a leader – skills that continue to serve our past editors well beyond their high school and even college years. To our past editors, The Review remains one of the great bright moments of their Horace Mann education.

The changes contributed by each group of editors, the unshakeable in-terest our past editors have shown in the magazine’s progress, and the constant improvement of quality both in content and design prove that The Review as an idea remains very much a work in progress – one which each successive group of students at the school has an opportunity to shape and develop in its own vision. Just as each individual issue is the product of a long and rewarding process, so too is the whole Review the product of a process that has been going on for twenty-two years.

It is important that I take this opportunity, as we begin the 2012-13 year, to thank several people in particular for making all of this possible. First and fore-most, I wish to thank Mr. Donadio, our faculty advisor, who has dedicated a huge amount of time and commitment to the students involved and has remained The Review’s strongest advocate and greatest leader for many years. I would also like to acknowledge the great help and support provided by the administration and faculty, particularly Dr. Kelly, Dr. Schiller, and Dr. Delanty. I am greatly apprecia-tive of the huge amount of effort already displayed by this year’s editorial staff and writers; it is clear that we have a great year ahead of us and that they will continue to lead the magazine down the right road in the future. Finally, I would like to thank Rebecca Segall, the Editor-in-Chief of our 2011-12 volume, for the incred-ible amount of dedication she invested in the magazine last year and for being a great mentor to everyone on the Review staff. You can find an article by Rebecca in this issue, as well as an article written by another past Editor-in-Chief, Deependra Mookim (’11), who likewise led The Review with great enthusiasm and grace.

Enjoy the issue.

Alex PosnerStephen PaduanoManaging Editors - Content

Letter From the Editor

Daniel Elkind Editor-in-Chief Volume XXII

2

Science and Technology

Domestic

International

Economics

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Features

Sam RahminNathan RaabNamit Satara

Come on, Media! 4Learning to Love Corporate Speech 6A Cruel Summer: Gun Control 10

Rebecca Segall ‘12Alex PosnerSahej Suri

A Reason to Hope: Southeast Asia 12A Period of Progress in the Middle East 16Reconstructing Afghanistan 18

Dr. Keyu Jin ‘00 An Issue of Credit 22

Daniel Elkind The Failed Republican Tax Plan 26

Deependra Mookim ‘11Isaiah Newman

A Free Market in Organs 30The Curiosity Rover 34

Alex PosnerStephen PaduanoManaging Editors - Content

3

4

Domestic


Come on Media, Report on the Election!

It seems so logical: in order to cam-paign for the oval office, the can-didates explain their stance on the

issues and why they are best fit for the job. As expected, when I turn on my television or open a newspaper, I am bombarded by announcements spon-sored by candidates. Now, since both parties understand the value of social media, facebook and twitter messages are fair game for the campaign trail. Yet, unfortunately, I have come to ex-pect that in order to hear anything sig-nificant about the candidates, I must seep through posters, commercials, tweets, and even newspaper articles. The candidates fight unfairly, twisting already unreliable information. The media plays along. The problem? Most Americans don’t filter through count-less articles to read about the issues that are occasionally brought up in the election. More significantly, it has been four years since anyone has joked about the media’s dirty mistress… President Obama. Yet, President Obama still

makes news reporters swoon and citi-zens don’t realize how much favor he is getting in this circus of an election.

In three months, Americans will have elected a new president. A new president with the power to serve as commander and chief of the army, make foreign treaties, and appoint jus-tices to the Supreme Court. Yet, nei-ther of the candidates whom we will have entrusted to lead our country is behaving as leaders should. Both can-didates are at fault for attempting to lie to the public by manipulating the citizenry. For example, earlier in the week, I turned on my television to hear Senator Mitt Romney trying to claim that President Obama is in fact lying to the public. Now, I feel that this point is moot, because in order to make his case, Mitt Romney must use and in-credibly deceptive commercial. But, unpacking this commercial see where its information comes from to check its reliability is quite a feat. Six seconds in, Romney quotes a cynical fact-checking

column in the Washington Post. This fact checking article was dubious of Obama because of one of his accusa-tions on Romney. He questioned deci-sions Romney made while working at Bain capital, calling Romney an “out-sourcer-in-chief.” Romney was clearly not over the month old dig, so he had to mention it in the infomercial. The info-mercial ends with a throwback to 2008, with Hillary Clinton raging against then Senator Obama. (Because clearly, Mrs. Clinton’s thought that President Obama falsely categorized her opin-ion on trade in 2007 is relevant now?) These sound bites Mitt Romney used in what should have been a Pro-Romney ad, but turned into an anti- Obama ad, show what a skewed perspective an av-erage citizen can get on the candidates.

Unfortunately, our current com-mander-in-chief is just at talented at falsifying information. An Obama sponsored Yahoo! Article that recently popped up on my newsfeed attempted to accuse Senator Romney of killing

Why the coverage of the Presidential election has been a failure

By Sam Rahmin

5

Domestic


a woman. A minute long commercial featured Joe Soptic, one of Mitt Rom-ney’s former steelworkers from his plant in Kansas City. Romney’s Bain Capital made a decision in the best in-terest of the business to close that GST Steel plant in 2001. With the closing of the plant, Mr. Soptic was laid off and he lost his health benefits. (Seems to make sense considering the plant no longer employed him…) Yet, somehow, Rom-ney is painted as a monster that robbed Mr. Soptic of health insurance. Appar-ently, he is the singular cause of Mrs. Soptic died of cancer. These campaign stories are growing more vulgar and absurd with every election.

Thus, Americans cannot rely on a lot of information put out directly from campaigns. So where can we get reli-able information? Unfortunately, we cannot trust the media. It is simple to see that reporters prefer to focus on off topic statements, usually ones that were taken out of context. For example, the British had a field day discussing Rom-ney’s many political gaffes. Romney, a man who served as chief executive of the successful Salt Lake City winter Olympics in 2002 and knows about the difficulty in running the Olympic games, questioned if London took the proper precautions preparing for the big event. This probably innocent po-litical gaffe quickly spread through the media. Later in the day, Romney ad-dressed Mr. Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour Party, as Mr. Leader. Britain as-sumed Romney forgot his name. Rom-

ney also made the mistake of publicly announcing that he was briefing with John Sawers, the head of MI6. The UK media attacked him for publicizing the secret meeting, when I think citizens should be praising him for being can-did about his whereabouts. In the mind of Great Britain and the media, these few gaffes add to the fact that Romney should not be president.

While these Romney gaffes were widespread in the media, coverage on Obama’s gaffes was shanty. Does everyone know about the time that Obama was signing a document in Westminster Abbey, forgot the year, and signed 2008 instead of 2011? How about that Obama’s first official gift to the queen was an ipod filled of his own speeches? Or that his first gift to the Prime Minister was a few DVDs… that won’t play in British DVD players? How about that First Lady Michelle broke protocol by touching the Queen in an official visit? Or that a member of Obama’s administration even dis-missed the Brits, telling that they were not “special” compared to every other delegation? Of course, none of these gaffes were given nearly as much cov-

erage by the media. Significantly, Mitt Romney is rich.

I don’t see how he can be faulted for his status at birth; I do not think he should be faulted for building his own busi-ness. Yet time and time again, I hear it being reported- Mitt Romney is rich. When he mentions his childhood, re-porters jump to point out that he grew up in a wealthy small town. When he went to a Nascar game, he accused of wearing a helmet that was too fancy. Somehow, reporters must stop picking on Mr. Mitt Romney and begin report-ing the news.

Ironically, the media’s love affair with Obama is one sided. He deserted the media in sports radio interview. When asked to compare his job to a sports game, President Obama stat-ed, “It also turns out that political re-porters are a lot like sports reporters. They’ve all got opinions, even if they didn’t play.” If even the president, who must stay on top of the news cannot see the media’s bias, there is no hope for the average citizen. My only suggestion as to getting trustworthy information is to rummage around for a diamond in the rough- a reliable source.

It has been four years since anyone has joked about the media’s dirty mistress... President Obama. President Obama still makes news reporters swoon, and citizens don’t realize how much favor he is getting in this circus of an election.

The Media's Dirty Mistress - The news media has favored President Obama overwhelmingly in the last two Presidential elections. PHOTOS (L-R): obamaballotchallenge.com, 1.bp.blogspot.com; PHOTOS OPPOSITE PAGE: www.namedevelopment.com, www.vacationrentalmarketingblog.com, zazenlife.com

Why the coverage of the Presidential election has been a failure

6

Domestic


“By opening the door for corpora-tions to spend unlimited sums in election the Supreme Court

has made a campaign finance system that was already flooded with money much worse.” The Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC has wrongly allowed corporations to “pour millions of dollars into the political sys-tem,” giving conservative candidates an unfair advantage and ensuring that “elections are bought by the biggest check writers.” Americans need to “take back their democracy” – and fast, before “the corporate interest in America…stop[s] citizen democracy in this coun-try,” permanently.

It’s a great story. It fires up the Dem-ocratic Party base. It would be nice if it were true.

Unfortunately, it isn’t. Citizens United is a tweak, at most, to the Ameri-can system of campaign finance, and a beneficial tweak at that. That system as

a whole is hard to fix without impos-ing costly restrictions on free speech for questionable material or ethical benefits. In short, it’s time for Democrats – and with them, the nation – to rethink their approach to campaign finance, and, by implication, Citizens United.

SORTING OUT FACT FROM FICTION

Critics of Citizens United tend to paint the decision as a sweeping revision of American laws on campaign spend-ing. President Obama’s remarks during his 2010 State of the Union Address are typical: the decision, he claimed, would “open the floodgates for special inter-ests…to spend without limits in our elections.” Two not terribly complicated tests demonstrate that this claim is flat-out wrong.

The first test is empirical. If, as President Obama states, Citizens United opened any kind of floodgate, then we

can expect to see a change in the amount of money spent during presidential cam-paigns. More precisely, we should expect to see a change in the rate of change of the amount of money spent during pres-idential campaigns. After all, there are other political trends, like (hypotheti-cally) increases in the price of television advertising, which began before Citi-zens United, continued after it, and also would increase the amount of money spent in politics. Only if Citizens United “bends the trend-line” would it have had an impact on campaign spending.

Matt Bai of the New York Times has already crunched these numbers. His findings? Increases in presidential election spending slowed after Citizens United, with an increase in spending of 136 percent between 2008 and 2012 following on the heels of a 168 per-cent increase between 2004 and 2008. An analysis of midterm spending from Middlebury College concluded the same

Learning to Love Corporate SpeechBy Nathan Raab

7

Domestic


thing; spending in 2010 remained roughly constant, adjusted for in-flation, as compared to spending in 2006. Citizens United has pro-duced no change in overall political spending.

But, you object, there must be something wrong! Maybe weak economic growth has acted as a brake on campaign spending in 2010 and the years following. Maybe liberal hatred of George Bush was so intense that it prompted more spending than usual in 2006 and 2008. Surely, Citizens United, at the very least, has changed campaign finance law so that it is easier for an outsider to spend large amounts of money in the political arena.

The answer is yes, but barely. We’ll start with individuals be-cause individuals, according to First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams, continue to dominate campaign spending: in this year’s Republican primaries, according to Abrams, 86 percent of contribu-tions came from individuals. Only one percent came from publicly traded corporations, and none came from large, Fortune 100 com-panies. Corporations generally resist spending in elections, explains Eugene Volokh, because they fear alienating potential customers.

Before Citizens United, a wealthy individual who wanted to in-fluence an election had two major options. If so inclined, she could spend the money herself, a right given by a 1976 Supreme Court Case called Buckley v. Valeo which struck down limits on individual expenditures as unconstitutional. Disclosure rules, however, would require that she publicly announce her sponsorship of the message. This obviously deters some individual expenditure. It is one thing to pay for a campaign advertisement endorsing a candidate, or a policy, and quite another to announce to one’s friends, colleagues, and neighbors one’s endorsement.

For the sake of argument, assume that our individual craves anonymity. If so, she could donate to a so-called 527 group, a cor-poration dedicated to political advocacy whose donors may remain anonymous under federal law. Under FEC rules, 527s could not en-dorse particular candidates, but the practical consequences of this rule were minimal. In the 2004 election, for example, Benjamin Feuer notes that the liberal 527 group MoveOn was able to run tele-vision advertisements in key swing states telling voters that George Bush had outsourced American jobs and otherwise “misled” the American public. While the advertisement did not exhort viewers to “vote against George Bush,” no reasonable person would consider the advertisement anything but advocacy against a Presidential can-didate.

After Citizens United, our fictitious donor had the same op-tions. The only difference was that she could also donate to a so-called “Super-PAC,” which was a legal vehicle by which donors could pool funds almost exactly like a 527. Super-PACs are distin-

Citizens United is a tweak, at most,to the American system of campaign finance,

and a beneficial tweak at that.

8

Domestic


PHOTOS: (L) Wikipedia, (T) MONEYOCRACY

1971: Federal Election Campaign Act:

Demands contributor disclosure and

puts in place contribution limits

1910: Federal Corrupt Practices Act:

Regulates contributions to House and Senate campaigns

1907: The Tilman Act:Prevents corporations

from donating to political campaigns

guishable from 527s solely by their abil-ity to explicitly endorse candidates. In an attack advertisement, how important is the final exhortation to “vote against Barack Obama?”

Citizens United did grant corpora-tions additional speech rights, but few corporations, per Mr. Adams’ statis-tics, have taken advantage of those new rights. Moreover, as we’ll discuss next, denying corporations those rights pos-es severe problems for the freedom of speech. CORPORATIONS AND FREE SPEECH

In a free society, speakers do not have to justify their speech before they speak it. Unless opponents of a particu-lar type of speech give a convincing ar-gument for why that speech should be barred, we ought to permit that speech. Arguments to bar corporate spending in elections are not sufficiently convinc-ing to surmount this burden of proof, as we’ll see in a moment.

“Money isn’t speech.” In a literal sense, this is true: money is money, and speech is speech. But this distinction quickly falls apart. The government can-not bar me from publishing this article. Could it prohibit me from spending money on a pen which I might use to write an initial draft, or from spending to print copies of the finished product? If I wrote this article on someone else’s behalf, can the government bar her from paying me? The First Amendment

would be an empty promise if it could. Money that enables speech must logi-cally deserve the same protection as the speech itself.

“Corporations aren’t people.” This is also true in a literal sense. In fact, cor-porations aren’t anything but groups of people protected by a certain set of laws. It is impossible to separate a corporation from those who manage it; there are no recorded cases of corporations breaking loose from the chains of their human masters and rampaging, Godzilla-like, through major metropolitan areas. If a group of friends and I decide to start a newspaper, whether we organize as a corporation, a partnership, or a trust – or whether we choose not to formally organize at all – will have no bearing on anything beyond how we file our tax re-turns and what would happen if we were sued. Neither our tax returns nor our status as defendant impacts the quality or quantity of our speech, so it would be odd to discriminate towards or against us on the basis of our corporate status or lack thereof.

“Corporate spending creates the appearance of corruption.” But the ‘ap-pearance of corruption’ is not a sufficient interest to justify any speech restriction, no matter how narrow. If an appearance of corruption is not worth investigat-ing, it is not worth censoring speech. If an appearance of corruption is worth investigating, it should be investigated. Should evidence of corruption exist, the law provides an adequate remedy: quid

pro quo corruption is illegal. Should evi-dence of corruption not exist after a long and careful search, the appearance of corruption has disappeared. The prob-lem is solved without restricting speech.

Some corporations happen to be very wealthy, and some people justify re-strictions on corporate speech on those grounds. Corporations, the logic goes, are creatures of the state which, by vir-tue of their corporate status, accumulate great influence and power. Such influ-ence and power, even when expressed in pure speech, distorts our democracy. Therefore, the state can legitimately reg-ulate corporate speech. This argument seems quite popular and is superficially persuasive. As such, I’ll spend some time on it.

We’ll start with the idea that a cor-poration is a creature of the state. A corporation is no more a creature of the state than any accumulation of wealth is a creature of the state. My assets are pro-tected by state and federal laws against theft, assault and battery; I would not have this computer, for example, were its theft not contrary to law. (Certainly I would not be able to keep it were I obliged to resort to physical force to pro-tect it.) Such a situation is entirely due to state action or lack thereof. Can the state limit my freedom of expression on the basis that my assets are protected by the state’s laws? I certainly hope not.

Moreover, regulating corporate ac-tion on the basis that some corporations have great power is both over and under

9

Domestic


1976: Buckley vs. Valeo:Upholds contribution limits but rules that campaign spending is a form of 1st Ammendment Speech

2010: Citizens United vs FEC:Allows for unlimited corporate

spending through “Super-Pacs”

broad. Some ninety percent of corpora-tions have net assets of under a million dollars, while plenty of natural citizens have many millions, even billions, of dol-lars counted as part of their net worth. If we can regulate corporations because they are wealthy, we can regulate wealthy individuals as well. On the other side of the coin, a complete bar on expenditures from wealthy corporations is like pro-hibiting wealthy individuals from speak-ing at all.

Maybe that doesn’t sound like a bad idea – maybe all accumulated wealth which generates speech distorts de-mocracy. But the “distortion of democ-racy” rationale is fundamentally flawed, if democracy is distorted when some citizens have more power over the out-come of democratic processes than oth-ers. Plenty of things distort democracy: some speakers are smarter, or more per-sonable, or have greater standing in the community than others. The fact that my speech is more influential than yours might be does not mean that you can bar me from speaking.

Advocates for speech restrictions might argue that money, unlike IQ or personality, only affects the distribution of a message; speech cannot be regu-lated, in other words, but the relative “volumes” of different speakers can be. This argument fails when we realize that volume is entirely determined by the in-teraction of the content of the message and the speaker. Repetition does not make speech more persuasive. “Win-

ning in the marketplace of ideas,” as Jus-tice Thomas terms it, is a function of the persuasive quality of the message, not of the number of times the message was re-peated on television.

Empirical evidence bears this out. One analysis – by economist Stephen Leavitt, of Freakonomics fame – found that a candidate would have to double his or her election spending to gain an extra one percent of the popular vote. Another analysis of spending on campaign ad-vertisements, the most common form of candidate speech, found that most advertisements help candidates “very little or not at all.” Corporate money, in other words, isn’t “buying” voters in any meaningful sense. Quality rhetoric has the same impact no matter how much or little money is behind it.

LEARNING TO LOVE CORPORATE SPEECH

But corporate speech isn’t just “not bad,” it’s as worthy of First Amendment protection as any other kind of speech. Amnesty International is a corporation. So is the ACLU. So, for that matter, is the New York Times. All of these or-ganizations benefit American political discourse precisely because they are corporations. For better or worse, the average American does not have the time, energy, or money to get an edito-rial published in a newspaper or appear on television. Advocacy corporations such as these allow the otherwise voice-

less to spend time and money to ensure their beliefs are heard.

Both times the Citizens United case came to argument in front of the Su-preme Court, the lawyers for the gov-ernment were forced to admit that a bar against corporate speech would permit the government to ban books or pam-phlets, what now Supreme Court Jus-tice Elena Kagan called “core political speech,” purely on the basis of their au-thorship. A free state does not do such a thing. Whether or not the author is trustworthy or makes what other peo-ple think a valid contribution to pub-lic discourse is not relevant. Speech is speech is speech.

If the average American voter can-not put two and two together on the topic of authorship – if he cannot guess that an advertisement from Exxon might exhibit a slant towards gasoline products, or that “Americans for a Bet-ter Tomorrow” might not actually be just a group of Americans who support a better tomorrow – we have bigger problems than those involving cam-paign finance law.

Whoever wins the election in No-vember will not have won because cor-porations skewed the outcome. They will have won because they earned a mandate from the American people. American democracy, if it is to survive, depends on a faith that the American people – not corporations or any other shadowy, disliked group – remain in charge of the U.S. government.

10

Domestic


Looking back on this summer, I’m sure a lot of us can speak of fond memories, whether it was from fol-

lowing the Olympics or watching nu-merous movies. However, what stands out for a lot of us is that this was a summer of chaos, slaughter, and death. Three major shootings occurred this summer in the United States: one at the midnight filming of the Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado, the second at the Sikh Gurudwara (temple) in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, and the last outside the Empire State Building. As a result of these mass murders, the ongoing de-bate of gun control has resurfaced, and now more than ever, we all have ques-tions regarding guns that need to be an-swered. Should guns be banned? Is too much gun control harmful? What are ways to prevent future shootings? Evidence from our history tells us that simply outlawing a substance won’t erase its existence, but will in-crease illegal activity pertaining to the matter. Banning firearms will make for

an environment with closeted bootleg-ging and private black-markets, as was done with alcohol during the Prohibi-tion Era in the 1920’s. Therefore, ban-ning firearms isn’t the route to take, but making them harder to access is. Those against increasing gun-control laws have argued that taking limit-ing gun freedoms will only hurt the American community more, as law-abiding citizens will be those who are disarmed. Regardless, criminals will go out of their way to access firearms, and this just results in an unarmed, vulnerable public. The duty of protect-ing this country falls on the police, but federal authorities can’t be crawl-ing up and down every square foot of this nation. We were lucky that the last shooting took place outside the secured landmark of the Empire State Building that only one man was killed in such a densely populated area. Unfortunately, banning guns isn’t an option for our country, as owning them is a “right”, as stated by the Second Amendment of

the Constitution of the United States of America. Also, many questions would exist if our government takes that route. What happens to all the guns owned by 3 in every 10 men in our country? How will hunting, one of our country’s pastime, be affected? This issue of gun control is one that has split our country, and a radical decision like banning fire-arms cannot and will never pass. As proponents of lowering gun control laws would argue, restrictions on firearm access only lead to more violence. However, the Harvard Injury Control Research Center has found substantial evidence that more guns lead to greater homicide rates. Statistics from our country also show that there is a correlation between stricter firearm laws and fewer deaths related to guns. States like New York and California, who have placed several laws limited access to guns, had fewer than 5 deaths per 100,000 people. On the other hand, Arizona and Alaska, both of which didn’t have a single firearm law de-

A Cruel SummerBy Namit Satara

AR-15, a semi automatic gun, famously used by James Holmes (right) in the Colorado Shooting. Thankfully, his gun was reported to have jammed before harming other people

blogs.suntimes.com

11

Domestic


1791: The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified. The amendment reads: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the se-curity of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

1871: The National Rifle Associa-tion was formed by Union Army veterans Col. William C. Church and Gen. George Wingate.

1934: The National Firearms Act passes in response to gangster culture during Prohibition. The law implements a tax on the mak-ing and transfer of automatic-fire guns, shotguns and rifles.

1939: Supreme Court upholds a federal ban on sawed-off shotguns, implying that the Founding Fathers adopted the amendment to ensure the then-new federal government could not disarm state militias.

1968: Congress passes the Gun Control Act. The law calls for bet-ter control of interstate traffic of firearms. Lee Harvey Oswald used a mail-order gun to assassinate President John F. Kennedy.

1986: The Firearm Owner’s Protection Act is approved by Congress. The law prohibits felons from owning or possessing guns or ammunition. The Law Enforcement Officers Protection Act is also passed. It prohibits the manufacturing, importing and selling of am-munition that can penetrate a bulletproof vest.

1993: Congress passes the The Brady Handgun Violence Act, establishing the National Instant Criminal Background Check System gun dealers are to use before selling a gun. The law is named after former White House Press Secretary James Brady, who was shot in the head during the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan.

1994: The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act becomes law. The law banned the manufacture, use, pos-session and import of 19 types of assault weapons, including AK-47s and Uzis. The law expired in 2004.

2007: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rules in favor of Dick Anthony Heller, 66, an armed security guard who sues the district after it rejects his application to keep a handgun at his home in Capitol Hill. District appeals to Supreme Court.

June 2008: The Supreme Court upholds the lower court ruling, striking down D.C. handgun ban as unconstitu-tional.

signed to protect its citizens, had over 20 deaths each. What has changed in our gov-ernment’s law enforcement since this summer that lets us feel safe everyday when we walk outside into the public. If those three shootings could occur in a span of one month, what’s keeping us protected? What’s different for us that

wasn’t for the 19 murdered victims these past months. America has to up its se-curity measure, and it has to do it now. How can we as a nation prevent future massacres? One idea is to increase the presence of federal authorities, but that eventually leads to higher taxes, which is another topic that would stir up great debate. Whatever our solution is, the

government has to work quickly in finding it. Gun sales have jumped 20% since this summer in fear of stricter gun control laws. One of those customers could be the next James Holmes, Wade Michael Page, or Jeffrey Johnson, and we as a nation need assurance that our protection is a high priority on govern-ment’s list.

A History of Gun Laws

James Holmes: attributed to the Colorado Shooting

Jeffrey Jonhson: attributed to the recent Empire State Builging Shooting

Wade Madison Page: attributed to the shoot-ing of a Sikh Temple

blogs.villagevoice.com

content.usatoday.com

toledoblade.com

Source:npr.org

12

International


A REASON TO HOPE

By Rebecca Segall ‘12

Why the nations of Southeast Asia are growing increasingly sensitive to human rights

img103.fansshare.com

13

International


For as long as we have held a global definition of human rights—a con-versation on the individual’s un-

alienable standard of living spanning the greater half of the last century—they have needed special protection in certain corners of the world. It’s 2012 and the battle for human rights in southeast Asia seems perpetual. Dif-ferences in both policy and mental-ity towards torture, free speech, and liberty at large stratify developed and developing countries on a moral level. While the narrative of the dissident rotting in a jail cell in Malaysia, Myan-mar, or China after challenging his or her government continues to unfold, however, there is reason to hope. Po-litical opposition, new leadership, and increasing pressure from the citizens are slowly changing attitudes and laws governing freedom of opinion in southeast Asia. The most convincing explanation for increasingly human rights-conscious policy in the region,

though, lies not in internal change but in the growing connectedness of na-tions. Foreign political pressure and improved diplomatic relations pushes all countries to set a higher standard for the good of the global community.

Take Malaysia, a notorious abuser of human rights. While activists con-tinue to face charges of sedition from a government desperate to maintain control, this spring and summer’s political conversation seems to be a prelude to positive change. Prime Minister Najib Razak is galvanized to act in response to waning support for the ruling government coalition in power since the country’s 1957 inde-pendence. He is setting out to make good on his promise to “strengthen civil liberties,” according to the New York Times, by undertaking a drastic reevaluation of legislation regarding the detention of political prisoners. Najib has described the nation’s Sedi-tion Act, an obvious vestige of colonial

rule, as “[representing] a bygone era in our country.” The 1948 piece of legis-lation will soon be replaced with the National Harmony Act. The law will attempt to strike a 21st century balance between defending freedom of speech and preventing the propagation of ethnic or religious hatred, a conflict that plagues all nations with diverse populations. Najib’s apparent commit-ment to slowly liberalizing freedom of expression thus seems to be an at-tempt to meet the demands of an in-creasingly politically involved public and maintain the political compara-tive advantage over opponents.

Karpal Singh, chairman of the Democratic Action Party, the politi-cal opposition, has critiqued the out-dated Sedition Act as broadly worded, in order to act as a malleable political weapon, as well as selectively enforced to target the ruling party’s political targets. A victim of the act himself, Karpal was charged with sedition after

The most convincing explanation for increasingly

human rights-conscious policy in the region, though, lies not in internal change but in the growing connectedness of nations. Foreign political pressure and improved

diplomatic relations pushes all countries to set a higher

standard for the good of the global community. Rights abuses and widespread suffering have been plagued Myanmar, but we are starting to see hope and improvement.

PHOTOS: (BL) www.mcmpovos.com.br, (TR) www.un.org, (BR) www.globalpost.com, (TL) www.unmultimedia.org

14

International


allegedly insulting a local sultan. For-eign and domestic outrage at Karpal’s treatment served as a warning sign that such politically paranoid policy would not be tolerated for long. A recent up-date in legislation regarding prisoners of conscience, for instance, limits the amount of time a suspect of subversive acts can be detained without trial. In another example of political mobiliza-tion spurring conversation over free speech, tens of thousands of Malaysian citizens demanded electoral reform in an April demonstration in Kuala Lum-pur. While 400 protestors were arrest-ed in violation of the Peaceful Assem-bly Act for not notifying authorities in advance of a demonstration, politi-cal pressure from voters and power-ful advocates for change are forcing a gradual governmental reevaluation of policy towards organizing protests. Similarly, though Irene Fernandez, a voice for migrant workers suffering human rights abuse in Malaysia, was met with charges of falsehoods in her reports on the workers’ lack of safety, international attention from agents such as the United Nations and human

rights organizations seems to be mak-ing an impact. Though defensive of its policies towards migrant workers, the government has commenced work with Fernandez’ agency to address the perennial issue of human trafficking. Human rights critics are withholding judgment of Najib’s reform until their effects fully manifest. But the catalyz-ing of dialogue over the individual’s and the group’s right to express chal-lenging opinions itself inspires faith in

the effectiveness of advocacy and open political discourse in traditionally rig-id systems.

In Myanmar as well, it seems for-eign political pressure along with the promise of improved relations with other countries is galvanizing change. After nearly 50 years of repressive military rule, President Thein Sein has initiated a series of reforms to elevate human rights. He has eased censorship laws and freed hundreds of political prisoners. Most notably, the govern-ment’s freeing opposition party leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has transformed the nation’s image. A celebrity in the world of human rights, Suu Kyi symbolized the government’s outdated and authoritarian approach towards political dissent; her freedom and subsequent rise to a seat in parlia-ment represents the most direct effect of international attention and pressure on government action. While former U.S. President George W. Bush had frozen assets and imposed harsher political restrictions on then-general Sein, President Obama has eased sanc-tions and fostered greater dialogue

In Myanmar, President Thein Sein (R) has instituted a series of reforms that promise to elevate human rights, and the government’s decision to free opposition party leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has transformed the nation’s image. PHOTOS: (R) www.plaidavenger.com, (L) asiasociety.org, FACING PAGE: tribune.com.pk

In addition to the political incentive of greater acceptance in the

international community, the economic and cultural

benefits of widespread improvement in human rights policy suggest change for Myanmar.

15

International


since Sein’s becoming head of state, correlating directly to the Burmese leader’s opening up of the political system. Interaction with the outside world, from foreign heads of state to human rights watchdog organizations such as Amnesty International to oth-er international bodies has enabled Sein to feel the benefits of protecting his people’s rights. For instance, con-flict between ethnic Bhuddist Burmese and the Muslim Rohingya minority in the northern Arakan State acted as a red flag for political factions in other parts of the world. A Taliban branch in Pakistan has threatened its govern-ment to place political sanctions on Myanmar out of concern for Muslims abroad, demonstrating the process of international attention and pressure as a motivator for improvement. The formation of a peace committee in Myanmar, working in tandem with opposition parties and members of parliament, has been able to coordi-nate cease-fires and temporary settle-ments with various ethnic groups in fringe minorities, an accomplishment widely perceived as a major step to-wards the end of sectarian violence and insurgency in the nation.

In addition to the political incen-tive of greater acceptance in the inter-national community, the economic and cultural benefits of widespread improvement in human rights policy suggest change for Myanmar. For in-stance, any form of political liberaliza-tion invariably attracts foreign direct investment in developing countries. Productive economic relationships with other nations symbolizes inter-national faith in Myanmar’s cultural development and provides opportuni-ty for upward social mobility and im-proved standards of living for Burmese citizens. For instance, since Sein’s in-novative reforms, Myanmar has seen a dramatic rise in tourism rates, which benefits local industries, including ag-riculture, a major source of income for rural Malaysians. Travel also draws the nation in to the global community, in-directly influencing attitudes towards

human rights and standard of living through foreign perspectives. The government has opened previously re-stricted tourist sites to the public; the home of General Suu Kyi, Aung San Suu Kyi’s father, once closed to visitors out of political defense, has been con-verted to a museum, bringing revenue into a region of abject poverty and publicly recognizing a dark piece of the country’s past. Though Aung San Suu Kyi vocally discouraged all forms of tourism to Myanmar over a decade ago, her party now publically urges individual tourists to visit, in order to “promote the welfare of the common people and the conservation of the en-vironment.” Democracy advocate U Ba Dhat Aung explained to the New York Times, “It’s good that foreign-ers connect with this country, spread their knowledge, assist the economy and observe what is happening inside

Myanmar.” Liberalization of cultural exchange exposes individuals to dif-ferent opinions, enabling a general at-mosphere of democracy and diversity of thought. Though watchdog organi-zations continue to hold Myanmar ac-countable for many violations of inter-national human rights law, including detaining political prisoners without fair trial, coordination between differ-ent political parties and cooperation with other nations have yielded un-deniable improvements in the way of free speech. Change is gradual, and no country in a globalized world can do it alone.

Authoritarian and socially rigid systems will never be safe for politi-cal dissidents; internet censorship, ar-rests without due process of law, and intimidation tactics to silence politi-cal opposition are symptomatic of a greater social issue that will have to shift in the 21st century. Three jour-nalists illegally detained in Vietnam exceed the nation’s legal limit of jail time without a trial; as their story be-gins to capture international attention, how will the government continue to seek a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council? And how will China respond to the international arbiters of justice to which South Korea is taking its case of Chinese illegal migration and tor-ture practices? A nation does not fun-damentally change its perspective in a vacuum; we must trust that the global structures we have in place to hold na-tions together—the international jus-tice system, the free market, journal-ism, tourism, and global culture—can maintain checks and balances. If they cannot protect individuals’ basic safe-ty and freedom, we must strengthen them.

As some developing countries send athletes to the summer Olym-pics for the first time in history, we watch as this millennia-old tradition of cooperation and global interaction unites the world on a cultural level. In the arena of global politics, it seems this same spirit of interconnectedness offers hope for a more humane world.

Liberalization of cultural exchange exposes

individuals to different opinions, enabling a general atmosphere of democracy

and diversity of thought. In Myanmar, there have been

undeniable improvements in the way of free speech.

16

International


A PERIOD OF PROGRESSHow the Obama Administration has brought

hope and change to the Middle East

By Alex Posner

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_lkd_Cj_d7bs/TTRrbkqogYI/AAAAAAAAAAU/9xLsMUehqzs/s1600/ss-110114-tunisia-unrest-03.ss_full.jpg

In recent weeks, criticism of the United States’ support for the Arab Spring revolutions has reached an

all-time high. Pundits, mostly conser-vative, have continued to point to the tragic death of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood as evidence of the democ-racy movement’s inevitable and de-structive decline. They have dismissed the wave of Middle Eastern revolution-ary fervor as nothing more than a tran-sitory phenomenon and have asserted that the changes of the past two years run sharply counter to the interests of the United States. This narrative, while compelling, is fundamentally flawed. It is true that the Arab Spring has faced a series of setbacks in recent weeks. The death of Ambassador Stevens was devastating and tragic; the conduct of his attackers was utterly abhorrent, and the assault on the U.S. embassy will forever stain

the books of history. In addition, thenow-infamous YouTube video made to mock the prophet Mohammad— while crude and offensive—was not grounds for violent protests. The public reac-tion was inexcusable, and so too was the U.S.’s inability to generate universal condemnation of such violent conduct, including from political and religious leaders in the region. These events, however, do not provide the whole picture. What conservative pundits fail to mention is that these few setbacks pale in comparison to the important and historic gains of the past two years. When analyzing the Arab Spring and its implications for the United States, it is best to look at these protests not in isolation, but in context. Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab Spring, is arguably the movement’s greatest success to date. When Mo-hamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian fruit cart vendor, set himself on fire to protest

what he saw as a culture of pervasive government corruption, few could have predicted the shock-waves that would be sent pulsating through the Middle East. In a matter of weeks, the nation was consumed by protests and the old guard—President Ben Ali—was no more. In October of 2011, Tunisia held its first round of democratic elections. They were strikingly successful. In the words of the Atlantic Council, “The elections met international standards for election transparency, voter turn- out, and international oversight.” A new constitution has been drafted, and the ruling party—a moderate Islamist par-ty known as Ennahda—has so far suc-ceeded in resisting the influence of the hard-line Islamists. The government is fiscally solvent, the Tunisian economy has stabilized, and the tourist industry has been revived. The future for Tunisia provides a basis for hope.

17

International


Progress will happen, and it will come in a way that benefits the Middle East, the

United States, and the world.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_lkd_Cj_d7bs/TTRrbkqogYI/AAAAAAAAAAU/9xLsMUehqzs/s1600/ss-110114-tunisia-unrest-03.ss_full.jpg

In Egypt, things have been more chaotic, which is not surprising given the country’s political, social, and economic history. Nonetheless, the political changes have resulted in unques- tionable progress. Hosni Mubarak has been deposed, democratic elections have taken place, and a new president and government have been instated. In addition, in August, President Morsi ended the military council’s grip on power by forcing the retirement of Field Marshall Mohammad Tawtawi. This was a moment of great upheaval and symbolism because for the first time the elected civilian government suc-cessfully asserted power over the mili-tary leadership. The council, a vestige from the time of Mubarak, had led the country during the political transition, and was seen by many to be an anach-ronistic entity standing in the way of true political reform. President Morsi’s stand against the military was bold, and it embodied the populist spirit that is at the ideological core of the Arab Spring. It is this same spirit that will hopefully define the tenor of Middle Eastern poli-tics for years to come. Many critics of the Arab Spring’s ef-fect on Egypt point to the election of a Muslim Brotherhood majority in the now suspended parliament and the election of the Muslim Brotherhood’s President Morsi as evidence of a US foreign policy failure. While these pun-dits assert that virtually every member of the Muslim Brotherhood is fiercely anti-Israel and anti-US, the evidence does not bear this out. President Morsi has pledged to preserve the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, and so far he has honored this claim. This does not mean that Egyptian-Israeli relations are strong and secure. There are many in the Arab world, including political leaders in the Mus- lim Brotherhood, who continue to be extremely hostile to Israel. There are countless others who are less extreme, but who still view Israel as a threat to Arab political interests. While we need to be attentive to these attitudes, the

reality is that we have relatively limited power to temper these anti-Israeli sen-timents or dictate how people think. If we champion the cause of democracy, we cannot at the same time demand that certain leaders be elected or that those who are elected reflect our inter-ests and perspectives. That is not how democracy works. The years ahead in the Arab world will certainty be messy. Democracy promotion is not easy and the building of a democratic state is never a lin- ear process. In fact, our own pursuit of independence and democracy was not without its fair share of trials and tribulations. The Continental Army battled the British in a war that lasted over eight years and that came at the expense of more than 25,000 Ameri- can lives. Even then, it took another five years to draft and ratify the U.S. Consti-tution. This success only came after we first experimented with a governmen-tal model established by the Articles of Confederation. Like the Arab people, we did not get it right on our first try. Progress will happen, and it will come in a way that benefits the Middle East, the United States, and the world. While the elected leaders of the Arab community may not always see eye to eye with the leaders of this country, we can rest assured that the calls for dig-nity and greater economic and political freedom are louder than ever. As his-tory has proven true, democracies do not go to war with one another; the democratic peace theory is one that has withstood the test of time. If the people of the Middle East hold their nerve and work to achieve sustainable democracy, accompanied by economic liberalism

and global trade, a new era of stability and peace will be ushered in. Wars will become less frequent, oil prices will sta-bilize, and respect for human rights will increasingly take center stage. We will all stand to gain if these objectives are realized. But, we must be clear-eyed in rec-ognizing that the achievement of these objectives is still many years away. As David Sanger, Chief White House cor- respondent for The New York Times, put it best when describing the situation in Egypt, “The next few years will be a constant tug of war between fun-damentalists and democracy-builders. The old guard will be pitted against the Islamist parties, with aspirations of changing the nature of the state and against those who led the revolution in the square. No doubt Americans will recoil at some of the laws passed, as Egyptians weave conspiracy theo-ries about how Americans are seeking to meddle. But even among the ranks of leadership, there seem to be more Egyptians who want to build a real de-mocracy than join a cause.” This perspective should guide our for-eign policy in the coming years, and we should redouble our support for genu-ine democrats in each of these coun-tries. Sanger’s analysis applies to virtu-ally every country in the Middle East. The wheels of change are moving, and while there will be many bumps along the way, there is an historic opportunity for us to help build stable democracies in the Middle East and Northern Afri-ca. It is imperative for us to stand with the democratic forces in the region and help them seize this moment.

18

International


RECONSTRUCTINGAFGHANISTAN

HOW TO GUARANTEE THE SECURITY AND STABILITY OF AFGHANISTAN, POST TROOP WITHDRAWL

By Sahej Suri

19

International


RECONSTRUCTINGAFGHANISTAN

The disintegration of law and order in Afghanistan can trace its origins back to the invasion of the White

Huns in the 5th century C.E., the more recent invasions of the Mongols, Mace-donians, Persians, British, Soviets, and finally the Americans. The nation has survived through centuries of upheaval but has remained relatively obdurate to change. However, it is does not neces-sarily follow for history to repeat itself after the occupation of United States troops in Afghanistan. The American Foreign Service, other U.S. agencies, and allied nations are in the process of strengthening the Afghani infrastruc-ture by “nation building”; ostensibly, Afghanistan may finally be able to break the ancient bonds held by warlords and the Taliban.

On June 22nd, 2011, President Barack Obama announced that by 2014, 30,000 United States combat troops will have been withdrawn from Afghanistan. A core of trainers and other troops, however, will remain. The President remarked, “…thanks to our intelligence professionals and spe-cial forces, we killed Osama bin Laden, the only leader that al Qaeda had ever

known. This was a victory for all who have served since 9/11.” The expecta-tion is that the country will have been stabilized, keeping Americans safe from terrorist attacks. Troop withdraw-al from Afghanistan paves a clear field for the stabilization and subsequent re-construction of the nation. The respon-sibility for this lies on the shoulders of the American Foreign Service as well as on other United States peacekeeping agencies. Through the Foreign Service, the United States continues to maintain its goals of procuring a lasting politi-cal relationship through dialogue, di-plomacy, and multi-faceted efforts to stem terrorism, create stability in Af-ghanistan, and guarantee a safer United States.

One facet in the effort to strength-en Afghanistan at its grassroots level is the reconstruction of its the economy. Herding and farming constitutes the livelihood of about 80 percent of Af-ghans living in rural areas. Unfortu-nately, a major prolific agribusiness cash crop in the past has been opium. In 2007, Afghanistan was providing 92% of the world’s illegal opium; 70% of its revenue went through the govern-

The rubble of a village in Afghanistan PHOTO: (Above) wikimedia.org, (Opposite Page) dn.theatlantic.com

20

International


ment of Afghanistan. Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, stated, “I urge the friends of Afghani-stan to recognize that, to a large extent, these uncomfortable truths may be the result of benign neglect”. Since farm-ers who comprise major a vital sector of the economy provide the nation with most of its food supply and since food supply is not commensurate with the demand, it is nationally imperative that the growing of opium be eliminated or, at the very minimum, curtailed in favor of the growing of more food crops. In conjunction with the Afghan govern-ment, USAID and the Foreign Service are subsidizing the cost of growing al-ternate crops, providing Afghan citi-zens with a means of living through ini-tiating agricultural reconstruction. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and other USG agencies are presently collaborating with the Karzai government to encour-age farmers to increase productivity of

foodstuffs by providing up-to-date ag-ricultural technology as well as effective agricultural techniques. Improvement of the infrastructure is being addressed in various regions by overhauling trans-

portation systems such as railroads, airfields, and roads that are more acces-sible facilitating farmers in getting their product to market. The Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation, and Livestock (MAIL) in coordination with Foreign Service officers are creating a viable system of credit availability in order to encourage the improvement of water-sheds and promote research projects, promote government incentives, and strengthen a myriad of systems critical for long-term development.

An additional step towards im-proving the infrastructure of Afghani-stan is through rebuilding its education system. Of the 7 million children in Afghanistan, the literacy rate in 2008 was approximately 28.1 percent greatly due to war and turmoil over the past 3 decades. However, as a result of the efforts of USAID, as of June 2011, the furthering of education has become a primary goal of USAID. Since Af-ghanistan’s population is greatly com-prised of children, the Foreign Service

Troop withdrawl from Afghanistan paves a

clear field for the stabi-lization and subsequent

reconstruction of the nation, and the

responsibility for this change lies on the shoulders of the

American Foreign Service and other American peace-keeping agencies.

The skies of Afghanistan are spotted with helicopters, the ground with troops. PHOTOS: (Above) dn.theatlantic.com (Opp. page T) cdn8.wn.com (Opp. page B) 4gwar.files.wordpress.com

21

International


is concentrating its efforts on that sec-tor. Specifically, USAID has supported community-based education (CBE), providing the much-needed recovery of lost years of formal education by delivering 12 million textbooks yearly as well as accelerated and remedial education programs. Several million children are now benefitting from 630 newly built or renovated schools and additional 53,000 teachers within the provinces. USAID is currently col-laborating with the Afghan National Development Strategy, the Ministry of Higher Education, and university ad-visors. The result is an improvement in the number of students graduating with doctorate and master’s degrees, better qualified educators at all levels, and modernization of curriculum to compete in the international markets of labor. Additionally, the Foreign Ser-vice encourages education specific to increasing farming efficiency. Sources for these types of projects come from microfinance as well as international aid in order to accelerate economic development for the future. By encour-aging and supporting the attainment of a higher quality of education along with multi-faceted programs in techni-cal and vocational training, the Afghan government, in cooperation with US-AID, is slowly but steadily improving Afghan economic development and obtaining an overall higher quality of life for its people.

The substandard state of health of Afghani citizens is another area of primary concern. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that the condition of health in Afghanistan is 3 to 5 times worse than its surrounding countries, again, greatly the result of decades of the devastation of war. Fe-male Afghanis have a particularly high early mortality rate. “Afghan women have less contact with health workers,” Daniel Toole, UNICEF’s South Asia director said, “Many health workers are men and, traditionally, women are not allowed to have contact with men who are not family”. As a result, they are denied much-needed healthcare.

Toole further believes that the health-care field needs to increase its number of qualified female professionals in order to offset traditional stigmas. An Afghan woman dies during childbirth every thirty minutes according to the Integrated Regional Information Net-works (IRIN); children who have sur-vived birth still must survive exposure to numerous debilitating and/or dead-ly diseases. There is a high risk of con-tracting diseases from food and water-borne diseases such as bacterial and protozoal diarrhea, hepatitis A, and typhoid fever thrive in Afghanistan. In addition, there is an increase in the number of cases of HIV/AIDS as the result of an upsurge of drug usage. Fif-ty-nine percent of Afghanistan’s chil-dren under the age of five suffer from malnutrition which leads to develop-mental problems and often results in premature deaths. USAID, in concert with the Ministry of Public Health, is in the process of ameliorating the an-tiquated and inadequate state of medi-cal care which exists throughout 13 of the 34 provinces. The MoPH pro-vides healthcare workers and supplies to over 870,000 patients monthly, and USAID trains volunteer community healthcare workers, doctors, nurses, and midwives. A healthier population is a major building block to a stronger Afghanistan.

Perhaps the course of Afghani-stan’s dismal history of foreign inva-sion is on its way to reversal. United States military presence has lessened the threat of terrorism and begun to restore the principle of national sover-eignty through assuring military and civilian security. The Foreign Service has established a framework within which Afghans are becoming enabled to pursue personal as well as national advancement. Hopefully, the United States’ occupation in Afghanistan is writing a new page in history Presi-dent Obama expressed his intent in this statement: “It’s important for us to make sure we get out in a responsible way, so that we don’t end up having to go back in”.

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan

Troops converse with local Afghan citizens

Perhaps the course ofAfghanistan’s dismal

history of foreign inva-sion is on its way to

reversal. The U.S. has lessened the threat of terror and begun to

restore civilian security.

22

Features

The horace Mann review | vol. XXi

Two of the most important devel-opments in the global economy of the recent decades are the

integration of emerging markets into world capital markets and their rapid growth, particularly in certain parts of Asia. Alongside these events are three striking and unprecedented trends: (1) a large and persistent increase in the private saving rate in emerging Asia against a steady decline in the private saving rate in advanced economies; (2) the emergence of global imbalances with developing countries running a large current account surplus and ad-vanced economies a current account deficit; (3) a sustained fall in the world long-term interest rate.

Household Credit Constraints as an Explanation to Some Prevailing Puzzles in the Global Economy

These patterns constitute an em-pirical riddle to mainstream economic theory, which predicts just the oppo-site. Standard open-macroeconomic framework (one which is used to study interactions of nations with open capi-tal flows and trade) tells us that in a fast growing economy---such as Asia---the saving rate should fall rather than rise, as agents borrow against their higher future income to increase consumption and investment. The world interest rate, rather than falling, should be rising, as a result of Asia being more produc-tive (and the rate of return as a reflec-tion of its productivity). Also, in face of high domestic investment needs, Asia should become a net capital importer

By Dr. Keyu Jin ‘00Assistant Professor at the London School of Economics

AN ISSUE OF CREDIT

23

Features


AN ISSUE OF CREDIT

(run a current account deficit) rather than a net exporter (run a current ac-count surplus). Finally, what is most in-teresting and most puzzling is the large divergence in savings rate across nations (fact 1). The standard theory would tell us that in response to common world interest rate movements, savings rate, which responds to interest rate changes, should move in-synch across nations. What explains their diametrically differ-ent behaviour? In our recent research, “Credit Constraints and Growth in a Global Economy’’, my coauthors Nico-las Coeurdacier and Stephane Guibaud endeavor to develop a theory that can solve this riddle, at the same time evalu-ating its empirical validity. This article

explains some of the main theoretical and empirical findings.

The striking divergence in saving rates across advanced economies and Emerging Asia is evident in Figure 1. But contrary to popular belief, ‘Asian thriftiness’ was not always present---in fact, differences between the private saving rates of these countries with ad-vanced economies were rather small at the time of their integration around 1990. The pattern is even more obvious when it comes to household saving rates in countries such as the U.S. and China. In 1988, household saving rates were about the same in the two countries---at about 5 percent. By 2007 the household saving rate in China reached almost 30

percent while that of the U.S. declined to a level of about 2.5 percent. The cari-cature of a `debt ridden’ U.S. put into sharp relief against `thrifty’ Asia reflects this popular curiosity. But if thriftiness cannot be the main explanation for Chi-na’s high savings rate, what can?

Our answer is household liquidity constraints combined with fast growth in Asian economies. By household li-quidity constraints we mean that con-sumers have a limit to how much they are able to borrow against future in-come---that amount being often smaller than the amount they would like to bor-row (less than optimal). For instance, we can imagine that households can borrow up to only a fraction of their fu-

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Savings in Emerging Asia % of GDP Private Savings in Emerging Asia % of GDP

Private Savings in Developed Countries % of GDP Private Savings in the US % of GDP

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Advanced OECD United States China India

Households Savings Rate

Figure 1(a) Note: Private Saving Rate between 1980-2007. Aggregate saving rate (shown for Emerging Asia) is the sum of private and public (government) saving as a share of GDP. Private sav-ing includes household saving (graph below) and corporate saving.

Figure 1(b) Note: Household Saving Rate between 1981-2007. Household saving rate is measured as household saving divided by disposable income.

24

Features


ture wage income. It may be 30 percent in countries such as the U.S., and it may be 3 percent in countries such as China. The differences are enormous---as part-ly manifested by the large discrepancy in household debt between the various countries (Figure 2). Although one can argue that some of these differences are demand-driven---for instance, if the Chinese are intrinsically reluctant to borrow---it is hard to argue neverthe-less that these vast differences do not at least to some extent reflect institutional differences in credit markets between nations. When a household’s income grows, as was the case in Emerging Asia over the last two decades, the restric-tions on borrowing would then lead to a rise in savings rate. Interestingly enough, standard economic theories that do not limit the amount of borrow-ing would tell us that the large desire to borrow against your future income in order to increase your consumption to-day would predict a large fall in the sav-ings rate.

While high income growth and

household credit constraints may ex-plain the increase in the savings rate of Emerging Asia—and China---the fact that the severity of these constraints may differ across economies can then explain why savings rates responses differ across these countries. Suppose that in an economy, borrowers and savers coexist. One may think of this as an intergenerational phenomenon---where the young have low current in-come which is rising over time, and the middle-aged have declining income and therefore need to save for retirement. Then, the young are the borrowers (but who are constrained by the amount of borrowing), and the middle-aged the savers in the economy. In a country like China, with severe credit constraints, there is effectively a smaller mass of bor-rowers and a larger mass of savers com-pared to a country such as the U.S.—all else equal. Imagine the consequences of a declining world interest rate, a trend that we have observed in the last twenty years or so. The fall in interest rate reduces the cost of borrowing for

the young (the borrowers), and reduces the interest income for the middle-aged (the savers)---who would then need to save more as they feel poorer (this is the income effect which we assume to dominate the substitution effect that would motivate them to save less). In a country with a large mass of effective borrowers---the U.S.---the borrowing rate would increase as it is cheaper to borrow ---making the savings rate fall. In a country with a large mass of effec-tive savers--- China--- the savings rate would increase. Such is a scenario where the savings rate can respond asymmet-rically to the common decline in the world interest rate. What is essential, in this case, is not only that households are credit-constrained, but that the degree of credit constraint is different across these economies.

It follows immediately that Asia with a sharp rise in savings rate can see a net capital outflow (defined as savings less investment)---the counterpart of which is a net capital inflow in advanced economies which see a fall in saving

-30.00%

-20.00%

-10.00%

0.00%

10.00%

20.00%

30.00%

40.00%

<25 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 >65

US change in savings rate 1988-2008 China change in savings rate (1992-2009)

Figure 2 Note - Change in Saving Rate by Age Group in the U.S. and China. This figure shows that the middle-age savings rate increased by more in China than in the U.S., and the young’s savings rate declined by more in the U.S. than in China, over the period 1992-2009.

US change in savings rate 1988-2008 China change in savings rate (1992-2009)

25

Features


rates. And how would this explain the decline in the world interest rate in the first place? The explanation is reminis-cent of Bernake’s ‘savings glut’ hypoth-esis---that emerging markets swamped the world market with a large amount of savings that depressed the interest rate. And yet we provide an explana-tion for why this savings glut emerged in the first place---fast growth in econo-mies that are heavily credit-constrained. With this realistic assumption, facts (1)-(3) can be jointly accounted by only one economic mechanism.

Any successful theory is in need of some empirical validation. While we have shown that the aggregate facts (1) –(3) are precisely what our theory pre-dicts--- thereby passing the macroeco-nomic test---we need to show that our predictions also receive support at the microeconomic level. Our micro agents, the young and the middle-aged, in coun-tries such as China and the U.S. then be-come the nucleus of our testing ground.

If our theory is correct, then two important predictions must hold in the

data. The first is that the saving rate of the young falls by less in China than in the U.S; the saving rate of the middle-aged increases by more in China than in the U.S. The second is that the decline in the aggregate savings rate in the U.S. is mostly driven by the young, and the rise in the aggregate savings rate in China is mostly driven by the middle-aged.

Working with household data, which itself has posed significant chal-lenges to its measurement and identi-fication, we find that key cohort level evidence lends support to the basic te-nets of our theory. Figure 3 compares the change in saving rate by age group across the two economies over the last two decades. Indeed, the saving rate of the young fell by about 10 percentage points more in the U.S. than in China, whereas the saving rate of the middle-aged rose by about 17 percentage points more in China than in the U.S.. More-over, of the total 20.2 percentage point increase in aggregate household sav-ings (as a share of GDP) in China, the middle-aged contributed about 60 per-

-3%

-2%

-1%

0%

1%

2%

3%

4%

5%

6%

7%

<25 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 >65

Contribution to the change in aggregate household savings

US (1988-2008) China (1992-2009)

cent, and the young about 15 percent. Turning to the U.S., which saw a 1.79 percentage point decline in aggregate savings-to-GDP, the young’s savings-to-GDP declined by 1.24 percentage points, while the middle-aged total sav-ings-to-GDP increased by about 1.51 percentage points.

Many more interesting patterns re-mainx to be uncovered from these com-prehensive and rare household-level information, especially difficult to find for China. Perhaps an ongoing thrill for the economic profession lies in under-standing the interactions of inherently different industrialized and develop-ing countries as the world becomes more integrated, and the consequences this interaction impinges on the global economy. In this sense, theory has not kept up to pace with the speed of real-time globalization, and more economic theories need to be developed to gain our understanding of the spectacular world events that we have witnessed, and will continue to witness in the fore-seeable future.

Figure 3Note - Change in Aggregate Saving as a Share of GDP by Age Group in the U.S. and China. This figure shows the contribution of each cohort’s savings on aggregate savings.

CONTRIBUTION TO THE CHANGE IN AGGREGATE HOUSEHOLD SAVINGS

US (1988-2008) China (1992-2009)

26

Economics


THE GREATREPUBLICANTAX PLANTHE GREATREPUBLICANTAX PLANWhy It's the Same Failed Policyof the PastBy Daniel Elkind

At a time in our nation’s history when upper class incomes have been in-creasing for decades but middle

and lower class incomes have stagnated, and when Republicans are proposing massive cuts in programs that benefit the middle and lower income classes, Mitt Romney has proposed tax reform that would slash taxes for the rich and almost certainly increase taxes for the middle and lower income classes. The Romney plan shows just how far the Republican Party has come in urging that Americans once again embrace the failed “trickle down” economic policies of the past.

Romney has proposed across-the-board cuts of 20% off the Bush-era tax rates and has proposed to pay for those cuts in part by limiting deductions,

exemptions, and tax credits. A recent study by the non-partisan Urban Insti-tute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, an organization whose director is Donald Marron, a former member of George W. Bush’s Council of Eco-nomic Advisors, looked thoroughly at the Romney plan and concluded that his plan would cut taxes for those earn-ing more than $1 million by up to 4.1% while at the same time increasing taxes on those making less than $200,000 by an average of up to $500. All told, ac-cording to the Tax Policy Center, the Romney tax plan could shift as much as $86 billion of the national tax burden away from the wealthy onto lower and middle income taxpayers at a time when it is those lower and middle income Americans who need the money most.

How would this happen? The re-duction of tax rates which Romney has proposed would result in a huge reve-nue loss: $360 billion in 2015 alone and $5 trillion over the next decade. To pay for this, Romney proposes to eliminate or limit deductions, exemptions, and tax credits, but he has failed to iden-tify which ones he would eliminate or by how much he would limit them. As the Tax Policy Center found, however, even if the elimination or reduction of deductions, exemptions, and credits were imposed primarily on the wealthy, the result would still be a massive de-crease in taxes for the wealthy and an increase for the lower and middle class-es. As stated in the report: “Even when we assume that tax breaks – like the charitable deduction, mortgage interest

27

Economics


THE GREATREPUBLICANTAX PLAN

False PromisesThough Romney and Ryan have galvanized a large propor-tion of the middle class, their tax plan provides huge windfalls to the very wealthiest Americans at the expense of the rest of the nation. PHOTO: upload.wikimedia.org

The Romney plan clearly illustrates

just how far the Republican Party has come in urging

that Americans once again

embrace the failed “trickle-down”

economic policies of the past.

deduction, and the exclusion for health insurance – are completely eliminated for higher-income households first, and only then reduced as necessary for other households to achieve overall revenue-neutrality– the net effect of the plan would be a tax cut for high-income households coupled with a tax increase for middle-income households.”

In his first debate with President Obama, Romney vehemently denied that he would raise taxes on the mid-dle class, and he even suggested that, after the reduction of deductions, his plan would be revenue neutral for the wealthy. However, Romney has failed to show how this could be so, and the Tax Policy Center study clearly shows that even the most favorable assump-tions regarding what deductions Rom-

ney would cut would leave the wealthy with a lower tax bill and the middle class with a higher bill.

Even more extreme than Romney’s tax proposal is that which was proposed by Paul Ryan, his running mate. Under Ryan’s proposal, widely acclaimed by Republicans, taxes on capital gains, in-terests, and dividends would be elimi-nated entirely, and, according to Role Call, a Washington newsletter, Romney would have paid an effective tax rate of only 1% on his tens of millions of dol-lars of income in 2010.

The Obama administration has proposed to leave the Bush tax cuts in place for those earning less than $250,000, and to return tax rates for the top 2% to the tax rates in place under President Clinton. Romney’s tax plan

does just the opposite; it takes Repub-lican “trickle-down” economic theory to an extreme by out-doing Bush with further tax cuts for the wealthy at a time when hundreds of billions of dollars must be cut from programs primarily benefitting the middle and lower in-come groups.

Republicans argue that tax benefits for the wealthy will “trickle down” to the average American, will lead to in-creased hiring by small business, and will resuscitate our economy. These are the same arguments that Republicans have made for more than a hundred years. They have no more legitimacy today than they had in the past.

The first argument that the Re-publicans make is that the wealthy are the “job creators” and that giving

28

Economics


It Failed Then, It Will Fail Now - Trickle-Down Economics

The great culpritsof "trickle-down"From top to bottom,Calvin Coolidge, Warren G. Harding,and Herbert Hoover -- all three were Republicans in the tradition of laissez-faire, favor-the-rich economic policies. The prosperity of the so-called “Roaring ‘20s” was heavily weighted towards the rich, and recent historical scholarship has indicated that the poor stagnated during the period. PHOTOS: (L) gregteach.net, (T-B) upload.wikimedia.org

more money to the “job creators” will increase employment of the poor and middle class. The problem with this argument is vividly illustrated by our situation today; although corporations and businesses are currently sitting on record amounts of cash, they still aren’t hiring. The problem with our economy is not that companies do not have the money to hire people, but that there re-mains no demand. After all, the lower and middle income segments of so-ciety do not have money to spend. To get the economy moving again, money must be put in the hands of consum-ers. In the 1920s, Republicans slashed taxes for the wealthy and for corpora-tions but did nothing to help the aver-age American. The result was a huge increase of income and wealth for the upper class, stagnant wages for the middle class, and a sharp contraction in demand because the average Ameri-can did not have the money to spend. Before the market crashed in 1929, fac-tories began to go idle because lower and middle class Americans could not afford to buy the goods produced in the factories. No matter how much money

companies have, they will not hire un-less people are buying their products, and the problem today is a lack of de-mand, not a lack of money in the hands of the “job creators.”

Republicans are also off base in ar-guing that reducing individual tax rates on the wealthy is necessary to ben-efit “small business.” When President Clinton raised taxes in 1993, Republi-cans claimed that the increases would hurt small business. But, as statistics from the Small Business Administra-tion show, job growth of small business under Clinton was 2.3 times the job growth of small business under Bush, who sharply lowered taxes on upper in-come groups.

It is true that many small and me-dium sized businesses such as partner-ships and “subchapter S” corporations pay taxes at the individual tax rates of their owners. However, a recent study by the Treasury Department showed that only 2.5% of “small businesses” earn more than $250,000, and Presi-dent Obama has proposed to lower taxes for those making less than that amount. Republicans argue that nearly

50% of the income of small businesses is generated by small businesses mak-ing more than $250,000. But to reach that conclusion, Republicans include as a “small business” anyone who receives income from an entity such as a part-nership or “subchapter S” corporation for which taxes are paid by the individ-ual owners. The Republicans include as a “small business” law firms, account-ing firms, investment partnerships, and anyone who invests in an investment partnership or “subchapter S” corpora-tion for which the taxes are paid by the individual owners. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has point-ed out, the Republican definition of a “small business” would include wealthy investors and is even broad enough to include President Obama and Mitt Romney as “small businesses” because President Obama had income from book sales and Romney had income from investment partnerships. In fact, the Republican definition of a “small businesses” would include 237 of the 400 wealthiest people in America, as well as the partners of law and account-ing firms, investors on Wall Street, and

29

Economics


The Bush Tax CutsPresident George W. Bush provided enormous tax breaks to the wealthy on the theory that prosperity would somehow find its way down to the middle and lower income classes as a result; what actually occured was a huge concentration of wealth in the hands of the very wealthiest Americans, at the expense of the rest of the country. PHOTOS: (T) www.gannett-cdn.com, (L) upload.wikimedia.org

If there were any question about whether

“trickle-down” economics works, it should be

disproven by history.

The Reagan YearsThough Republicans cite the Reagan years as an example of “trickle-down’s” success, the story is more complicated. As the result of Reagan’s tax cuts, budget deficits soared. While incomes of the top 1% rose by 80%, the incomes of the bottom 20%of Americans fell by nearly 3%, and there was a massive shift in wealth from the lower and middle classes to the top 1% of Americans. PHOTO: www.bayshoreteaparty.org

individuals who do no more than cash checks from their investment partner-ships.

But if there were any question about whether “trickle-down” eco-nomics works, it should be disproven by history. When President Clinton raised tax rates in 1993, Republicans screamed that his tax increases would drive the country into recession. In-stead, the Clinton Presidency produced more than 20 million new jobs and four years of balanced budgets. In contrast, President Bush slashed tax rates, and brought the nation huge budget defi-cits, a doubling of our national debt, a huge concentration of wealth for the wealthy, and an economy which pro-duced only 3 million new jobs and the Great Crash of 2008.

In the 1920s, under Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, Re-publicans also slashed taxes on corpo-rations and the wealthy. In fact, they invented the concept of “trickle down” economics. Again, the result was a huge concentration of wealth among the up-per income segment, and virtually no income growth for the middle or lower

class. Between 1923 and 1929, incomes for the wealthiest 1% jumped by 75%, while the average income for the re-maining 99% rose by an average of only 1-1.5% per year. By 1929, the wealthi-est 0.1% of Americans controlled as much wealth as the poorest 42%. The 1920s progressed with a middle class that could not afford to buy consumer goods, resulting in massive overpro-duction that was one of the major con-tributing factors to the Great Depres-sion.

Republicans often cite the Reagan years as evidence of that “trickle-down” economics works. But the Reagan years do not bear that out. During the first years of the Reagan Presidency, the na-tion was in recession due to the fact that the Federal Reserve raised interest rates as high as 20% in order to combat skyrocketing inflation resulting from the oil shock. Although Reagan cut tax rates in 1981, the nation only emerged from recession in 1983, after the Fed-eral Reserve slashed interest rates. Be-tween 1982 and 1986, Congress actual-ly raised taxes 11 times with no harmful effect upon the economy. Even after the

further tax cut in 1986, tax rates under Reagan were substantially above the level to which they were reduced by the Bush-era tax cuts. Moreover, Reagan’s tax cuts did not produce the rosy results for all that Republicans claim. As the result of Reagan’s tax cuts, the nation’s budget deficits soared, the national debt tripled. While incomes of the top 1% rose by approximately 80%, the in-come of the bottom 20% of Americans actually fell by nearly 3%, and there was a massive shift in wealth from the lower and middle classes to the top 1% of Americans.

30



115,890The number of

Americans currently needing organ

transplants. Each year, around thirty thousand Americans recieve such

transplants.

An average of 750 people in the US receive organ transplants every day. This is great news in itself,

but the problem arises from the fact that we are adding 130 Americans to the organ waiting list in the same period of time. More than 115,000 patients are currently on this waiting list, with an average of 18 deaths ev-ery day due to the shortage of organs. These deaths may seem inevitable due to a chronic supply and demand mismatch: the number of Americans in need of organs has always ex-ceeded the sum of deceased donors and live donors. However, this criti-cal and persistent shortage is in fact preventable if our policy framework is overhauled and a multi-pronged approach to liberalizing reforms is adopted.

Since America’s organ shortage stems from the system in place, it is necessary to understand what the le-gal regime in force entails. Deceased

donors make up 79% of total US organ transplants, and the US has an opt-in system for these donors, meaning or-gans by default cannot be used upon death unless otherwise specified. Car accidents result in a substantial num-ber of deceased donors, since organ donation can only happen after brain death but before cardiac death. More

generally, storing organs upon re-moval is only possible for short pe-riods of time, further constraining the possible supply. An average of 3.3 organs are removed from deceased donors, and the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) is respon-sible for maintaining a waiting list of those in need of transplantation. The UNOS is a private, non-profit organization with a federal contract for maintaining the Organ Procure-ment and Transplantation Network (OPTN), a national database that centralizes the waiting list. The law that led to the creation of OPTN, the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984, also bans the sale of human organs. The rationale for the law is not dissimilar from laws prohibiting prostitution: people would take on risks they don’t understand, unscru-pulous opportunists might abuse the system, and Americans in despera-tion would “sell” their bodies. As a

A Change of HeartWhy It’s Time for a Free Market in Organs

By Deependra Mookim ‘11

31

Science and Technolgy


nating much-needed kidneys and parts of the pancreas, lung, liver, and intestine. Traffic fatalities are in secular decline–obviously a favorable trend but one that lowers the poten-tial supply of organs from deceased donors. Organs from live donors are also typically better for recipients

6,205The number of Americans

each year who die waiting for organ transplants.

result of this legislation, legal live do-nations typically occur within fam-ily members and, to a much smaller extent, through organ swap programs or acts of kindness.

There are only two ways to close the organ shortage: decrease the de-mand for organs or increase supply. Decreasing demand is not a viable solution since organs have no good substitutes. When there are substi-tutes–as in the case of kidney dialy-sis versus transplant–the alternative to transplant is typically inferior in health terms or more expensive. As the population grows and the aver-age lifespan rises, it is fair to assume demand for organs will continue ris-ing–with deaths on the waiting list rising hand in hand if the status quo is not challenged. The only way to tackle the organ shortage is to in-crease the supply of organs from de-ceased and live donors. Instead of an opt-in system for deceased donors, the US should adopt a system of pre-sumed consent. Under this arrange-ment, Americans filling out a driver license application, for example, would automatically be organ do-nors unless they check a box stipu-lating otherwise. Having citizens consciously opt-out as organ donors shifts the frame of reference for deci-sion-making and has shown to have a positive correlation with participa-tion rates in the numerous countries that have similar rules. Another in-centive that tests well for increasing organ donor registration: give prior-ity on the waiting list to individuals who were previously registered as or-gan donors. These small behavioral nudges retain the individual right to forego organ donation yet have the potential to save many lives. There are many ideas in the same vein, but Americans must first suspend their gut reactions against reform.

Enacting reforms to increase or-gans from deceased donors is a step in the right direction but an optimal solution includes policy changes for live donors, who are capable of do-

donate organs if compensation were legal and a market of some form ex-isted.

The turpitude of a free market in organs makes it unlikely to gain support as a legitimate policy, but a completely free market is a good starting point in the exercise of de-signing a better system. Why is our government not allowing an indi-vidual to be compensated for saving another person’s life? In a free mar-ket, individuals would likely not be capable of understanding the health risks of donating organs. A possible scenario: a poor person would sell his organs in desperation at a price that doesn’t compensate for the con-sequences of donation. Live dona-tion is obviously a risky procedure, but only doctors–not individual do-nors–are capable of grasping the full extent of the health consequences. In other words, individuals selling their organs would not have enough information to put a price on their organs that would correctly account for health risks. The economic prob-lem present here is a lack of informa-tion, and this informational failure discourages market participation from donors and punishes many who do participate. However, if the gov-ernment and government-supported health institution were required to serve as an intermediary, the health risks could be compensated correctly to address this market failure. In such a system, the government would pur-chase organs from individuals and set a price that adequately compen-sates for health risks. A kidney donor with few health complications, for example, would receive less compen-sation than a patient donating a sec-tion of a liver at greater health risk. A common concern of organ donors is insurance coverage post-operation, and the government could allay these fears by building insurance subsidies or coverage into donor compensa-tion. The federal government would work with medical professionals to draft rules for determining compen-

in terms of long-term health, and deceased donors by themselves will likely not bridge the organ gap. How-ever, the sale of organs is prohibited in the US, which acts effectively as a price ceiling at zero dollars that eliminates live donations based on monetary incentives. As we know from Prohibition, government bans on mutually beneficial trade can lead to the formation of black markets and illicit compensation agreements. These arrangements end up benefit-ing middlemen and a small num-ber of agents but hurting everybody else–in this case, healthy people with an organ they could sell and live without as well as unhealthy people who will die without a transplant. The organ shortage problem is global in nature; there is currently only one country in the world with a legal or-gan market: Iran. While Iran is cer-tainly not a paradigm of excellence in public policy making, the country has eliminated the kidney shortage successfully. The idea of buying and selling organs is so untenable on the surface that it is usually written off as radical and unethical. But the fact of the matter is more people would

32



sation at different risk levels, and the system could retain a certain degree of flexibility for doctors in the case of idiosyncratic patient risks. To avoid conflicts of interest, the doctors vet-ting the organ transplant are required to be independent from the doctors of patients receiving the organ. In such a system, the government also caps the amount of risk any given patient can accept in order to err to the side of safety, and doctors only accept organs that meet strict quality standards (e.g. no partial liver trans-plants from alcoholics). In effect, a government-enforced price ceiling remains in place, but it is much clos-er to the price in a free market. Gov-ernment purchases of organs would retain the incentives in a free market while patching the market failures of a laissez-faire system.

The mechanism for distributing organs in a hypothetical free market would allocate organs to those who most value them in monetary terms. If the first half of this proposal is en-acted but a free market is retained for recipients, then the highest bid-der on the waiting list would receive the organs from the government. The prospect of the government

purchasing organs from its citizen-ry–likely poor or middle class–and selling those organs to the highest bidder upsets notions of fairness and social equality. Do the richest amongst us deserve organs and the right to live more than the poorest of society? Due to this unappealing feature of a free market, the govern-ment could instead determine recip-ients based not on ability to pay but on the present criteria in place such as biological match, length of time on the waiting list, degree of medi-cal urgency, and physical proximity. Somebody, of course, has to fund the government purchases from live donors. The government could absorb losses on the purchases and give the organs away for free, with all Americans footing the bill indirectly through federal taxes. A slightly bet-ter solution: a mandatory require-ment for insurance companies to compensate the government for the organ purchase. Insurance compa-nies would pay the average price of the organ purchased by the govern-ment, instead of the price on an indi-vidual basis in order to increase cost predictability for the companies. The insurance companies would likely

pass on this extra cost of compen-sation to all consumers, resembling what would happen if the govern-ment provided organs for “free” as previously described. However, this scheme has the benefits of avoiding distortionary government taxes and maintaining budget-neutrality. The insurance companies would also be a natural check against the govern-ment if doctors started accepting riskier donors with higher compen-sation expenses.

The system proposed here can be summarized as the following: A po-tential donor sees a doctor who tests for health risks and organ viability, and the doctor uses a fairly standard-ized system to determine the price of the organ. If the donor consents to the procedure, the government will compensate the donor for the quoted price. The government will distribute the organ to a match on the waiting list, which will continue to be run by UNOS and use the same unbi-ased criteria. The recipient’s insur-ance company will compensate the government for the average price of the organ being transplanted. This is certainly not the only way to address the organ shortage, but any sort of

The Movement for Donations A group campaigns to raise awarness about organ donation, and to encourage donations that will save lives. PHOTO: www.erlanger.org

33



reform would likely be an improve-ment over our appallingly inefficient and inhumane system, one that pun-ishes both willing donors and recipi-ents as they face death.

If the economics and ethics of this plan do indeed pass muster, the key remaining question: is this pro-posal politically feasible and will the American people approve of it? The compensation of blood, sperm, and eggs is legally permitted due to the lower health risks; however, by per-mitting these transactions, we are saying in essence that the human body and its parts do have a price. So why should organs not have a price as well, especially when they are in such dire need? Congress has also recognized to a degree that the lack of compensation is a problem. The National Living Donor Assistance Center picks up the tab for travel and subsistence expenses authorized by the Department of Health and Hu-man Services. While this is a far cry from full payment for live donors, it does indicate recent willingness at the federal level to compensate for the cost of transplants. Furthermore, the idea of compensating donors ac-tually polls decently in the US: an

The critical and persistent shortage of organs, which results in an average of 18 deaths per day, is in fact

preventable if our policy framework is overhauled and a multi-pronged approach to liberalizing reforms

is adopted. A completely free market is a good starting point

in the exercise of designing a better system.

NPR-Thomson Reuters Health Poll found that 41% of respondents sup-ported cash for organs and 44% ap-prove of some sort of compensation by the federal government. The poll also found that support for compen-sation was inversely correlated with age; the fact that young people ap-prove of compensation more than old people suggests changing pri-orities amongst the youth and bodes well for policy changes in the future. While the envisioned reforms–and organ sales in particular–seem ta-boo, they are not a significant logical leap from entrenched moral presup-positions and ideas already in effect. By disrupting the current system and creating a better one, the US could not only close its organ shortage but also set an example for the rest of the world to follow. A reformed approach to organ collection and distribution would increase the number of de-ceased donors, support able-bodied live donors and, most importantly, saves the lives of Americans on the waiting list. The price of inaction is too steep to trust vague notions of righteousness over the ethical un-derpinnings and defensible evidence supporting change.

34


The horace Mann review | vol. XXi34

Science & Technology


CURIOSITYThe key to humanity


By Isaiah Newman

Throughout the past 55 years, humanity has been constantly exploring the universe beyond this planet. Various governments and groups of scientists have launched and built telescopes, satellites, probes, and

rovers. Data has been collected and analyzed about almost every celestial body in the universe that is visible from earth, all in the name of expanding our knowledge of the cosmos and of our place in it.

35


The horace Mann review | vol. XXii 35The horace Mann review | vol. XXii

The landing of the Mars rover “Curiosity” was a complex piece of choreography, as illustrated by this NASA diagram. PHOTOS: (T) www.startalkradio.net, (L) www.lackuna.com

On November 26, 2011, a group of American scientists working for NASA, under the name of the Mars Sci-ence Laboratory, launched yet another attempt at satisfying this boundless hu-man curiosity: a new Mars rover, aptly named “Curiosity”. The rover spent ap-proximately 8 months in transit from Earth to Mars, finally touching down on the red planet on August 6, 2012, in an incredibly impressive and inspiring feat of human engineering.

Due to the cosmic distance between Earth and Mars, it takes approximately 7 minutes for a signal sent from Curios-ity to reach its controllers here on Earth. Unfortunately, when Curiosity “hit” the Martian atmosphere and began its de-scent on to Mars, this created a gap in communications between the rover and its controllers, rendering those on Earth unable to control it during the most dan-gerous part of its trip. In preparation, the scientists and engineers behind Curios-ity had to plan thoroughly in advance, writing over 500,000 lines of computer code to direct the rover through its land-ing, as well as build several automated mechanisms, such as a crane to lower Curiosity onto the surface of Mars, to function to exact specifications in ex-treme conditions. Somehow, the engi-neers who worked on the robot man-aged to pull off the rover’s landing on Mars without a hitch, in a feat that truly shows just what human ingenuity and

pragmatism can be capable of.Although the successful landing of a

rover on Mars is neither new nor surpris-ing, Curiosity’s landing remains wholly extraordinary. It demonstrates the pre-cision and ability of humanity to suc-cessfully land a large payload on Mars, which will be incredibly useful for future exploration of the planet. Furthermore, it shows that humanity is capable of achieving advanced technological feats on a grand scale. Launching a small met-al robot at a red sphere several hundred million miles away sounds like a daunt-ing task, and yet we have done it now 3 times successfully.

Curiosity’s mission is itself equally important. The rover has a number of stated goals, but its primary one, accord-ing to the mission statement on the Mars Science Laboratory’s website, is to deter-mine whether Mars could ever have sup-ported life. The rover will, for its lifespan on Mars, explore as much of it can of the planet, and use its various instruments and cameras to collect data. While that may not sound particularly exciting, it certainly is significant.

The information gathered by Curios-ity could be incredibly valuable to future space travel. It could tell us whether or not Mars will be able to support humani-ty in some form. More importantly, how-ever, it will extend humanity’s knowledge of the universe we live in. It will help us to understand the nature of the universe

and of life in general. In this way, it will further the interests and purposes of sci-entists everywhere, and of humanity in general.

While this language may seem ex-cessively grand to some, it remains accu-rate. Through the information it collects, Curiosity will help to further human de-sire for information and understanding. While it is possible that Curiosity will not provide as much information as is hoped, it is impossible for the mission to be a failure. Already, its landing on Mars has spurred celebration across the coun-try and the world, and hopefully it will continue to inspire interest in human ex-ploration of the universe.

This, in turn, demonstrates the ne-cessity of space exploration in general. Humanity is, by our very nature, a spe-cies composed of contemplative and inquisitive individuals, forever wonder-ing at our circumstances and place in the universe. Exploration is a primary means by which we can gratify ourselves in this pursuit of comprehending of the world around us. Fortunately, uncharted areas to discover are not a finite resource: the universe is expanding every day, and there is so much of it about which we know next to nothing. Space exploration and research are not merely scientific pursuits; they are human pursuits, and until we explore every observable object possible, we will be unable to satisfy our curiosity.

The information gathered by Curiosity will help us understand the nature of the universe and of life. In this way, it will further the

interests and purposes of scientists everywhere and of

humanity in general.

Documents

Issue 1 - Summer 2012