Revision on Research Question
Yesterday as I was in my Conflict 340 class (International Conflict Theory), we discussed the question as to why in all of the OECD nations, the US is by far, even a statistical outlier, the most violent nation. OECD is an international organization of the 30 richest countries throughout the world, most of them are in Europe and North America. Something that kept popping up in my mind was that almost all of the other countries had access to universal healthcare and free or extremely affordable, high quality, higher education.
I brought up Keynesian economics in the conversation. My comments alluded to the idea that as long as constituents of a nation are invested in their government, there is less violence. Many of the nations in OECD that have universal healthcare and free education have higher tax rates, keeping their population invested in the work the government is doing, leading to lower inner violence. The argument I made was that as long as there is a perpetual, manageable debt, there is less violence.
So I think I would like to explore this more. So my new research question is this:
How does access to universal healthcare/free high-quality education affect intrastate violence?
As a conflict major this will be something that I can carry over into my other courses and I may even use this as a starting point for a thesis later on if I choose to go on for a graduate degree in Conflict Analysis.
I found a newspaper article from the Huffington Post about how since the Aurora shooting there has not been a substantive conversation in the presidential campaign, or in Washington, about gun violence in the US. I find this nearly insulting that it has taken this long to do something since incidences like Columbine, Virginia Tech, Springfield, and Aurora. This article discusses the reasons why this conversation hasn’t happened and why it should.
I also found a collection of photos like this one of gun shows in the US, where citizens can buy just about any type of weapon, whether they need it or not. This picture below is the one that stuck out to me the most, as it shows the accessibility of firearms in the US as a mass market (which I oppose).
I did find a lot of articles about guns and about universal healthcare, but there isn’t much in the way of comparing the two of them. I have this set about gun violence here, but I will still need to look for more information on the effect that access to universal healthcare has on violence in the developed world. I think I will also need to revisit the film Bowling for Columbine, a documentary about gun control from Michael Moore. I remember there being some really good statistics in it.
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