Technology: Electrifying America

After the American Century

 A few months ago, MIT Press singled out my Electrifying America as one of 50 books to celebrate as part of an anniversary event.  I was asked to prepare a short reflection on the book, which appears below.

The late 1980s was a good time to reflect on and analyze electrification, a process that had begun in the 1880s and been completed in my childhood. When I took up the subject, electricity had become "natural" but it was not difficult to recover its recent novelty. I was also experienced enough, with three previous books (on Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and General Electric), to realize that this was a wonderful subject and to know how fortunate I was to start work with the encouragement of a contract from MIT Press.

I researched Electrifying America when there was still no email or Internet, although I proudly wrote on a new word processor (with no hard disk). Most documents had to be gathered in libraries and archives, which was less a hardship than a pleasure. Where could I better get a sense of the early electric light than at the Edison National Historic Site? I did research in Muncie Indiana (better known as Middletown) to understand how it had adopted electricity. Likewise, I studied the electricity-mad Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, where it had been held in 1901. Such experiences gave me an invaluable grounding in the material culture of my subject.

That grounding stretched back to my childhood. I often visited my grandparents’ New Hampshire farm, which, when I first was there, lacked electricity. I also glimpsed the pre-electric world among the Amish and Mennonites whom I encountered while growing up in central Pennsylvania. During summers in Boston, I delighted in streetcars, and pestered my father to take me for rides, demanding to know how the system worked. A mechanical engineer who had co-authored a book about steam-power plants, he explained to me elementary mechanics and electrical machinery. Decades later he was still teaching me when we discussed sections of Electrifying America in draft form. By then, I was also teaching him some social and cultural history. They are at the center of the book, which fuses my education in American Studies with an understanding of technical details and an immersion in specific places. It proved to be the longest and perhaps the best of the eight books I have written for MIT Press, though an author always likes to think the next book will be the best one. (My America's Assembly Line will appear with MIT Press in spring, 2013.) 

Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology received a full-page review in the New York Times Sunday Book Review in September, 1991, and that December it was named a Times Notable Book for the year. It won the 1991 Abel Woolman Award from the Public Works History Association, and in 1993 it received the Dexter Prize from the Society for the History of Technology. It is still in print.

Victory for a Compromise: Obama Care

After the American Century

It costs four times more more money to have a baby in the United States than it does in Germany or in Canada. 

Seen from outside the United States, the Supreme Court decision, which found the new American health system to be constitutional, is only a partial victory. For the law is a compromise that keeps competition and profit-making at the center of American health care. This means that the US will continue to spend billions of dollars supporting a vast health insurance industry and a huge number of tort lawyers. All those white-collar workers and all those buildings could be put to much better uses than making money out of human suffering and human need.

Doubtless there are some areas in which competition can improve medical care, but I doubt these benefits are worth all costs associated with a medical industry that is organized for profit, with all the legal fees, court battles over malpractice, and endless form-filling and record-keeping involved. 

It is much better, surely, to have a system like that in Scandinavia where all patient costs are automatically covered through taxation, and where hospitals compete to provide the best care, researchers compete for funds, and doctor's compete to be the best in their field.  This costs little more than half as much as the US system. Yet Scandinavians compare quite well with Americans when it comes to life expectancy, child morality rates, and other measures of well-being.

According to the 2012 Statistical Abstract of the United States. health expenditures rose as a percentage of American gross national product from 9% in 1990 to 16% in 2008. They do not give statistics for after that year, but surely no one is going to argue that medical costs have dropped since then. By comparison, in Denmark medical costs were 8.9% of GDP in 1990, almost exactly the same as in the US then, but since have only risen to 9.7% of GDP.  In Germany the corresponding figures are a rise for 8.4 to 10.5%, in the Netherlands from 7.4 to 9.9%, in Japan 6.5 to 8.1%.

In short, by 2008 Americans were spending one dollar in every six for medical care, while the Danes were only spending one out of every ten kroner, and Japanese were spending only one yen of every twelve.

How about the rest of the English-speaking world? In 2008 New Zealand used 9.9% of its GDP on health care, compared to 8.6% in Australia, 10.4% in Canada and 8.7% in Britain. In short, no nation on earth except the United States uses anywhere near 16% of its GDP on health care. The closest "competitor" was France, at 11.2%.

Americans have made progress with their new health system, which requires all citizens to carry medical insurance and makes certain that they can buy affordable coverage. But it is still an expensive and inefficient system compared to what already exists in the rest of the developed world. 

Health costs for the typical American family doubled from 2011 to 2011. President Obama was right to see that such galloping growth is unsustainable, and the new system he has put into place should stop costs from rising so fast. But Americans need to develop a medical system that can reduce costs to levels common in other advanced industrial nations.Even with Obamacare, the US system is behind the competition.

Obama's Nobel Prize Address: The Just War & The Four Freedoms

After the American Century Posting # 199

President Obama has given a major speech on the occasion of receiving the Nobel Prize. He began by admitting quite frankly that he was at the beginning of his international labor and rather a surprise winner of the prize. He then confronted what many see as a contradiction: that he is currently the commander in chief of the American armed forces which are engaged in two wars.

To his credit, he did not mention George Bush. It would have been fair enough to blame him for the unnecessary invasion of Iraq, at the least. Rather, Obama made the case for just war, when diplomacy fails, and provided a summary of his foreign policy, linking it to Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King. In doing so, he specifically rejected the "realist" approach to foreign policy, which tends to be embraced by Republicans more than Democrats.

One aspect of this speech will be striking to most Europeans. Obama spoke several times of evil, a word that one might more expect to hear from George Bush. In Oslo, Obama declared: "Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. " and later said: "We make mistakes, and fall victim to the temptations of pride, and power, and sometimes evil. Even those of us with the best of intentions will at times fail to right the wrongs before us." This is not far from the language of the Lord's Prayer. Such language is not unusual from an American politician. But "evil" is seldom heard in mainstream European politics, which are far less religious in tone.

Part of the explanation for this difference is structural. In Denmark, the Queen always ends her yearly speech on New Year's eve with the same words: "God protect Denmark." This is the ordinary language of a European monarch, but it is less common for the European politicians to ask for the Lord's protection. The American president, however, must play both roles.

However, Obama does not merely mention "evil" in passing, in a formulaic way. The core of his argument that war is necessary and unavoidable is rooted in the belief that some men are beyond the reach of reason or diplomacy. While he referred to Ghandi and King and clearly admires their idealism, ultimately Obama presented himself as hard-headed idealist. He is closing down the prisons at Guantanamo Bay. He promises to ophold the Geneve Conventions and to the honor Human Rights. But he also sees a world where wars and conflicts remain unavoidable.

He does not see the same world as George W. Bush, however. Obama sees the greatest hope for peace in international cooperation, in standing together against regimes that oppress their own people, that seek to acquire nuclear weapons, or that threaten other states. His foreign policy is one of enlightened self-interest that echoed President Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms. In his speech, Obama argued that freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from fear, and freedom from want when achieved in any nation ultimately enhance the security of its neighbors and by extension the rest of humanity. He may not have mentioned Roosevelt by name, but by employing his language, Obama aligned himself with core values that guided American foreign policy before the Cold War, and made them appear equally useful today.

The Weakening Dollar

After the American Century

For much of the twentieth century the American dollar was the benchmark currency. Whenever a crisis arose, world investors moved money into the dollar. For decades, the dollar was a good investment for anyone living in an inflation-prone economy, like those in Latin America or Africa. Likewise, because the dollar was stable, it was the preferred currency in the oil market.

The apparent rock-like stability of the dollar began to weaken already in the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. Until then, at least for very large investors, one could redeem dollars in gold. After then, the dollar was a little less rock-like, but on the whole was the preferred currency in any crisis. One could see this again in the wake of the financial collapse during the fall of 2008. Even though American banks were largely responsible for the sudden downturn, many people around the world instinctively moved money into the dollar.

Those days are over, and probably over forever. Rationally speaking, the dollar is not a smart investment at the moment. It has been declining in value for months, and has reached its lowest point in 14 years against the Japanese yen. The current interest rate on dollar savings accounts is also very low, so that even assuming the dollar's decline ends soon, nevertheless, the rate of return is better in the Euro zone.

The Chinese, meanwhile, are keeping their currency artificially weak, as a way to stimulate exports and continue building up already massive foreign reserves. In effect, the United States is letting its currency fall in value for the same reason, to stimulate exports and dampen the desire for imports. But China is way ahead in this race to the bottom, while Japan and Europe are both being hurt. Because China and to a lesser extent the United States have weak currencies, both Japanese and European goods cost more - forcing some factories to close or to move overseas where labor costs are lower. Japan and Europe have higher unemployment and fewer exports because their currency is too strong.

This is a dangerous game for all concerned. As President Obama pointedly told the Chinese leadership on his state visit, Asian economies need to play by the same rules as the rest of the world. Asian consumers, particularly in China, need to buy more, and their currencies should be worth more, to bring the world's economic system into balance.

For the United States, the danger is that it will soon be forced to increase interest rates in order to fund its growing national debt. This will increase the dollar's value, but it will also slow or halt economic recovery. This in turn will reduce American demand for foreign goods, as the economy stagnates.

Unfortunately, precisely this scenario (in which the US weakens) might be what China wants. For if it comes to pass, then China's massive holdings in American dollars will increase in value, while the US itself will grow slowly or not at all. The Chinese economy might then outpace US growth by 5% or more per year, until, in perhaps a decade, perhaps less, the US currency would enter a more definitive decline.

I hope this scenario is wrong. Should it prove at all accurate, then the dollar's reign as the world's reserve currency might not last longer than about 2020. Clearly this is not a happy thought for anyone with a pension or investments in the United States. Just as importantly, the relative decline of the US economy vis-a-vis the rest of the world will soon necessitate a major realignment that takes account of new players: Brazil, India, Indonesia, and most of all, China.

Climate Changes Faster Than Lawmakers

After the American Century

The climate is changing more quickly than lawmakers are. We know that species of fish along the coastlines are moving out from tropical zones into new areas. For example, fish not seen before in the North Sea have arrived because its waters have become milder. We know that summers are getting longer, that hurricanes are becoming stronger and more frequent, that the glaciers covering Greenland and Antarctica are melting faster each year.

Researchers at MIT plug statistics from such developments into a computerized model of the world's weather system. They include projected economic growth rates, and run hundreds of simulations, to see what might happen given different combinations of factors. Their latest findings are dire. Global warming is occurring twice as fast as previously thought, and they project a global temperature rise of 5.4 C by 2100. Their worst case scenario is a change of more than 9 Celsius. Most of southern Europe would likely become desert. The only good and fair thing is that in the US the predominantly Southern politicians would see their constituencies dry up or sink under rising seas.

We have now had quite a few such studies, but they have not led to major efforts to change human behavior. Every year the world has more CO2, more coal-fired power plants, more cars, and more electricity use. And this is true for almost every country. The United States House of Representatives, with only a small majority, has passed a law (that still must be approved in the Senate) which recognizes the problem and begins to take some mild measures toward change. It is not enough, although it is good to see the United States begin to take responsibility for its pollution. Meanwhile, the nations that signed the Kyoto Accords, promising to lower their CO2 levels have little reason to be smug. Most of them have failed to live up to their promises.

It may be that human beings are just not capable of long term planning. Is it possible that the time horizon of the brain remains somewhere between one to five years? However, it will take decades to replace existing housing and transportation systems with energy saving alternatives. The problem of global warming must be confronted immediately, because it will take decades of concerted action just to slow it down. Permanent changes in energy use are needed, but most governments have done far less than they might.

A small case in point. The Danish government put together a stimulus package for the economy, focused on home repairs and improvements. I applied for money to insulate the last remaining part of our house that is not insulated. The application was turned down, emphasizing explicitly that insulation was not covered. Now my little job will get done anyway. But does it make any sense for the Danish state to pay for such things are painting and wallpapering, but not insulation? Such policy mistakes tell Danish citizens that climate change is not really on the government's agenda. (Not that this surprises me. The government created a little independent agency, as a special platform for a prominent denier of global warming who is a statistician, not a scientist.)

Many national economies are shrinking, yet global warming is speeding up. Politicians do not yet realize that the goal can no longer be just to keep economies expanding. The old, high-energy form of expansion is at the core of the global warming problem.

Global warming is not merely a technical matter awaiting some technological fix that will make it go away. It is a problem of changing human behavior, including prohibitions and incentives built into the laws of each nation.

Next President Weakened by Financial Crisis

After the American Century

The world stock markets have been in turmoil, falling drastically and bouncing back on the news that the US Federal Government will take over huge amounts of bad debt built up by irresponsible banks. Many of them, we now know, were lending out immensely more money than they had themselves, and often lending it to people who could not afford to meet the mortgage payments. Woody Guthrie once said that some men rob you with a six-gun, others with a fountain pen. The investment banks have robbed millions of Americans, not once but twice. First, by getting them into mortgages they could not afford, and second by dumping their mistakes on the taxpayer's doorstep. Elsewhere around the world, people and institutions who bought some of this debt were "only" robbed once.

Just how much this will cost taxpayers is unclear, but early estimates suggest $1 trillion. The US does not have a surplus in its coffers, nor does it currently have a tax system that can cover this sudden additional debt. Both McCain and Obama have been talking about reducing taxes on the middle class, but after this week that may not be realistic.

Foreign investment in US government debt has been keeping the country functioning. In July of 2008 Japan and China each owned more than $500 billion in US Treasury bonds, bills, or notes. Investors from oil exporting nations have bought $174 billion. (Click here for a full list.) Why should Chinese, Japanese, and Saudi investors still buy American debt? Why not buy European government debt which has a higher interest rate? Indeed, will there be enough buyers for $1 trillion in new US treasury bills and bonds? Keep in mind that because the dollar has weakened considerably during the Bush years, such investments may not be profitable.

I hope that I am wrong, but in twenty years historians may see that the autumn of 2008 was the moment when the US lost its leadership of the world economy, and argue that it was the time when the hegemony of the American century ended. Of course, it seems that the US government has just stepped in and saved the world's economy, after its reckless bankers almost ruined it. But the nation cannot emerge stronger than its rivals from this crisis. China, Japan, India, Brazil, and the EU likely will gain on the US. Their economies have not suddenly been burdened with $1 trillion extra debt on top of an equally large debt created by the Iraq War. (For more on this, see Niall Ferguson's thoughtful op ed piece in the Washington Post.)

Even before this crisis the US budget was severely out of balance. The sudden increase in debt means that the future president will have less scope in foreign policy. It will be - even more decisively than before - a debtor nation, one which cannot afford to offend its creditors. And should the next president want to start a new war or underwrite a new peace, how is he going to pay for it?

The added $1 trillion debt will also make it harder for the next president to fund social programs, such as extending medical coverage to all Americans. All of a sudden, there is a whole lot less money to work with. Borrow $1 trillion at, say, 4%, and just servicing that debt will cost $40 billion a year. That money will not be available for schools, research, creating a new energy economy, or roads and bridges.

The next president will struggle to move forward dragging a $1 trillion ball and chain. The investment banks have not only robbed the public twice; they have weakened the next president and diminished the US standing in the world.

The Real Campaign Issues I: Oil

All the candidates are talking about change. One area that screams out for change is US oil policy. The United States is the world's largest oil consumer and polluter per capita, and yet it has resisted the Kyoto Accords. Rather than offering leadership, the US has been a stumbling block. This is not in its own national interest, and it is economically wrong-headed, as well as contributing to environmental degradation. 

The US spends billions of dollars a year on imported oil, and yet its cars are far less efficient than they might be. Indeed, while some mild requirements for miles per gallon have been imposed on automobiles, the gas-guzzling SUVs and small trucks driven by millions of Americans are exempt from controls. I even know one 80 year-old woman who drives a Humvee to the supermarket, getting about 4 miles to the gallon. This is in rural Connecticut, where the need for an armored car is minimal. Gas mileage for cars in the US is roughly the same now as it was thirty years ago, and it was better in 1988 than in 2008!  Could there be any connection between this policy fiasco and the fact that former oil executives, i.e. members of the Bush family, have been running the country for 12 of those 20 years? I am not suggesting a conspiracy, just inability to see that the world has changed. Only as his presidency has drifted toward its end has George W. Bush admitted that, in his words, the nation is "addicted to oil." But after making that admission in a State of the Union message, little has changed. Except the price of oil. It has kept going up. 

The US today could drive just as much and use less than half the oil it does today, if only it made a real effort. American cars today average less than 25 mpg. The Toyota Prius gets 55 mpg. The Honda Insight got 70 mpg. Detroit did not build these cars, and has consistently fought for lower standards, and that means more imported oil, primarily from the Middle East. Detroit has not shown any leadership, and it has backed candidates with a similar (lack of) ideas, notably George Bush and another former oil executive, Dick Cheney.

This is the old story. Do any of the candidates in this election want to champion a new story? The Democratic candidates seem to want a new policy for gas mileage, but the American public has generally resisted any forced changes in the automotive lifestyle. Obama has proposed to help Detroit make the transition to hybrid cars by having the Federal Government pick up some of the health-care costs the car industry has. As he points out, health care now adds $1500 to the cost of every car, which is more than the cost of the steel. In short, Obama has moved beyond mere rhetoric to look for a solution and a partnership. He argues that Ford, GM, and Chrysler really have no choice. If they want to stop losing market share, then they will have to begin making more fuel efficient cars.  Obama also champions substituting home-grown biofuels for oil, reducing the costly dependence on foreign oils. Obama has also said that he would appoint a Secretary of Energy Security, in order to keep focused on the problem.

Hillary Clinton has some of the same ideas. More efficient cars, bio-fuel, more solar and wind power. She introduced legislation in 2006 for a "strategic energy fund" that would put $9 billion over a five year period into energy research, and and she suggested taxing the oil companies to help pay for it. Clinton has noted that ExxonMobil made the highest corporate profits in history, and together with the five other large oil companies had profits of $113 billion in 2005. A tax of less than 10% on their profits from one year would be enough to pay for the research into alternative energies. 

In short, both Obama and Clinton see the importance of new energy policies. Both see the dangers of relying on foreign oil, the dangers of global warming, and the need to rescue Detroit from its own backward looking executives. Either, if elected, would push the US in the right direction. But how hard would they push? Jimmy Carter was educated as an engineer, and he understands thermodynamics. Unfortunately, he did not find a way to get the public to accept his energy plans. Instead, Ronald Reagan told the electorate what they wanted to hear, that the shortages were artificial results of red-tape and environmentalists tampering with the free market. Never overestimate the American voter when it comes to oil. Convenience and the cost at the pump may matter more than global warming or national security or preserving what is left of the automobile industry. But at least if either Clinton or Obama are elected, there is a chance that the US will have an intelligent policy.

Anyone interested in the story of how the US became the world's largest consumer of energy might want to go to the library and borrow my Consuming Power: A Social History of American Energies (MIT Press).

A blog on Electricity will follow next month.

Moby Bush and The Great Saddam Whale

On April 2, 2003 I sent a short opinion piece out to several US newspapers, criticizing the Bush Administration's planned war on Iraq. None would print it. Criticism of the Bush Government was still not widespread in the media, though hundreds of thousands of people were protesting the planned invasion in the streets of New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and other cities around the nation. At the time I was a visiting professor at Notre Dame University, and I had followed the build up to the Iraq War quite carefully. I was against the invasion then, but I could not have imagined how thoroughly the Bush Administration was going to bungle their "peace keeping" once the invasion was over. Subsequent events showed that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and was not making any. This seemed likely to be the case to many people at the time, not least to the inspectors who were on the ground. Recall that Colin Powell went to the UN and, we now know, lied, claiming that the US had superior intelligence to that possessed by the French and the Germans. Today, we know that they were right and the US was wrong. But even at that time, I felt that the nation was going absolutely in the wrong direction. And so I wrote the piece now published here. Warning: If you have not read Herman Melville's Moby Dick, then the literary parallels between Ahab and George W. Bush will be lost on you.  On board the Pequod II The Pequod II shipped out in 2001 with the new captain, whom we did not know well, but he was rumored to be compassionate. In the first long months of the voyage he kept himself mostly below, in the Texas, letting others steer the ship while he plotted his unilateral course. Then he emerged in the midst of a storm and addressed his officers and crew. He called on all to join in a quest to make the seas safe for whalers and to assure civilization a steady supply of sperm oil, by hunting down and slaying the Great Saddam Whale. Captains from passing French, German, and Russian ships warned him to hunt only normal prey, but he ignored them. For his mind was fixed on an earlier encounter with that great whale, whom he believed once tried to kill his father, and whom he saw as the very incarnation of evil. Indeed, he spoke of an "axis of evil" that included Iran and North Korea, making up a strange triumvirate that had no alliances with one another. Can First Mate Starbuck Powell stand up to the Captain's extravagance, and steer us into safer waters? Or is his goodness ultimately no match for monomania? Will the frowning captain accept advice to change course from the smiling second mate, Tony "Stubb" Blair? Can the captain heed advice, or is this course become a destiny? We cannot expect restraint from third mate Flask Rumsfeld, who is cheerfully certain he can kill all whales that spout in any gulf. Below decks are wolfish planners who steel Bush's will for the fiery chase. First, they promise an easy chase and quick victory. Have we not harpoons with satellite guidance? Now, they counsel patient pursuit. We will bring democracy and progress to the Middle East fishery. There be also readers of Revelation on board, who look to scripture and conclude that the confrontation with the Great Whore of Babylon has come. This will be the last day of judgement against the infidels.  The Pequod sails on a profitless voyage into a rising storm. In his quest to destroy the Great Sadddam Whale the Captain risks his cargo, insults his allies, kills innocent people, and creates new enemies. I am a involuntary Ishmael on this voyage. My cry for war did not go up with the rest. I don't want to end up clinging to my best friend's coffin. +++++ I see no need to change this more than 1700 days later. Melville was not, of course, writing about George Bush. But he had seen men like him and was able to imagine an apocalyptic scenario.  Bush's foreign policy has been a catastrophe for United States. If we are fortunate enough to have wise leadership after the next election, by which I mean leaders who do not act unilaterally but listen to their allies, it will still take at least a generation for the nation to regain  the moral stature it had abroad at the end of the Clinton years. Sadly, however, it is possible that during the last decade the US has squandered a great historical opportunity for world leadership that will not come again.

What Can Denmark Learn from the United States?

In my last blog I pointed to some areas where the United States might learn from Denmark. Now it is only fair to do the reverse: what can Denmark learn from the US? Quite a lot, actually. I want to point to four areas.

First, Danes have only a generation of recent experience in living with minorities from other cultures, and they have not done a good job of integrating them into their society. Refugees and immigrants have come to Denmark from more than 100 nations, but Danes speak of them as if they were a singe group, with few nuances. They speak of them collectively as "new Danes," which is code phrase that signals that these are people that are not really accepted as full members of society, even if they were born in the country and speak Danish as their first language. Politicians on the Danish right angrily demand that foreigners give up their own cultures and assimilate. They talk much like the anti-immigration leaders in the United States c. 1910. I personally know a lovely young women whose parents came to Denmark from Sri Lanka. She got an engineering education and speaks the language like a native - and Denmark is screaming for engineers - but nevertheless she never got a decent job offer inside the country. Instead, she has a terrific position in London. That is crazy, of course, but there are all too many examples of such discrimination and failed integration. The unemployment rate for "new Danes" is much higher than for the rest of the population. So, Danes should go to school to Canada and the US to see better models of how to welcome and integrate new citizens. The need is great, because Denmark has an unemployment rate that is now under 3%. Not only do they need to retain their own minorities, but they desperately want to recruit and then retain skilled people from abroad.

Second, Danes are losing some of their cultural heritage every year, particularly books and paintings, but also other important cultural objects. This is because of tax laws that do not encourage donations. In the United States, of course, donations are a tax write-off, so someone with a valuable painting can both be benevolent and also get full value for philanthropy. Another example is close to my heart. When a university professor retires in the US, he or she might well donate valuable books and collections to the library, again in exchange for a tax write-off. But in Denmark, no such rules apply. I know of one case of a man who had a valuable personal library, which almost was broken up and sold. Finally, the family did agree to sell it to the university for a fraction of its total worth. But in most cases, nothing of the sort happens. This would not matter so much if Danish libraries were well stocked. However, there is little tradition of building up good research libraries in Denmark, because this sort of thing is left to the State. But national governments, in my observation, are irregular in supporting libraries and museums. So, the Danish nation could benefit from changing the tax laws, because for a pittance they could preserve far more of their cultural heritage. The United States has some amazing libraries and museum collections built up by knowledgeable collectors. There is little monetary incentive for Danes to do the same.

Third, while I praised the Danish socialized medical system in my last Blog because it is free and works pretty well, it could be improved if it adopted a more proactive approach. In the US doctors give their patients an annual medical exam, and so can track their weight, blood pressure, and other vital indicators. Danish doctors only see a patient when something goes wrong. In other words, they wait, often until it is a bit late in the game. Preventive medicine would raise life expectancy, which currently is a bit lower than the US, and quite a bit lower than next door Sweden. I mention Sweden to indicate that this is not a problem with socialized medicine per se, but rather a specifically Danish problem.

Fourth, and finally for today, the Danes could learn from Americans how to meet new people. They are a rather shy lot, hanging back in the corner of the room if they find themselves in a group of strangers. In the US people are quite ready to mix it up at a cocktail party, the more the merrier. Danes feel most comfortable at a smaller gathering, preferably where they know everyone else in advance, and ideally where there is a seating plan. Spontaneity is not the Danish strong point, in other words. Most of my Danish students who take a term in the US are able to make this adjustment, so there is a chance that the country can and will open up a little.

If both nations have something to learn from the other, however, I am not advocating cultural homogeneity. Fortunately, in my view, the Danes are not becoming Americanized, but that is a subject for another blog.

Is Denmark a Model for the United States?

Can Americans Learn from Others?

For most of the time during the last 225 years Americans have been convinced that they live in the best country on earth. They have even seen it as exceptional, a nation like no other. But not too many Americans have looked carefully at the alternatives. They are told repeatedly that the American way is the best, and that the rest of the world is just trying to catch up.

So how about a reality check? I have been living in Denmark for long enough to make a knowledgeable comparison. I have written a short book to introduce outsiders to Denmark, but because it is addressed to people from anywhere who might be planning to visit or live there, I avoid making direct comparisons.

But in the next century I hope that Americans will look carefully at what they are not getting from their government. 

Imagine living in a country with universal health care paid for entirely out of taxes. I will not lie to you and say that Denmark has a perfect system, but it is one which supports both basic and applied research and that provides a high level of care. Quite possibly the Swedes have an even better system.

Imagine a country where handguns are illegal, and where the one or two murders that do occur in a week are almost all solved by the police. 

Imagine a country where the unemployment rate is less than 3%, and where those who are unable to get work receive free retraining and can get unemployment benefits for much longer than the six month limit in the United States.

Imagine a country which provides university education free to all citizens, and then, to make absolutely certain no one is left out, gives ALL students a scholarship big enough to cover housing and meals.

Imagine a country where automobiles are not absolutely essential to getting around, and where most families have only one, and middle-class people get along without one. this is possible because the state has made certain that there is a tightly integrated bus and train system. Certain parts of the US have begun to learn this again - they had it in c. 1905.

Imagine a country where the minimum wage is more than $12 an hour! This does make a restaurant meal more expensive, for example, but it is worth paying that, if it means almost no one lives in poverty. There is something deeply absurd about the US system where someone can work full time for the minimum wage and still be at the poverty line. 

How is the Danish system this possible? Taxes are higher, and much less is spent on the military. It is not unusual to pay 50% of your salary in taxes. I used to complain about the high taxes a lot when I first came to Denmark, but gradually I began to see that the quality of life in such a system is worth paying for. Danish parents all know that their children will have the chance to go to university if they graduate from gymnasium (high school). A Dane knows that full medical care will be available, even if one is unemployed. A Dane who does get laid off, can feel pretty confidant that they will get another job, and that in the meantime domestic life will go on without too many disruptions. In short, the Danish system reduces anxiety about the future and provides a basic safety net. 

There is no perfect society, but some are better organized, have better food, protect their citizens better, and so forth. We have all heard that joke about heaven being the place where different nationalities have specific roles. In my ideal world, the French run the restaurants, the Spanish operate the cafes, the Danes make the furniture, build windmills and run the social services, the English make TV detective programs, fill the theaters and organize pomp and circumstance, the Italians build the town squares and provide the opera, the Germans construct and maintain the cars, the Americans innovate, build the bathrooms, provide popular music, and make the pizza, while every country provides its own novels, classical music, and fine art.

Of course, nations do not remain static. They get better or worse. The English have learned to cook somewhat better in the last two decades, for example, even if they still build some quite awful houses decorated in what Danes are certain is terrible taste. But many of the English seem to know this, and to recognize that for them IKEA is a step up. So perhaps my fellow Americans can improve, too. My Christmas wish is that they will look seriously at other societies and see what they might learn from each.

If you want to read more about Denmark, have a look at 

David E. Nye, Denmark and the Danes: A Two Hour briefing

SDU Forlag, 2006 (available through Amazon.com)