wrongologist – Page 202 – The Wrongologist

Why So Fearful?

“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men” – Plato

Following on yesterday’s thoughts about how our presidential candidates are busy soiling their underpants over the possible threat of “Radical Islamic Terrorism” (say it Obama! What are you afraid of??), we heard Trump call for banning Muslims from visiting the US. Cruz and Rubio are merely for registering all of them.

This is a good time to take a look at the rates of homicide in America and our perception of the rates of homicide. Here is a chart from Gallup that shows the actual rate has fallen steadily and dramatically since 1992. The graph demonstrates that starting in 2001, we saw an increase in the number of Americans who thought violent crime was rising (the dark green line), even though the actual violent crime rate (the light green line) continued to fall, and remains roughly 75 points lower than it had been at its early 1990s peak. It’s clear that the perception of that crime rate tracked closely with the actual rate until 2001, when they began to diverge:

In addition, Pew asked Americans in 2013 if the number of gun crimes had: gone down, gone up, or stayed the same over the past 20 years. Bear in mind that the gun murder rate is half what it was, and the rate of non-fatal gun crimes is about a quarter of what it was 20 years ago, but only 12% said gun crimes were down, 26% said they were the same, and 56% said they’ve gone up.

This, despite the fact that the homicide rate/100,000 people in this country is lower than it’s been in 50 years, falling from 6.6 in 1981 to 3.6 in 2010. That’s not all. Ian Reifowitz at the Daily Kos offers more data:

• Violence in schools has dropped dramatically in the past two decades
• The overall rates of physical and sexual abuse of children is down
• The rates of rape/sexual assault and violence against intimate partners in the US is 25% of what it was a couple of decades ago.

We live in an environment where all politics is designed to ramp up fear and outrage. Where our media, both mainstream and Internet, awefulize about nearly everything, where people have short attention spans, and fail to understand nuanced problems.

The current “be afraid” broadcast coverage of San Bernardino is another opportunity to instill fear in the public about mass shootings. It sells commercials, but misinforms the public. The press and most politicians characterize these mass shootings as either the work of misguided crazies if they are Americans, or terrorists if they are not.

And then the media complains about the public’s ignorance, and basks in the fact of peoples’ acceptance of extreme political views, followed by hand-wringing about why people are so angry, frightened and cynical.

Polls show that Americans are afraid of Muslims. A 2014 Pew survey asked Americans to rate various religious groups on a 0 to 100 scale, with a higher score indicating more positive feelings.

• Republicans (including people who lean Republican) gave Muslims a rating of 33, on average — one point lower than atheists and far lower than any other religious group.
• Democrats had more positive feelings toward Muslims, but were still chilly; they gave Muslims an average rating of 47, slightly above atheists and Mormons and below other religious groups.

According to a Public Religion Research Institute poll conducted earlier this year, 77% of Trump supporters believe “the values of Islam are at odds with American values and way of life,” versus 72% percent of other Republicans, while 43% of Democrats said the same.

After fifteen years of non-stop war against the Muslim world, it may make sense that Americans are insecure about Muslims. But, it is the media, and the 2016 Republican candidates who have ginned up this fear, against the reality of our actual experience.

It shouldn’t be difficult for either the candidates, or the media, to put public safety in a context of the past 20 years.

The facts above show that we are safer than at any time in the last 50 years, but that doesn’t mean we are safe, or that we do not have a problem with potential terrorist acts at home. We do, and we need to be vigilant. We also need to develop better techniques to identify potential domestic terrorists, and to teach citizens how to react in a potentially threatening situation.

Restrictive gun control wouldn’t hurt either.

The quantifiable improvement in crime and homicide rates in particular, should give us some hope that we can do better. But none of that happens unless we chose facts over fear.

Or, if we let fear drive us from our long-held values as a people.

Is The Second Amendment Now a Security Threat?

San Bernardino brings to the front burner an ignored reality of our open society: Bad guys (and gals) don’t need to use bombs or planes to cause terror in the US; they can use small arms fire in a crowded place. And Mr. Obama, in his Sunday speech, underlined that America was indeed attacked by terrorists, using guns that anyone can purchase at Wal-Mart and thousands of other stores.

This creates an issue for the Second Amendment absolutists. Last week, the epidemic of gun violence in the US transcended being just another crime. Now, it’s become a matter of national security.

Mr. Trump and the other GOP presidential nominee wanna-be’s have been pandering to the fear that terrorists could be among us, in sleeper cells, waiting to spring an attack. In effect, they are saying, “all you terrorists, off my lawn!”

But, American voters know that any terrorist, Atheist, Christian or Muslim, can go shopping for guns and ammo, and then be ready to get busy terrorizing. Now it HAS happened here.

And it is a paradigm shift from our efforts to make America safe from terrorists that fly planes into buildings. No matter the size of a 9/11-type catastrophe, we would be crippled emotionally but not economically. But, imagine what the economic consequences would be of a series of attacks on shopping malls (or supermarkets) around Christmas. Who would be brave enough to shop?

An amendment before the Senate last Thursday would have enabled the US Attorney General to deny the issuance of firearms to known or suspected dangerous terrorists, like those on the terrorist watch list.

But Senate Republicans voted against it, and the amendment was defeated. The Republican position is that any citizen has a right to their day in court before those rights can be suspended. Fair enough, but there are only about 8,400 American citizens on the list, so there must be a bigger GOP agenda at work here to torpedo the watch list amendment.

Republicans understand that Democrats could use this vote against them in 2016. They must know that as much as they think that they stand to gain politically from a fearful public, there will be more Planned Parenthood type shooters, and that ANY terrorist attack will be even more proof of the need for gun control as a matter of national security.

If voters can accept the “national security” arguments for limitations on the 2nd Amendment, maybe gun control has a better chance of limiting use of weapons in public places than we think. Perhaps, banning those on the terror watch-list from acquiring guns, an assault rifle ban, and large-capacity magazine ban would make even Republicans feel safer.

From David Atkins at WaMo: (brackets and emphasis by the Wrongologist)

[We have] already made a number of concessions to the clear wording of the 1st and 4th Amendments in the name of national security. The 2nd Amendment is explicit about its call for a well-regulated militia. It’s beyond time that if we as a people are going to be serious enough about stopping terrorism to invade countries halfway around the world…and set up…a mass spying agency against ourselves, we at least take seriously the imperative to regulate the terrorists’ latest weapon of choice…

A major problem is that the meaning of the 2nd Amendment has already been decided by the Supreme Court. SCOTUS has ruled that there is an individual right, unconnected with association with a militia, to possess firearms in the home for purposes of self-defense and that right applies to state regulations as well as federal regulations.

So, walking back recent Supreme Court decisions will be tough. How tough? Well, here is a video of Justice Scalia saying that rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) are probably permitted under the 2nd Amendment:

(those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here)

RPGs. A weapon of choice for terrorists. And Scalia thinks it is ok for Americans to own them. Think this guy is going to vote to limit the 2nd Amendment? Doubtful.

Of course, with 300+ million guns already in circulation, it will take decades for gun control to impact public safety, so why even try to do it?

Yet, you can bet that in a few weeks, some Christian we fail to call a terrorist, will shoot up a mosque. After all, how far are we from: “if you see something, shoot something?”

Then we can read these arguments all over again.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – Moar Terror, Moar Gunz Edition

The argument has already started: “They were Arabs, and no amount of gun control would have stopped them.” The OMG, they were Muslim Terrorists (!!) yelp obscures two problems: America has 300+ million guns in the hands of 320 million citizens. We’ve allowed guns to become ubiquitous. Second, the vast majority of American deaths from guns do not involve Muslims. The NYT reports that there’s been a mass shooting of four or more people in America every day in 2015. Including San Bernardino, a total of 462 people have died and 1,314 have been wounded in such attacks this year. Republicans tell us that this is the cost to water the Tree of Liberty.

Wrongo has no problem with gun ownership. If people wish to own guns for hunting or self-defense, fine. If people hunt for food, fine. If they hunt for sport, they should examine their consciences, to see if they can find one.

But no one needs dozens, much less scores of guns. No one needs semi-automatic, or worse, automatic weapons, other than to kill lots of their fellow citizens. You can defend your house nicely with a pump-action shotgun with ‘00 buckshot. You don’t need a 30-round magazine and a semi-automatic AR or AK rifle. The legitimate reasons to have a gun are:

• You are a cop
• You are registered in an organized, regulated militia
• You hunt for food
• You feel the need for home protection.

These purposes can be accommodated within a framework of reasonable laws. But unlike freedom of speech, or assembly, or religion, where most people see rational limits for other Constitutional rights such as: you can’t threaten a person’s life and claim a 1st Amendment privilege, or form a lynch mob. But, when it comes to the 2nd Amendment, people make the most extreme demands for freedom to own any weapon.

We cannot stop terrorist attacks on our soil. Despite our federal surveillance and the training of local police, more attacks are coming. It only takes a few people to pull off such attacks, weapons are easy to obtain in the US, and the materials to make explosives are everywhere.

We will see more virulent Islamophobia, and more restriction of immigration. What we won’t see is more restrictions on who/how many guns people can own, despite the fact that we could make it more difficult for those who want to commit these atrocities.

One shooting victim we’d like to see:

In other news, it’s beginning to look a lot like Trump:

New poll has The Donald at 36% among Republicans:

The Zuckerberg donation: A good thing, or a PR thing?

Climate Talks

The climate is speaking to us, but is anybody listening? Here is what the climate is telling us:

50% of Forest Bird species will go extinct in 50 years
99% of Rhinos gone since 1914
97% of Tigers gone since 1914
90% of Lions gone since 1993
90% of Sea Turtles gone since 1980
90% of Monarch Butterflies gone since 1995
90% of Big Ocean Fish gone since 1950
80% of Antarctic Krill gone since 1975
80% of Western Gorillas gone since 1955
60% of Forest Elephants gone since 1970
50% of the Great Barrier Reef gone since 1985
40% of Giraffes gone since 2000
40% of ocean phytoplankton gone since 1950
70% of Marine Birds gone since 1950
97% – Humans & Livestock are now 97% of land-air vertebrate biomass, while 10,000 years ago humans were just 0.01% of land-air vertebrate biomass
1,000,000 – The number of humans, net, that are added to earth every 4½ days

But, you gotta admit, antibiotic resistant germs are doing really, really well!

Now, maybe you accept climate change as a reality. Or, you may be a climate change skeptic, or a climate change denier, but no one should misunderstand what the climate is telling us. Slowly, the world is seeing more greenhouse gases being emitted into the atmosphere, destroying ecosystems and encouraging global warming. The greenhouses gases can be caused by many different things, however, a lot of the earth’s greenhouses gases comes from various industrial businesses that burn hydrocarbon fuels. Some of these businesses have been asked to pay carbon tax as a result. The money from this tax gets contributed towards fighting climate change. Hopefully, more businesses will realize the impact they are having on the world and will look to lower the amount of carbon dioxide that they emit.

And, given the above, shouldn’t activists on all sides be discussing what can be done to stop the decline in flora and fauna? There cannot be a more important global problem that needs solving. Even Mr. Market should be working to help solve the die-off of species. Yet, we haven’t heard any ideas from him.

Here’s an idea: Getting human population growth and global GDP growth under control must be job one. Income inequality shouldn’t automatically prompt politicians to make calls for ever higher GDP growth, so that trickle-down will help the masses, since growing our way out of the die-off of species isn’t a viable long-term strategy.

You’d think politicians and economists would be asking: “Do we need to rethink our entire conceptual framework about population and economic growth?” Well, they aren’t interested in that thought.

They offer the same old thinking, just rearranged. If you want a Thanksgiving metaphor, your dinner plate is filled with turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce. And you take your fork and mix them all up, but they’re still the same. Even when you put gravy over all of it, it’s still not new. But it looks new, if somebody doesn’t think too carefully about what’s behind the new analysis.

Here is a view of the political divide on global warming in the US from The Economist:

And the NYT reported that on Tuesday, Republicans undercut Mr. Obama’s pledge at the Paris Climate Summit by approving two measures that Obama is sure to veto. The vote was largely along party lines. After the votes, Sen. John Barasso, (R-WY) said: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

While the president is at this climate conference, the American people [believe] that [his pledge] has a very, very low priority…

When Republicans in the Senate think the American people see climate change as a low priority when the poll above says they actually think its a pretty big deal, you know why we can’t get at solutions to the die-off of species.

Isn’t it curious that intelligent, educated conservatives denigrate climate change and its consequences, as some kind of phony science? They must see that there are plenty of business opportunities, and fortunes to be made as a result of climate change. This would normally have their hearts all aflutter at the chance to put their money behind a few disruptive innovations. But they have no interest, and are simply standing pat on the problem.

They are not alone. The Economist says the climate change just ain’t a big issue globally: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

A giant opinion-gathering exercise carried out by the UN finds that people in highly developed countries view climate change as the tenth most important issue out of a list of 16 that includes health care, phone and internet access, jobs, political freedom and reliable energy. In poor countries-and indeed in the world as a whole-climate change comes 16th out of 16.

It’s beginning to look like a few billion lemmings are just gonna follow their reproductive organs off a cliff.

And even if a few of today’s lemmings think they’re doing something new, for all of them together, well, things look grim.

Time to Dump Our Frenemy, Saudi Arabia

Our Middle East strategy is a failure. We want to blame someone for the failures in Iraq, Afghanistan and now, in Syria. Many will point the finger at Mr. Obama, and he is complicit in our failure, but so are all American presidents since Carter.

One constant in our ME efforts has been our ally, Saudi Arabia. They have been our confidante and along with Israel, they have provided intellectual leadership to our presidents and our military.

Since the 1930’s when we first recognized Saudi Arabia, we have tried to straddle the fence with our choice of allies in the ME. Turkey (NATO member) is Sunni. So is Saudi Arabia. Our “enemy” AL-Qaeda is Sunni. Our “enemy” Iran is Shia. Our “ally” Iraq is Shia. Our “enemy” Syria is Shia. Our “enemy” ISIS is Sunni.

Now, we need to reconsider our alliance with the Saudis.

Although many in the non-mainstream media have consistently pointed out that Saudi Arabia has been a key financier of ISIS, (see here, here, and here) we continue to spend our resources to defeat ISIS in both Syria and Iraq while our ally funds them. And they also export and promote a very similar brand of Islam to that of ISIS. The Progressive reported on the views of Cal State Professor Asad AbuKhalil:

The ideology of the Saudi regime is that of ISIS even if the foreign policies differ…Mainstream Islam frowns upon the views, excesses, practices and interpretations of ISIS…But Wahhabi Islam [the official ideology of the Saudi monarchy] is fully in sync with ISIS.

Still, there has been little mainstream media acknowledgement of the Saudi role until an article on 11/20 in the NYT by Algerian writer Kamel Daoud:

Black Daesh, white Daesh. The former slits throats, kills, stones, cuts off hands, destroys humanity’s common heritage and despises archaeology, women and non-Muslims. The latter is better dressed and neater, but does the same things.

His white Daesh is Saudi Arabia. Here is how Daoud ends his piece: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

Daesh [ISIS] has a mother: the invasion of Iraq. But it also has a father: Saudi Arabia and its religious-industrial complex. Until that point is understood, battles may be won, but the war will be lost. Jihadists will be killed, only to be reborn again in future generations and raised on the same books.

Daoud makes this point about our relationship with Saudi Arabia:

In its struggle against terrorism, the West wages war on one, but shakes hands with the other. This is…denial, and denial has a price: preserving the famous strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia at the risk of forgetting that the kingdom also relies on an alliance with a religious clergy that produces, legitimizes, spreads, preaches and defends Wahhabism, the ultra-puritanical form of Islam that Daesh feeds on.

Wahhabism is Saudi Arabia’s dominant faith. It is an austere form of Islam that insists on a literal interpretation of the Koran. Strict Wahhabis believe that all those who don’t practice their form of Islam are heathens and enemies. It hopes to restore a fantasized caliphate centered on a desert, a sacred book, and two holy sites, Mecca and Medina.

Saudi Wahhabis have spent $ billions to export Wahhabism throughout the ME. They have been able to greatly influence the politics and religion in Muslim countries, and the teaching of Islam in educational establishments.

It has changed these countries, and has led to the conversion of some Muslims to Wahhabism. This conversion of relatively small numbers of Muslims has had a large impact, because these converts have provided much of the leadership of the various jihadi movements that have sprung up in the ME.

The reality of Saudi support for ISIS is studiously ignored in America, probably because of their financial clout, their supply of oil, and our long-standing alliance with them. And there’s the trap. Denial creates an illusion that the Saudis are our partners.

Once again, desert Arabs are stoking a war designed to control the Fertile Crescent. But they are not alone. Turkey wants a rebirth of the Ottoman Empire. Israel prefers Muslims to fight each other, and not them. Russia wants to keep its Syrian base in order to project power elsewhere in the ME. The West wants secure access to oil and to enrich its military contractors by engaging there.

The Saudis also invaded Yemen, and we supported them. They attacked their neighbor under the pretense of reinstalling the deposed government. Now, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the local ISIS affiliate have flourished there. They are fomenting war throughout the ME.

So why would we rely on the Saudis in our war against ISIS?

Oligarchs Seek Indentured Servants

Just when you thought that there couldn’t be another scheme to further mess with college students as they embark on their post-college journey, along come Income Share Agreements (ISAs).

The ISA is a contract whereby an individual investor (or a fund) would agree to provide a student with a lump-sum payment to be used for education costs, in exchange for receiving a share of the student’s income for a fixed period (5-10? years). The repayment would most likely be structured as a dividend on a security, thereby allowing the investor to pay a lower tax rate than on interest income.

Individual ISA contracts would be pooled and sold to investors. These are the kind of contracts that could only flourish in our growing oligarchy.

We have a student debt bubble. Student debt has tripled in 10 years, now totaling more than $1.3 trillion, or more than the country’s total debt for credit cards, auto loans and any other category except for home mortgages. Student debt default rates are equal to those of the 2008 subprime housing loan crisis, and the debt continues to grow, up this year by an estimated 8% with an estimated average debt of $35k each. About 70% percent of students have graduated with debt this year.

And now, ISAs are the new idea to siphon off student debt into the private sector. WaPo reported on Friday that Purdue University signed an agreement with Vemo Education a Virginia financial services firm, to look into the use of ISAs to help Purdue students pay for their educations. In an earlier WaPo op-ed, Mitch Daniels, former Republican governor of Indiana and President of Purdue, said:

From the student’s standpoint, ISAs assure a manageable payback amount, never more than the agreed portion of their incomes…Best of all, they shift the risk of career shortcomings from student to investor: If the graduate earns less than expected, it is the investors who are disappointed; if the student decides to go off to find himself in Nepal instead of working, the loss is entirely on the funding providers, who will presumably price that risk accordingly when offering their terms. This is true “debt-free” college.

What a nice way to say “indentured servitude.” And universities get to keep raising tuition faster than inflation. Sounds like a real winner for Mitch and other Republicans.

The argument by the free-market types is that ISAs shift risk from the backs of students to the investors. If the student has not earned enough over the period of the agreement to return the original capital to the investor, the student would have no further money obligation.

Sounds good. But, why would the investors agree to fund any low-paying degrees? It is logical that they would look to fund only those who represented a low risk of achieving significant earnings in the initial 10 years of working. So they would want to finance medical and engineering degrees while leaving the social workers and teachers to public sector finance. If private sources (investment funds) are providing the money and setting the terms, then loans will only go to those who are most likely to be successful.

And, Mr. Market will tell us which degrees and careers are worthy.

The investment fund will have access to voluminous private data that will allow it to make a precise (nearly riskless?) ISA negotiation with the student, while students are likely to only have access to their University’s aggregate data on expected salaries by type of degree.

If there was any doubt that this is a neo-con approved idea, consider that Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Rep. Tom Petri, (R-WI) proposed ISA legislation with a maximum contract length of 30 years and the share of income capped at 15%. This is touted by Sen. Rubio’s supporters as evidence of his “innovative ideas.”

Sadly this idea has been around since the 1950s, when it was first floated by conservative economist Milton Friedman.

One of the most significant factors in our uneven economic recovery since 2008 is how we’ve become beholden to the oligarchs. The gig economy has replaced permanent jobs. Wages have stagnated, and companies are motivated solely by returning money to shareholders, often through share repurchases.

Now, college students are supposed to provide another class of equity return for the investors. They are to syndicate themselves to “shareholders”?

It’s a sick idea, one that only the greediest among us would support.

Monday Wake Up Call – November 30, 2015

Today’s wake up is for the American worker. While you were sleeping, corporate executives were piecing together an economy and associated tax regulations that allowed them to become America’s oligarchs.

The Center for Effective Government just came out with a study of CEO retirement funds. You already know the conclusion, but you didn’t know the facts:

• The 100 largest CEO retirement funds are worth a combined $4.9 billion. That’s equal to the entire retirement account savings of 47 million American families
• Nearly half of all working age Americans have no access to a retirement plan. The median balance in a 401(k) plan at the end of 2013 was $18,433, enough to generate a monthly retirement check of $104.

In addition, 73% of Fortune 500 firms have also set up special tax-deferred compensation accounts for their executives. These are similar to the 401(k) plans that some Americans have through their employers. But average workers face limits on how much pre-tax income they can invest each year in similar plans, while the plans the F500 provides to their top executives do not. They are free to shelter unlimited amounts of compensation in their retirement funds where their money can grow tax-free, until retirement.

But for the average employee? The GAO says that 29% of workers approaching retirement (aged 50-65) do not have pension or retirement savings in a 401(k) or IRA. While according to a study by the Schwartz Center at the New School, 55% of those aged 50-64 will be forced to rely solely on Social Security (which averages $1,233 a month).

The current rules mean that if CEO’s slash worker retirement benefits, they can boost corporate profits and thereby, stock prices. And since much of executive compensation is tied to the company’s stock price, these rules (and company practice) create a powerful incentive for CEO’s to choose their pocketbooks over those of their employees.

We are talking about market power. The CEO’s and their firms have little to fear from Mr. Market. In turn the rising wealth at the top buys growing political influence, through campaign contributions, lobbying, and the rewards of the revolving door between government jobs and those in the private sector. Political influence in turn is used to write the rules of the game—the tax laws we are speaking of here, antitrust laws, deregulation, union-busting—all in a way that reinforces income concentration.

The result is a feedback loop between political power and market power that created, and now maintains, a vicious circle of oligarchy.

Well, time to wake up from a snooze that allowed our politicians and the largest corporations and their CEOs to turn our country and economy into their private sandbox.

To help with today’s wake-up, here is Rage Against the Machine, the gone but not forgotten band, with Zach de la Rocha on vocals and the superb Tom Morello on guitar. They are performing “No Shelter”, written in 1998:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NEoesmnYU4

Sample Lyrics:
Empty ya pockets son, they got you thinkin’ that
What ya need is what they selling
Make you think that buying is rebelling
From the theaters to malls on every shore
Tha thin line between entertainment and war

Chained to the dream they got ya searchin’ for
Tha thin line between entertainment and war

There be no shelter here
Tha front line is everywhere
There be no shelter here
Tha front line is everywhere

American eyes, American eyes
View the world from American eyes
Bury the past, rob us blind
And leave nothing behind

Just stare
Just stare
Relive the nightmare

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – November 29, 2015

Russia and Turkey, America and turkey. Turkeys shopping on Friday. Turkeys on the campaign trail. Quite the week for turkeys.

Russia’s and Turkey’s tiff makes Thanksgiving worrisome:

What Massasoit should have said to the Pilgrims:

“We’d love to get the platter back when this is over. That, and our land.”

Not all holiday cornucopias are filled with gifts:

For some, Black Friday wasn’t about shopping:

For others, long lines on Black Friday would be OK:

2016 presidential politics provided quite a bit of leftover turkey:

Thanksgiving Day

Happy Thanksgiving! Gratitude is the word for today.

This is our 837th column, and Wrongo wants to thank all those who have stuck around since the beginning, all of you who read them, and those who comment. The Wrongologist started this blog with the idea of highlighting what is wrong and providing it to you in digestible bites. So on this day of huge (possibly indigestible) bites of turkey, gravy, pies, dressing, etc. Wrongo is very grateful to all of you!

It turns out the more grateful people are, the healthier they are. NPR reported on a study by Paul Mills, a professor of family medicine and public health at UC San Diego, that showed people who were more grateful had better cardiac health:

We found that more gratitude in these patients was associated with better mood, better sleep, less fatigue and lower levels of inflammatory biomarkers related to cardiac health…

Soon, Antibiotics Won’t Work

It’s estimated that more people will die from bacterial infections than from cancer by 2050. Two disparate factors are driving this. First, scientists in China say they’ve identified a gene that makes common, dangerous bacteria resistant to “last-resort” antibiotics called polymyxins. The mutated gene, called mcr-1, was found in the Enterobacteriaceae germ in both pigs and people in South China, according to a report published in The Lancet.

Study author Jian-Hua Liu, a professor at South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou, China, said:

The polymyxins (colistin and polymyxin B) were the last class of antibiotics in which resistance was incapable of spreading from cell to cell…

The new gene was found on mobile forms of DNA that are easily copied and transferred between different bacteria. According to the researchers, this suggests a much greater potential for the gene to spread and diversify in different types of bacteria.

Liu went on to say that the discovery points to the emergence of a gene which can create multidrug resistance that:

is readily passed between common bacteria, including E. coli and the Klebsiella pneumoniae germ, which can cause deadly pneumonias or bloodstream infections.

We have all heard that extensive use of antibiotics in agriculture may contribute to this resistance gene. Liu’s team said that pigs were more likely than people to have bacteria with mcr-1 gene-related colistin resistance. That suggests that the resistance originated in animals and then spread to people.

The discovery bodes ill for public health worldwide. Timothy Walsh, Professor at the University of Cardiff in Wales, told BBC News: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

All the key players are now in place to make the post-antibiotic world a reality. If MCR-1 becomes global, which is a case of when not if, and the gene aligns itself with other antibiotic resistance genes, which is inevitable, then we will have very likely reached the start of the post-antibiotic era.

According to the Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, drug-resistant infections could kill an extra 10 million people across the world every year by 2050 if new antibiotics are not found. That’s 350 million people lost. By 2050, this could cost the world around $100 trillion in lost output: That’s more than the size of the current world economy, and roughly equivalent to the world losing the output of the UK economy every year, for 35 years. Here is a graphic representation of the scale of the problem:

The second factor driving this disaster is our Bad Corporate Citizens. There are two classes of these bad actors. The food conglomerates that feed antibiotics to animals raised for meat, so that pig farmers can make more profit, and the Big Pharma companies that spend their intellectual calories on corporate inversions (such as Pfizer is doing in its merger with Allergan) rather than on antibiotic research. As David Cox reports about drug company research:

They’re happy to sell existing antibiotics, but they’re not interested in researching and developing new ones.

Professor William Fenical at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego discovered a new antibiotic capable of attacking the bacteria MRSA, a hospital superbug. However, most large pharmaceutical companies abandoned their antibiotic programs by 1995. And even though we know that animals raised with no antibiotics are less likely to contain drug-resistant bacteria than those routinely given antibiotics, about 80% percent of antibiotics sold in the US are given to animals raised for food production.

So, we have a perfect storm brewing: To enhance corporate profits, we give antibiotics to animals, weakening the value of those antibiotics in controlling human disease. And we look the other way when the big drug companies use innovation to avoid taxes, while saying that research into new antibiotics is “too risky” for their shareholders.

Again, the strategy of big business is “privatize the gains, socialize the losses.” And maybe when you get sick, the doctor will only be able to prescribe you a pork chop.

The world needs a new capitalism. Mr. Market isn’t going to fix this.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Author: wrongologist