Greetings from
The Publisher . . .
The thing about interesting times. . . .
The thing about these times that's really interesting is looking at options people haven't been taking seriously. When the Chinese say “May you live in interesting times” it's not exactly a blessing—it translates into times of change, which could also mean great change—or chaos.
How that translates in this electronic age of information is that it is harder and harder for those considered “authorities”—or Supreme Leaders—to lie and hide things from the rest of the world.
We are looking at many “unquestioned” assumptions about our society that have long been considered unchangeable.
The War on Drugs? Hey, “Drugs won!” as a friend of mine put it. It's been over for a while and now people are questioning our swat-team control strategy.
The most mind-boggling statement I've read on drug laws is that it doesn't matter how strict or how lax they are around the world or from state to state within the U.S. , roughly the same percentage of people continue to use illegal drugs.
So what's the point?
Maybe we should look at changing the things we can change.
More and more people are noticing the violence that comes with fighting it. Why are drug cartels getting rich when U.S. taxpayers need relief?
Do we want to let non-violent drug offenders out of jail? Or build new prisons and hire more prison guards?
When it comes to health care, people are clear they want another option: 85% want something that isn't provided by insurance companies. Our representatives won't hear of it, but at least people seem clear that our system is out of balance. It's pretty much like we are using a one-way, private street to take care of our public needs. (See David S. Cohen interview with health-care advocate Greg Knoll.)
The conversation by our media has been so one way for so long that we are just recently hearing more about how single-payer systems such as England 's and France 's seem to work fine. We haven't heard much of anything about the countries that have mixed public and private systems. They're out there.
There are a lot of interesting choices to make.
I was thinking the other day that one of the biggest challenges now is for city and county governments to provide health-care benefits for current and former employees. Wouldn't having a national health-care option be a bailout for local governments?
Have we explored how much it would change us if no one had to worry about not being able to provide health care for their families? And knowing that if they did get sick, that wouldn't lead to bankruptcy?
If the underlying cause of disease is stress, then wouldn't just having such a health-care system make life less stressful, and thereby reduce disease?
The big objections relate to so-called “socialism” and the cost.
When it comes to costs, though, I think we're looking at it backward. I remember when I took the Personal Finance Course from my friend Roger Lane years ago. Roger's now back home in Hawaii and continues to be a business consultant (roger@ rogerlane.com). In that course, one of the first things we did was to get clear about our purpose and goals. What do you want this next year? Two trips to Asia , one to Hawaii and one to Europe ? Okay, put that down.
We used those goals to see how much money we needed and created our budget from that. (Usually people look at it backward by asking how many vacations they can afford.) Cutting down on unnecessary expenses and then discovering how to May increase our incomes to meet our goals came next. Great course.
Why doesn't the government design a system that would take care of people the way people need to be taken care of to begin with? After that, let's look at where we can cut costs there and elsewhere. It's similar to what I did when I decided how many kW of solar panels to put on my roof. You just don't install a system; you insulate and get an energy-efficient refrigerator so your needs are not as high.
According to Rep. Ron Paul, all we'd need to do is close needless overseas military bases. Maybe we could prevent corporations from getting too big to fail rather than bail them out because they are too big to fail.
Maybe we could require that large corporations pay taxes like they did in the 1950s—unlike today— when the majority of corporations paid taxes. Taxes on the sale of legal marijuana could pay for a lot of health care.
Also about health is the new documentary Food, Inc. , that I review this month. Corporate food suppliers are so powerful—and so subsidized—that they can sell their products cheaper than it cost to make them.
We've known for years that the Farm Bill is a payoff for the largest corporate “farmers.” Now the conversation is about how the Farm Bill affects immigration and national policy too. Some section of the Farm Bill might be better made part of health care, such as nutrition programs. A lot of money these days seems to be going to companies who claim that what they like the most is relying on market forces and competition—just not competition from the government when it comes to health plans, I guess.
And what about Iran ? Wow! It changes daily, so who knows what will happen next? The government has admitted irregularities in voting in 50 cities. One city had 150% of their registered voters turn out. They've been reading about Floridian democracy.
It was moving to see the mass of people who turned out to protest, especially knowing there could be retaliation.
Wasn't it the other i-country that we spread democracy on? I-ronic.
So how many similar demonstrations in Washington , DC —with the theme “This isn't the change I voted for”—would it take before Congress discovered new health-care options?
Have a great month,
Steve
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