Just-us.

One of the small perks of spending time on the road, as I have the last few days, is the opportunity to listen to NPR on satellite radio.  Three trips this week, with six or so hours in the car, gave me a good snapshot, or maybe it was a full-length movie, of the hottest topics.  Apparently there is only one…the federal deficit.  (Of course, closer to home, New York is broke, but that will be a topic for another day.)

Now for those of you who don’t know me, I have spent the past 40 years evaluating programs and policies meant to prevent a variety of public health problems especially alcohol related problems.  If you want to know a little about what I do, go to my website http://www.evalumetrics.org/. 

I still can’t decide if the current situation is a disaster or an unprecedented opportunity for prevention.  Right now all the discourse is about how to find more money to pay for healthcare and crime and unemployment while not taking any tax money from the wealthy.  One of the proposed solutions is to cut funding for what are called “domestic programs.”  Unfortunately, these are the very programs that will prevent the problems that will cost billions in future healthcare, crime, unemployment etc.  To save even more money for big business many are proposing the elimination of environmental regulations.  Again, save a few million for big businesses and assure billions in future costs for healthcare for those with respiratory, neurological and developmental problems caused by industrial contaminants.  Did you realize that within a few years after environmental laws prohibited the use of lead in gasoline, the average IQ in the United States increased over five points?

Now staying with the theme of this blog, I tried to reflect on how federal and state budgets were debated back in the day…the 60s that is.  I can only speak from the perspective of a teenager and college student at the time, but I remember overwhelming support for the war on poverty, aid to education, funding research in healthcare, the space program and so much more.  During that decade more was spent on higher education and more Americans went to college than at any time in history. 

It is ironic that so many 60s teens benefitted from scholarships, loans and huge government grants to colleges and now, so many of those graduates, and some of their children, want to eliminate support for those programs.  This is a theme I will revisit often.  It is the current American sense of justice which is pronounced, just-us.

To end on a positive note…one of the talk shows featured a discussion of the proposal to eliminate or limit the federal tax deduction for charitable donations.  One side argues that without the incentive of a tax deduction most people would not donate to charity.  The good news is that a recent survey of wealthy individuals indicated that almost none cited tax deduction as a reason for donations and that most would donate to charity with or without a tax deduction.  I hope that is true.