SilverBulleits

Primal Scream

In what passes for leadership, our President once again took to the airwaves tonight with hollow calls for class warfare and desparate calls, for more calls, to congress: presumably to pressure our repesentives to "compromise."  Arguably, compromise is in order; that said, blaming the tea-party, for calling the abject and prolonged failures of our so-called leaders to account, is IMHO misplaced.  If there were more factions with the perceverence to play by the rules and effectively petition their government for rational change, ours would be a better country with a brighter future.

What bothers me most about the current morass is how little attention is being focused on the true underlying issue: ironically, the "balanced (read more taxes acompanying vague promises to cut spending) approach", is really nothing more than a proxy on Democrats' and the mainstream media's limp-wristed embrace of true change.  Specifically,  the left simply cannot fathom retreat from a century-long slide toward socialism: said differently, they just can't bring themselves to believe that a better governement may, in fact, be a smaller one. The 2012 elections, therefore, are likely to be the pail of water that follows an unsuccesful wake-up call.

And that brings me to the point of this post: Republicans seem too stupid to realize that they've got the sure win theme right under their nose!

Preemptively self-editing paragraphs of illustration, I'll just state an obvious aspect of human nature: even though our culture has evolved (or devolved) any number of unscuritably-complex trappings (e.g., government) , under it all we're still dumb animals.  We're still most driven by instincts burnt-in over milenia of natural selection (apologies to the ID idiots out there): we're still captives of Maslow's Hierarchy; and, Richard Dawkins persuasivley argues that our most basic appitites are still shaped by our selfish genes! In short, as a whole and as individuals, we're still more interested in the propogation of our genes than even our own survival.  What parent would't give her own life to save her child?  Indeed, most adults would, in a pinch, unhesitantly risk their life for any child!

So, here's the killer issue: just below our collective conscious is a quite natural revulsion to what we're doing to children and childrens' children. What previous generation has little more than massive debt as its legacy? What will they say about us: they who will, perforce, one day have much less just so that we can have much more than what we actually earn? How can anyone (apart from our President and many in congress) celebrate tonight's "compromise": i.e., an act of faux-statesmanship that leaves them feeling good about adding only $7trillion (as opposed to $10T) to the travesty that is ours?!!!

All that the Republicans need for a landslide next year is to, somehow, distant themselves from what happened tonight (if not claim some credit for what the tea baggers hath wrought).  All things considered, tonight's debt compromise was, probably, the best we could do.  `just sayin...

New-fashioned Participation

Reading my old friend Lawrence Wilkinson's most recent post this morning (with broadcast news of the raging debt crisis playing in the back ground), I'm prompted to scrawl down a few thoughts on a "participatory web" that predates (but not by that much) the internet.

Citing an article in the current Economist, Lawrence points out that 43million—one in every seven Americans!—regularly recieve food stamps.  And, as I was just reminded by my own TV, a big part of the uproar over the arbitrary August 2 deadline (on extending the federal debt limit), centers upon precisely which of the 80million checks that the gov't issues to its own citizens each month, may be delayed.  By my estimation, that equates to over half of all American families have become, to a greater or lessor extent, dependent upon government largesse! 

Somehow, I really can't imagine that the founding fathers had anything like this in mind for their Republic: a nation that has devolved to contemporary politicians routinely pandering to whatever voting block they can identify.  Then, sadly, the very nature of an entitlement makes it all but impossible for the next office-holder to remove these insidious freedom-killing programs. Add in an ever-accreting set of politically-packaged new "rights" (e.g., government subsidized health) and the demogoguery floats on a sea of red ink with ease.  This owes, in part I think, to the unhappy coincidence of a less-than-fully-congruent-different "half" of tax payors: i.e., those that end up paying no tax at all and, therefore, have no percieved stake in the outcome or "skin in the game."

`lest you think that terms like "freedom killing" are just so much demogoguery of their own, consider the direct and indirect impact of chronic deficit spending.  What right do we have to indebt our children and grandchildren, to the tune of $100K's/ea, just to pay for our own current over-consumption?  Fast forward a few years to when more frugal Chinese elect to call our hand and start cashing out: doesn't our best case scenario then involve a kind of subtle servitude?  And, back at home in real time, does anyone really doubt that more/better jobs are inextricably linked to expansionary and successful private business ventures? That being the case, isn't it also obvious that, on the margin, an overly-progressive tax structure most certainly retards new and/or expansionary enterprise?

Idiots like Bill Maher puzzle aloud over how/why folks would "vote against their own interests" (e.g., by not insisting on higher taxers for the rich).  He's also fond of saying that the Ameican people are morons.  He's wrong.  The truth is that more of us than he knows have an, at least subliminal, understanding of economic cause and effects; and, in general, we're more rational and aspiring than the elite left wants to fathom.

So, what's "overly-progressive"? How about the status quo. Do you know that in the US 5% of Americans pay over 80% of all taxes BUT they take in less than 40% of all income! In short, the rich and upper middle class already pay more than their "fair share."  IMHO, Obama's hollow solution to upping taxes on "millionaries and billionaries" is almost as big a fraud as is his pointing to corporate taxation (a practice that does nothing more or less than driving the cost of everything up and the demand for American-made products down).  You could take all of the income of all of the very rich and all you get is less: less new business initiatives and, by a short route, less tax revenue (from the suddenly idle but formerly most productive among us). For more on this line of thought, Micheal Medved has been penning persuasive prose here for a while.

First uttered by Plato (and restated by de'Tocqueville and an assortment of others since) "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury."

Back to Lawrence's original point: a couple of days ago I was standing in the check-out line of a moderately up-scale grocery store and watched as two patrons' selections, including all manner of cosmetics, frozen foods and choice meats, were bagged up.  Call me a tea bagger (which I'm decidedly not) but I could not help but become mildy annoyed to watch them both whip out their EBT (food stamp) cards with nary a notion of appreciation to those out working to pay for their "gifts."

Whither Heathcare Consumerism: whether it withers or weathers?

`forgive the mind-bending, tongue-twisting title.  But, the most ambiguous term in this tortured taunt may be Healthcare Consumerism (HC) itself!  For, while some may see it as a problematic set of ideas, perpetually stuck at the threshold of mainstream adoption, others see scenarios involving more empowered and accountable individuals as inevitable and imminent.

In upcoming posts, I’d like to provoke a “wither HC” conversation: how “inevitable and imminent” is it [or not]? What has constrained early HC antecedents: e.g., consumer-directed health plans, HSA’s, FSA’s, etc?  And what are the trip wires and early warning signs that we can we look to as harbingers of a more rational healthcare future: scenarios wherein the principle cost-causers—individual patients and their attending physicians—are induced to find more cost-effective ways of maintaining their health and/or managing chronic afflictions.

I’ll start the ball rolling with a loose parallel: during the span of most of our lives, we’ve seen retirement and pension planning move from mostly employer and/or government managed plans to the current world where many (if not most) folks have materially-expanded control and responsibility for their own senior-years' savings. IRAs, 401K’s and similar schemes have given us all more incentive as well as flexibility and accountability, in how we provides for our golden years.  And, in the process, we’ve collectively transformed large swaths of the securities industry. Financial professionals have, by no means disappeared; but, many of their roles have changed: from remote portfolio managers to engaged coach/advisors. 

May this tell us something about the future of patient/physician relationships? Maybe, maybe not.  In my view, however, only good things can come from introducing millions more decision makers into a more dynamic healthcare marketplace.

What do you think? Will HC weather the current Heathcare Reform storms? Are key aspects of the Affordable Care (a.k.a., ObamaCare) really HC sceanrios in disguise or merely the preface to an expansionary National Health agenda?  Or, do you share my own belief that all roads lead (wittingly ot otherwise) back to HC?

BTW, for a more expert take on HC, check out Ron Bachman's BLOG at http://www.healthcarevisions.net/page/page/2641658.htm and/or http://www.healthtransformation.net/cs/healthcare_consumerism_video