Truth About Green Jobs And Energy Independance

Have you noticed on the news how many companies that Obama has visited have gone bankrupt. First was a window company who made "green" windows. Now it is a couple of solar panel companies. This is after they have gotten million from the government. One thing that you can be sure of is that the presidents of these companies have been well paid and they have donated to the Obama re-election fund. The truth is that it is a lot worse than what is being reported on the liberal news.

Think about it this way. The government gives a lot of money and loans to these green companies. When the companies go bankrupt, one of the creditor is us taxpayers. We don't get a dime for the money that we have loaned or given for free. We have the further problem is that these companies hired a lot of buddies from the Obama "list". Remember how I pointed this "list" business out when Allende was President of Chile? Allende's goons had the list, but we did not hire any of the people on the list. You can bet that Obama had his "list" and it got results. Now that the people who were hired are now out of work, us taxpayers will pay them "more" in unemployment than they ever made working at the green companies. Interesting isn't it? Work for a green company for a year and draw unemployment for the rest of your life. That is just one small point.

I don't know what you pay for electricity in your area, but I pay about $0.12/kwh. That means it will cost me $0.12 to run 12 hundred watt lights for one hour. In prior Blogs, I pointed out that all this green power is not available 100% of the time, while power from coal and oil is available 100% of the time. Now as you would expect, power that is only available part of the time would sell for less and it does. I heat my house with electricity that is not available 100% of the time. During high demand periods, the power company cuts off my power for a couple of hours a day, just for my heating system. For allowing them to cut off my power they sell me the power for half price or $0.06/kwh. I know from research that they buy power for about $0.02/kwh from the coal fired generating plant. Here is where it gets more interesting.

Because the power companies are highly regulated, they are required to "buy" back power from green sources at the retail rate or $0.12/kwh. When you first hear this, you might think that it is a good idea. If the power company sells you power for $0.12/kwh, then why should they not buy power back from you at the same price? Here is the real impact. If the power company can buy "interuptable" power from the coal fired power plant for $0.02/kwh, but the regulation says that they have to buy form a green company for at $0.12/kwh, who is picking up the difference of $0.10/kwh? That is the rub. We all are by having to pay more for out power. It is a little extra here and a little extra there, but in the end it adds up to billions. This means this whole green thing is costing us many times more than just the millions that are being given to the green companies.

When I was a kid, I used to hear my father say that, "...a fool and his money don't stay together very long..." Obama and his policies is this "fool". I an individual or a company or a country invests in stupid things, they are all going to lose. It is very difficult for a company to make it. Most fail. Only the ones who make the best investment decisions make it and that goes for individual as well as countries. If you can name a single area of government spending that has been a good investment in the long run, I want to know it. There have been a few, very few. This whole green thing is by far the stupidest that I have ever seen and there does not seem to be any end to it.

Obama and the green movement have this "false" argument that we need to be energy independent. What difference would that make? None. Of the major economies of the world, we are already clearly the most energy independent. We have more coal and oil than any of our major competitor. Russia would be the only exception. If we really need more oil, then why is Obama at every opportunity making it more difficult and more expensive to produce energy? There can only be two possible answers. First, he is stupid and doing all of these things because of his stupidity. Second, he is doing it to "trash" the United States. If you have some other reasons, I would like to hear them. I don't think Obama is stupid, so it has to be the latter. He wants to "Trash" this place and he is going a good job of that. I know that a lot you bleeding hearts can't accept that we could have such an animal in the White House, but I think we do. I have connected too many dots to think other wise. Watch the news over the next few months and see if one of them does not show you that we have spent a lot more on green energy than just the free money that we have given these green companies.

PS, I predict that the high tech battery company built in Detroit will turn out to be just as bad. We could have purchased the batteries fully assembled from Korea for much less. Wait and see. Check the GMC stock price. It has to get upto about $55/share for us tax payers go make out. It went public at $33 and has not seen that level since. Just wait!!!

Salmon Party Dip

Sorry about the error, but I pushed the wrong key and cancel my Blog. Here goes again.

This simple dip has been one of my favorites for many years. I have shared it with friends and they have been impressed too.

(1) One 7oz can of the high quality canned salmon, smoked or unsmoked
(2) Two table spoons of powdered Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing
(3) One small onion chopped fine
(4) One stalk of celery also chopped fine
(5) 1/4 t-spoon black pepper
(6) Dash red pepper
(7) 1/4 t-spoon dill
(8) 1/2 cup real mayonnaise (not kraft)
(9) Butter milk as required

Mix all ingredients except for salmon in a small mixing bowl. Add just enough butter milk to mix and yet stay thick. Once all is mixed, crumble in the salmon and mix slightly more without breaking up the salmon too much. Chill and it is ready to serve as a dip on crackers or veggies.

Enjoy

PS, Sam's Club has the Hidden Valley mix in large containers and has the best canned salmon too.

PS #2, Another alternative is to add a table spoon of Dill Pickle relish. It adds a little color and texture.

Hurricane Irene Damage

I have been watching the TV coverage of Hurricane Irene. It looks like it did a lot of damage up and down the East Coast. I guess that what one would expect from a hurricane. It is a know fact that hurricanes are common on the East Coast and some travel very far north before they dissipate. I think the media was a little disappointed that there was not more damage. It would have been a lot bigger news event had it. All of this TV watching go me to thinking about how we respond to things like this. I think we should all rethink how we deal with "normal" events like this.

I did not see the President's speech on the event and what "he" plans to do to "help". I know that FEMA is all dressed up and ready to dump all kinds of borrowed money into the situation that our kids will have to repay. Before I get deeper into my concern, I would like to develop a side plot. It is my understanding that this is a country of "law" and that means we all have the same individual rights under the "law". If your brother kills someone, they can't send you to jail just because you are his brother. That is because our basic rights are "individual" rights and that is how it should be. What if we had a country where there were "group" rights and you could be sent to jail for things your brother did? Thank God for that we don't. My point is that all rights are "individual" and "group" right fly in the face of this key point and are a serious problem where ever they exist. Now, I want to move on.

The guy on the TV interviewed someone from New York who said that this was the 3rd time his home was flooded in the past 10 years. He seem to imply that FEMA should come to his aid since he had suffered so much. What do you think? I know a guy who was on vacation in Florida and a tree limb fell on the power lines to his home up North and took out his circuit breaker. The affect was his sump pump could not pump water out of his basement and his home flooded. As far as I know FEMA did not come out to his home to help him clean up the damage. I know a similar story about a guy, also up north, who had a circuit breaker kick out while he was away on vacation during the winter and his boiler froze up and it flooded his whole house. Here again, I don't think that FEMA came out to help him. Now when you think about it, is it any different between the guys up North who had their home flooded compared to the one in New York who had his flooded 3 times? I don't think so.

In the Midwest, they have tornadoes. Some of these are very small while a few are really big. If a small one tears the roof off your barn, is that any different from a tornado that tears the roofs off 100 barns? Again, I don't think so.

As far as I know there were only 10 deaths remotely caused by the hurricane. Some were people out driving on flooded streets. Those were caused by stupidity, not the hurricane. Stupid people get killed all the time. My guess is that less than 5 normal people were killed. Why is this point such a big deal? I know for a fact that there are more people killed in Minnesota and Wisconsin hitting deer on the roads than were killed by the hurricane. If that is the case, then why doesn't Obama go on TV and promise some kind of solution? See what I mean, these are very normal events that "individuals" have to deal with. They are "not" national emergencies where we need to spend all kinds of tax payers money.

Did you ever notice that the price of similar homes cost more if they are on high ground vs flood plains. That difference in price reflects the difference in "risk". There is a way to eliminate the risk on the home in the flood plain and that is with flood insurance, but that would mean the cost of ownership of the home in the flood plain would be the same as the one on high ground. What is this? No free lunch!!! See what I mean. Do the people in New Orleans really think that their homes that are below sea level are just as safe as those on higher ground? I guess some do and that is our problem. Notice in California that they have earth quakes, but most people do not have earth quake insurance. When you ask them, "why not?", they say that it cost too much. If they had to buy earth quake insurance, they would not be able to afford the same expensive home. Gee whiz. Most people are logical to a degree.

If we start creating groups who have special rights, we will start down a very slippery slope. We are already doing it with things like Hurricane Irene. What about special rights for women or old people or kids or blacks or gays or union workers or public employees? It is a mess and we are letting it happen and get worse. I still remember the line from "Animal Farm" where "...some animals are more equal than others...". I knew when I read that at about age 12 or 13 that special rights were a bad idea. They sound good if you are in the group, but what if you are not? As far as I am concerned I feel that the individual up and down the east coast should take care of themselves and the government should stay out of it. I have a boat at Little Creed just off Chesapeake Bay in Virginia that I think just might be under water right now, but that is my problem, not the governments.

Unions And The Automation Back Door

As an Industrial Engineer, I have been involved in automation for many years and have some comments you might find interesting. Prior to about 1960 when some factory job was automated, the automation devices were made right here in the USA so that we "transferred" one job for another. At the same time what ever we were making cost a little less. We called it productivity, but since then things have changed.

If you notice, many of our factory jobs are gone. The factory jobs were where people who did not have an education or who dropped out of school could earn a living. These same people are still around, but many of the jobs have gone. Starting to see the problem. I could call these people "one rungers", but some did move up in the past, but not now. By far the biggest invention that has accelerated automation and the elimination of manual labor jobs has been the computer. Manual farm labor has even yielded to computerized automation. When I was a kid, my mother used to work on a grading line where things like potatoes moved along a conveyor belt and workers picked out the bad potatoes. Thousands of low skilled people used to do jobs like this. Now it is done with computers for much less cost. They used optical pattern recognition systems that work at the speed of light and do a better job than my mother used to. First of all, you might think that this is progress, but wait.

We have moved to a service industry in the country with much of that in the financial area. Rather than pencil and paper, they now use computers. My point is that all of these computers, cell phones and electronics of all kinds are "not" made here in the old USA any more. Try to find a TV set made here. You will have to go to a museum to find one, that is how bad it has gotten. Now for my final point.

What do you think is the biggest factor in driving us to automation and to the importation of that automation? Unions! They drive up the cost of manual and unskilled labor thinking that they are helping the common man. What they are actually doing is accelerating the loss of jobs by way of things like automation. The bottom line is to be, "the low cost producer". Automation is easy to justify when the union labor cost is so high, but the final results of the automation is only a very small reduction in cost. In China, they can use USA style automation from the 60's and 70's and still beat us on cost because of their lower labor cost. You know how much difference it takes. Just a few cents under another person's price for the same product and most of you would drive miles to buy gas for just a couple cents less per gallon. This is a big deal and no one ever talks about it.

I know a company right here in the USA who make injection molded parts, but who have all their complex and expensive dies made in China. They use low skilled workers to run the automatic machines and import the complex dies made by skilled workers in China. Are you following that?

My point is that automation from China is killing union jobs right here and the union is unaware of exactly what they are causing. We are toast!!!!

Predictions About The 2012 Election

I always like to be a little ahead of the curve, so here is my prediction about the 2012 Presidential election. I can tell you that this one will be much different from anything that this country has seen before and here is why.

Remember my Blog comparing what Obama was going to do with what Allende did in Chile? I was right on wasn't I? Recall that Allende did selective enforcement of the laws? Well, isn't that just what Obama is now doing? How about the latest where he will not prosecute Mexicans for illegally crossing our border. I thought the great thing about the USA was that we were a society of "Law". Recall the picture of the lady of justice holding the balance scale with a blind fold on? It use to be that the smallest among us had exactly the same right before the law as the richest man in town. Sorry, but that is not the case any more. If you are on Obama's side, you have special rights that the rest of us do not have. It is like "Animal Farm" where some animals were "more equal than others". Now to my prediction about the election.

It has been reported that the head of the labor union has met with Obama more than any other person. He claims that he gets calls from Obama almost every day. Surprised? You shouldn't be. Remember the speech by Obama to one of the labor union groups where he said, "don't worry, I have your back"? Now exactly what does that mean? What do you think those in the audience thought when they heard the President of the United States say that too them? What is does is tell everyone there that they can push the envelope and will not have to worry. When they look at all the examples of where Obama has selectively enforced the law, they know that when they go outside the law that they will not have to worry about the consequences because the President of the United States, "..has there backs...? Here is why it is going to be a lot different in the next election.

It appears that Obama will have over a billion dollars in the bank for this next election plus his ability to selectively enforce the law. That mean that any extra illegal money will also be available to him too. Look at the numbers. We have about 300 million people in the USA and about 1/3 or 100 million will vote. Obama needs just over half or 50 million to win. Divide 1 billion by 50 million and you get $20.00 per vote. He does not need to pay $20 for every vote since many will follow hin anyway. He only needs to swing about 10% of the 50 million. That works out to $200 per swing vote. We are now starting to look at the kind of money that can make things happen in the ghetto. With me so far?

Look for a big push on absentee ballot voting by Obama supporters. Obama's union goons will be out in big numbers intimidating voters and getting them to submit absentee ballots where they can observe who they are voting for. You already know that unions don't like secret ballots. They want to know how you voted so that they can intimidate you and they will. This is my prediction and you just watch. This is going to be big.

Obama is going to have bus loads of supporters out beating the bushes and trying to intimidate voters. You know that. It is going to be just like one of those big union votes and you know how they work. People are going to get hurt. It will not be enough to just intimidate those in the inner cities and ghettos, they will have to out into other communities with their thugs and this is where it will get rough. They will all know that Obama, "...has their backs..." so they will go well beyond the normal level of violence and intimidation. When this happens, there will be a lot of people in the USA who know that Obama, "...does not have their backs.." and that they are the only ones who are there to look after them and their families. I know these people and there are millions of them. They have never been so helpless and they know it. When Obama's goons push too far, these Americans who feel that no one is protecting their rights are going to protect their right by the only method that they have and that will be violence. They will feel that they have nothing to lose, but they do.

Obama will still be the President during the next election and he will do exactly the same thing as Allende did in Chile. He will selectively enforce the law and that means prosecuting the honest people who tried to protect their rights and he will let his goons go free. He has done this before and you will see him do it again. We will see shooting and people killed during this next election. That is my prediction. Most of you will say that this type of thing could never happen here, but you would be wrong. In all the history of the USA, we have never had a situation like this one. The stakes are too high for Obama to give up the Presidency now after he has almost bankrupted "our" country.

You are going to see early signs of what I am talking about right after the primary elections are over and both conventions are done. Watch the speeches at the Democratic convention and see if they do not call out the dogs and let their supporters know that they have a free reign. You will see all kinds of confidential lists of names leak out of government offices about who is on this or that public program. From these lists, the goons will know who and where the people live and they will be at their doors intimidating them and their families. You watch and you will see it happening. If you don't wake up it will be over before you can take any action to stop it and Obama will be our next President. The media will be on Obama's side and will spin these stories so that they look like the Tea Party people are at the root of the problem when they are just protecting their families from Obama's goons. This is the way it happened in Chile and it will be the same here.

Think it won't happen? Think again.

PS--------------
A little perspective. Obama was raised on his mother's milk as a political hippy from the 1960's. He is a pea from the same pod. I know the people in these groups from the 1960's. They have gotten older, but they have not changed. Two things are at the root of what they believed then and now and those are:
(1) You can not fix this place or improve it. You have to tear this whole place down and start all over again.
(2) You have to crack the eggs to make an omelet, so a few people might get hurt along the way because "the ends justify the means".
This is Obama. This is how he thinks and acts. I know that it is hard to believe we could have elected a person like this as our President, but we have to face reality. We did it, just like Chile elected Allende. Thousand died there before they recovered and it is going to happen here too.

Economic Reality

In Econ 101, they teach economics like it is some kind of "fixed" problem when it is changing all the time. It is a little like farming where every year is different. The weather can be different as well as insects and such. Farmers understand that things change and they have to also change and do different things each year to get a good crop. Not so with Economists. They believe in doing the same thing over and over expecting to get the same results year after year. When I was a kid, my dad used to give me 25 cents and send me off happy all day, but now dads give the kids the keys to the car and they don't seem to be happy. The world and the model are always changing and Economists need to start accepting that. Try this?

After WWII, the economy of the USA really took off. We had plants making all kinds of things and we were able to sell them all over the world for a nice profit. Why was that? Because we were smart and hard workers, right? No! It was because we were the only game in town. All other countries that used to make things was in ruin. They had to buy from us. Prior to WWII, how did things work? Advanced countries imported raw materials from under developed countries and made things out of that raw material and sent it back as "value added" to the same people who sold us the raw material. With this system, if you were one of the more advanced counties, you were on top. But like most things, the situation and the rules change over time. Under developed countries like China, Brazil and India have moved up on the chart and now are no longer just exporting raw materials for us to add value too. They are adding their own value to their raw material and selling to our customers. What does that leave for us? Now we have to really compete and we now find that we can not. Why is that?

We have been used to earning a lot more per hour and now some country like China or India comes along that is willing to work for less and they take the orders away from us. We even get the idea that if we buy their cheaper products too that we can have a higher standard of living without having to really produce anything. Nice idea? The result is that we produce less and buy more and we can do this for a while before it catches up with us. What we did was to spend the money that we had in the bank in the form of our net worth. We went even farther and created "paper" net worth by building bigger and bigger homes and manipulated our domestic housing market to make the prices of the homes go up at over 10% per year over several years. We even had companies that would allow us to borrow against our "paper" net worth or home equity and spend that money too on cheap imported products from China. This was a great deal for China. We were using money that we did not have to buy things from China that we really could not afford. Like any game that is too good to be true, it turns out that it is not "true". Bust.

What caused the American Revolution was the fact that England was buying our raw materials and not letting the Colonies manufacture their own end products. Cotton and wool had to be shipped to England where it was milled into cloth and sold back to the Colonies. It was clear to all that this was a losing proposition for the Colonists so they revolted. This was the way most of the world operated for the past 500 years and now the tables have turned with more and more countries able to make their own products and ship them where ever they want.

Transportation is another big item that has leveled the playing field. Item used to cost a lot more if they were far from where they were mined or made, but not now. It is so cheap to move products around the world that location is not as important as it once was. With the information age that has become even more clear. Information can move at the speed of light and for almost zero cost. Think of that? What we are tending toward is a very level and fair playing field for the economies of the world and we are just one of those players. Unions think they can hold back time by their efforts, but we all know that in the end it will be the low cost producer who wins. The basic charter of the unions is to get more and more for their members and have zero concern about those not in their union or their long term future. In the end all union companies will go bankrupt and that includes school districts and the government if they are unionized. That is the end game and it is coming faster and faster all the time.

Look at the economic life of different products today? The turn over of new products is a type of clock and that clock is ticking faster and faster. Products that used to have a 10 or 20 year life cycle are now down to just a few years. Look at computers and cell phones. How many have you owned in the past 5 years? This means a company can be on top one day and one the bottom the next. Just look around at the companies who were here and who are now gone?

Things change and our Econ 101 has to recognize that change and the increasing rate of change.

Obama Is Trashing "Our" Country

Most people look at what Obama is doing and judging him only what he is doing. They never look at "why" he is doing what he is. You know that I like to look at the big picture and connect as many dots as I can. When I do this, it starts to answer the "why".

In any problem situation, there are short term and long term considerations. Most people do not make this distinction and Obama and his people are smart enough to take advantage of this fact. It is my opinion that our most serious problems are short term. Let's take a look at what is going on and see how Obama trashing "our" country. Why he wants to do that is another Blog that tracks back to the 1960's.

First. let's look at global warming. This plays right into the hands of Obama. If it is not clear to anyone that "if" global warming is a problem, it is not a short term problem. We know that no mater what we spend today, it will not have any affect for many years in the future. Spend today and "hope" to get paid back in the future. Obama wants to bankrupt us today and he does not care about the future. Any way that he can spend our countries wealth today, he goes for it. If our basic problem is short term, whey all the concern about the distant future. Watch how Obama convinces our dumb citizens that we have to spend now to save the "world" in the future. By the time we have any problem with global warming, there will be such an increase in population that most of us will die from starvation.

Second, look at coal. Obama is doing every thing that he can to kill the coal industry that makes 60% of our electricity. He figured out that both the "greenies" and "global warmers" are easy to fool. Notice that we still mine coal, but we sell it to China where they can burn it in antique power plants. How is that logic? Out of sight, out of mind. Our coal is basically free. The cost is digging it out of the ground. We have millions of people out of work who we are paying by borrowing money from China. Why don't we just put them to work digging the coal and "selling" the coal rather than borrowing money to pay them? Is that too logical for you?

Third, how about green energy? Notice how Obama takes advantage of this one too? We know that windmills and solar panels produce electricity, but at a cost at least 10 or 12 times that from coal. Notice how Obama kills two with one stone? He keeps the "greenies" happy while making energy more costly for everyone. Obama is smart and it is clear that he wants to bankrupt "our" country.

Fourth, I have a lot more. Take the pell grant program. This is government money that is given to kids to go to college and get brain washed. Recall that the 5 top degrees at the University of Wisconsin Madison are all worthless and have no future payback. They are Political Science, Communications, Psychology, English and History. Now is this investment going to payoff in the short term? No! Does the expenditure address our short term economic problem or make it worse? That is an easy one. Worse, and that is what Obama wants. He wants to bankrupt "our" country. Is it starting to become clear.

Fifth, How about drilling in the Gulf or in Alaska or "frac-ing" for natural gas? In all these cases, Obama and his people are preventing more exploration or production of energy. Here again, Obama calls out his backers, "Greenies" and "Global Warming" people, plus our union college professors and school teachers.

Sixth, How about economic stimulus? Obama called on a bunch of his college professor economists to support his position. If the professors were so smart and knew so much about economics, why don't we see them running businesses? Don't you think it is strange. Talk is cheap.

What most people do not understand is that the economy of every country is only a little bit better or worse than most others. It is like a professional football team. The difference between the winners and losers very little. It only takes a small advantage for one team or the other to win. It is the same with the economy of a big country. That is why Obama can do so much damage. It is like he took the fist string quarter back out of the game. Teams can lose a single player and that can make the difference between winning and losing. Obama has said to the unions that, "...I have your backs...". What would you think if you were a business man and your President said that about the unions?

Seventh, How about the unions? What if the unions were even more powerful? What if they could demand even high pay and benefits? It would make our products cost even more.

Connect the dots and see if you don't agree that Obama is killing our economy?

One Rungers

We have become a country of "One Rungers". Sounds bad and it is. Every day, I get a little closer to figuring this all out. I think that if I keep connecting the "Dots" that eventually I will have the clear picture. Remember the old puzzles where you used to connect the dots to figure out what the picture was? Well, the concept still works. You are probably wondering, just what is a "One Runger"? Before I get to that, I would like to tell a short story.

When I was a kid, I used to pick cotton along side of my father. He was a dust bowel and depression Okie, but he knew something about the "ladder of life". He knew that when we were both picking cotton that we were on the bottom "rung" of that ladder and to get ahead, we needed to figure out how to get to higher rungs on that ladder. He just worried about one rung at a time and he was able to climb that "ladder of life" until when he died, he had a net worth of several million dollars. I understood the concept of the "ladder of life" at an early age too and have one just like my father and climbed that ladder, one rung at a time. Having shoes to wear to school was just one more rung on that ladder. Now why is this story so important? Here is why.

When I was in graduate school, I studied economic systems optimization. Sounds like a big deal, but like most things, it was simple. The idea was to study systems and see how they could be optimized. That is go have the system produce as much as possible and at the lowest cost. When you look at the United States, that means that we are operating at our optimum when every individual is operating at their maximum potential. It is like a horse race where the idea is to get 10 horses over the finish line in the least amount of total time. The total time is the total of each horse's time all added together. In most horse races, that is exactly what happens. The race tends to be optimum. This all happens because there are rewards for the horses based on their finish times. The fastest horse gets more than the last horse, but they all get something. The last horse does not end up as dog food. It is a simple concept isn't? Now how does the "One Rung" thing come into this?

What we have with most of the people now in the United States is a bunch of "One Rungers". These are people who get on the first rung and just stay their. They don't seem to want to try to climb higher. If they have the basic ability to get to a higher rung and chose not to, it clearly sub optimizes the economic system. Follow me on that? Now it is even worse. If they just stayed on the first rung, that would be bad enough, but they want to get more pay for keeping on doing the same thing over and over. When I picked cotton, we got paid by the pound, so the more we picked, the more we got paid. We were still on the bottom rung, but we were getting a little higher. Labor unions are at the core of this problem. By forming a union and getting all their buddies to attempt to bankrupt the company, they can get paid more while staying one the "One Rung" and not producing any more. Notice than almost any job that can be done outside the United States has left and now we are left with only things that are more difficult to ship out. Medical and government workers are about the last big groups left. Home building held on for a while with big government incentives, but it finally collapsed too.

What we have to do is to figure out how we are going to get people to start trying to climb that ladder of life again. We used to have a lot of new immigrants who came here to climb that ladder, but no more. What we have now are mostly free loaders who want to be "One Rungers". School teachers at all levels are perfect examples of "One Rungers". Notice how unions have helped them. A teacher who started teaching a class o 25 2nd graders for $30,000 per year now wants to be paid much more for doing exactly the same thing. To try to justify this whole thing, the unions have created rules that require a raise if the 2nd grade teacher takes some extra credit class in the summer, yet they still teach the same 25 2nd graders. They even go one better and try to get the class size down to 20 kids and still get paid the same or more. Where is the logic in this? If I picked the cotton with just my left hand, should I get paid more per pound? This is what we are talking about.

I could go on with kids 20 years old who get truck driving jobs for the county or state and 20 years later they are still truck drivers, but what to be paid more just because they have gotten older. They still have to drive the speed limit, so where is the greater productivity?

What we have to do is to figure out how to penalize people who sit on "One Rung" when they are capable of climbing higher. Rewards help, but we can't reward people for staying on the same rung all their lives. To compete in the world, we have to try to "Optimize" our economic system and that means getting rid of "One Rungers".

Stupidity In The Heart Land

With all the focus on our national problems and all the bad news out of Washington DC, you would think that most of our problems are the result of decisions made in Washington DC. What I am finding out is that we are making just a bad of decisions right here in the heart land. I live a few miles from a small down where non state and county roads are maintained by the local township. You would think that at the township level of government that your own neighbors would be concerned about how they are spending their own neighbor's tax money, but they are not. Check this out?

I live at the end of a 1/4 mile long dead end gravel township road. It has been that way for over 100 years. It can get dusty at times but I have always been able to get home with two wheel drive. There is one other house on the road that is only used part time in the summer. The mail man drives down my road to deliver mail to the only active mailbox on the dead end road. Some friends feel sorry for me that I live on a dirt road, but it is just fine with me. The bottom line is that for just one active mail box on 1/4 mile long dead end road, it is not worth it to improve the road. This is where I have a problem with local stupidity.

Between my road and the small town, there is another dead end dirt road about 1/2 mile long that also has one active mailbox on it and the local township has decided to dig out all the big rocks and pave the road. I don't know what it has and will cost, but it is several times the amount of taxes paid by that one mailbox. It seems that all the people in the township will have to pitch in to pay for this special road job. This road is in an area where the ground can freeze on a cleared road down to as much as 6 feet deep. The freeze and thaw can cause rocks down that deep to be pushed to the surface. This meant that they had to clear these rocks down to a depth of 6 feet before they could start to prepare the road bed. This is a good idea, but it means the road base is not well settled and should remain gravel for a couple of year to allow settling. The township in their wisdom paved the road within about a week of clearing out the large rocks. Stupid again, but it was not their money. It was the money of their friends and neighbors. That is the sick part. The people on the town council are not only stupid, they are sick.

When you think about different types of roads, dead end roads are in a special class. Because they are dead end, 99% of any traffic on the road is only for those homes on the road. They do not serve any "thru" traffic as do other roads. This alone should make them a special class of road that should require special consideration when it comes to spending tax payer's money on them, but that does not seem to have happened in this local case.

My position is that if you can't control how tax money is spent at the local level in the heart land, then how can we expect any different from Washington DC? When I asked about the stupid decision about the road, they said that other people had their dead end roads paved, so why shouldn't they. It is one of the common excuses that we keep hearing. People answer a question with a question. I asked, "why are we wasting money paving this road". The answer that I get, "what about those guys in DC"? You can see that we are not going to resolve from the top down, so it is my position that we will have to solve it from the top down and that means local and individually.

PS-----
If the supervisors of this rural township were not so totally stupid, one of them would have loaned the road department one of their game cameras so that the traffic on this dead end dirt road could have been monitored. I drive by this dead end road several times a day and for a period of 10 years I have never seen a car either coming or going. My guess is that there is only one car that uses the dead end road and it goes in and out no more than twice a day. With a little vision, that they don't have, they could collect the traffic use on each township road and use that to guide them. They could even calculate something like "car miles". The average miles a car drives on a mile of township roads. A little 4th grade math would be all that they would need.

Who Sugar Coated The Black Community?

We need to open our eyes and be honest with each other. The United States is made up of a lot of different groups of people and one thing is certain. We are all in this together. How or when we got here is not the problem. The fact is that we are here. I limit this to those who came here legally. Breaking and entering is a felony in most states. I helped build the roads and schools and I don't want trespassers using my property. This blog is about the Black Community. Few are honest when they talk about the Black Community and that includes both Blacks and all others. I found out a long time ago that the first step in solving a problem is to, "admit that you have one". If you don't feel that the Black Community has a problem and the country has a problem with the Black Community, you are not being honest. What I want is an honest discussion that just might help find a solution.

In about 1975, I predicted that any progress that the Black Community had made in the past 200 years in the United State was going to be destroyed by the Black Community themselves. It is closing in on 40 years since I made that observation and it appears to be coming true. Normal people want a decent quality of life and they want their kids to do a little better than they have done. We all know that we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us and we respect that. As we get older, it is our shoulders that our kids and those after us will stand on. When you think about this, if it does not humble you, you don't have American blood in your veins. My forefathers were Scotts and Native Americans, but now me and my children consider ourselves Americans. Everything in our bodies came from the soil of America. We are Americans. We are proud and responsible at the same time and that is the reason that I feel we have to admit there is a problem with the Black Community and we have to be honest about it. We are all Americans.

I know my history and I know that most of the countries of South America imported a higher percentage of slaves from Africa that did British America. Slavery was legal in all countries of South and Central America while it was never legal in North America for more than half the states. That is a fact. For the past 150 years the quality of life has been better here in America than almost any other place in the world, yet the Black Community does not appear to have shared in that life. Why? Most of us believe in the same God, yet something is different. Why do we have a Black Caucus in our government? Why not a Scottish caucus? What is this separation that we condone?

As I have blogged in the past, most things are simple. Governments and laws can't make me want to plant a garden or tend my bee hives, nor can they make me study hard and try to do well in school. I make those decisions for myself. Even my parents have had little influence. I am curious and want to better understand the wonderful world around me. As I have stated in the past, I have slept under bridges and in tent
in fruit orchards, but that was not who I was inside. I don't know what it was, but I have been around the world more than once and seen things that I never thought in a million years I would see. I have owned airplanes and yachts and sailed almost every ocean, but that is not the point. It is something inside of a person that makes then try and when stopped to try even harder. What is it about the Black Community that so few seem to have, what ever it is, inside of them. I don't know what it is, but few in the Black Community seem to have it. It is not just IQ. IQ is over rated as is a college education. What I am talking about happens when you are under 10 years old. Now I am not an expert on any of this, I have just paid attention for the past 70 years and am now trying to connect the dots. People like me have a responsibility to try to connect the dots because we are the only ones who really can.

Back In 1975 there was an article in the Scientific American magazine about the out of wedlock births with in the Black Community. In 1975, it was 50% and had risen from only 5% in 1940. I had no idea why there was this big change, but I knew at the time that it would cancel out any progress the Black Community had made up to that point and I have been proven right. What caused the sudden rise in out of wedlock births? It has gone on to get much worse, but why? It has to be something inside of a person to let themselves be a part of such a thing. What changed? How does the Black Community dig out of such a deep hole? In 1975 Black kids who were 20 years old were born back in 1955 when the rate was less than 10%. 20 year old Black kids who are 20 years old now were born in 1990 when the rate was over 80%. I have 5 children and I can tell you what a job it was for two parents to raise those 5. How can it be done outside of a normal marriage? Even so, some Black kids have that something inside of them that allows them to go on to have normal lives and a decent quality of life, but why do so few have it?

The drop out rate for Blacks is many times that of other American, why? The schools are free and it is where most of us learn the most important things in our lives. I'm over 70 and I rely on what I learned thru 12th grade more than I do on what I learned in college or graduate school. I am sure that is true for most people, so why does the Black Community turn their backs on this important opportunity to have a better quality of life? That is my question.

I could go onto drugs and crime, but it would just be piling on. We know there is a serious problem and yet no one seems willing to come forward with a solution. I know that the solution is not going to come from the outside because this is a problem that is inside each Black person in the Black Community. I found what it was in me by about age 8 and that was before I knew anything about politics, money or wealth, so it is not that. Rather than blast me with foul comments, why don't you blast me with ideas because if, that some thing, does not some how get inside more in the Black Community it is only going to get worse and as an American that is not why we are all here.

Honey Bees, Ants, Macro and Micro Economics

With the big economic crisis, we need to step back and see if we can see the "Forest". I have studied Economics like many of you in our major universities and have never felt that they had the answers that they claimed. In the Ivory Towers, the heads of those running the place seem to grow with the size of their budgets. Did you ever hear one of the them say that they did not really understand what was going on in the area of economics? No! Their heads were too big to admit that they did not understand the situation. Notice, also, that they all teach the same thing and that is some kind of central control. Isn't it also interesting how we have much the same with religion, central control. My point is that if there is central control, then there is a place where a person with a big head can command power. We all want power don't we? Some more than others and if there is no need for central control, then there can be no central power and we all know that central power is stronger than non-central power. What we need to do is to test this whole idea of central power and see how well it has done in running things. I am going to use some simple examples that I hope with carry the point.

First, let's take an inanimate problem. It has just rained a lot here and I noticed that most of the water has ended up in the river next to my house. Now, I know that rain is just water that fell from the sky and each molecule is separate and has no brain or what to communicate with other molecules of water, but the rain ended up in the river. How can that be? Don't we need some central government telling each molecule of water what to do? No! The reason why is that the movement of water is a distributed system with each molecule of water already knowing what do do. Each rain drop follows the rules of physics and runs down hill. When it comes to an obstruction, it accumulates there and each molecule waits its turn to flow on farther down stream. Did you ever see a stream running up hill? I don't know of a system of control that works better than rain water running down hill. The problem with this concept is that there is no place for one molecule to have power over another. Man wants power and trys to dam up the flow, but it still follows the same old rules and tries to run down hill. Dull, but I have my point.

I am a bee keeper and like to watch the bees collecting honey. There is a Queen bee in the hive and a bunch of boy bees called Drones, but they don't run the hive. No one runs the hive. Each bee already knows what the do and they do it all by themselves. Nature is full of systems like this and the key point is that they have worked just fine for millions of years. Can you think of a single human system that has worked for even 500 years? No! The problem with human systems is that someone always wants to get hold of power and run everyone elses business. Wives try to do this and so do mother in laws. It is a natural thing for us humans to want to have power and run things and tell others what to do. In the end it never works.

We all have our individual motivations. Think about this. How can a person in Washington DC command you to get better grades in school or go get a job or to work harder on that job? They can't, but they keep trying and many think that they are smarter than you. Even if they are, it does not make any difference, it still won't work. The honey bee did not need a Queen telling them to haul a bigger load of honey or to search farther out for better flowers. The single bee with his small brain figured all this out and did the right thing. Look at an Ant hill and you will see the same thing. Most people don't want someone telling them what to do, but some people with very big heads still want to try. Many have convince themselves that it is for your own good and no matter how much it hurts, it is still good for you.

The problem with Macro Economics is that it never answers the question of what make a person get up at 5:00am and go out and milk a bunch of stinking cows and do that twice a day 365 days a year. Macro Economics is like a rope. It can stop the person from getting up at 5:00am, but if the person does not want to get up they can't push him to do it with the rope. I used to teach Micro-Economics and that all made perfect sense, but Macro-Economics never made any sense because I could not connect it to the individual actions of people. You hear about the "invisible hand". Why does it have to be invisible? If they know what they are talking about, then just come right out with it.

Our country and the world have serious problems and Macro-Economics will not be the answer unless it is to get government and those who want power over people out of the way. We need to revisit the rules of nature and see why they don't seem to be working. These are the rules that affect individuals, independent of government. Why do so many of our kids drop out of high school? We need to answer that. Why do our kids do drugs? Why? Why do parents allow their kids to take college degrees that are worthless? Why are we not more like the honey bees? Do we need some kind of King or Queen in Washington DC to tell us what to do and think? Everyone seems to be focused on the King in Washington DC when they should be looking at their selves in the mirror. Remember my blog on Vince Lombardi? This is a "one on one" game that we are in and don't you forget it. Remember the honey bee system has worked for millions of years and no human invented system has worked for more than 500 years.

World Wide Economic Crisis

It appears very clear that we now have a world wide economic crisis. It looks to me like is will eventually have the same impact as the 1929 crash. Don't think so? How did the 1929 world wide crash finally end? What was the cure? Don't know? Most of the world hit rock bottom, like Germany, Japan, Russia, China and Europe after WWII. The people in these countries were cold and hungry just like we were in 1929. Why did Germany and Japan "start" WWII? Don't know that one either? Energy--Oil--Economics. When people are desperate, they do desperate things. 1929 and WWII were bad, real bad, but it could be worse now.

Now the population of the world is much larger than it was back then. All of the Earth's natural resources now have to be divided up among more people and we have already used up a lot of them, so the amount per person is very much smaller. When I was poor, like many people who were poor, I did not realize how poor I was. Now most people of the world know how poor they are and they don't like it. That is the main reason that we have such hot competition from around the world. They know that a better life is possible. I did not think it was possible when I was poor. Getting off the subject.

As the world's population has grown and the "good life" standard has gone up more want and expect the "good life". This is what I call a "double whammy". To drive the world's economies to the level required to provide the "good life" has meant that all of our systems have gotten a lot more brittle. You know what I mean by brittle. It means that now fewer pegs have to be pulled out to bring down the system than it did in the old days. Further, it will fall faster and harder now. If you watch the talking heads on TV, they are always looking back and making judgments based on a different "system state" than we have now. If they understood the "system" rather than the history of where the system had been, they might come up with the right answers. It is like watching where a fly has been and try to predict where he will go next. All systems engineers know that when you have a big complex system that you don't fully understand, it is critical not to make sudden changes. Obama is the biggest change that I have seen in my life. He does not have a clew about what he is doing or the full impact of his actions. If he is guided by Econ 101 or some Political Science class he took in school, there is no hope.

I made a prediction of those counties that will remain standing after all this has played out. Do you remember who they were and what facts that they had that would help them survive? Look it up. Of the big players, Russia is at the top of my list along with Canada. The USA will be there, but not one of the top players. Brazil will be there, but not on top. What were the factors? Energy, Food, Water, Low population density and Education will be the currency of the future. Who has them will be around. There will not be much left for the others. Sorry.

It is going to be interesting. I have my survival garden, do you?

Economics And Vince Lombardi

The problem with our President, Obama, is that he was too young to have learned a very important lesson from Vince Lombardi. His philosophy was very simple. You know me, "simple is beautiful" and it was the same with Vince. He told his teams that all they had to do was to defeat the person across the line from them and they would win. To him, it was a "one on one" game. Isn't that simple? Note also, that the Japanese Samurai had exactly the same philosophy. Now how does all this apply to economics and the situation in the USA?

As I pointed out in the past, we are in a contest with the rest of the world for our our way of life and our standard of living. The basic question is whether or not we can defeat the person across the line from us? It is as simple as that. Can you or your kids defeat the person across from them? We have to answer that. Let's use South Korea as the team across the line from us and see how we stack up. First, 99+% of their kids complete high school compared to only about 60% of our kids. Based on this fact alone, my guess is that they will easily roll over us. If you were to stack 10 of their kids up against 10 of our kids, it might look like this. Four of our kids would not even be on the playing field because they are drop outs. Now of their 10 kids compared to our 6 kids. Their quality of basic education is so much higher than ours that only one of our kids is equal to their average. It would be like our high school team up against a pro or college team. We would lose.

Next, let's look at another point and that is these 4 drop outs. It is going to take at least 2 of the 6 high school graduates to feed and imprison the 4 drop outs. That only leaves us with 4 high school graduates to help move our economy ahead. The reason this is so serious is that even if we were to get our 1st graders upto the level of South Korea tomorrow, it would be over 25 years before we would start to see any payback. I don't see anyway that we could get our 1st graders up to level of South Korea in 10 years and that would mean we would not see any payback before 35 years from now. See how bad it is?

How about teen agers getting knocked up out of wedlock or having babies that they can not afford to raise. In the USA, it is about 20% and within the black community it is about 75%. In South Korea it is "zero". Do you think that single point gives them an advantage against us in this economic contest? If you don't you must be smoking something. Notice how the Obana's have a big campaign to get our kids to lose weight, but don't seem concerned about drop outs and teens getting knocked up?

I could go on making more factor comparisons with South Korea or most any other of our economic competitors, but the conclusion would be the same. Look in the mirror and tell me who you could defeat "one on one"? Remember the blog about "Shopping"? That was where you went to the store and checked out the products there that you could make cheaper? Did you find one? That is the type of "one on one" thing that Vice Lombardi taught.

Obama's New Gas Mileage Standards

Did you know that Obama is going to save us and the future of the county by mandating that we increase the average gas mileage of our cars? Just how that is going to save us, I am not sure. When I talk to my school teacher friends, they all say that, "it is about time we had cars that get better gas mileage". They seem to agree that Obama is going to save them and provide them with cheaper gas. Most of the world pays more for gas than we do, so why do we feel so bad? In past blogs, I pointed out that no matter what Obama does, he is not going to reduce the price of gas. How about a little 4th grade math on the subject?

Let's start off with a car that now costs $20,000 and gets 35 miles per gallon. Obama wants that car to get 40 miles per gallon. Isn't that a good idea? Again, my school teacher friends bow down and kiss the ground under Obama's feet. I don't think they did all that well in 4th grade math or those awful word problems. The car that now costs $20,000 will increase to $25,000. There is no free lunch except in the school cafeteria. If we figure that the buyer drives his cars 100,000 miles and at the end, they are both worth $5,000, we have a nice word problem. Also figure gas at $4.00 per gallon. The question that we need to ask is, "how much does it cost to drive each car one mile?"

We have to take into account the cost of the car and the cost of gas. For the $20,000 car, we will consume $15,000 of its original value driving the 100,000 miles. That works out to $0.15 per mile and for the Obama car, it is $0.20 per mile. Now we save gas on the Obama car and that works out to only $0.10 per mile for a total of $0.30 per mile for the Obama car. Isn't this math just great? Now for the Old car that only gets 35 miles per gallon. It will cost $0.114 per mile for gas so that it has a total of $0.264 per mile.

How can that be that I save money on the old car? The Obama car will cost my family more, but wait. We are going to save the world by buying the Obama car and all my school teacher friends think that is just fine. It will be just one more reason that they will need a "small" raise in pay next year.

When I talk to my rich capitalistic friends who run companies that hire people and who pay most of the taxes that support my union school teacher friends, I get a much different answer. They don't purchase either the $20,000 car or the Obama $25,000 car. They go out a buy an old used car for $5,000 that only gets 30 miles per gallon. That is about what my E320 gets. These old cars are better than most people think and my friends plans on getting 100,000 more miles out of it. I have 248,000 miles on my old E320. The cost per mile for this old car is only $0.05 per mile for the basic car and $0.13 for gas for a total of only $0.18 per mile. This is almost half that of the Obama car.

If I were to add in the cost of insurance knowing that the new cars might have collision while the old car does not need it, the advantage of the old car would be even bigger compared to the Obama car.

The bottom line is that in the economic contest that we are in with the rest of the world, we have to make good economic decisions and Obama and most of those who voted fore him are not. Our way of life and our standard of living are the result of winning in this economic contest and we can't opt out and take our ball and go home in the one. In the past, having a two big oceans on both sides of us allowed us to do our won thing and not consider most of the rest of the world. We took all this "free" land and resources and had an advantage over most of the world for a very long time. That original wealth was divided among a very small number of people so we were individually very rich. Much of that original wealth has been used up and what was left has been divided up further (4th grade math). It is a contest whether you want to be in it or not so get used to it. Doing more dumb things is not the answer. Smart talks and dumb walks.

Big Savings In Higher Education

Many of you disagree with me and I respect that, but why don't you have a proposal on how to reduce government spending? When I use the term government, I mean government at all levels not just in Washington DC. It is my position that education in the USA has failed us. If you disagree with that flat statement, there is no reason to read on. We rank no better than 25th in the world, yet we spend more per kid than any other country. How do you reconcile that? 40% of our kids don't even complete high school. How do you reconcile that? The top 5 majors based on degrees issued are all "bull shit" degrees that cost as much as real degrees, yet the student will never earn enough to pay back to the tax payers the cost of the degree. Even in the better degrees like Doctors, we now import over 60% of our doctors while at the same time we have the highest cost for medical services in the world. How do you reconcile that one? Even though we have continued to spend more money per student, since 1986, the total number of engineering graduates has gone down. This is in the face of the fact that we have never had more foreign students in our engineering schools. How do you reconcile that? The only conclusion that I can draw from the facts is that our education system has failed us. Our kids and their parents are dumb, period. Foreign students come here and eat the cream off the top while our stupid kids take "bull shit" majors if they go to college at all. We used to have a lot of smart foreign students come here to further their education and stay, but now more go back home with their knowledge that we paid for.

Obama knows that most of American voters are stupid and he plays on that fact. It has been the history of Americans to look for the good in people and give them the benefit of the dought. We turn the other cheek or don't say anything if we can't say something good. We are stupid. We have our heads in the sand. Obama was raised outside the USA where people there do not think like us. They know Americans are stupid and lazy and so does Obama. Notice how he is willing to bull shit the American people about our debit situation knowing that they are stupid and will eat it up. A real American would treat the voters with more respect, but when Obama knows that they are stupid, why not treat them like stupid people? Perfect logic.

Are you starting to see the significance of the failure of our educational system? We care more about football and soccer than we do about education. Every small town paper has a big local sports section and don't spend any time on real education issues, except more pay for union teachers as if that would solve our education problems.

If we were serious about education, we would fire every PE teacher and dump all sports programs from our schools. Radical? It is so bad that we are going to have to do something radical. How many of the professional baseball coaches have PE degrees? None? How many professional basketball coaches have PE degrees? None. It is a worthless degree and we all know it so why to we have union PE teachers in all of our schools. Ask yourself this simple question. "What were the 3 most significant things that I learned in school from my PE teacher?" 99% of people can't think of one. What would be the loss if we dumped them all? Nothing. In the worst case, if it really turned out that they did something worth while, we could hire some back. Ever notice how many school principles and school administrators were first PE teachers? Looks like great preparation to me to be able to run our schools. Look around and wake up.

The Big Budget Compromise

You are starting to see the "big budget compromise" and what do you think about it? I don't have a problem with compromises, but there is one thing that we always need first. "What is right?" If you are going to compromise, you need to first figure out "what is right".

Take this simple example. My position is that I plan on shooting you in the head two times. You ask that we come to some kind of compromise and I agree. I will only shoot you in the head once. How is that? This is what we are talking about, but you never hear anyone asking any of the parties what their "real" solution is. I have seen this many times over the years where people start with the compromise and never consider a "real" right position. IO ask, how can you know how far you have compromised if you don't first know where ground "zero" is? That is the problem.

I saw some interviews with our congressmen who said that they were not satisfied with the compromise that they had to make. The person who conducted the interview never asked them how far from what they felt was the "real" solution that they had to compromise. We have to all have some kind of base line that we use to make our decisions from.

If your kid did not get good grades in school, when do you clamp down? You have to have some kind of base line or the kid will never know where you stand on anything. It is no different when it comes to the future of this country. Where is that base line? How much of your earnings are you willing to give to people who are in class (3)? This is from a prior blog. People who have made stupid decisions with their lives and now want you, who have been responsible to bail them out. I don't feel that I own them anything and you should not either. I do not believe in religion, but one of the teachings is that "god helps those who help themselves". My father was a person who tried to help may people who appeared to be in the same position that he had earlier found himself. He was in class (2) and he tried to help those who were in class (3). I watched as I saw his efforts amount to nothing. He could not help those who would not first help themselves. If you don't agree, you are some kind of dreamer. You can try to help them, but it has to be with your own money, not mine.

This has gotten a little off track, but is is the same thing. Our basic problem is that we are spending too much on people who don't seem to want to help them selves. That is where the cuts need to come in the budget. The problem is that these people can vote and they vote in people like Obama who will take the tax money from people who have acted responsibly and worked hard and give it to those in class (3). It is real simple and we have to figure out some way to stop it before it brings us all down.

As a side point, I just got back from spending a few days at the EAA fly in Oshkosh, Wi. There were over a million people there and more than 25% were from outside the USA. In the days that I was there, I never saw a single piece of trash on the ground. I never saw a anything except grass and clean dirt. Not a single chewing gum wrapper. Not one of the over a million people there failed to put every single piece of their trash into the garbage cans that were there. Who were these strange people who took such good care of things? They were responsible Americans and people from all over the world who were also responsible. We are talking about more than a million people of all ages here. If we can put together such a group in Oshkosh, Wi, then why is it so hard to have people like this all over the USA? That is the problem.

I talked to some people from Canada and after a while, when they felt comfortable with me, they asked, " what is going on with you Americans?" They were wondering why we were suddenly acting so strange. I told them that we have an "affirmative action President" and that is what you get when a President is not based on "merit". That ended the conversation and they knew all that they needed to know and so do you.

Self Imposed Poverty

AS I look at it, there are three basic kinds of poverty.
(1) You have a serious birth related handicap and can not earn a living.
(2) You are the victim of some major event, but have the ability to dig your way out over time.
(3) Your personal conduct and choices have prevented you from making a living.

I don't have a problem helping those in class (1) and (2). The ones in class (1) are long term charity cases that the human race has always had to deal with. We never needed the government to help us with these and we still don't. People have been born blind and handicapped in may ways and most were still able to earn a portion of their keep. It was personal pride that drove most of them. They accepted the help, but would have rather taken care of their own needs.

Class (2) is a group who are only in trouble for a limited period of time. My family was a victim of the great depression, the 1918 flu epidemic and the dust bowl all at the same time, but it was temporary. 100% of those who were in the worst imaginable poverty have all dug their way out by their own efforts and a little help from friends. These types of groups are going to come and go as they have done for millions of years and the solution to their problem did not require any big government program.

Now for class (3), these are those who have figured out how to game the system and not work or have made such stupid decisions in their lives that they now find them selves on the outside looking in. You can name the stupid decision that they have made, like dropping out of school, doing drugs, getting pregnant out of wedlock, getting aids or some other self inflicted decease or getting into crime. The problem that we now have in the United States is that we now have many more of class (3) and they have the right to vote. We now have a class of politicians who go after this group and buy their votes with the tax money from everyone else who has acted responsibly. In the old days there was a way to take care of class (3) and that was the Darwin Principle. They died off over time and were eliminated from the gene pool.

Sounds like tough medicine, but it did work and the human race went on. If we continue down this path, I am not sure that the human race will go on in the form that we have all known. When confronted with a problem, I like to see if I can find a solution, a real solution. I then like to confront others to come up with their "real solutions" and then debate the merit of both. The problem that I am finding more and more is that there is no one to debate with because they do "not" have any "real solutions". To keep doing what we are now doing with public tax money to support class (3) has only one ending and that is that we will all be broke. We just might be there right now.

How do we reduce or eliminate class (3)? If we don't and just keep spending money, you know what will eventually happen. It might be interesting to look at the incentives for people either not get into class (3) in the first place or to get out once they are in. I was in class (2) at one time and I did not need much help to get out and I think that it is the same for most people in class (3). I was hungry and cold and did not have shoes to wear to school, so by age 6 or 7 I figured out that I need to get out of the mess that I was in. I had a shoe shine kit that I used to earn enough money to pay for the movies. I used to also be able to buy a "Big Hunk" too. It was the largest candy bar for the money so that is why I bought them. I never bought popcorn, because it was mostly air and I could make it at home. We even parched field corn in an old iron frying pan for a treat. I had a friend who had a cast iron "gun" that you could put corn in and then drive in a wooden plug and when heated in the fire, steam from the hot corn would blow out the plug and we would have "puffed" corn. Remember that "puffed wheat" was shot from guns. I know what poor is and I don't need someone explaining it to me. I also so know the way out and I don't need someone explaining to me that I don't know what I am talking about.

The problem we have is that the people who are explaining the problem and the solution have themselves, never been in class (2) or (3). Think about it?

PS---Look at Obamacare in terms of my three groups above.  The number of people in class (1) is very small and 90% are now covered by donations.  If class (1) is 5%, then Obamacare could cover as many as 10%x5% = 0.5%.  We can afford that much.  Class (2) might be as big as 5% too, but these people only need help for a very short time.  Class (3) is getting bigger and bigger and what Obamacare is going to do is to make this class even larger.  If you really have a big heart, I could go along with helping this group for 30 days and if after that they did not have a clear path and will to help themselves, I would cut them off.  Look in the mirror and tell me how you could "vote" to have the sheriff go to the home of a "responsible" person and take their money at gun point to be given to a person in class (3)?  I have too much honesty to do that even if I had the power to do it.  How about you?