Obamacare, Easy Solution

I have an easy solution for Obamacare.  If you know me, you know that most problems that appear complex, often have very simple solutions.  The main problem is that most of us do not look for easy solutions.

First off, we need to agree on some terms.  Have you ever heard of some people being referred to as "disadvantaged"?  Exactly what is a "disadvantaged" person?  Is it PC talk for a "poor" person?  What I do is to look behind the curtain to find out what caused or created the problem.  I don't like to just give a person with a broken arm a pain pill.  I like to figure out why they got the broken arm in the first and address that problem.  If the person got the broken arm by recreational rock climbing, I don't feel sorry for them and don't want to spend my money or time addressing his broken arm.  The broken arm is that person's problem, 100%.  I like to help people who are trying to help themselves, but I don't like to help people who have created their own problems or who are gaming the system.  What I am getting to is that we really don't have "disadvantaged" people.  We have people who have been responsible who try to help themselves and irresponsible people who have created their own problems.  Now we can deal with Obamacare.

Does a person who drops out of high school and can't get or won't get a job a person who deserves modern space age medical service at the expense of responsible people?  I don't think so.  If these people deserve anything, it is a very basic inexpensive system, not Obamacare.  If a person has two kids out of wedlock, I would assume that they are well off enough to take care of them and provide for their welfare, education and medical care.  If they can't, who should be held responsible?  Not the kids, but the parent.  How about people who have 5 or more children?  Again, I would assume they are smart enough and wealthy enough to care for them and don't need any help from my tax money.  If they can't, should they get first class healthcare?  I don't think so.  How about people who do drugs, smoke or who are very over weight?  Those are their choices and they should take responsibility for them.  I don't owe them anything, do you?

If we would just get rid of the word "disadvantaged" and look at people in terms of how socially responsible they have been and provide the type of medical service that they deserve, our problem with the high cost of healthcare would be solved.  We need to be honest with our citizens and realize that we are not rich and that we can not afford Obamacare as it is currently structured.

Cheaper and Younger Doctors

If we are ever going to get a medical system that we can afford, we are going to have to address the actual cost of becoming a doctor and the cost of practicing medicine.  That is the point of this blog.

I have blogged in he past that our education system is stacked to make the cost of doctors and the cost of medicine in general more expensive.  That has to change.  I checked a few statistics on different doctoral degrees and found the following.  The median age that a doctoral degree is awarded is 30 for engineers and 40 for education.  It has been my observation that most of the doctoral degrees awarded for education were the result of unionized teachers gaming the tax payers for more pay while doing exactly the same work that they did before.  The is also a trend of new doctoral medical graduates going into a post doctoral specialty.  It is part of the old adage to "learn more and more about less and less until one knows everything about nothing".  It only runs up the cost while creating more and more risk for the patient.  How many times have you heard of situations where there was a conflict between different drugs?  It happens all the time.  No one seems to want to "specialize" in general or family practice.

India is gaming our medial system right under our noses.  They graduate doctors and send them here so that they can send money back to India to support their families or to pay back the cost of school.  It is not much different from China making something cheaper in China and sending it here where it can be sold for more money and that money can then go back to China.  It is really no different from foreign trade or the balance of trade.  We have a serious imbalance with both China and India thought each are slightly different.  We don't need more engineers and doctors from India, we need our kids to get off their butts and become engineers and medical doctors.  In about 1970 we went over  the 50/50 point where we "imported" over 50% of our new doctors and it has gotten worse ever since.  That is what we should be working on, not more regulations for the insurance industry!

PS---Why is Washington DC working on Obamacare to make it "cheaper" and "better"?  Remember the joke about the drunk who parked his car in front of the bar and lost his car keys?  He was looking about a half a block down the street for the keys because that was where the street light was.  Does that remind you of our  jerks in Washington DC?

New Economic Para dim

There is a "new economic para dim".  Most of us did not see coming nor do most of us even know that it is here.  That is the point of this blog.

We know that things change all the time, but some change so slowly that we don't recognize that they are changing.  It is like watching grass grow.  You can't see it, but we all know that it is happening.  It is the same with economics.  We throw around things like "automation" and the loss of traditional manufacturing jobs.  We know that we have a shortage of engineers and technical people, but don't really know exactly why.  We know that the median family income and net worth have been going down and again, don't know exactly why.  We know that the economy is growing and so is our population.  We also know that we have a "lower" percentage of able bodied citizen working today than any time in the past, and don't understand the cause or the full economic impact.  Are you with me on this?  Here is what I think.

Let's just take automation and the shift from physical work to intellectual work.  Automation clearly affects the less intellectual work much more than the difficult intellectual work. We all know that.  We also know that the productivity of intellectual labor can be many time that of physical labor.  I covered this before but it is worth going over again.  The pay or worth difference between people doing physical work is much less than that of intellectual work.  I used the example of adding up numbers in ones head vs hammering nails into a board before to make my point.  The difference between people in the times to hammer the nails is very small, where as, the differences in times to add the numbers varies greatly. This demonstrates why intellectual work can pay so much more than physical labor.

Did you read the book"Greening of America"?  It made the prediction that people in America were going to get very rich compared to the rest of the world and that we would see all kinds of gated communities to protect the rick from the poor.  The book was partly correct, but for the wrong reasons.  The shift to intellect becoming the currency of the future and displacing physical labor is the driver.  Notice that the median family income and net worth are going down while the "average" is going up?  This is very significant for a lot of reason and here is just one.  We often talk about the American economy being a "consumption" economy.  With the major shift in income toward the upper end, what we will see is "less" consumption as we have known it.  That is because people at the low end of economy spend 100% and more of their income at places like Walmart.  The higher end people do not spend 100% of their income on consumption, but invest and save much of it.  What we are seeing is economists making observations and predictions about the future based on their past experiences which doesn't track with the future.  There are all kinds of examples like this where we look backwards to try to predict the future and it won't work.

We have never seen a situation like this before in human history.  That is why there is so much confusion in government, education and society in general today.

PS--Imagine an economy driven by profession athletes, who had very special skills and were paid many time what the average person earned?  That is the way it is going to be, only these people with special skills are not going to be athletes.  They are going to be the small percentage of very smart people.  To keep the others happy, someone is going to have to entertain them.  Note that Apple is not in the high tech computer business, they are in the entertainment business.  The masses use computers for entertainment not to produce anything.  It is happening now, but you just did not notice!

PS--What did it take in the past to entertain kids?  They worked on hot rods.  Kids today can't change a tire.  For entertainment people used to golf, fly fish, boat, drive motor cycles and airplanes, but not any more.  Kids are entertained with cheap computers that they can operate with their thumbs.  At EAA in Oshkosh there are at least a million visitors and the average age is over 60 and going higher.  When I was a kid adults road motor cycles for entertainment, now companies like Harley Davidson are in decline for lack of customers.  It is not kids age 20 to 25 who are riding motor cycles, it people over age 60.  Things have changed and it is not for the better.

PS--Golfing is down by over 25% in the last few years.  Cabelas is having problems because our kids are not hunting or fishing.  In some places the deer herds are so large that it appears that we will have to hire professional hunters to thin them out.  This all happened in just the last 25 or 30 years right under our noses.  The future will be a lot different from the past, but what will it be?  That the big question that we all face!!

Null Set Logic

Did you ever hear about "null set logic"?  I did not think so and neither did I.  That is what this blog is about.

First, we need to agree on a simple definition.  Exactly what is the "null set"?  Null means "no" or "none".  We will start there.  The other side of "no" is "yes" and "none" is "some".  Is this all a little confusing?  I thought so.  How about an example?  Let's say that we are looking for a needle in a hay stack.  We could look just for the needle until we find it or we could start taking away the hay until the only thing left was the needle.  The hay is "not" the needle or part of the "null set" while the needle is part of the "primal set".  Does that make it a little clearer?  Now, let's move on.

Look at our former President, Obama.  Most people tend to like him even though many admit that he was not a very good President.  Why do you think that is?  It is because of the way we think and act.  Most of us think that we operate on the "yes" or positive side of things, but without thinking we actually think in terms of "no" or the "null set".  Here is another example.  Why do most people have few friends?  Notice that they seek out people who they like while rejecting those they don't like.  Notice that it is a lot easier and takes less information about the person to reject them than it does to accept one as a new friend.

 Switch to the other side and look at what we do if we want to be someone's friend.  We conduct our relationship so as "not" to be rejected.  People go as far as being dishonest so as not to offend the other person.  How is that?  Now, look at Obama.  Recall that he advised his staff "not" to do anything stupid?  What he was doing was minimizing the impact of the "null set" because he know that was the key to having people like you.  Notice also that Obama went out of his way not to offend anyone even to the extent of "not" taking actions were needed.  The fact that he did not speak the words "radical Muslim terrorist" is just one example of this point.  He took heat because of this, but it was "less" than if he had spoken those words.

If you look in the mirror, I think that you will agree that most of you operate on the "yes" side.  What we need to do is to recognize that there are actually two sides and to get the right answer we often need to work from "both" sides.  In advanced math they have the concept of "primal-dual" and they have developed ways to work problems from both sides.  In the case of the needle in the hay sack and you will see that it is clear that as one searches for the needle that it is very logical that when you pick up a piece of hay and determine that it is not the needle that you you toss the piece of hay aside and not put it back on the pile.  This is, in fact, the fastest way to find the needle.  When you think about it, why would you want to search for the needle by any other method?  No!

Now look at our current President Trump.  He seems to be working on the primal or positive things that he wants to do and gives little attention to negative aspects of his actions.  On the other hand, Obama was preoccupied by avoiding these negative aspects.  Now look at yourself.  You have been programmed by past experience to give more weight to these negative aspects that I have described above.  You are being manipulated and don't even know it.

You may have to read this blog a few times to get the message and when you do, you will much more able to see what is happening and why.

PS--Had Trump followed Truman as President, I don't think that people would have  been so concerned about Trump being so non-political.  Remember that they used to refer to Truman  as "given them hell Harry".  Isn't that what Trump is now doing?  Obama was one of the most risk adverse Presidents that we have ever had and who opted to do nothing rather than take a risk of doing the wrong thing.

Is Education Just Learning Tricks?

When was the last time you thought about the purpose of education?  We talk about education all the time, but we never talk about the true purpose.  In most things, we first need a purpose before we go off on a search.  Why not education?  That is the idea behind this blog.

When John Locke wrote about government, he started off defining the situation when there was "no" government and that is what I think is needed when we examine education.  When a human is born, their education starts and it was a long time before there was anything like a school.  The new born had to figure out how to solve real problems, like eating.  They had to do this on day one.  From there on it was a series of solving problems either by themselves or by watching others.  Many times, the parents showed their young child the solution to their problems.  It was like learning a new "trick".  It might be how to walk or something more complex, like finding a root that was good to eat.  What I am building up to is that education had a purpose and it took two forms.  First, it was the child who solved their own problems and thus learned and the Second, was learning "tricks" from others.  Did you ever look at it that way?  There is more.

I don't think that you invented writing or mathematics, so you must have learned some kind of "trick" that allowed you to use the inventions of others.  See where I am going with this?  Even these "tricks" had a basic purpose.  We don't want to lose sight of the purpose in all this.  What is the purpose of reading and writing?  It is has several purposes, but none are to just have a lot of facts and stories in one's head.  One is to communicate with others.  This means that both parties have to be on the same wave length with a common language.  Basic stuff!  The second is to be able to store data and information, both for yourself and others that can be accessed later.  Here is where I start having a problem with our current education system.

Why do I have to spend my time reading and taking tests on the Canterbury Tales?  What is the "purpose"?  What possible problem could I face in my life that would reading the Canterbury Tales help me to solve?  Is it something like lifting weights will help me play football better?  I don't think so.  Look at math and the way we teach it.  Life is filled with math "word problems" yet our education system does not prepare many of its students to solve real life "word problems".  Isn't that the purpose?  Notice that I keep coming back to "purpose"?

My experience with teaching, both as a student and a teacher has been that most of the efforts are exposing a student to some "facts" or "tricks" and then having them parrot back those same "facts" or "tricks".  Is that really what education is?  If we let student use their personal computers during the testing they would all be able to get 100%.  Does that mean personal computers make our kids straight "A" students?

Education should prepare our kids to deal with life, real life and do you think that our current system does that?  How about what classes to take in high school?  How well do our kids, parents and teachers do on that one?  Not very well.  Most take easy classes that are worthless in life.  How about college?  What college and what major?  I note that Political Science is the most popular major in many of our universities.  How would you judge the quality of the decisions by students, parents and teachers who agreed with that decision?  I could have used credit card debit and I would have gotten the same answer.  The bottom line is that our current education system has failed.  Our kids are not prepared for life.  Wasn't that our purpose back in the beginning?  Even the caveman knew that their purpose in the education of their children was to prepare them to deal with the problems of life by either the "tricks" that they taught them or the ability they taught them to solve their own problems.  Those who could not solve many of their "own" problems did not survive and died off.  That is how we got to where we are now, but today, what happens to those who did not learn the "tricks" or who can not solve their own problems?  That is the big question and I think that we may actually be going backwards as a human race and our current education system is not the solution.

PS---Have you noticed that much of what we call education is little more than entertainment.  What are our kids doing with their "thumbs" on their little computers?  They are wasting learning opportunities by spending time with these devices.  Our kids do not need more entertainment.  They need more education!

PS--I just found some statistics on our new teachers.  They have the lowest SAT scores, but much worse is that they have the lowest STEM scores when we are "importing" doctors and engineers.  The government should end the student loan program for anything but STEM majors.

PS--Look at the smart phones that most of our kids have.  There are all kinds of "app;s" on them that our kids can use.  Did any of your kids write some of those "app's"?  I did not think so.  Your kids are not smart because they can use their smart phone.  All they are doing is using some "tricks" invented by others.  Take away those smart phones and you will see now smart your kids are.  You will not like the picture!

Simple Minded Economics

It is a lot easier to understand economics if you use "simple minded economics".  This is what is taught in our colleges and universities.  This blog will explore "simple minded economics" for you.

One of the key principles of all economics taught in our colleges and universities is that the economy can be "stimulated" by deficit spending by the government.  How many times have you heard one of these taking heads talk about "stimulating" the economy?  How about 1,000 times?  It dates back to Keynes who wrote a book that 99% of colleges and universities adopted as a new chapter for the Bible. He proposed that if the government wanted to "stimulate" the economy so that it would "grow", the government could spend money that they did not have.

In a prior blog, I dealt with this same principle and if you read that blog, you would know that these "hot shot" professors never dealt with how the government was going to "pay back" the money spent that they did not have.  Have you?  I compared it to a person who was driving down a dirt road that had a hole in the road blocking it.  Using the "stimulation" concept, the driver would climb past the hole and bring back dirt to fill in the hole so they could drive on.  To get that dirt, he had to dig another hole in the same road a few yards farther down the road.  Isn't this exactly what these "hot shot" economist proposing?

Now, to our current situation.  During the Obama administration, he ran up our national debit by over 10 trillion dollars.  That means Obama spent over 10 trillion dollars more than was collected in taxes.  Now, what were the results?  The economy did not grow, it was not stimulated.  Those are the facts.  Family median income during the Obama administration fell by over 20%.  The point that I want to make is that now government is proposing to lower taxes as a means of "stimulating" the economy.  Now, I know that no one wants to pay more taxes, but don't expect lowering taxes is going to stimulate the economy long term.  What if Obama had spent even more and he ran the national debit up even high, would it have "stimulated" the economy?  I don't think so!

Did you ever hear any thing more stupid than lowering taxes at the same time the government proposes to provide "better" health care?  We already spend the most of any country in the world on health care and we are about the 38th richest country.  We are "not" the richest country in the world!  Why do so many people and the government seem to claim and act as if we are?

Why don't we propose that we stop spending 20% of our economy on health care and get it down to about 10% like most of the rest of the world?  If we would do that, it would have the "real" affect of stimulating the economy both short term and long term.  Are you getting tired of "simple minded economics" like me?  Maybe a few of you are!