Pathetic Pope And Catholic Church

I just saw on the News that the Pope gave $500,000 to help immigrants coming thru Mexican from places like El Salvador.  The Pope and his group are criminals who pay people to violate our immigration laws.  We should hold the Pope and his church criminally responsible as an accomplices in a crime.  It is that clear.

In places like El Salvador where the Catholic church has so much influence, they have helped to pass laws the make it a crime to use birth control or do abortions.  When you have a country with 885 people per square mile you can only call it a mess and that mess was created due to over breeding.  If this were cats and dogs, we would all know what to do, but since we are dealing with the Catholic Church and blind faith, it is a total mess.

In prior blogs, I have pointed out that I believe in Sir Isaac Newton and the principle that all events have a "cause" and the problem on our Southern border is no different.  The cause is over breeding advocated by the Catholic Church and they should be held responsible.  There are other liberal groups that are also advocates, but the big tent pole is the Catholic Church.

Wake up and be honest!  You know the problem and you know the cause and you know the solution.  Start doing something!!

Growth Of Radicalism

I think that most people feel that the USA is becoming more and more radical and I do too.  Per Sir Issac Newton nothing changes without a cause.  In this blog I will tell you what I think is the cause.

First off, we need to agree on what radicalism means.  My definition is a measure of the percentage of people who have ideas or behavior that is farther and farther from the mean.  The opposite of radical is a group with similar views.  This is not a case of right or wrong.

Next, let's look at history.  When us humans lived in small groups like cavemen or small villages and back in those days we only had contact with a few people and it did not change much over time.  Because the groups were small, it was difficult to ignore odd people in your group.  The affect of  this was more contact with all member, even odd members.  The effect was to change both you and the odd person and cause the both of you to tend toward the average.  This is the starting point.  In some small countries where change has been slow or cities small, they would be more homogeneous with few radicals.  Finland might be one of those countries or Japan.  Are you following this?

Now, what has changed?  There are many, but some seem more significant to me.  Bigger cities allow us to pick our friends from a larger pool.  This causes the groups that are formed to be more specialized and different.  Historically people were formed into "tribes".  What we now have with the recent development of larger cities are new kinds of "tribes" forming.

Colleges and universities are another change with larger percentage now attending.  These tend to form "tribes" with in their alumni.  Recently with greater fluency, students are attending colleges and universities farther and farther away from their homes which further concentrates the differences between "tribes".  The fact that they have wide differences in GPA and Sat requirements also tends focus these groups into narrower and narrower "tribes".  This is all new and was not a part of the history of the human race.

Religion is another way that groups are further specialized and focused.  Even in small communities there are many different churches available with each looking at the world differently.  Friendships within the church often dominate over those in schools and other social places.  Some of the religious groups promote a dogma that can be hostile to the extent of advocating the killing of those who do not share their beliefs.  Are you starting to see how these widely defined groups see other groups as being "radical".  It only get worse.

I could go on and on with more examples, but I think that you get the idea, but I do have one last example and that is the computer age and the person to person communication system that it supports.  In all of human history there has never been a system so available to the poorest individual where they could find and communicate with any person in the world who shared their unique ideas.  In the past, the chances of two or three individuals who shared the most extreme ideas every crossing paths was a big "Zero", but not any more.  All the other of my points above are small potatoes compared to the impact of modern electronic communications.  There is a good side to this development, but there is clearly a darker side.  I have no idea where this will all end up, but I am sure that it will accelerate.  At the same time, I do not see any social system that has a chance of canceling out the "dark" aspects.  We know that no society in history has existed for very many years.  None have made it for 1,000 years.  As stable as many of us think that our current social institutions are, they are no match for the "growth of radicalism" that the human race is now facing.

PS--It gets even worse.  Think about this.  Historically children learned from their parents while the family was sitting at the dinner table. They were not exposed to the radical world until they were older.  Now with the electronic age, they are exposed much younger when they are less prepared to judge the quality or significance.  This is a big deal.  Next add the impact of unionized teachers from nursery school on.  If you don't see the significance, look at how churches do it.  They attack little kids and brain wash them with fear from the earliest age.  Now, the churches don't have a monopoly on radicalizing children who will grow up to be radicalized voting adults.  Scary isn't it?

PS--Wasn't it Adolf Hitler who formed the Nazi youth corp and radicalized them to the point that they would turn on their own parents?  It really is scary!

Strange Medical Cost Logic

Many of my friends are complaining about the high cost of medical insurance and want government to put some kind of controls on to insurance companies.  This is crazy logic and this blog will explain why.

To understand medical cost, we need to get down to some economic basics.  The cheapest and most economical medical system is one where people individually pay their own medical bills with their own money.  At this level individuals will be making the best "value" decisions.  There will be no middle men collecting a share.  When I was a kid, this is how the medical system worked here in the USA.  Doctors made house calls back then and you paid them on the spot.  I just talked to a doctor friend who had just retired and asked him how much he charged for a house call back then and he said about $35.  That's right, just $35.

Back when I was a kid, the life expectancy was about 2 or 3 years less than what it is today, but it is now going back down.  I did not know of anyone who had health insurance back then.  Most  people were healthy and productive until they died.  Now, look at those 2 or 3 extra years of life?  For those extra years, we have paid 90% of our total medical budget.  Do you think that in the current system we have gotten our monies worth?  I don't!

If we are going to get our medical cost down, it will have to be done like the cost of every thing else, efficiency!  Remember Henry Ford and how he got the cost of cars down so that many more people could afford one?  Specialization!  He took people of modest skills and had them do just one special job on his assembly line until they got very good and fast at it.  Simple, right?  Why don't we do that with doctors?  Before a doctor can do carpal tunnel surgery they had to go to an expensive college for at least 10 or 12 years and then serve an apprenticeship for a couple of years.  They call it a "residency".  Realize the doctor has to get his "bait back" or his educational expense and this amounts to over $75 per hour they work for life.  Further, look at the short number of years that doctors work. From age 35 to age 65 is only 30 years.  A truck driver works from age 18 to 65 for 47 years and does not have to pay back 15 years of college cost.

The worker on Henry Fords assembly line could put the spark plugs into a 10 cars per hour while in the master mechanic system, the worker could only put the spark plugs into 4 cars per hour.  Our medial system has to figure out how doctors can server "more" patents per hour, not less.  Notice how our school teachers union wants to reduce the size of classes that they teach?  That only runs up the cost per student and I think that doctors are trying to do the same thing. 

Before you buy a car, you ask, "How much does it cost?"  Why don't we do that with doctors?  See the problem?   I asked the last doctor that I saw how much the medicine cost and they did not know.  I then asked if there were any alternates and they said , "Yes", but did not know how much they cost either.  I asked the doctor how sure they were that their diagnosis was correct and they appeared offended.  I know for a fact that medial is not an exact science and much of what they do is probabilistic.  How many times have you seen on the News about some kind of medical miracle? We know that there is no such thing as miracles, but we do know that many medical decisions are wrong.

Now, back to medical insurance.  Insurance is based on a company "betting" that your medical cost will cost them "less" than the premiums that you pay.  Not only is the insurance company a costly middle man, but they add on a "profit". 

PS--We need  cheaper doctors and that means training doctors cheaper, faster and not wasting so much money on paper work.  Doctors could end up with the same "net" amount of money if they didn't spend so much of their money and time colleges and more time curing patients,   

PS--If the doctor saved $10,000 per year at 4% compound interest he would end up with $560,000 at retirement.  If the truck driver saved just $5,000 at the same bank, he would end up with $527,000.  If the doctor wants to end up with much more than the truck driver, he will have to charge you a lot more and he does.                                       

Higher Oil Price Is Good

I hear a lot of my friends complaining about the rise in the price of gasoline, but I think that is good!  I will explain in this blog.

Most people just look at the growth in our economy as our primary objective or the stock market, but there is a lot more that we need to consider.  Like it or not, but we are in competition with most countries around the world.  That's right, we are in competition and we need to recognize that fact.  As it turns out the USA has more oil and other natural resources than almost any country in the world.  That's a fact.  When the value of our natural resources goes up it makes the USA wealthier and punishes other countries who do not have these same natural resources.  One of the key elements of economics is to increase the distance between the USA and other economies.  That means doing things to make our economy go "up" while trying to make other country's economy go "down".  Starting to see how it works?

Most countries have to import oil because they do not have any or do not have enough.  When the price of oil goes up it does not hurt the USA.  It will cause shifts with in our economy, but taken in total it helps our economy and makes us richer.  I did not fully understand this simple economic  concept until I was working with a group at Stanford University on a business game.  My team was well ahead of the other teams in the game when one of my team members stated that we need to shift from just making a profit to "punishing" the other teams.  At the time, I did not fully understand this idea.  I wanted to keep trying to increase my team's profit.  Later, I realized that businesses and countries are in competition and often need to think about how they can "punish" their competitors.  When you think about it, it is like a race where you want to win, but also by the greatest margin that you can.  See how this idea works?

I know that some people in the USA may be hurt by higher oil prices, but others will make more.  Only with some kind of "impossible" "perfect" method can 100% of the people all come out ahead in any economic system.  If you have been reading my prior blogs then you know that there are no "perfect" solutions that satisfy 100% of the voters.  When you hear some politician claiming that they have a "perfect" solution of some kind, you know that they are incompetent.

Higher oil prices are good for the USA and bad for those who have to import oil!

The Comfort Curse

Most of us work hard every day so that we can become more "comfortable".  Isn't that right?  Well in this blog, I will show that "comfort" may actually be a curse.

In a blog some time ago, I pointed out that comfortable shoes just might not be good for you.  Do you recall that?  In that blog I explained that what comfortable shoes are are shoes that allow most of the muscles in your feet and legs to relax.  It does feel good, but when you think about it, what is happening is that your muscles are becoming lazy and weak.  If you are a hiker, is it good for your ankles to wear boots that "support" your ankles so that they can relax and do nothing?  I don't think so.  Are you starting to get the idea?

How about getting a ride to school rather than walking like most kids did for the past few hundred years?  If you get a ride to school, you are not so tired and can study better. Right?  No!  If you have seats in your classroom that are padded and very comfortable, is that good?  I don't think so.  You might even go to sleep during the class.

Most parents today want to provide for their children better than their parents provided for them.  Right?  Kids today deserve nicer cloths and cloths that are more in style.  They deserve tennis shoes that are soft and make their feet feel good.  For most of human history, kids were lucky to get "second hand" or hand-me-down shoes. Do you think that kids in the olden days had more sprained ankles than kids today who live in cities?  No!

Look at sports.  Do you really think that you can get better at a sport by reading about it or watching it on TV?  How about running a marathon race?  Do you think that you can get into shape by watching people run on TV or pretending you are a marathon runner in some video game and end up winning because you can punch the buttons with your thumb the fastest?  I don't think so.

What we have today is a major effort by almost everyone to make life more comfortable.  The intentions may be great, but the results is that we have become soft and non competitive.  Giving "A's" for effort is just one of the things that we do that ends up hurting those who we want to help.

It appears that we have eliminated "tough love" in favor of making life more comfortable and we will wake up one day to find that we have caused the human race to start going backwards.  Don't curse your children or your country.  We all deserve better!

Health care For All Test

I have devised a simple test for "health care for all".  This blog is about my simple test.

A few years ago I pointed out that in about 1975 we imported 50% of our new doctors.  For a country that put so much weight and importance in health care, we were not even producing half of the doctors that we needed.  At the time, most people were unaware of the problem because we had so many doctors who were born here that those new immigrant doctors we a small ratio of the actual doctors who people visited.  I think that if I were to ask the same question today that I would get a very different answer.  It should now be clear that we have a shortage of doctors and have to import most of our new doctors.

Now, here is my test.  If the USA is such a great country and we want free health care for all, isn't it clear that we will need more doctors?  Further, if we can ever afford free health care for all, then doctors will have to earn "less".  That should be clear too.  Now for the test,  Given that our government passes some kind of new laws that gave free health care to everyone, would you recommend that your son or daughter went to college to become a doctor who earns less?  How about a nurse?  If free health care for everyone is such a big deal then it follows that we should be able to graduate our own doctors and nurses.  That means your kids and mine are the ones who will have to go to college to become those doctors and nurses.  We should know that we can not keep importing our doctors from places around the world who have a shortage and who need to keep their own doctors.

Simple test isn't it?  You look in the mirror and tell yourself what is the right decision for your children.  Our children are the future of he USA!

Infrastructure Myth

I keep hearing the "gobble goop" coming our of politician's mouths about infrastructure, but do any of them know what they are talking about?  I don't think so.  How about you?  That is the point of this blog.

It seems like we hear every day about chuck holes in our roads and that we need to spend more money at the federal level on "infrastructure".  We are all concerned about chuck holes in our roads, but is this really a federal government issue?  Check out these numbers.  Per data that I got off the inter net we have a total of about 4.12 million miles of roads in the USA.  These are divided between different governmental units from federal down to individual townships.  The quarter mile road to my home is a dirt road maintained by my township and has nothing to do with the federal government.  My state collects plenty of money from state gas tax to maintain my road just fine.

For the record, we only have 136,000 miles of federal roads in the USA.  This only amounts to 3.3% of our total road system, so why do so many politicians keep pointing to this as a big crisis?  I have been advocating for years that we should get the federal government out of the road business.  I think that it may have been a good idea at one time to build a system of interstate highways like Germany had back in the 1940's, but once most were built, it now time to turn all roads back to the states.

I don't know why it is that many people keep trying to make almost every local problem a "federal" issue. The pattern is that once the federal government has gotten involved in helping to solve a problem, we can "never" get them back out.  This type of things happens all over the place.  Look at education.  I went to a local country school that was 100% controlled locally and it did a fine job.  We now have duplicated functions at the city, county, state and federal level.  Why is that?  Is it better?  I don't think so.  Just wait until the federal government starts licensing school teachers or lawyers or even barbers.  That is what will happen if we let this keep happening.

The whole infrastructure argument just plays into the hands of our federal government politicians who want more and more power for their egos.  Many of us citizens play right into the hands of these politicians when we think that things like highway speeds should be the same all over the USA.  Are you starting to see how the argument about infrastructure is a scheme to federalize our lives and we all need to stop this,  It is not a good idea and we all have to understand that!

PS--If you have read any of John Locke's writings, then you know that he had a lot influence on those who wrote our constitution.  He warned that the states should be very cautious about delegating too much authority to a federal government.  He proposed that it is better to error on the side of "not" giving authority over "giving".  He knew that once authority is given that it can "never" be taken back.  I would add that to give authority to a federal government it should not only be "better", but at least "10% better".  You can ask Great Britain about their giving authority to the Common Market to confirm what I am talking about.  Further, they should have paid attention to their own John Locke. Look at what has happened due to our own federal legislature as they delegated too much authority to the different government agencies.  They have lost control such that our vote for them has also been taken from us, the voters.

PS--How about a few facts about gas taxes?  The federal tax per gallon is $0.184 and for California it is $0.552.  Why don't we "add" the federal tax to the state tax and get the federal government out of the road business? Notice that the federal government collects 25% of the road tax, but only takes care of 3.3% of our roads.  Does that give you an idea about the efficiency of our federal government?  Let's drain the swamp!!!

Drain The Swamp

What does "drain the swamp" mean?  It means to get government out of our lives and that is the point of this blog.

If you look at how our government is involved in our lives, it is not that our government wants to hurt us.  It is just the opposite!  Our government wants to take care of us and protect us.  How can that be bad?  Here is how.  Our government, in an attempt to help us ends up putting us all in straight jackets.  They take away our freedom while trying to protect us.  There has to be a better way.  Here are some of my ideas.

Let's start with something simple like your barber.  To become a barber, one has to go to some kind of  accredited Beauty College and then be licensed by the state.  This is to protect us from "some thing", but I don't exactly know what that is.  When it is all done, we still screen our barbers our selves and only go to the "good" ones. How did the government protect us? It only makes a hair cut more expensive.

Here is another way.  Let's say that the barbers had to be insured for some minimum amount such as $50,000.  This would protect us, the customer.  Further, let say that if we had a claim against the barber that it could be cheaply resolved in court with the government providing us with a public defender while the barber provided their own legal counsel. This way, the government and the swamp would be mostly out of the picture.  Let the free enterprise system take care of it.

How about housing?  Get government out of the home loan guarantee business that mostly protects the banks for making bad loans.  Rather than just protecting us, our government wants to help us buy bigger homes than we can afford.  That is right!  Banks don't care if we buy bigger homes than we can afford as long as they follow the terms of the government their money is protected.  The government wants to encourage home ownership by their program, but it turns our that places like Canada who leave home loans totally up to the banks have a higher home ownership rate than we do.

How about optometrists?  Why don't we use the same system for them as I proposed for the barber?  I buy my glass at Wal-Mart by trying on different glasses until I find the ones that I can see with the best.  Isn't that just about what the optometrist does only it cost 10 times as much?

Look at your driver's license.  In most states, you have to have some kind of auto insurance, so why not use this system for both the car and the driver?  It would take the government totally out of the picture.  It would be the same for those states that require an annual safety inspection.  If the insurance company will not cover you and your car or truck, then you would not be able to drive it on the roads.

Are you starting to see how this could work?  The whole idea is to protect the public and we all know that everything that the government gets involved in costs more than if it were in private hands.  Further, we know that once a person gets onto the public pay roll that it is almost impossible to ever get them off, no  matter how incompetent they are.  I feel that the fewer public pay roll people we have the better off the country will be.  You all know that this is true.  What I am trying to present here is that it is actually possible to "drain the swamp".

Don't Touch A Hot Stove

I think that most of you know better than to touch a hot stove, but some have a different view.  That is the idea behind this blog.

Most people know or soon find out that touching a hot stove is not a very good idea.  They know that you will get burned if you do and that seems to be enough to keep most people form doing it more than once.  It is also interesting that no one had to pass a law to keep people from touching hot stoves either.  It is "natural" for most intelligent people.  Yet there are still some slow learners.

Take the Central American immigrants who want to come to the United States.  They know the stove is hot and that if they bring kids that they will be arrested and the kids can not be put in the same jail as they are.  Simple logic follows that this will result in them being separated from their kids.  It is like touching the hot stove, they know what is going to happen so why do the keep coming?

Here is the problem.  Liberal nuts here in the United States think that we should not just put a warning sign on the hot stove, but should give the immigrants special gloves so they can touch the hot stove without getting burned.  They would even prefer for us to eat cold food rather than cook it on a hot stove for fear an immigrant would touch the stove.  Is that stupid or what?

I do not have any sympathy for a person who keeps on touching a hot stove after they have been told not to touch it and if they do, they will get burned.  I think that Darwin had it right when he put nerves in our fingers so that it would hurt when we touched hot stoves.  Had he not, we would all be as stupid as the liberals who want to protect law braking immigrants at the expense of the real United States citizens. When will it end?

Good Enough

We don't hear people promoting "good enough". but that does not mean that they are don't support it.  This blog will try to shed some light on the point.

The crash of the Boeing 737 has created a discussion on the quality of pilots and I had a chance to discuss the point with some of my retired Air  Force friends.  There was also a recent crash of a Marine helicopter in Arizona too.  Just how good are our pilots?  I have a book written and signed by one of the original Tuskegee airmen.  It is an accepted fact that the Tuskegee airmen were, "on average" better than the regular army white airmen.  Why was that?  Were the regular white army airmen just, "good enough"?  I think that the answer is "Yes".

How about the pilots of the crashed Boeing 737?  Were they "good enough"? It appears "not" because their planes crashed and killed all on board.  What ever happened to the "best"?  In the name of political correctness or "PC", we have shifted from "best" to "good enough" in too many areas.  We used to test incoming medical students so that we started off with the "best", but when we did that we found that our pot included very few Blacks or other minorities.  In order to be "fair". we lowered the standards until we had more Blacks and minorities in our pot.  We then chose from the pot at random so as to be fair.  The result was that some of those "best" qualified were passed over in favor of someone of lesser merit who was "good enough.   Does this sound "fair" to you?

If you were passed over and a person of lesser merit was favored over you, how happy would you be? Not very!  The bottom line of using merit will mean that those of lesser merit may be left behind, but the cure may be worse than the disease!  Further, in the case of your pilot or doctor, it may mean your life if merit is ignored in favor of "good enough".  I feel that we have gotten to the point that we can no longer trust many of those, so called, professionals that we have to deal with daily.  I am not sure about you, but I want to know that my doctor was graduated from college on the basis of merit vs some kind of ratio or "good enough".

Think about the dairy farmer who had 5 bulls and one was the "best".  Why would he want to breed his cows to the other 4 bulls if he wanted to produce as much milk as possible?  I don't think the farmer is interested in producing "just enough" milk.  Would you?

Did you ever have a coach in school who just asked their players to be "good enough"?  No!  They want their players to be as good as they can be and further, in the big game, they want their "best" players on the court rather than players who are just "good enough".  If we all understand the logic of the coach, why can't we follow the same logic in other areas?

I have blogged on this point before, but it is worth repeating here.  The currency of the human race has always been intellect.  That is what separates us humans from animals.  Since the beginning of time intellect has played a major roll in the advancement of civilization and our quality of life.  We all know that. For most of human history physical abilities played a major share along with intellect as the currency, but over the past hundred or so years the balance has shifted such that intellect has taken over.  That is a fact.  Over human history, I think that us humans have gotten smarter, but not at a rate that can keep up with the shift.  That is the problem and it is only going to get worse.  Ignoring "merit" is not the solution in favor of "good enough".  Promoting "good enough" is only going to make the wealth pot smaller for all of us and the average quality of life worse.  I don't enjoy the fact that there will be a wider spread between rich and poor, but punishing "merit" is not the solution by accepting "good enough".

The final point is that claiming to be some kind of victim is even more destructive to the poor.  One has to play the cards that one is dealt and those who are more fortunate need to be open minded about how to mitigate the problem.  We all need to be honest about the situation.  I have always wanted to be a professional basketball player, but I am only 6 feet tall.  Am I some kind of victim and am I  should I be considered "tall enough" to play professional basketball?  I don't think so.  How about you?

The USA Is A Country Of Immigrants

How many times have you heard someone spout that. "The USA is a country of immigrants"?  Too many time for me.  This blog will try to expose this stupid argument.

There was a time when encouraging more immigrants was good for the USA, but that was a long time ago.  After Columbus discovered America and small pox killed off 90% of the Native Americans, America was very sparsely occupied.  That was a very unique time in world human history. It happened, but you can bet that it will never ever happen again.  Given that we had millions of acres of land that was unoccupied, it was logical to promote immigration to develop that unused land to grow our economic wealth.  We used to be able to "give for free" 160 acres of land that is now worth a million dollars to any immigrant who would farm it.  Why don't we still do that today?  The land is all occupied and we can't afford it.  It is a new time and we have to do thing differently.  We don't need any more immigrants.

Just because something was a good idea 200 years ago does not mean it is still a good idea today.  200 years ago it was a good idea for farmers to cut down trees and clear the land so that it could be plowed and planted in corn.  Is it still a good idea to keep cutting down trees and clearing land so that farmers can plant more corn?  I don't think so!

At one time it was a good idea to shoot buffalo to keep them from eating all the grass on the plains so that we could allow our cattle to eat that grass.  At that time there were million of buffalo on the plains and now there are "zero".  Should we still keep killing any buffalo that we see because we once did?  Again, I don't think so!

It is true that many of the people in the USA are immigrants or are children of immigrants, but that does not mean that it is still a good idea.  Back in 1849 thousands of immigrants came into California to mine Gold, but now the Gold has all been mined out.  Do we still need more immigrant miners coming into California?  I don't think so!

The argument that we still need more immigrants is one of the stupidest ideas that I have ever heard.  Those who use this argument are totally uninformed of the facts or are not capable of understanding how stupid their argument is.  What was good at one time is now not good.  Times have changed and what was good has also changed.

Wind And Solar Power Mandate

The more I dig into government "mandates" the more pissed off I get.  This is another blog on "mandates".

First off, energy is the main component that drives the quality of life for us humans.  Think about North America before Columbus.  The people here had no domestic animals to do work for them.  They had to do it all with their own muscles.  This fact limited their quality of life compared to Europe at the same time.  In Europe, they had horses and cattle, plus coal for the steam engines that provided "energy".  Isn't it clear that the availability of energy is the driver of quality of life for us humans?  Think of the impact of when oil was discovered.  Now, think of the downward impact of making the cost of energy higher?  The government "mandates" on wind and solar energy did not create more energy, they just made energy more expensive.

Here is another point.  The amount of pollution created is a function of its cost.  If it costs more, then it creates more pollution in the process.  Look at cars.  The more a car costs, the more pollution that was produced to make the car.  It is the same for a house.  The bigger the house, the more pollution was produced to build the house.  This applies to everything, so remember this point.

Here is another point.  The farther from the point of use that power is produced, the more it costs.  This is because of the additional cost of transporting the power.  In the case of wind and solar power, it is mostly produced in areas that are remote from where it is needed and thus includes extra cost for transmitting it to where it will be eventually used.

Here is another point.  If the source of power is intermittent, then it has to be backed up by a source that is 100% available.  I think that we all know that, but did you know this?  The cost of power from a typical power plant is made up of two components.  The amortization of the physical plant cost plus the cost of fuel.  This means that the power plant produces the cheapest power when it runs at capacity.  If the plant has to run below capacity to provide room for wind and solar power the power from the power plants costs more.  Now combine their power with the more costly wind and solar power and you have, what I call a "double".  Higher cost normal energy plus higher cost wind and solar energy.   Starting to see why we are being screwed by the wind and solar power mandate?
Because wind and solar power is intermittent, it has "zero" impact on the number of regular power plants that are needed to provide power 100% of the time.

Here is another way you are being screwed.  If your power is made up of 10% wind and solar and it has a cost that is twice that from a regular power plant, the impact on your energy bill is only 5%.  As long as the ratio is low, many of you don't even notice that you are being screwed, but as the ratio goes up your bill will eventually become twice or three times what it was before!

Rather than using the unethical "mandate", what if our government just added a "tax" to power?  It would make us use less and not give an unfair advantage to uneconomical things like wind and solar power.  We would see the tax and the additional tax could be used to pay down our national debit.  Are you starting to see how "mandates" are a bait and switch and that if our government were honest it would pass a "tax" rather than hide behind a "mandate"/

Ethanol Mandate

Most of you don't know that "mandates" are how our elected politicians stab us all in the back.  This blog is about how the ethanol mandate screws all of us and we don't even realize that we are being screwed.

When our government passes a tax, it is all out in the open and we realize it when we pay our taxes. In the case of "mandates" the cost is hidden from us.  If you read my blog about sugar and the fact that we pay over 5 times as much as the rest of the world for sugar should have opened your eyes.  It is a first class screw job!  Ethanol is no different.  Any place in the world they can produce ethanol for sugar cane or switch grass for much less than we can from corn.  The problem is that the "mandate" states that we have to supply a certain amount domestically.  Since we have not been able to produce that "mandated" amount, we can't import the cheaper ethanol.  Is that demented logic or what?

When the idea of ethanol had it's birth, we were importing oil and the idea was that if we made ethanol from our corn we could reduce the amount of oil we imported.  It sounded good at the time, but things have changed and we now produce more oil than we need so there is no need to produce ethanol to fill the gap.  The problem is that corn growers have gotten use to getting the "candy" and now we can't take their "candy" away.

When this ethanol deal first started, we were growing 99% of the corn on land that did not need irrigation or was well suited to grow corn economically.  With the "mandated" increase in corn production, marginal land was put into production.  This made our environment worse.  As the prices went up for corn as a result of the mandate, so did the price of farm land.  Now, we have a situation where the profit from growing corn on this new expensive land is not worth it.  Interesting how our government can screw up a good thing isn't it?

We talk about competition and the free enterprise system and capitalism, but in the end our government doesn't seem to be able to keep their hands off.  What we now have is the situation where we gave candy to the baby and now we have to figure out how to take the candy back.  It is happening all over the place and you all know it!

Dishonest Sugar Prices

This blog is a little wake up call for many of you.  We are getting screwed with the price of sugar in the USA.  This blog will give you some facts.

Many of you have heard that USA dairy farmers are having a hard time with the low price of milk, but did you ever think that sugar is much worse?  Here are the basic facts.  The price at Walmart for a 4 pound bag of sugar is $0.64 per pound, but did you know that the international price for that same sugar is only $0.12 per pound.  With a little 4th grade math, we find that we pay 5.3 times as much as most of the rest of the world.  Can you think of anything that we are being screwed on worse than that?  I don't think so.  When President Trump proposed putting a 25% tax on aluminum there was an outcry from beer drinkers that it could make a can of beer cost about one cent more.  Where is the same cry for sugar from Pepsi drinkers?

Here is another one.  You might think that dishonest lobbyist for dairy and cotton farmers have too much influence in Washington DC, but you didn't know that there is more money in Washington DC supporting the sugar farmers than "all" other farmers combined!  When you look at the fact that we are having to pay more than 5 times the world price for sugar, I think that you can see why this is.  The other thing is that this special treatment of sugar farmers has been going on for over a hundred years.  I am not going to get into it here, but look at corn farmers who profit from Ethanol and the corn syrup substitute for sugar.  What we need is more free markets for everyone, not special protection for rich farmers.  We are talking about multimillion dollar farmers, not the old family farm that we remember.

As a homebrewer, it is the fermentation of sugar that provides the alcohol.  Think how cheap Vodka or Gin is to make any place else in the world.  All you need to do is to dissolve sugar in water and dump in some yeast and then distill out the ethanol.  It is that easy and cheap if we could buy sugar at the international price.

I can't figure out why there is so much talk about our stupid government policies, but there is a total silence about us getting screwed with our high price for sugar.  I have farmer friends in Iowa and North Dakota who are gaming us with special high prices for their products.  They complain that they are losing money.  Their problem is that they paid far too much for their farm land.  The land should only be worth what it can produce and if we paid the same price for sugar that the rest of the world does the price of land would be much less.  Sounds like what happened to the cost of college when the government gave out free money to students doesn't it?

I am sick of this type of things and so should you.  Who are you going to vote for and are they going to do anything about it?

PS---I blogged about this point before, but it is worth repeating. We are not talking about a tax or a duty here.  What we have is a "mandate" where the government limits the importation of cheap sugar and then silently allowing the prices to go up for you and me.  It is like getting screwed by way of the back door.  Why isn't this all out in the open so that people know what is going on?  Ask your representative in Washington DC what they are doing about the price of sugar?

PS--I checked to see how much alcohol you can make from a pound of sugar and it turns out that it takes 5 pounds of sugar to make a gallon of pure alcohol.  That means a fifth of 100 proof Vodka will require about 6 cents worth of sugar at international prices.  At our USA price of 65 cents, it will cost 45 cents.  The federal tax on alcohol is $13.50 per 100 proof gallon.  It takes 2.5 pounds of sugar to make a gallon of 100 proof Vodka.  At international prices that gallon will cost 30 cents for sugar and here in the USA that sugar will cost $1.63.  The biggest cost of Whiskey is not the corn or sugar, it is the federal tax.

Universal Political Objective

Before we can agree or disagree on a decision, we first need to agree on an objective.  That is what this blog is all about.

Rather than just objecting or supporting a possible decision, we first need to think about and agree on some kind of objective,  Look at the possible decision by President Trump to close our Southern border.  To some it is a good idea and for others it is a bad idea.  How can that be?  The problem is that each group has a different objective and based on the different objectives, the decision is clearly good or bad.  Isn't that clear?

I think that I have stumbled onto the possible objectives of each group and thus it follows that they would judge the decision very differently.  I think that the discussion should start focusing on the objective rather than taking decisions one at a time.  Here is my way of looking at the situation.  First, let's divide our population into three groups on the basis of economics.  I know that all will not cleanly fit into my three groups, but I am not aware of a better grouping.  Mine are:
(1)  Top 10%
(2)  Middle 10%
(3)  Bottom 10%
These groups are based on family income and thus is a reasonable measure of the quality of life for each group.  Many of you are going to challenge my grouping, but just hang in there and see if you can do any better.  For any grouping to work, it has to be simple!

Now, let's see how this could work.  Democrats and liberals tend to focus on the Bottom 10% while the Republicans and conservatives tend to focus on the Top 10%.  Both claim that they are for the whole country or everyone.  There are times when both parties agree, but those times seem to be getting fewer.  Look at the "tax cut".  For the Democrats, it does not look like such a good deal because so little of the "tax cut" went to the Bottom 10%.  The Republicans liked it because it helped the Top 10%.  Rationally, since the main ones who actually pay most of the tax are the Top 10%, there is no way to make a substantial tax cut with out cutting their taxes the most.  Anyone who has any understanding of economics knows that it is jobs that create wealth, income and quality of life and that most jobs are created by the Top 10%, not the Bottom 10%.  The "tax cut" has both a day one impact and an impact down the road.  Liberals tend to focus on the short term while the conservatives tend to focus on the longer term.  Isn't that clear to all?

Are you starting to see how liberals and conservatives are at totally different ends of the field?  What we need is to figure out is how to get them both nearer the center where it may be possible for them to agree for a change.  I think that they both need to start shifting to the Middle 10% and stop expecting decisions and policies to all have to be "perfect".  I don't think that it is possible to have a "tax cut" that would be "perfect" for the both the Bottom 10% and the Top 10%.  If that is the case, why don't we all stop arguing about something that is not possible?

I blogged before that illegal immigration may be "good" for the Bottom 10% and for the Top 10%, but bad for the Middle 10% or median.  Business wants cheap labor so they can make more money while liberals feel good if they can help a poor person some place in the world.  The problem is that it lowers the family income for the Middle 10%.  Those who argue for a bigger pie forget that to consider how that bigger pie may be divided up and if a fair share will go to the Middle 10%.  It appears to me that with a slightly "smaller" pie it may be possible to divide it up more fairly for all groups.  Starting to see why just focusing on economic growth or the stock market may not be the right overall objective?

Think more about the Middle 10% an less about the Top 10% and the Bottom 10%.  Also, stop using the argument that "it is not perfect".  Just how many things in this world are really perfect?  Very very few!

PS--When you hear liberals and conservative arguing about which is best, "trickle down" or "trickle up" economics it validates that they are at different ends of the field as stated above. Remember that the median family income of the USA ranks no better than about 30th in the world.  The median here is not doing all that well.  With the correct political policies, the Bottom 10% should have a shot at joining the Middle 10% and the Top 10% should be working hard not to drop down into the Middle 10%.  No matter what the policies, we will always have the Bottom 10% and the Top 10%.  Math says that you can't change the numbers!  Let's work on the Middle 10% for a change.