Recognising America's Culture of Greed - Another Step in Recognising the Changing Zeitgeist?

America's Culture of Greed by Lowell Klessig

American culture has many commendable attributes. Extreme individualism is not one of them.

Individualism was the core of the frontier psyche. The pioneers were, in many ways, self reliant and self-sufficient. At the same time, early Americans were also very conscious of the common good. That consciousness was reinforced by the Civil War, the Great Depression, and WWII. However, in the expansiveness of the late 20th Century, and especially in the last few years, individual rights have trumped responsibility to the group. While every society struggles with balancing individual freedom with the common good, America has lost its balance. Our survival now depends on re-establishing it.

I have had the wonderful opportunity to travel to 48 countries and to teach in eight of them. A graduate student and I conducted cross cultural research on 28 of those countries. We compared the societies on eleven generic social priorities including "Individual Freedom". Social priorities vary widely among countries and our various analyses did not always yield the same result. However, there is a world wide perception that "Individual Freedom" is excessively high in the United States.

While people of other cultures view our individualism as dangerous, we are proud of it. We are proud of it until it severely damages the common good-like the financial system upon which we all depend. Then we get angry that government, as the defender of the common good, didn't prevent such destructive individual greed.

The Wall Street mess is a logical extension of the unlimited American individualism that we hold so dear. CEOs just pushed the pendulum further off center when they demanded obscene salaries and took wild risks with other people's money while only considering their individual wealth, power and ego. Because of their position, their extreme greed has had a dramatic negative impact on the common good.

CEOs in other cultures act differently. For example in 2005, according to the Institute for Policy Studies, the CEO of British Petroleum (BP is the second largest oil company in the world) made a handsome $5.6 million. The CEO of Royal Dutch Shell (the third largest oil company) made a handsome $4.1 million. The CEO of U.S. based Exxon Mobil (largest oil company) collected $69.7 million and the average salary of American oil companies was $33 million. That discrepancy represents a huge cultural difference between the US and Europe.

The comparison with Japan is even more astonishing. American CEOs have been earning about 400 times the average earnings of their employees in recent years. In other words the CEO earns more every day than the employee earns in a year. Japanese CEOs earn only 11 times what their employees earn.

No-one who has traveled extensively would argue that European and Japanese CEOs are less competent than American CEOs. The difference lies not in intelligence or training or experience; it lies in the ethics of their respective cultures - the balance between individual rights and the common good.

The candidates in this election differ regarding the appropriate balance between individualism and the common good. One candidate (McCain) recognizes the need to put "Country First" but then typically begins his sentences with "I" to focus on his personal story as a war hero and maverick politician. The other candidate (Obama) talks very little about himself while focusing on "we", our moment in history, and our common future. Then McCain chooses to partner up with Palin from Alaska - America's last frontier of rugged individualism and self reliance. Palin has the strongest orientation toward individualism of any national candidate in my lifetime - stronger even than Barry Goldwater whom I supported in 1964. She can even gut a moose by herself.

None of these candidates condones the excesses that have become commonplace on Wall Street. However, McCain and Palin can not shed their Republican affiliation and its bias toward excessive individualism, e.g. deregulation of the banking system. They are saddled to the same cultural curse that is causing our financial system to crumble-too much "I" and too little "WE".

Note for publisher: The research referenced in the article was published in the Journal of Human Values 5:1 (1999)

Lowell Klessig is Emeritus Professor of Integrated Resource Management at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. In addition to articles in professional journals, he has authored numerous Extrension publications in non-technical terms for adult audiences. He served as Executive Director of the Wisconsin Rural Leadership Program. He has travelled to 48 countries and taught in eight foreign countries. He writes a monthly column for a midwestern weekly newspaper and does occasional magazine features (a one page bio summary is available electronically upon request).

Lowell Klessig
934 River Road N
Amherst Junction, WI 54407

715/824-2490

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Plastic Bag Bans Around the World

Plastic Bag Bans - World Update by Kit Parks

In the last two years, there has been a striking momentum to reduce or eliminate plastic bags in the US as more Americans become aware of the environmental hazards of these bags. While the US movement is in its infancy, much of the world has already taken action.

In 2002, Bangladesh became the first country to outright ban plastic bags. The bags were credited in large part for the massive floods in 1988 and 1998. Enormous amounts of plastic bag litter clogged sewer lines and flooded upwards of two-thirds of the country during these devastating floods.

The litter from plastic bags was so bad in South Africa that the Minister of the Environment and Tourism jokingly named plastic bags the national flower because so many bags decorated their trees. Free bags are now illegal and there is a 3 cent levy on all plastic bags.

Paris banned the bags in 2007, and all of France will follow suit in 2010. Other countries with outright bans or free bag bans include: Bhutan, Eritrea, Rwanda, Somalia, Taiwan and Zanzibar. China banned free bags last summer and estimates that it will save 34 million barrels of oil each year.

Countries that tax plastic bags include Ireland, which saw an immediate 90% reduction in plastic bag use after enacting its PlasTax. Ireland saves 400,000 barrels of oil each year due to the tax. In Germany, most stores charge 5 to 25 cents per bag. Hong Kong has proposed a 50 cent tax for 2009. Israel adds a surcharge for plastic bags unless they contain meat, fish, poultry or produce. Sweden also taxes the bags.

Spain is working on its National Plan of Integrated Waste which would include a ban in 2010. In the UK, the retailers took the lead. Many have eliminated plastic bags and encourage reusable bags. IKEA and Whole Foods are two US chains that have been leaders in the reusable bag movement.

2008 will be remembered as the year US retailers began to regularly stock reusable bags. The mostly non-woven polypropylene bags are becoming standard fare in most stores today. However, people often forget the bags, leading to the surge in popularity of new bags that fold into a pocket so that they can be stored in purses, eliminating the need to remember.

Plastic bags are considered environmentally incorrect because they never fully decompose, are often littered, which causes significant harm to wildlife, and due to the staggering 100 billion used in the US each year, unnecessarily clog our landfills.

Surprisingly, paper bags are worse environmentally. Lack of air and moisture in the landfills prevent proper decomposition, they take more energy to manufacture and deliver, and they cost retailers, and thus consumers, significantly more to produce than plastic bags.

Many Americans now realize, as have many of our European and Asian neighbors, is that reusable bags are the solution to the plastic and paper bag problem.

Kit Parks is the president of Ecoroot, a reusable products company which donates 20% of its profits to environmental education programs. She writes about environmental and lifestyle issues. Parks can be contacted via the Ecoroot website http://www.ecoroot.com

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