On his book Measuring Tomorrow: Accounting for Well-Being, Resilience, and Sustainability in the Twenty-First Century
Cover Interview of January 28, 2018
A close-up
I think the chapter on health is the perfect
introduction for any reader interested in what goes on in our contemporary
societies and wondering how this book would change her/his vision.
The most striking fact about the fate of
humanity in the twentieth century concerns health, not growth: we have seen a
greater improvement in human health in the second half of the twentieth century
than at any moment in all human history, i.e., the last seven million years. Life
expectancy skyrocketed between 1900 and 2000; a century described (and rightly so)
as eminently violent and destructive. According to historical data gathered by the
late Angus Maddison, during
the twentieth century, life expectancy increased, on average, five times more than
in the millennium that preceded it.
Moreover, simple metrics such as life
expectancy or mortality rates tell us a whole different story about what has
happened in a given country in the last thirty years than just growth. Take the
United States. The recent discovery by economists
Angus Deaton and Anne Case of very high mortality rates among
middle-aged whites in the U.S., all the while GDP was growing, is
proof that health status must be studied and measured regardless of a nation’s
perceived wealth status. How is it that the richest country in the world in
terms of average income per capita, a country that devotes more of its wealth
to health than any other, comes close to last in the rankings with comparable
countries in terms of health outcomes? Use different indicators, as I do in the
chapter devoted to health, and the solution to the American health puzzle
quickly becomes apparent: the ballooning of inefficient private spending has
led to a system where the costs are huge compared to its performance. The
healthcare reform initiated by Barack Obama in 2009 can actually be explained
by the desire to amend a health system in which the human and economic cost has
become unbearable. If this reform was to be destroyed, the cost would no doubt skyrocket
again.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
A close-up
I think the chapter on health is the perfect introduction for any reader interested in what goes on in our contemporary societies and wondering how this book would change her/his vision.
The most striking fact about the fate of humanity in the twentieth century concerns health, not growth: we have seen a greater improvement in human health in the second half of the twentieth century than at any moment in all human history, i.e., the last seven million years. Life expectancy skyrocketed between 1900 and 2000; a century described (and rightly so) as eminently violent and destructive. According to historical data gathered by the late Angus Maddison, during the twentieth century, life expectancy increased, on average, five times more than in the millennium that preceded it.
Moreover, simple metrics such as life expectancy or mortality rates tell us a whole different story about what has happened in a given country in the last thirty years than just growth. Take the United States. The recent discovery by economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case of very high mortality rates among middle-aged whites in the U.S., all the while GDP was growing, is proof that health status must be studied and measured regardless of a nation’s perceived wealth status. How is it that the richest country in the world in terms of average income per capita, a country that devotes more of its wealth to health than any other, comes close to last in the rankings with comparable countries in terms of health outcomes? Use different indicators, as I do in the chapter devoted to health, and the solution to the American health puzzle quickly becomes apparent: the ballooning of inefficient private spending has led to a system where the costs are huge compared to its performance. The healthcare reform initiated by Barack Obama in 2009 can actually be explained by the desire to amend a health system in which the human and economic cost has become unbearable. If this reform was to be destroyed, the cost would no doubt skyrocket again.