Gray Squirrels And Muslim Terrorists

What do Gray Squirrels and Muslim terrorists have in common?  A lot more than you might think!  That is what this blog is about.

First, look at what President Trump wants to do.  He wants to put a temporary hold on immigrants from several predominantly Muslim countries.  The main reason is that their governments have failed and thus we have no way to confirm that they are not terrorist.  Here is where the Gray Squirrel comes in.  If the Muslims in these countries were Gray Squirrels, we could analyse them by color and not let in "Black" squirrels, which are the bad ones.   See how easy this would be?  I know that you have seen Black squirrels.

Now, let's move on to when we let in the good Gray Squirrels from these Muslim countries.  I know that you would feel safe, because that all we let in were the "good" Gray Squirrels and no "bad" Black squirrels, but this might be a problem.  Did you know that a small percentage of squirrels born to Gray Squirrel parents turn out to be "Black"!  That means that "good" Gray Squirrel parents can have a terrorist offspring.  This is exactly what now happens with the Muslims that we have let immigrate into the United States have done.  See the problem?

How sure do you have to be that Gray Squirrels will not have a "Black" terrorist child?  We know that we can't be 100% sure about the Gray Squirrels that we let in!  If that is the case, what odds are you willing to play with the life of your wife or kids?  Would you go along with 100 to 1 odds?  That means the odds that the Muslim family living next door might come over and kill one of your kids is 1 in 100.  How about 1,000 to 1?  Like those odds?  You make your kids wear a helmet when they ride their bike with the odds of the helmet saving your kid is about a million to one.  There is no way that you can get the odds down to 1,000 to 1 if the ones you let in are Gray Squirrels.

Remember that Great Britten just had one of these "Black" Squirrels set off a bomb that killed over 25 young people.  You have to ask, "what kind of safety are you willing to give up to allow Muslims immigrants to move in next door to you?  How much pleasure do you get from this new neighbor?  What did the Muslim immigrant give you or your children as "pay back" for the right to be your next door neighbor?  Was it worth it?

The bottom line is that Gray Squirrels have Black squirrel off springs and there is no way to stop or predict it.  The only reason that Black squirrels are born here is that we let in Gray Squirrels in in the first place.  No amount or type of screening can prevent Gray Squirrels from producing Black off springs next door to you.  Think about that!

PS---How do you get rid of "Black" squirrels?  You have to get rid of Gray Squirrels and don't let in any more Gray Squirrels.  I have a problem with Black squirrels at my bird feeder and to get rid of them, I shoot all the Gray squirrels that visit my bird feeder.  I have  been doing this for years and now, I don't have anymore Black squirrels.

Economists, Wake Up,

I have been following economics all my life and no one yet has come up with a theory that connects all the dots.  Here is another point.

We always keep hearing about "Economic Growth", but what does it really mean?  It only compares the current period with some period in the past.  It tells you a little, but not as much as most people think.  Look at a situation where you have "negative" growth.  Is that bad?  May be and may be not.  If the size of the population is gong down by more than the decline in the economy, the average person has a bigger piece of pie and that is "good".  Russia and Japan are a little like that.  Their population has been going down while their economy has be staying the same or going up a little.  That means that the Russians and Japan are better off and that is "good".

Look at a "positive" economic growth situation.  Is that "good" or "bad"?  It depends doesn't it?  Here in the United States, our economy has been growing, but so has our population.  Think of all the "poor" immigrates we have let in, plus all those who are here illegally?  Under these conditions, we know that the median income and net worth have both gone down.  That sounds "bad" to me.

Here is another thing.  We have businesses going out of business every day.  We don't make buggy whips anymore or have very many weaving looms.  If we lose 1% or 2% of our jobs by companies going out of business every year, we would need that same level of new growth to just make up for those that died.  Simple isn't it?  If that is the case, why do we never hear the smart economist talking about the "death rate" of existing businesses?  We know this kind of thing happens because we have all kinds of depressed towns like Gary, Indiana.  The businesses closed and no new business came to pick up the slack.  Isn't that what we have in West Virginia now as a result of the war on coal?

How about this one?  The economy grows, but the rate of automation is faster than the growth rate.  In this case we have a lot of people out of work and on welfare.  Did you ever hear a smart economist taking specifically about the rate of automation and that we needed to grow faster than that rate or we will end up with a lot of people out of work?   Do economist think that we are all so stupid that we could not understand what is going on economically if they told us the whole story?  You tell me.

I blogged before about the "currency" of the future economy will be intellect.  I think that you recall that.  Did you ever hear a smart economist explain why the spread in income is going to keep getting worse and that there is not much that can be done about it?  Again, I did not think so.  You would think that after we invested trillions of dollars in student college loans that we would now have more "intellect" to power our economy, but we don't.  We still import well over half of our doctors and we still have a major shortage of engineers and technical people.  The student loan program could not stop the trend, but it should have at least slowed it down.  Did you hear any smart economist explaining how we made a very big mistake with the student loan program by "not" focusing on the skills that our future economy needs?  I did not think so.

The bottom line is that our colleges and universities seem to have a monopoly on economic thought and it is my position that they have let us all down.  There does not seem to be any "smart" economists in our colleges and universities after all!!!

PS--Another point.  Years ago, many people held the same job most of their lives and may have had only one or two jobs during that time.  Today my kids have had almost a dozen jobs and they are only about halfway thru their careers. This is proof that the rate of death and birth of new businesses has increased significantly.  All we hear from our smart economists is that people put out of work need "retraining".  Do you ever hear them discuss the payback for "retraining" or the ratio of time to train vs the working life of that training?  I did not think so.  we used to spend about 5 to 8 years of school to prepare a person for 40 or 50 years of productive work.  Today, the ratio for a typical medical doctor is 25 or 30 years of school for 25 or 30 years of productive work.  In the limit, you know that no economy can afford those kinds of ratios and that is exactly where we are headed.  Why don't our smart economists tell us how we are going to deal with this clear fact?

Problem With Doctors

We have a problem with doctors in the United States.  Don't think so?  Read the rest of my blog.

First off, we need to understand the mindset of most of our doctors today.  It is very expensive to go thru medical school and as a result, a disproportionate percentage of our doctors come from richer families.  They would make you think that our doctors are cut from some high IQ cloth, but they are not.  If you look at our colleges and universities that have the highest tuition and the richest parents of students, you will also find that they are the most "liberal".  That is not bad on the face of it, but it has other implications.  There is some thing deep in the thinking of most liberals and that is "perfection".  They are like spoiled babies, which many are, who are not satisfied by common things.  They do not look forward to a camp out in the woods and sleeping on the ground.  They want to visit Europe or some other expensive place.  They look for the "perfect" dress rather than one they can afford like the poorer person.  I blogged on Obamacare and how liberals think that everyone has a "right" to state of the art health care".  This is like "perfect" health care.  If most of the people want President Trump to enforce our immigration laws and deport people who are here illegally, liberals only want the "really" bad ones deported.  Further, they don't want the government to make a single mistake and deport a "good" person.  They would rather not deport anyone if it meant that a one "good" person would be deported in the process.  Are you starting get an idea of the mindset of a liberal?  Do-Gooders fit into the same class and that is where many of our doctors come in.  They are part of  a "double" selection process where the "rich" and "Do-Gooder" come together.

Now, how does this affect our medical system.  Let's start with the Hippocratic Oath.  It says that it is better to do nothing rather than take a chance of doing something bad for the patient.  Does this sound more like a covering the doctor's ass first rather than taking care of the patient?  I know that doctors are afraid of Lawyers and thus they carry big and expensive malpractice insurance policies.  By practicing defensive medicine, it reduces the chances of having a run in with a lawyer and that is exactly what they do.  Are you starting to see why they hide behind their "oath"?

Have you noticed how doctors today run all kinds of expensive tests and yet our life expectancy here in the United States is going "down"?  Do any of you remember the days when doctors made house calls?  They came with their little black bag and you paid them in cash before they left.  I was just talking to an older local doctor about when he started practicing medicine and he said that he charged $30 for a house call back then.  I have a vet for my horses who makes house calls and can do ultra sounds to determine the sex of a foal for about $100.  In India, people can do the same thing for less than $10 at their local drug store.  What does it cost here?  Once I had the vet out to take a blood sample so that I could test to see if my horse carried a gene for a serious genetic problem.  The total cost including the testing was about $100.  If you were to have this done on one of your children, it would have cost over $1,000.  What is going on here?

I just went to a doctor at a major medical clinic and told her that I had all the clinical symptoms of  Lymes disease, but on the basis of a negative Lymes disease blood test, she refused to give me a prescription for the medicine to cure my Lymes disease.  How is that?  Everyone who lives in an area where Lymes disease is common knows that the blood test for Lymes disease is very unreliable.  Listening to me explain my clinical symptoms took no more than 5 minutes while her blood and urine test took a day and half and cost me 20 times as much!  Do we have a problem with doctors in the United States, or what?

Here is the decision alternative situation:

(1) No Lymes-------------------No Pills

(2) No Lymes-------------------Yes Pills

(3) Yes Lymes------------------No Pills

(4)  Yes Lymes------------------Yes Pills

Look at the table.  Which is the "perfect" answer?  Can't figure it out?  It is (4) and (1), but what my doctor did was to take answer (3)!  Why did she do this?  Because she was afraid of (2) than she was (3).  Now, think about the impact of (2) and (3)?  Under alternative (3) I could die or have permanent health damage.  Under (2) I could develop a strain of a disease in my body that could not be cured easily with standard medicine.  Realize that I am 77 years old and am going to die of something in a few more years  ( I hope not).  The only explanation is that the doctor is more concerned about being sued than about my health.  In the case of being sued, she has insurance.  What do I have?  Nothing. Does this example start to show you the problem that we have with our medical system?

PS--I found another doctor who only looked at the clinical symptoms for Lymes and got the correct medicine in less than one hour,  What a system!

PS--Here is another key point about doctors.  90% of their knowledge is "empirical", which means it is based of the memorization of examples,  Most science is based on "analytical" knowledge that is based on principles that apply universally.  You can't solve "new" problems with "empirical" knowledge, but you can with "analytical" knowledge.  In college you learn "analytical" knowledge by experimenting, where as, you learn "empirical" knowledge by memorization.  This is why kids who can memorize for a big test are the ones who get into medical schools and the ones good in math and physics are the ones who get into engineering schools.  With "empirical" knowledge, you can see backwards but not forward, where as "analytical" knowledge allows one to see "both" ways'!!

Lymes Disease

I know that many of you never heard of Lymes Disease.  It is very common in my area and is transmitted by ticks.  The name of Lymes comes from the fact that it was first identified in Lymes Massachusetts.  It is a very insidious disease with varied symptom.  It affects the central nervous system and can cause death.  That is what this blog is about.

I live in an area where Lymes is common and I had Lymes a couple of years ago.  It made every joint in my body hurt, much like arthritis.  I had other typical symptoms and went to a nurse who gave me a prescription for antibiotics that arrested my symptoms in about 10 days.  I ended up with a few extra pills, which I saved. Now, about two years latter, I have Lymes disease again.

I used the pills that I had saved and the symptoms started going down immediately. The problem was that I did not have enough pills to totally cure my case of Lymes.  I went to the pharmacy where I had gotten to try to get my prescription to see it could be refilled.  I was told that I needed a "new" prescription.  I next went to my local clinic to see if they could approve it and was told that I needed to schedule a session with one of their doctors.  My pharmacy told me that a new prescription would cost about $45 and that it would sell for about $25 in Canada.  When I asked how much a session with their doctor would cost, they did not know.  They said that they would send me a bill after the session.  Ny guess is that it would cost at least $250.

Since I had a similar session with a doctor a few years ago, I know how the session would go.  A nurse would check my blood pressure and pulse and when the doctor came in, he or she would ask me some questions about my symptoms and I would give simple oral answers.  Based on that, I would get a prescription for the medicine.  My question is, wouldn't it be exactly the same if I mailed the doctor a note stating my symptoms and signed it?  There is no way that the doctor could determine if I was telling the truth about my symptoms or not, so what would be wrong with a signed statement.  I was not required to sign any documents in as part of the original visit, so what evidence did the doctor have that he or she made the correct decision?

Here is the significance of all this.  Because the pharmacy knew that they had me over a barrel and that I had to fill my prescription with them, they could charge me "extra".  They knew that I needed thr medicine and was in a weak negotiating position.  It was the same with the doctor.  I went to "WebMD" and read all about the symptoms and the treatments, I knew as much as the original nurse knew.  Had our medical monopoly been more honest, the pharmacy could have accepted my signed statement to protect his butt and could have filled my prescription.  With this kind of free market system, my total cost would have been something like $30 or $40 instead of a total of about $325.  It is no wonder the medical system in the United States costs so much more than the rest of the world.  I did not even consider the wasted time from the time I had the first Lymes symptoms and the cost of my time to take off work and go to the clinic.  Doctors and the medical system forget that my time is valuable too!

Several years ago, I asked one of my doctors if they had ever heard of Bayes Theorem and you know what the answer was!  She had never heard of it!  All most doctors do is to apply treatment protocol right out of their "book".  The system forgets that, I can read the book too.

PS--How about a new chapter?  I went to a famous clinic today to see if I could get my prescription filled.  I told them my symptoms, but that was not enough.  They did a blood and  urine test that showed every thing was normal.  The actual Lymes test will not be ready until tomorrow, so I still do not have my prescription!  Exactly how sure does a doctor have to be before they will approve a prescription?  Is he more concerned about his own ass rather than mine?  I think we need to all ask that question.  I know for a fact that the Lymes test is "no" reliable.  It yields both false positives and false negatives, so how much does it really add to the "certainty?  I asked the doctor ever considered Bayes Theorem to determine his level of certainty that I really do have Lymes disease.  You know the answer?  He never heard of it.  So far the meter is up to at least $600 and I still do not have my medicine.

PS--I got the results of the Lymes blood test and it was "negative",  That was exactly what I expected.  Here is my estimate of the numbers.  People who come to the doctor with joint pains and who have been bitten by a tick actually have Lymes 25% of the time.  The blood test for Lymes gives a "negative" when you have Lymes 25% of the time and a  "positive" 5% of the time when you don't have Lymes.  Now, what does all this mean?  It means that the chances that I actually have Lymes with a "negative" test is 18.75%.  Under this set of probabilities is it better go give me the medicine or do "nothing"?  If I take the medicine when it is not required, what are the chances of having a condition "worst" than Lymes"  My guess it that it is less than 5%.  Do you think that this doctor is smart enough understand the odds?  This is one of the major problems with our medical system and why it costs so much.  Doctors want perfection when it is not possible and are willing to spend other people's money to satisfy their desire, "no matter what it costs".  Have you ever heard logic  like that before?  We all have to get used to the idea that there is "not" perfection in this world and if there is, we can not afford it!

Whole New Economic Theory

I have been very frustrated by the different economic theories taught in our colleges and universities.  I was graded down by Prof Ted Krepps in graduate school because I disagreed with his simple minded economic theories.  I think that my original economic theories were better than Prof Ted Krepps', but now, I think that I have stumbled onto a much better theory.  That is what this blog is about.

The history on economic theories has always been simple minded because of the simple minded people who came up with them and the requirement that they be simple so that they could be "sold" to their simple minded customers, the college professors.  It is really that simple.  It is the same reason that simple minded religion has swept the human race.  Religion is total bull, but it is simple and easy to understand by the simple minded followers.  I think that the really smart economist of the past knew that their theories were seriously lacking, but if they made them more correct, they also made them  more difficult for the simple minded to understand and accept.  The result is the sad state that we now find ourselves in.  Think about old Sigmund   Freud  ?  His theories were also total bull but they were eventually rejected, but it did take a long time.  Professors and students who were brain washed found it difficult to realize that old Sigmund  was full of bull.  It is the same with economics.

The real theory of economics is very complicated.  I think that you all knew that.  Further, because it is made up of so many factors, the impact of individual factors that change over time by the affect of other variables.  Even with advanced math and sophisticated computers, it is difficult to model the real theory of economics.  My theory is made up of several different systems that interact.  There is no limit to the number of factors, but there are those which are more significant and those which are less significant.  These weights change over time making it even more complex.  Sorry that this is not simple!

Here is my list of factors:

(1)  Wealth from natural resource exploitation

(2)  Wealth from value add by human effort not related to (1) above

(3)  Zero sum game activities that shift wealth, including theft

(4)  Wealth consumption without the generation of addition wealth

I know that my list seems strange, but you will see why I have selected these.  In the early history of the United States, most of the wealth generation was by natural resource exploitation.  Things like fish, fur, lumber and farm products.  Later, it was Gold, oil, coal and hydro power.  Think about countries like Saudi Arabia.  The only thing that they have off the list above is "oil" and they did not start to exploit that until the last 75 years.  How about Cuba or Porto Rico or even Spain.  Are you starting see why they are so poor?  It is my observation that the real big money or wealth of the world has always been traced back to the exploitation of natural resources.

What about wealth from value added human labor.  This includes both physical and intellectual efforts.  Humans started out with manual labor and physical skills as the basis for their wealth and gradually it has slowly shifted to intellectual efforts as being of the most value.  In most enterprises, it is a "mix" of low and high intellectual skills.  These include managerial skills as well as technical skills.  Historically the human race had an adequate supply of intellect compared to it's demand so there was not a very large big spread between to top people and the bottom people in terms of the value added and thus their pay.  That has changed significantly recently with those on top being "worth" many times those on the bottom.  If you look at the median pay for these groups, you will notice that the median has "not" gone up.  In fact, in many cases, it has gone down.  Take the telephone companies like Western Electric who invented the transistor.  The median income and quality of life for workers at Western Electric in the 1950's was better than that for the median worker at Apple today!  How can I say that you might ask?  In the 1950's a median worker at Western Electric could easily buy a house and car here in the United States.  It is currently impossible for the median worker for Apple to do that today.  Realize that we need to include "all" the workers in China and other 3rd world countries in the total Apple enterprise, not just the high tech people at the top located in Santa Clara Valley.  The bottom line is that the value added segment of the economic model has not produced too well for the human race.  In the limit, value added will produce wealth, but it will not significantly raise the median quality of life of the human race.  More workers will make the pot bigger, but it will not provide a larger piece of pie for the median worker.  Sorry, but that those are the facts.  If you have contradictor facts post a comment.

Next, the zero sum game segment.  You all know what a zero sum game is, or do you?  It is like a poker game.  Several people come to the table with wealth that they have acquired some place else and when the game is over the wealth is in different hands, but the amount of total wealth has not increased.  The change in wealth is "zero", thus a zero sum game.  This also includes theft, like bank robbery.  Spain in the 1500's stole ship loads of Gold from the new world that made them rich, but their efforts did not create any new wealth.  It took Spain a while to spend all that stolen wealth and when  it was all gone, they were back where they had started as poor as ever.  The economics of theft go on at all levels and many appear to be honest productive enterprises when they are actually zero sum games. Most of these zero sum game activities actually interfere with legitimate activities that do produce new wealth.  I think that our legal system is guilty of this.  Lawyers get rich often at the expense of lowering the generation of wealth by others.  Governments are just as guilty too with their regulations and mandates.  You know what would happen if 100% of the people worked for the government?

Finally, the waste and squandering wealth.  What is wealth for, but to use and spend, but there are at least two ways to spend wealth and those are (1)  Those that destroy the wealth and (2) Those that provide for the generation of more wealth.  Here is a simple example.  You are hungry for a meal and go to the store and buy a fish and take it home and cook it and eat it and then go enjoy a movie.  That would be a (1) above, or you could buy a fishing pole and enjoy the sport of fishing and catch a fish and take it home and cook it and eat it.  That would be a (2), plus a little exploitation of a natural resource. In the short term, consumption of the wealth is not bad, but if it is all consumed or more is consumed than is being produced, that is bad!  Sounds a little like the United States right now.  During the Obama administration we only collected about 80% of the taxes needed and the economy still was static.  Do you now really think that by collecting less than 80% of the taxes that we spend with jump start our economy?  What are you smoking?

This is chapter #1, My next chapter will try to better connect and develop the interaction between these.

USA Is Too Poor For Obamacare

If you watched the news, you know that President Trump entertained the Prime Minister Brunbull of Australia this week.  As part of President Trump's comments he praised the government healthcare plan that Australia has.  To many that sounded like he thought that we need to get on the bandwagon  and implement a plan  like Australia or modify Obamacare to match the Australian plan.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  That is what this blog is about.

I did a little research on median family net worth between the USA and Australia and found some very interesting figures.  For the record, the median family net worth for the USA ranks 19th in the world at approximately $51,017.  The figure for Australia is $219,500.  In simple terms, that means that the median family net worth for Australia is "4 time" that of the USA.  We are poor compared to the Australians.  That being the case, Australia can "afford" a much more liberal government health care plan  than we can.  It is as simple as that.  Australia can afford steak while we are lucky to be able to afford hamburger.

We can vote any person into political office that we want and they can pass any law that they want, but they can not perform magic and pass a law that makes us as rich at the Australians so that we can afford a liberal health care plan like they have.  It is one thing to have a champagne appetite and another to have the income and net worth to be able to afford it.  Get used to it.  We are  poor.  Sure, there are a few very rich people in the USA and in most countries around the world.  Do you really think that those rich people owe us and should pick up the tab for our health care?

There are several reasons why Australia is richer than we are and that is what we should be talking about.  If we can figure out how to increase our median family net worth by "four times"  we would be able to afford the Australian health care plan.  How do you think that we could do that when the median family net worth in the USA is going down!  We have to stop it from going down before we can expect to start it going up.  Do you agree with that?  What is making it go down?  If you don't know the answer to that one, there is no hope for you or the USA.  We could have another multimillionaire or two, but it would not change the median.  Do you understand why that is?  If the top 10% of income earners were to double their income, it would not change the median.

Let's focus on those families who are now below the median family income and see if we can figure out how to get them above that median or 50% point.  First, we need to find out who they are.  If you look at the group of immigrants who have entered the USA in the past 10 years, you will find that 90% are below the median and for every new family that is below that median, they move a family who was just below the median up above the median.  Here is how it works.  There is a family that has a net worth of $10.00 less than the current median at $51,007. This immigrant family comes in whether legal or illegal, it does not make much difference who has a family income of $25,000.  You know that most do not make near this much.  They eat out of the public trough on welfare.  The affect of this is to lower the median family net worth from $50,017 down to $50,007.  That is how it works!  As a result of this immigrant family, the USA is now poorer.  Is that too simple to understand?  This same thing goes on every day and over a period of time the median family net worth is lowered significantly.  With this type of thing going on, how do you think that we will ever catch up with Australia?   We won't!

I could mention the fact that Australia accepts very very few new immigrants.  Note that they are sending 1,500 rejects to the USA per the deal with Obama?  The high school graduation rate in Australia is much higher than ours.  Their out of wedlock birth rate is also much lower.  They don't have the high percentage of Blacks or Hispanics like we do.  They do not accept radial Muslims like we do.  Ask Minnesota and Dearborn, Michigan if the mass immigration of Muslims have made the quality of life better in those commutes.  Australia has far fewer lawyers as a percentage of their population and far more doctors and engineers.  Interesting isn't it.  Remember we just "squandered" $1.5 trillion on student loans.  For that you would think that we would have a surplus of  doctors and engineers and would not need to "import" them from other countries?

Bottom line is that we are not rich and have to stop acting like we are rich.  Being poor and acting rich can be very destructive and you can see it in our colleges and universities today.  Because of the lavish student loan program, we have a lot of truly poor students who are acting like they are rich.  At some point the student loan money is going to run out and they will wake up to the fact that they are poor.  The problem is that they won't wake up.  They will blame someone else and pretend that they were little victims of the mean old government.  Obamacare is just a good example and we should all learn from it and wake up and face the fact that we are poor and if we want a better quality of life, then we need to figure out how to significantly raise the median family income and that is not something that the government can do of us.  We need to look for examples where systems work, like Australia and follow their lead.  We don't have to invent the wheel.  There are successful countries who have done that.  All we need to do is to follow the examples of the "winners".

We Can't Afford Obamacare

With all the talk about how bad Obamacare is and the need to repeal it, they have all miss the main point.  That is the point of this blog.

I will set this up with countries like Greece, Argentina and Venezuela.  We all know that these countries are a total economic mess.  In the case of Argentina, they used to be the richest people in the world an Greece was the berth place of civilization.  Even Venezuela had more oil than they could ever run out of.  They were rich too.  Why are they not rich now?  They did not have Obamacare, but they made the same kinds of decisions that lead us too Obamacare.  What their governments all did was to pass laws and create new programs that gave their citizens some thing that they "could not afford".  Once they had done that, it became impossible to ever take it away.  It is simple isn't it?  We passed Obamacare without understanding that we "could not afford" it.  No matter how rich we think that we are, we can not afford first class, state of the art medical care for everyone.  That is the simple fact.  If we get stubborn like the three countries above did and our voters have a tantrum and try to hold on to a medical program that we "can not afford", we will end up like the three countries above.

The argument that other countries have healthcare for 100% of their citizens misses a key factor and that is that those countries "ration" their government's healthcare to a level that they "can afford".  Before Obamacare, we were spending 17% of our GNP on medical care while those countries that we argue have it right, spend about half of what we do.  With Obamacare, the figure for us is now at least 20% of our GNP.  Obamacare might have worked if we started out with a plan that just provided "basic" healthcare we for no more than 10% of our GNP, but we went for the whole enchilada and ended up doing exactly what Greece, Argentina and Venezuela did and did.

It is not just Obamacare where we are spending like we are rich when we are not rich.  In the 8 years Obama was President, we borrowed about $10 trillion and spent it on "feel good" programs for things that we could not afford.  You know that individuals get into trouble by spending like they are rich and borrowing more than they can pay back.  It is no different for counties.  Our politicians need to be honest and so do us voters.

We could not afford Obamacare from day one and now we all need to turn back the clock and be satisfied with the best taxpayer paid healthcare that we "can afford"!!  This would be like Canada.  If individuals wanted better healthcare, they could pay for it with their own money like people in Canada do.  Why are we not talking about the Canada healthcare system?  Are we that stupid?  Don't answer that!

PS---Notice that we provide all citizens with "free" school thru 13th grade, but do not provide "free" college.  We do subsidize a large percentage of college, but expect the student tho wants to go to college to pay a "portion" of the cost.  Why don't we do something like that for healthcare?  We have all the education that we "can afford"!  Kill the student loan program too, just like Obamacare.

The Perfect Storm And Automation

We all know what the perfect storm is.  It is when several factors come together to make the situation many times worse than it would have normally been.  It doesn't just apply to weather, it can apply to almost any situation.  That is what this blog is about.

If you have noticed, automation and artificial intelligence are every where.  You hear it talked about on the news almost every day.  I have some friends who started a new company a few years ago to design automation systems.  As it has turned out they walked into a perfect storm at exactly the right time what their new company needed.  To have a perfect storm, several, almost independent events need to happen at the same time.  The following is going to be my list of those events.  I have been involved in automation and advanced tooling for most of my professional career and the two things that limited the success of many of my automation projects was (1) The high cost of my machines (2) The low cost for worker labor.  I had a lot of very good ideas about automation but could not get them "justified" because the cost of my automation system was "more" than  the cost of labor that they would eliminate.  That has changed now with the "perfect storm".

When I first started, I had to do the controls with "cams".  These were a challenge to design and make, plus they were expensive and could only do "one" job.  A cam is like a single stored "program" in a computer., but the advantage of the programs stored in the computer is that it can be changed easily and cheaply.  In the old days many of my projects were limited by the high cost of the computers, but not now,  Compared to 1970, computers now cost less than 1% of what they cost back then.  I don't think that there is anything that has gone down in cost as much as computers and in less time!  The cheaper computers are, the easier and the more economical it is to replace workers with automation.  My old "cam" controlled machines could only replace the least skilled workers, but these new cheap computer controlled machines can economically replace workers with a much higher levels of skill.  The bottom line is that automation used to only affect the lowest 5-10% of workers, where as now automation affects almost 33% of workers.  At the same time it make the other 67% of  high skilled workers worth more as they become a limitation.

If you want to promote automation an eliminate workers, here is what you need to do:

(1)  Make computers cheaper and faster

(2)  Mandate that companies had to provide substantial maternity time off for workers

(3)  Mandate that companies with more than 50 workers had to provide expensive government defined healthcare (Obamacare}

(4)  Mandate that companies had to pay a higher minimum wages

(5)  Mandate that companies had to significantly upgrade the work place

(6)  Lower the number and quality of public school graduates skilled in the STIMS

(7)  Make CNC machines cost less by importing them from China

(8)  Mandate that cars had to get higher mileage regardless of their cost or economic life (Tessla)

(9)  Build super container ships to lower shipping cost of products from China

I think that you can see how this perfect storm is shaping up and that it is only accelerating and will get worse.  More and more lower skilled and modest skilled workers are going to be squeezed out by automation until less than 50% of our population will be economical to employ.  Which 50% part will you and your children be a part of?

PS---We have squandered $trillions on student loans to produce political science graduates.  These people are the easiest to automate out of jobs.  We need doctors and engineers, but that is not where all the student loan money went.  We have to import both, but not political science majors!