On Cutting The Government

Over the past 6-9 months I've been thinking a lot about the changes that are happening in politics as some people get more agitated about the size and scope of federal and state governments. The biggest development is the rise in influence of all the "Tea Party" conservatives who are hell bent on reducing the size of government by cutting spending, eliminating "non-essential" services, and trying to "right-size" the government. 

As I've listened to all the rhetoric, I don't think it's all such a bad idea at it's core. The government should be run like a business. Like any business, you have revenue (taxes) and you have costs (services). If these two components get out of line for too long, it becomes an unsustainable situation. Somebody has to pay somewhere (or you just print more money -- but that's a different story). 

However, while I'm all for getting rid of "waste" in government, I don't think that some people really understand what happens when you cut "waste". Because when you cut parts of the government, you are cutting jobs. When you cut jobs, people get pissed. And when people get pissed, they change their votes. So while some might contend that the 2010 election was a indictment against President Obama for all of his "budget busting" bills -- I think the more realistic answer was that everyone was pissed because they didn't have a job. In his campaign he talked about changing healthcare -- it's not like weren't expecting changes in this area.

Back to people being pissed -- when you cut the government, you are cutting jobs. Right now the unemployment rate stands at 9.1%, while the "real" unemployment rate stands to be much higher -- at some something like 15%-20% after you factor in all the people who have quit searching for work and those who are underemployed.  Let's say you get the chopping block out and start cutting programs (jobs) -- where do you think that unemployment number is heading?? It's certainly not going to be a good number. 

The other way to "right-size" the government is to reduce the benefits that it gives to people. Everyone loves to say they want to cut government spending, but when you actually give them some options, they won't touch any program that will have an effect on them. And that's the problem -- Medicare and Social Security are the biggest drivers of the future budget, but no one has the desire to make a real change to them, because they affect so many people. In the end, you have everyone cursing any potential tax increase, but nobody wants to pay. It's not a good combination.

I think people need to be realistic and pragmatic about how to reduce the deficit. The bi-partisan group in Obama's fiscal commission recommended spending cuts and tax increases that draws ire from both sides of the aisle.

Will someone finally listen to them?

In The Mirror -- Poem

Originally written in 4/2010

New Republicans in the House

They're all so conservative

Off that George Bush shit

Stickin' to what Palin says

Palin's on Fox

Yeah that's the hot news

Got up and left her state

Right out of the blue

Hit the book tour with the one she didn't even write

Ghostwritten by others who haven't lived her life

Soaking up the spotlight, living in the fame

Going rogue

Sparking movements

Charging people money that's insane

On to the Tea Partiers, who hate on Obama

Putting 'staches on his face

Sparking up the drama

One jab, two jabs, they think he's going down

Little do they know that they're just a bunch of clowns

Throwin' him under the bus

Callin' him socialist

When you say those words

Dude you're so ignorant

They're led by GB

Yeah I'm talking Glenn Beck

Callin' Obama all the names

Just to get the ratings check

All day it's Maoist, Socialist, Marxist, Progressive

All Barack is doing is helping the most oppressed men

Yeah he's on the left, but not way in left field

Look at the fighting in his party on the healthcare deal

Public option's out. Abortion restrictions tightened.

This was a centrist bill, whether or not you like it

Back to Glenn Beck, no I'm not done yet.

Always putting progressives down from his TV set

What's wrong with the prospect of a better place?

Clean water, clean Earth, let's clean up this place

Somehow that makes me a Maoist controlling everyone

Let me turn the tables on this one troubled man

He tells me man is fallen

Points to the Holy Book

He says all of our laws come from these ideals

If you don't believe in them

You're an enemy of the people

How is that any different from a theocracy?

Imprinting on minds how life's gotta be

That's not the nation that I grew up in

Read the Founders words

It's in plain text man

On Healthcare Reform & Civil Rights History

A lot is being made about the Democrats plan for health-care reform. One minute it looks like they have their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, which means they can push through whatever they want. The next minute, they lose Kennedy's seat, and everyone says healthcare is dead. The next minute, everyone starts talking about reconciliation as a way to only need 51 votes in the Senate to get the bill. Then, you have Republicans calling reconciliation a "back-room deal" even though they used those tactics when GWB was in office.

It's apparent that something needs to change with healthcare. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that the bill needs to have this or that. I haven't looked at all the numbers. And most people haven't. So, it annoys me when people cling to their Glenn Becks of the world and just repeat what they say (ex: public option is bad), when they haven't performed the analysis themselves. I'm not saying the public option is good either. I'm saying I DON'T KNOW. Is that such a novel concept?

Now, people are looking at the polls and saying that less than 50% of people are in favor of the health plan. These are the same citizens that hated the stimulus, but loved all the individual tax breaks and incentives that it created.

However, the biggest thing I think about is, who cares about public opinion? Obviously it is an election year and the Democrats are nervous about losing their seats, but sometimes on an issue you have to go above public opinion. Do you think when the Supreme Court made its decision on Brown v. Board of Education that >50% of citizens agreed with it? Hell no. It took 10 YEARS for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to finally become law. Why did it take so long?

By the early 1960s, the nation s congressional history contributed to growing legislative pressures for a comprehensive civil rights law. Although political pressures prevented President John F. Kennedy's administration from proposing legislation to Congress in 1961 and 1962, the President took steps to ensure minority rights in voting, employment, housing, transportation, and education by executive action. (link)

Political pressure = motherfuckers in Congress from the South + public opinion. That means that the public didn't want black people to have their Civil Rights, because if politicians would have voted for it in 1954, then would have lost votes in the subsequent election. It wasn't until the early 1960s that public opinion changed somewhat and allowed the legislation to go through.

The National Opinion Research Center discovered this change of attitude in a sample survey of northern whites in 1963. The Center determined that the number who approved neighborhood integration had risen 30% in twenty years, to 72% in 1963. The proportion favoring school integration had risen even more impressively to 75%. (link)

How does this all tie together? All I'm saying is that someone needs to grow some balls in Congress and pass something that going to rein in costs and create the incentives for lower-cost healthcare. I'm not saying that I know what the solution is, but the alternative (doing nothing) doesn't look too promising either.

On The End of Capitalism

After 6 months of reading it on and off, I finally finished the book Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life. I've always wanted to learn more about him, and at 750 pages, I definitely learned more about him and Cuban revolution than I ever did before.

One thought that stays with me is the idea that eventually capitalism might end. Maybe our brand of capitalism is not sustainable. Maybe it needs to be changed. Now before you sit there and call me a brain-washed, socialist bastard, just hold on a second. I think we're all trained from day one here in the United States to say that capitalism is the best thing since sliced bread and everything else will fail. That really neglects the situation for all the people in the developing nations around the world. Because especially today, we are wealthy at their expense. So while we sit here and watch our football, go to our malls, and spend money we don't have, there are millions are people who really don't have anything.

This brings me back to 2 summers ago when I went to Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. One day at breakfast there was a Christian group (about 20 deep) that were having breakfast at a table near me. They had come to this country to visit and were saying their various prayers. I just couldn't help but ask myself, do they ever wonder how they ended up in the United States and most people live in poverty and have a daily struggle. How do you reconcile that with the idea of a "loving God"? I just can't erase that memory from my mind.

There's this huge gap that we have created between the developed and developing nations of the world. The question I keep asking myself is: will our technological prowess eventually end scarcity of most essential items?

I'm not saying this is going to happen tomorrow or 1 year from or even 10 years now. I'm saying in the distant future, will everyone be able to have essentially what they need? We will be so efficient and advanced in everything to the point where we are abundant with the necessities for living life. To me, at that point capitalism doesn't really make sense. In capitalism, you need a steady stream of new products. People need to buy things over and over to keep the economy going. For example, look at our "recession". The savings rate went from .5% to 4.5% and we've had a complete shit show in the economy. HELLO. People are actually saving money and not spending it on crap. But, that's the thing. For capitalism to work, you need people spending money. When we don't, the whole thing goes completely to hell. When you got those stimulus checks from G-Dub, he didn't want you putting them into the bank. He wanted you to spend it and keep yourself in this cycle of debt that is all-too common in our country. He doesn't want you to save money in a recession, especially with 70% of our economy being consumer spending-- see Paradox of Thrift.

My question is, will we ever be so efficient and advanced that we don't need to buy any more crap? Will we have everything that we need? But if that were to happen, not many people would have jobs. Capitalism just wouldn't work.

Thoughts?

On Ownership

How do you really own something? Are the things that we "own" really ours or can someone else have a claim on them? For example, I purchased the computer that I am currently using with my money, but is it really mine?

Let's take a step back. Going back to when the settlers came to the New World, they found a vast land inhabited by the Native Americans. With any basic knowledge of US history, you will know that the Natives were pushed further and further west as the Americans took hold of the land. To rationalize the acquisition of land, the concept of Manifest Destiny emerged. Basically, the story goes, it was ordained by God that the United States needed to have all the land from coast to coast. So, the Natives were thrown off their previous land, and we had events such as the Trail of Tears.

Now I'm not going to debate that the Europeans/Americans did some pretty bad things in killing lots of Natives, spreading their diseases, etc. But my thought is: was it really that wrong for the Natives to be moved to new lands? Did they really OWN their previously inhabited land?

My thought is that they didn't really own it. To me, ownership is contingent on some powerful body being able to back you up if someone tries to take your property. For example, if I take your computer, and there is no US government to back you up and send the police after me, then do you really have a claim on that computer? In this situation we are in the State of Nature and might means right.

In my view the Native American Nation had sovereignty over a certain space of land, but after losing battles to the Europeans/Americans, the sovereignty was transferred away from them to Great Britain and later the United States. Thus, ownership was transferred, so how could the Native Americans' land really be "stolen"? They had no one to turn to in order to enforce their claim on the land.

What do you think?

On Universal Healthcare

One topic that has been on my mind recently is Universal Healthcare in the United States.

The United States, the most wealthy country in the world, is the only industrialized nation that does not have a universal health care system. Well, why not?

The philosophical side of the issue brings up some interesting points. If you as a person can rationalize paying for the public school system, then I don't understand how you could not rationalize universal health care. Is it fair to tell kids that the income of their parents is going to drive whether or not they get a decent education? Of course not. Here's the thing, we have a public school system that is free because many people would not be able to pay for it otherwise. If you don't like the public schools, then you are free to pay for the private school of your choice.

Interestingly enough, the public school system wasn't originally developed because everyone felt that kids had the right to learn -- they wanted a public school system so there would be smart enough people to have jobs in our society. If there were too many ignorant people, then society could not advance.

Coming back to universal healthcare, the argument for it follows a similar pattern. There are a lot of people who can't pay for healthcare in our country. Instead of getting the care that they need, people are forced to avoid treatment until they have a big crisis in their health. Maybe their employer doesn't offer an affordable healthcare plan. Maybe the insurance companies have denied their applications for coverage. Maybe they don't have enough money.

If this is the situation, then how can we solve it?

I think everyone should have a right to universal healthcare. Maybe you don't get 100% of the costs paid. In England, it costs around 10 US dollars for any prescription that you want. That is obviously a lot more afforable than the drug costs here in the United States. But what is cost for the people at large?

One of the big things that people who are against universal healthcare bring up is the idea that if there is universal healthcare, costs are going to spiral out of control and it is going to be a big burden on everyone. My answer to that is look at every other industralzied nation in the world. I don't see them spiraling out of control. But then they come back and say, "well why should I have to pay for people to smoke and get get sick and do all these other things that don't affect me." Here's the thing -- you're ALREADY DOING THAT. It's called insurance. You're paying for the healthcare costs of all the other smokers that are on your same insurance plan. You're paying for people who go to the doctor all the time for no reason. You're paying for the fat people who won't lose weight and have lifestyle diseases. Conceptually, you're already paying for all this, so why is universal healthcare any different?

My big theory is that universal healthcare will make costs go DOWN. In the United States, we don't focus on preventing illness. We focus on trying to get you better once you're already sick. But that's wrong way of approaching it. Why not focus on helping people living healthy lives from get-go? We need to focus on preventing illness. Not curing it once it's already too late. Universal healthcare removes some of the barriers that people have to obtaining the treatment that they need. You don't have to worry about your co-pays, are you in the network or out of the network, or whether you've met your deductible. And for people who don't have health insurance, they can finally get the correct treatment that they previously had to forego. So by preventing illness instead of treating illness, healthcare costs will inevitably go down.

I also found some other reasons why people are against it.

1. Patients aren't likely to curb their drug costs and doctor visits if health care is free; thus, total costs will be several times what they are now.
2. Healthy people who take care of themselves will have to pay for the burden of those who smoke, are obese, etc.
3. A long, painful transition will have to take place involving lost insurance industry jobs, business closures, and new patient record creation.
4. Malpractice lawsuit costs, which are already sky-high, could further explode since universal care may expose the government to legal liability, and the possibility to sue someone with deep pockets usually invites more lawsuits.
5. "Free" health care isn't really free since we must pay for it with taxes; expenses for health care would have to be paid for with higher taxes or spending cuts in other areas such as defense, education, etc.

My responses:
1. Charge people a small, but afforable fee (like England) for prescription drugs. Focus on preventing illness and people won't need as many drugs.
2. If you have insurance, you're already paying for other people to be obese.
3. Fuck the insurance companies. They only thing they are good for is denying care from people. They reject people who apply to their plans for dubious reasons. In effect, you send them your money from your paycheck and then have to yell and scream to get the real care you need.
4. Put a cap on damages for malpractice lawsuits based on the injures.
5. Taxes are inevitable. For people who already have insurance, it is unknown how much the cost of insurance premiums that they currently pay will compare with the potential increase in taxes.

I think universal healthcare is imporant. So, if you agree that it is important to have a public school system, give me one good argument against universal healthcare.