My Country Is Called Earth (3 page)

“But the main cause of crime is in the home. Many parents are not giving their children the love and attention they need. Many parents are not training their children to respect the rights of others. And many parents are not teaching their children that they have a duty to the community in which they live.

“Another reason for your high crime rate is that science says that you are not responsible for what you do. Science says man is an animal who has just recently, in evolutionary terms, left the jungle, where the law is kill or be killed. And science says a man’s actions today are determined by his genes and his early childhood.

“Science also tells you, by teaching that the universe has no cause or a reason to exist, that life is accidental, meaningless, and cruel. When people believe they can be squashed like a bug at any moment, it is easier for them to tolerate violence and injustice in themselves and others.

“I cannot overlook your economics, which has produced a lot of poverty and hopelessness in the midst of great wealth. In your time, many people feel they have no future, and therefore nothing to lose if they end up in prison. In fact, prison has advantages: guaranteed medical care, food, and shelter.

“Finally, many of your social tensions are due to overpopulation and crowding—there are too many people for the available resources and space. This naturally creates friction, especially in the cities.

“I don’t want to give you the impression that men in 2076 are all angels. We still have injustices, but on a much smaller scale because we have eliminated many of their causes. Crime continues to get worse in your time because society is doing nothing about it except increasing the number of laws, police, and prisons. We understand that just locking people up is focusing on the symptom of the disease, not the cause.”

I told Edward, “I would really like to hear how the crises of my time were resolved.”

“The solutions are obvious to us,” he said.

“It seems to me that the world is falling apart. Every day brings new problems.”

Edward returned to using the past tense when he referred to 1992. “From our viewpoint, we can clearly see what had to be done. The people of your time did not see the big picture.”

“What does the big picture show you?”

“It shows us that all men are brothers. We see that the survival of nature and the survival of man are one and the same. In 1992 you faced the eventual collapse of civilization, and none of your leaders knew what to do. The solution was to abolish private property and governments in their present forms, and to stop believing that nature existed only for your pleasure and profit. In three words, the answers were love and sharing.”

“What finally happened?” I asked.

“First people had to accept that the old ways were wrong. There was a lot of suffering before they achieved that realization.”

“And then?”

“And then men saw the truth: God loves all It has created without qualification, and God meant for all creatures to share the abundance of the earth.”

Wednesday, July 1, 2076

On the morning of my fourth day on the commune, Edward said to me: “There’s an individual here you should talk to, a man we call Exellon. He’s one of the founders of First Gandhi, and is old enough to remember your era.”

Later that day we walked over to Exellon’s house, a four room structure on the top of a hill. Surrounding the house so completely that it was almost invisible were trees—oak, elm, maple, redwood, eucalyptus, palm, cedar, cypress, southern magnolia, and others. The hill itself was covered with many varieties of fruit trees.

When we arrived, Exellon was outside eating lunch with several people who had just come from picking apricots. “So you’re the guy from the past,” he said, while looking me over. “Pretty skinny. You remind me of the joke about the fat man and the thin man. The fat man said to the thin man, ‘You look like you’ve been in a famine.’ The thin man replied, ‘You look like you caused it.’”

I ignored his joke and proceeded to ask a question: “Can you tell me how the world solved the economic crisis at the end of the twentieth century?”

“You get right to the point. I like that. After lunch we will talk.”

At this time, Edward, who was a teacher at First Gandhi, excused himself to attend a meeting with some of his students.

When lunch was finished we went inside to Exellon’s library. He began by asking me, “What do you know about monetary and fiscal policy?”

I outlined for him the role of government in the economy, as I understood it:

1. A government can expand the money supply without causing inflation as long as it expands the money at the same rate as the output of goods and services—the Gross Domestic Product—increases. But when there is a rise in the money supply without a corresponding rise in a nation’s production, there is inflation. The classic example of this was the German economy in the 1920s. This also occurred in many Latin American nations in the 1970s and 1980s, and is happening now in Russia.

2. As the money is put into circulation (assuming GDP growth keeps up with the printing presses), wages go up, new jobs are created, and poverty decreases. The key is finding markets for the increased production. It is the secret of the economic success of the U.S., Western Europe, and Japan since World War II.

3. GDP can be increased by improving productivity through investments in new plants and equipment, infrastructure, education, training, and research. Free trade also increases GDP in those nations that can compete.

I also mentioned the role of population. If the population grows faster than GDP, increased production does not result in a higher standard of living, because the money has to be spread over more people than before. In many developing nations, governments have ignored environmental concerns in order to produce rapid growth. Their short-term solution to their population problem will have painful long-term consequences.

After I finished Exellon asked, “How would you deal with the economic challenges of your day?”

I answered, “A decent job is a right. It is government’s duty to assure that right. If necessary, taxes on the wealthy should be raised to finance work-making projects.” I added, “I am not really here to talk, but to learn from you how the world solved its problems.”

After a moment’s reflection he said, “With the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989, the former Communist nations began experimenting with capitalism. Many people thought the decline of Communism and the rise of free markets in Latin America and Asia heralded the dawn of a golden age of capitalism. Actually, the golden age was almost over in 1989. I need to go back a few years to explain why.

“In 1980 the American people elected a Hollywood actor to be their President. This man had no understanding of economics, history, or world affairs. He believed an unregulated private enterprise system would create a financial boom that would benefit everyone. So in his first term of office he cut income taxes by hundreds of billions of dollars and he loosened the reins on business.

“An example of his incompetence was the savings and loan disaster. By refusing to exercise any control over savings and loans, he gave dishonest individuals the opportunity to enrich themselves and their friends. This mistake cost the American people two hundred billion dollars, because the federal government had guaranteed the deposits of the S&Ls.

“This President allowed entitlement and defense spending to increase by hundreds of billions of dollars a year at the same time that he was slashing taxes. As a result, he and his successor, George Bush, had to borrow three trillion dollars. By, 1992 America’s national debt totaled more than four trillion dollars, and the cost of servicing that debt was several hundred billion dollars a year.

“Those two Presidents made another major mistake. Because of their belief in free trade, they failed to adapt the American economy to the new global marketplace. The result was a gradual decline in the standard of living of poor and middle class Americans.”

I asked, “Are you talking about our balance of trade deficit?”

“Yes. For many years the United States exported more manufactured goods than it imported. The surplus provided jobs and rising incomes for a growing American population. But in the late 1970s this balance of trade surplus disappeared, and it turned into a substantial deficit in the 1980s. There were several reasons why this happened. Automobiles and electronic items from Asia had become popular with American consumers because of their superior quality. Many other products manufactured abroad by American and foreign corporations could be sold more cheaply than goods made in the U.S., due lower labor costs.

“The trade deficit created a permanent class of unemployed manufacturing workers. It hit black families especially hard, because many of them had relied on factory jobs. The trade deficit put pressure on the wages of factory workers who were still employed and caused many office employees to lose their jobs when American industry restructured so that it could compete in the global economy.

“There was one other event taking place at this time that was costing jobs. Corporations were using automation and computers to eliminate many positions in factories and offices.”

Exellon looked at me and asked, “Do you know what today’s historians call the 1980s?”

I said, “I called it ‘The Greed Is Good Decade.’”

He went over to his bookshelf, pulled out an encyclopedia, opened it to a marked page, and read: “‘The Golden Age of Capitalism: The 1980s in America, when many fortunes were made in real estate, the stock market, business, and in corporate mergers and acquisitions. It was a false prosperity caused by speculation, free trade, restructuring, a
laissez faire
attitude by political leaders, and a spree of spending and borrowing by individuals, corporations, and governments unequaled in history. Politicians boasted about the number of jobs created in the 1980s, but they did not talk about the number of decent jobs that were eliminated, or the fact that most of the new jobs were low-paying.’”

Exellon closed the book. “In the 1990s, when the federal, state, and local governments finally faced their fiscal difficulties, they chose to reduce spending and raise taxes, which added to the downward pressure on incomes. And the federal government still needed to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars a year, because the weakness of the economy limited tax revenues, and because defense and entitlement costs continued to be a large part of the budget.

“I remember the debate in the United States during this time of slow growth and shortages of quality employment. Some thought the circumstances only required adjustments that would make America more competitive: the removal of foreign trade barriers, tax cuts to give the rich incentives to invest, retraining for laid off workers, better public schools, or less government regulation. A few of these ideas were tried, but the results were discouraging.

“The World War II children and the baby boomers, who had been led to expect a future at least as rosy as their parents, were seeing their dreams destroyed. Those born after the boomers were discovering there was nothing for them to look forward to. These three groups said to each other, ‘We must find a new approach. First, let us define the challenge.’ They agreed the economic system was not creating enough good jobs. They saw that the quality of their lives had deteriorated due to crime and other modern stresses. They also agreed there were many environmental concerns that had to be addressed: pollution, global warming, destruction of forests and species, soil erosion, and overpopulation.

“A few asked the next logical question, ‘Is it necessary that millions of men and women remain idle or in minimum wage or part-time jobs simply because the present system has no room for them? Perhaps it is time for a democratic capitalism, where all are guaranteed a slice of the economic pie.’

“The free marketeers argued that the old capitalism had provided the high standard of living the people of America, Japan, and Western Europe had enjoyed before, and to throw it out would be foolish. They said if people would be patient just a little longer the world would enter a glorious age of prosperity and opportunity generated by technology, free trade, and global growth.

“The proponents of a democratic capitalism answered, ‘High-tech is fine if it doesn’t eliminate your job. Free trade forces the American worker to compete with low-wage workers in foreign lands. And the world cannot afford more growth dictated by greed—we must start thinking in terms of economics that can be sustained. Therefore, we intend to form self-supporting communities that will be accountable for what they do to the earth. These communities will represent a second economy, with their own farms, businesses, and workshops.’

“The communities, now called communes or villages, began with the homeless, the unemployed, and individuals who wanted a slower, simpler life more in touch with the earth and their natural rhythms. The village life was harsh at first, but for many it was still an improvement over their prior lives of poverty and hopelessness.

“These villages served another valuable purpose. They gave people a sense of community again: a feeling of belonging, of being part of something bigger than themselves, and of responsibility to others.”

“What was happening in the rest of the world at this time?”

“How does that expression go? The rich were getting richer, and the poor were getting poorer. As more nations adopted free market systems, and as global trade expanded, the tendency of capitalism to enrich the wealthiest members of society at the expense of the poorest was enhanced. Poverty was also increasing because of declining manufacturing employment in the developed nations and population growth, environmental degradation, and flight to the cities in the developing nations.”

Exellon seemed to get distracted for a moment, then he resumed: “Isn’t it ironic that the President who had been known as the champion of capitalism actually hastened its end? The waves of borrowing he set in motion and his free trade policies accelerated the abuses of nature, consolidations of wealth, and economic hardships that result from unregulated private enterprise. The consequence was that men were pushed to the edge sooner than if he had not been elected President.”