Politics, Health Care and Energy

The politics of the country are racing towards a conclusion. Despite the constant efforts of the political class to distract and misdirect, several basic problems must be addressed. First, the government has promised more than they can deliver in Social Security and Medicare. Regardless of the stated aims, the good intentions of those aims and the high-mindedness of their creators we cannot continue to keep the promises the ruling class has made to us. Those promises must be broken; the question is how--not for our betterment but how to make the political class less culpable. Demonization of doctors, profits and the like will do some but the real solution for them is the creation of a huge, unwieldy umbrella under which all will labor and suffer. (Homogenization of circumstances only socializes the pain.) The other big problem is energy. In this area the politicians are less sure. Fossil fuel, even if peak oil has arrived, will last for another generation at least, just not at the same price. The global warming terror may be petering out as a technique and our efforts to suppress our own sources and options are becoming more and more overtly crazy; perhaps bribery and mental illness are the only plausible explanations. So I was interested to see the recent appearances of the tiny head of "speculator terror" peek out on our intellectual desert. This notion has been kicking around on goofy talk shows and, especially, O'Reilly who is particularly stupid about it but this article puts it in some better perspective. Think price controls. And remember the difference between cost and price. You can always freeze the price of something, you cannot freeze its cost.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203609204574316541478587478.html