U.S. Department of State
Washington, D.C. 20521-5120
e-mail 102142.1366@CompuServe.com
October 29, 1997
Editor
The Economist
25 St. James's Street
London SW1A 1HG
Sir:
You are still my favorite magazine, despite occasional lapses of logic and even more infrequent shaky research on given topics. I refer to two or three past inadequately researched articles on Mormonism and the state of Utah. Let me quickly state that since a letter writing campaign I undertook with you some years ago -- and materials I sent and directed your attention to -- your comments on Utah and Mormonism have been much better informed. I last wrote you on February 16 regarding another matter entirely: the coments of Robert Bork in his Slouching Towards Gomorrah regarding the moral deterioration of American society.
I write the present letter for two purposes. To congratulate you for carrying Jagdish Bhagwati's compelling rebuttal to Fred Bergsten's faulty arguments in favor of regional trade organizations (The Economist , October 18, p. 21). When I studied economics at Harvard under Professor Gottfried Haberler thirty-five years ago, Haberler made the same arguments as Bhagwati against the European Common Market (and other PTAs), insisting such organizations were just excuses for creating trade-diverting preferential trade groupings. Knowing that I was a US Foreign Service Officer (on leave of absence to complete my PhD), and assuming I'd be returning to a position from which I might just have some influence on future US trade policy, Dr. Haberler invited me to join him for tea from time to time to make sure I understood this principle.
Much influenced by the writings of Harry Johnson another leading economist of the day who advanced the notion of Optimum Currency Areas, as senior economist in the State Department's Office of International Monetary Affairs during the Nixon Administration, (a position in which I was coincidentally preceded by Fred Bergsten) I drafted a paper called The Theory of Cross Border Multi-National Free Trade Areas . The paper fell into a black hole in the State Department, being eventually resurrected for publication (after several years' delay) in the professional journal of the American Foreign Service Association. As the date selected for its appearance approached, the debate regarding a North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) was heating up and my paper was revised by the publication's editor to provide support for NAFTA, with copies distributed to all members of the US Congress. I was later told that the paper had actually swung some undecided votes in favor of NAFTA.
I've always felt a bit guilty about that since NAFTA, as enacted, led directly to the meltdown of the Mexican peso, whereas my original proposal, carrying forward Johnson's notion of natural regional trade areas had more modestly proposed no more than authorizing the governors of adjoining states in America and Mexico (and Canada) to draft jointly-agree proposals for the free movement of goods and workers within natural economic areas artificially separated by arbitrary national borders. -- along the lines of the Alps-Adria pact -- to be ratified by the respective national legislatures of the three countries. Whereas NAFTA, as it exists, is just another example of the Balkanization of world trade and a betrayal of free trade, such as Professor Haberler warned me about.
My second purpose in writing is to bring to your attention a logical oversight regarding your article on page 28 in the same issue regarding The Map of Well-Being . Your chart, and the thrust of the accompanying article, indicates that all of Utah, Northern Arizona, Eastern Nevada, and Southern Idaho are physician deficit areas, implying that the residents of this natural region are deprived of adequate health care.
In fact, this area, as your writer should have been aware, is the heartland of Mormonism, with almost a fourth of Mormondom's ten million members residing therein. And a recent study produced at one of the major medical schools in California (sorry: don't have the datum before me) asserts that the average Latter-day Saint lives ten years longer than the average non-LDS American, attributing this to living the so-called Word of Wisdom (abstention from alcohol, tobacco, or caffeine). So Mormons are by and large a healthy bunch and, as such, resort to doctors a good deal less than most folks. I have a physician nephew and medical student son-in-law and am much aware of how doctors go about thinking where they will practice. I'm also as an economist accustomed to putting things in a supply/demand perspective. I suggest that Utah (and the surrounding Great Basin region) are not suffering because of an insufficiency of doctors, but, rather, have a lower than average number of physicians per 100,000 residents because there is less demand for medical treatment because of a more than average number of healthy people. I think much the same can be said for North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Iowa -- all heavily settled by Scandinavians whose genes for good health have been sifted by generations of living in the rigorous north of Europe where survival has never been easy.
Sincerely,
David Brighton Timmins, PhD (Harvard), FSO (ret.)
Professor of Finance & Economics, Webster University - Geneva Campus
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