Thursday, February 05, 2004

A year ago, China's inept public health agencies covered up the SARS outbreak. This year has China admitting that parts of its animal disease prevention system were "weak and vulnerable" and the public had only limited knowledge about bird flu and limited ways to prevent it. We are talking about standard of living again. The luxury of having lots of people and money devoted to public health and disease control is a standard of living issue. The ability to make and enforce regulations that might be unpopular or costly is a standard of living issue. Without the overhead of regulations and government workers that would deal with a health crisis, China can produce cheap goods and go on taking our jobs. Today's political climate has a solution, however: "Government is too big." "Regulations are bad for business" Things like education programs and heath agencies that monitor our human and animal populations can be decreased.. What we need to do is incrementally dismantle the infrastructure that brings us this higher standard of living because it is just too expensive. If we take things apart a bit at a time and keep saying, "It's your money!!!!", as we take things away, then we can leave everyone feeling like they came out on top. Then, when the U.S. looks more like Mexico or China, we will be able to compete on the global market. 5:28:48 PM    comment []