Cucumbers and Ice Rinks

EU and Cucumbers
I was writing yesterday about the EU and the regulations on cucumbers.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/eu-regulations-to-keep-cucumbers-straight-are-declared-null-and-void-606625.html Sometimes it hard to keep a straight face with these people. There must be a gene for meddling and it would have to be linked with arrogance.
There is a wonderful story--I believe an urban legend--about the town council that is asked to solve the beetle infestation in the local lake. After a long investigation and debate, they decide to import frogs to eat the beetles. A year later the locals complain about the frogs being everywhere and, after the appropriate investigations, the council brings in snakes to eat the frogs. The next year the town is overrun with snakes and the council starts to discuss alligators.These people tinker with everything without any concern over the fallout because they are so certain, so confident. They remind you of a church council from the middle ages; ordained, superior and self-righteous. And beyond simple mortal criticism.
The wonderful analogy with a skating rink should never be forgotten. Imagine going to a government bureaucrat and telling him you want to open a skating rink where people of all ages and skills will maneuver about an ice surface on razor-sharp blades. The government would go nuts. You would have a host of crippling rules, regulations and, likely, a supervisor barking crazy orders to the participants. It would never work. These regulators are silly; the problem is that when we need them, they don't do their job at all. Particularly if the problem is dynamic. They are great at regulating vegetables and toilet sizes; it's more difficult when it comes to active people, the economy and criminals. We don't need their help with toilets and cucumbers; we've got their help in spades. We do need their help in monitoring leverage, private and public debt and deficit spending; nothing.

Obama, Old and New

We are in a fascinating time. This last week, with its plans and hopes and errors, has been a microcosm of the state of the nation and the problems it faces. Obama sees urgency in future health expenses and he is right. And he is right in his concern over potential energy costs. His solutions, however, are reflexive and insincere. Insincere because he plans to hide the Medicare expenses in a larger plan. And reflexive. Like his response to the arrest of the esteemed Professor Gates, there is an overriding philosophical--or better, ideological--template he is working from (or through). His racial response to the arrest is "suffering accomplished black man harassed by bigoted resentful white cop" and his socialist response to the future financial demands are "with our abilities and the power of the government, we can manipulate this." They can't. Our total financial demand on the future labor of the next 15 years is 48 trillion dollars. That's 350% of GDP. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at3MNu8BRwQ The only possibilities are an incredible growth effort--and surplus is necessary for growth--or default or inflation. Obama is bringing some bravery to the old arguments; he just is not bringing anything new.

Remember that analogy about Fenway Park. A drop of water doubling in size every minute starting at noon will fill the park at 12:49 but at 12:44 it will be only 7% filled. So it is with compounding debt: It will grow on the exponential curve. Creating more debt makes it worse. Only decreasing debt and increasing surplus will help.

"Panics do not destroy capital, they merely reveal the destruction already created by unproductive work." (Mills) The key is "unproductive work."

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

Health Care and Affirmative Action

One of the benefits of the health care bill is the racial discrimination of medical school applicants. I have always thought that this reverse discrimination was unjustifiable and, as policy, could become destructive. There is something primitive and tribal about it, suborning the common good for the benefit of a subset. On a more practical point, when does this stop? How long do you get a break because your grandfather didn't? At what point does the society say "O.K., all done!"? The constant skewering of the tests, charts and tables at some point will be seen as abusive in addition to unfair. Finally it will be seen as swimming upstream, as a policy that won't work because it can't, because the favored group will always need favored. And that development will be fatal. http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=333586760867927

Health Care and the Art of the Possible

Health care is not the major component in the health care plan. Money is. A few years ago the medical clan was furious that only three physicians were on the board Hillary put together to revamp the "health care system." I'm sure the government was mystified; they knew this wasn't a plan for medical care, it was a way of restructuring the government's responsibilities for payment. Physicians had very little to do with it. The government has agreed to pay the expenses of Medicare and in ten years it will take up much of the budget. So much that the government will have little money for their other useless self-rewarding ideas. They have promised too much--and to a dangerous group; old people vote. This new plan is an effort to take the whole system over so they can hide their cost control methods in the general population and health care can be restricted for the elderly as part of a "nation effort and program." That way the elderly won't see that they have been specifically targeted. Social security limits in some way or another will come soon after.
Certainly everyone can see that you can't increase the number of people covered in a system, decrease the cost and maintain the quality. Ferocious companies have tried these "economies of scale" ideas but the federal government? Chris Dodd? Barney Fife/Frank?

The recent discussion about the elites not reading the bills they vote on is instructive. The basic point is these people are inept. It would be the same as if they said, "I can't get up that early", or "I don't use spreadsheets" or "I don't have a driver's license." They are not qualified for their job and have no shame about it. Conyers actually ridicules people who think he should have some understanding of what he is voting on. If that isn't an admission of the breakdown of government, I don't know what would be. If you change the word "politician" to the word--and concept--"manager", everything changes.

These people are just bags of wind; they don't have jobs, they have territories just like the Mafia. (ca., 1st district. Ma., 3rd). We aren't voters, we are prey. If we don't come across, they'll break our windows.

Health Costs, Leaders and the CBO

Here is a copy of the graph of cost from the health care program projected out over time as presented by the CBO. It is not pretty. http://cboblog.cbo.gov/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/slide10.jpg The solutions are fewer old people and/or less care for them. There is an overall point here. These politicians are not doers. They just say things but do not manage them. If there was a plan to fix a problem, there would be a big separation between recognizing the problem, offering a solution and managing the plan that would solve the problem. Forget how distorted the first two parts are; recognizing the problem and offering a solution are twisted, bribe and lobbying influenced processes that rarely create anything of value. But the big problem here is that the legislature-executive divide, so reasonably created by the framers who did not envision great government expenditures and projects, breaks down when distorted ideas and projects are created by the legislature and then administered by the executive. These people simply are not any good at it. In business when you have a vision and fail at it you go out of business and work for your brother-in-law. In government, when you develop a failed project you you stay a legislator or become an ambassador or a lobbyist but the rest of us are stuck with the stupid idea and implementation until the next inept go-round.

Health Care and our Leaders

Here's a real nice little quote from Obama. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/07/22/obama_doctors_taking_tonsils_out_for_money_instead_of_diagnosing_it_as_allergies.html
He looks to hype support for this government health plan by demonizing doctors who are victimizing children. The first page of the book on desperate responses: a personal attack on someone who has something to gain if you lose--and, by the way, include a kid. These people are shameless. Do I know crooks in medicine? Yes. But if the honesty among attorneys were one tenth the integrity of physicians, this would be a nice world.

What is overlooked in this mess is this: these lawmakers come up with a pandering notion/good idea and seduce the population with it. Now I make no excuses for the population; De Tocqueville said the big risk in the democracy was that the voters would figure out they could vote themselves other people's production. But then they do not manage the problem they created. I heard on the news a few nights age that a dentist billed Medicare for 9300 procedures on one day. There are three pizza parlors in Florida that managed to get themselves registered as three dialysis units and bill regularly for them.

Yet I routinely am called by my credit card if I do anything out of the ordinary.

A few years ago a friend of mine who was running a radiological diagnostic unit applied for his license to use diagnostic isotopes. He got back a license that authorized him to use weapons grade uranium. Weapons grade uranium! These people simply do not deserve to be in charge.

health care

I did not watch Obama last night but the health care mess seems to be worse. The insincerity of all this is staggering. The concerns about health care in the government is not about the well being of the citizens, it is about the expense of their well being. The government has always bought votes and support by offering voters perks --like social security, health care, and prescription plans--without any notion or concern about the eventual outcome. Anyone can see now that those bills are becoming unmanageable and, rather than tell the truth and admit they were wrong (and stupid and insincere), they try to disguise the situation and persist in the fiction that this can be achieved. If they tell the truth they will leave many old people--who thought they would have health care--without anything and social security is next. Those guys vote. So the option the political class has chosen is to deny there is a general financial problem and pretend the problem is fraud, or poor care or the uninsured. There is no easy solution here. We have people who have not saved, have a lot of debt and are totally unprepared for managing their future lives. There will be a shell of social security and a shell of medical care but these shells will mean a significant change in our lives and our expectations. And this will mean scavenging the productive people for any spare income to support those who did not make the effort to support themselves. I see a contraction here in lifestyle and comfort, like what is beginning in Europe. Here's an article that talks, superficially, about the American health measurements we mentioned earlier. http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=332723342557746

Health Care Bait and Switch

There are problems facing us now that will be resolved in one way or another. Refusing to confront them will still result in a solution of some sort. As I see it, there are three major things that must be resolved: 1. health care costs, 2. energy policies and 3.our attitude towards money and debt. I think it is important to distinguish between health care and health care expenses. Health care is fine; health care costs are not. As this blurb shows, health care costs will bankrupt us and are a function of the growing number of people requiring care and the growing number of health care solutions available to them. This, if true, leads to a few very nasty options including decreasing the number of people requiring care or minimizing the care options available. I see no other choices and believe the government has come to this conclusion as well; they are just lying about it.
http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=328

financial triage

This topic is crucial to every one's life: what to spend in the year. These stats are from the government and are quite extensive. Interestingly--and disingenuously--they do not include taxes which should be on every one's mind. But these are the numbers the average family spends after taxes and they are instructive. They are broken down in nice detail. If you believe as I do that the country will not grow much in the near future but there might be some financial distortions, for example energy costs might go up but inflation will not because credit and debt will shrink and thus contract the money available, then what increases in the chart in the future must be shifted from the chart. I.E. the chart will not grow: if one thing cost more it must be paid for by a shift in expense from something else. These are interesting to ponder.

http://www.visualeconomics.com/how-the-average-us-consumer-spends-their-paycheck/

Conspiracy or Accidental Chaos

I hope everyone read my little financial link yesterday. Here is a link of a different stripe. I do not know why this interview is not being discussed every hour by everyone. It suggests a remarkable event and legitimate terror on the part of our esteemed leaders. One could easily see this story as part of a huge James Bond plot. Who was moving this money out? Who has the economic muscle to do it? Why did they do it? Its proximity to the election is very provocative; was that a factor? Most importantly, why is such a huge and astonishing event ignored? It is more than curious: That money movement could anonymously threaten the security and stability of a culture must be addressed. But before that, it must be recognized.
From Motley Fool: http://caps.fool.com/blogs/viewpost.aspx?bpid=143295&t=01006124249416869148
And there are individual lessons, too. This is a complex world and we may not have all the understanding or the tools to control its most basic components. That places a burden on every individual to protect himself as well as possible. And that start with being informed.

Upheaval and Investment

There are countless websites devoted to the topic of personal finance because, I think, this is such a problem. This is something you can learn--and I can help because I have been through it all. My fear is that this is a harsh culture created by strong men. Their strength and vision may be bred a little thin now but the demands created by their philosophy persists. The concept of personal freedom guaranteed by the state is revolutionary but it is not immutable because it all but guarantees incidental personal failure. As time has gone by, some cultures have compromised freedom in order to mute the possibility of personal failure: it is illegal to work an extra job on your 6 week designated vacation in France. Illegal. The upside is compressed in an effort to elevate the downside. In this world the ideal bell shaped curve is a line straight up and down.
This battle between personal freedom and social responsibility will never end and will be tweaked and massaged forever by the well-meaning and the avaricious, the optimists and the pessimists, the exceptional and the kind proxies of the incompetent. You don't have to go any further than those horrifying pictures of those poor people staring out at helicopters in flooded New Orleans to know the truth: some people can not take care of themselves. What should we do about them?
Countries have dealt with their problems in a lot of ways but remember that the poor, the disenfranchised, the inept must be given something someone else made. Furniture. Food. Money. Security. If they can't create it, they must be given someone else's. This government in the past has outlawed gold ownership, capped money withdrawal, arrested and interred American citizens under some stressful circumstances.
At any rate, please indulge me my concerns here and take my ravings with a smaller grain of salt than you might ordinarily.
Here is the first thing to read, a notion that emerged by accident as the people at Google were searching for an investment approach for their soon-to-be-millionaire employees:
http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/best-investment-advice-youll-never-get