The government is the right institution to pay for and hold the healthcare industry accountable (single payer).  Competition is useful in many areas but not in who should collect and pay for health coverage which we all need.  A single payer system is the most streamlined and will provide the greatest simplicity and uniformity. In any specialized or emergency healthcare sector the effectiveness of competition breaks down.  You are at the mercy of the provider when you get the bill.  It is absolutely necessary that the government educates itself and oversees those that provi ..read more

A bureaucracy is a group of people communicating and working around a set of standards.  Its why your McDonalds burger is similar wherever you go.  It is also why we have clean air and water.  It is neither good or bad.  Communication, learning, and accountability can all be stressors.  You can work to improve the system, even then some will complain because problem solving effort is required in the change once they have one system down. In time the bureaucracies get more efficient at enforcing and overseeing existing rules and the entities they govern get trained on w ..read more

Overview North America After Polar Ice Melt (credit Kevin Gill using NASA Satellite Imagery from flickr.com) We all share the same rock, the same atmosphere, the same oceans, we have to take care of it now with 7 Billion people in a post-industrial age. It requires work…the more people and the more industry the more work it takes.  In a war it can be easy to rally an economy around a common goal, there is the fear, we have to act.  In a climate situation it is much harder…. our activity is causing a long-term problem, we need to make a change, and we need to devote a lot of resources ..read more

The non-military part of the government is less than a quarter of what the government spends.  Most of the money goes to the military or seniors (which we would spend privately anyway if the government wasn’t).  It is not the fault of the government that the industrial revolution happened resulting in a much more urban/suburban culture and industrialization.  This required the government to greater plan cities, oversee worker safety, empower laborers with management, manage increased globalization, and rule on what we put into the sky, earth, and waterways. We all want less stre ..read more

There is goodwill and homework type budgeting which includes doing homework on all the things the government does and understanding the more mental work put in by the top, the more efficient the government will run.  Resources are allocated according to need and understanding.  Appreciation is given to the necessary stress the government puts on society to ensure we are accountable to each other and the world.  It is not the government but human innovation and values that increase the size of government. There is also emotional budgeting focusing on temptation….giving as much mo ..read more

The gold standard, don’t tax pledges, balance budget amendment propositions and even the recent cryptocurrency craze are all forms of trying to force the government’s hand in budgeting.  They are afraid of the control the government has with printing money, they understand the unsustainable nature of the debt they created, and they want to control it without standing up for any pay fors. 1. Bind the Government’s Hands 2. Hide 3. ? The reality is the government’s ability to control its money has been very important in history to help in recessions, wars, infrastructure initiatives etc.&n ..read more

Many of these are not original but as I think about what is true in an economic system I come up with these points. The economy is work. In order for us to consume tomorrow what we consume today someone has to work tomorrow. Wealth in the world is: The debt of another The value of an asset Money printed by the government Having more people in debt doesn’t help the world and having the world’s assets cost more labor hours isn’t necessarily helpful either.  A revenue producing asset doesn’t make the world wealthier, that is someone else’s future labor owed to you.  The world doesn’t ..read more

To be blunt a correction needs to be made for what has happened over the last 40 years.  We need to deter this cycle from occurring for the next 40 years.  The promises of increased growth to pay for these tax cuts never came true and the fortunes created as a result of these tax cuts are not just.  The debt that has incurred never went to some foreign entity we now owe our labor too; it went to the top of the income ladder.  We have yet to seriously address tax issues to the increased efforts in the middle east which have cost $6.4 trillion according to the Watson Institut ..read more

We are not more or less poor because we under tax ourselves, in fact the economy doesn’t really care as long as the government keeps spending.  The economy only knows who is spending not who is acquiring assets and who is acquiring debt.  As long as the government spends the same and goes into debt and the rich keep saving the status quo remains.  If the rich were to start spending all of their money the economy would try to compensate by devoting more resources to what rich people would buy, prices on other things would go up, the quality of life of everyone else would suffer ..read more

The problem with just cutting taxes is it’s a slow wealth transfer.  It takes time to take the government’s money so they got a little smarter in 2017 with cutting the corporate tax rates.  Just like selling a business or some revenue stream you get an instant pay out.  Where do rich people put their money? A lot of it in public or private companies. By taking a ~$200 Billion revenue stream away from the treasury companies are able to take home 79 cents on the dollar vs 65 cents, an increase of (79-65)/65 = 21.5% so now your company has 21.5% more profits without doing any work ..read more