Health Care - Right or Privilige?

Is health care a right? Or is it a privilige? Yes and No.

Why are we even debating this? Because we are shallow. Most of our debates are just that - shallow.

Health Care is certainly not your kind of natural or inalieanable right. You are not born with the right to have it, save what you give to yourself or what your caretaker provide for you. But there is also another class of rights that is contingent on the developmental stage of the society - I would call this class of rights resource rights. What do I mean?

Every society has natural and developed resoures that add value for all its citizens. The more developed, the more value is added. Roads, waterways, public utilities, the justice system, national security - all these support and underlie the creation of value in the society. All these are, in most cases, owned by the overall society.

These are what help to determine what "resource rights" citizens should have available to them.
Health Care is of course critical to the capacity to enjoy and benefit from all natural rights. What is the value of your right to free speech if you end up in a coma for the rest of your life?

So yes, health care is indeed a right. But it comes about because of a common privilege - the privilege to partake in the common and residual resources of a society created by the combined labor and efforts of generations.

The richest, most developed society on this planet cannot argue that its citizens do not have a right to this fundamental resource so that it can adequately pursue and enjoy all the natural or inalianable rights.

In America, and probably in all other developed nations, health care is indeed a right. To argue otherwise is to be, somewhat sick.

Praising Reagan,or showing great insight and honesty?

amaIt never ceases to amaze me how dishonest we can get in this country. The latest flap over Barack Obama's take of how fundamental change comes about in a society is another example of this. I viewed the Obama interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal and he is 100% right in his analysis. Ronald Reagan did change the trajectory of America. But the core argument is that it was possible because there was an underlying current that wanted change. Margaret Thatcher did it in Great Britain.

No where did he imply that he agreed with the direction this change took us in.

Yet, Senator John Edwards, probably more in his zeal to score political points rather than lend his unmistakable skills towards elevating this debate made this rather self-serving comment, “You think about what Ronald Reagan did to America, the American people, to the middle class, to working people. He was openly, openly intolerant of unions and the right to organize."

We all know the main theme of Edward's candidacy and no one can fault him for fighting for the working class.

But to not understand or to misconstrue what Obama is saying, is to display a total lack of objectivity, a quality you should not want in your next president.

Or worse, to bend it to suit your own objectives is so Bushlike, it is scary. And these are precisely some of the things that Obama correctly sense that the American people are tired of.

Whether or not you agree with his politics, you have to admit that Obama brings a level of freshness to politics and public discourse America has not seen in decades, and the country seems to be ready for this. This is a great example of how the man thinks and the type of leadership he would offer.

For people to be expressing shock that Obama is “praising” Reagan is just absurd and is part of the problem with a large part of the American electorate. We fall too easily for second hand news and analysis, too lazy to do our own research. The video of the interview is out there for anyone to view and listen to. If you come away with the notion that Obama is praising Reagan for the direction he took the country in, you are either a fool or just lack plain understanding.

What you should come away with is the realization that you have someone running for the presidency who has insight and great judgment, a firm grasp of where this country needs to go, demonstrated time and time again.

The real question is not whether Obama is ready to be president, the real question is whether the American people are willing to follow what is stirring in their souls - a desire for profound and meaningful change that will rebuild the middle class, restore our can-do attitude and have a political system that is geared towards solving huge problems rather than nitpicking about a small number of our differences.

The Self-Destructive Race To The Bottom Line

Global warming is not the only thing America seems to be delusional about. A globalization and trade strategy that makes no sense is the other.

This race to the bottom line is self-destructive. We either do not understand the core of economics or we are just plain drunk with capitalism.

The core of economics is not costs, or even demand and supply - those are results themselves of something else. The core of economics is the balance between desire and efficiency.

If you kill desire then you undermine growth through stagflation. If you attempt to satisfy desire with no care to efficiency then you destroy wealth with inflation.

Lower costs for lower costs sake may or may not impact efficiency. But taken to its natural extreme, it will surely undermine desire because it creates a cycle of undervaluing of effort and work by using benchmarks arising from dissimilarities. Someone whose work is valued less and less in the market place, will have less and less desire or wherewithal to consume.

A worker in India is not the same as a worker in the US. The worker cannot be evaluated as a separate entity from his environment. The environment in the US is a richer one for living created by effort at different levels - innovation, legislation. These over time come to reflect the values of the society. They feed into each other synergistically and mutually add value.

It is the same for India, or for any other society you may take. But the resultant labor resource are a reflection of that society and reflect those differences. We either comprehend the value of those differences and protect them or we do not. Because those differences represent progress and what set developed societies apart from under or developing societies.

And what are these differences? Well, lets take one simple one.

Day care in the US has become a part of mainstream economic activity. More people now pay for day care in the US than 50-60 years ago. Why? Because more women now go out to work, to produce, to add to the GDP. No longer can you leave little Tom with aunt Mary next door.

In India, and less developed countries, they still have the luxury of "auntie" day-care. To American workers, children day care comprises of costs that are a welcome expense that is a part of the economic system. To the Indian worker, children day care comprises favors that are a welcome convenience of the social system.

See why you have to be careful when you talk about free-trade. Free trade yes, but not at the expense of your own progress. That is just plain short-sighted and serves nothing else but false dogma.

So what is the solution to this mad rush to the bottom line where American workers are being battered back to the stone age?

Don't tell me the solution is more or better education. That is a solution yes, but not for the above problem.

Technology has become more of a change agent than education will ever be. That is because people can learn only so many new skills over a productive life-time to keep up with how fast technology is changing the landscape. Yes, in an overall sense the society will benefit from the learning of new skills - meaning a new wave of college grads, etc, will contribute new skills and so on. But that is not the problem. The problem is the displacement of still valuable skills by a rush to pay less and less for them by moving jobs where it is seemingly possible to do so.

The US either want a middle class or it does not. If it does not, then all the US worker is doing is producing his way out of a job. The better he gets, the more valuable he becomes. The more valuable he becomes, the more valuable his environment in terms of incremental taxes for schools, roads, etc and the added value to services and goods. But too bad, the more valuable he becomes in this society the less valuable he gets to the function of increasing the corporate bottom-line. Now the corporate bottom-line is out of sync with the society's bottom line.

The social-economic link above that has played such a huge role in how the society has developed, is now out of sync. Should we now go back to "auntie" day care? We don't know. And most likely, we never will.

So the workers in India who have this as a social convenience, does not have it as a true competitive advantage out of anything they have done, but as a result of the progress of the American economic system. Because if that system did not progress beyond "auntie" day care, the American worker would probably not be that expensive for American business. So maybe that is where we need to go back to after all. Maybe we are not so smart or developed after all.

Now we are really upsetting the balance between desire and efficiency. We are killing the desire of the American middle class by our attempts to increase efficiency with lower costs. There is a better way.

And yes, the very sound of it is ugly to some. Tariffs.

Tariffs, used correctly, are not trade protection. They are trade enhancements. They are supposed to maintain the desire / efficiency balance, because there is no such thing as "Free trade". Societies differ, that difference factors into the economic equation. Free trade assumes that is not so. Unfortunately it is so and until it is not so, there is no such thing as Free trade.

Now, if the damn politicians were only smart enough or courageous enough to think this through. I wont hold my breath.

Drivers License For Illegals? What next?

The conundrum related to this matter demonstrates the hypocrisy and woolly head thinking that dominates so much of the American society.

The governor of NY is about to ask his own civil servants to break the law. The Federal government allows businesses to get away with breaking the law. Some want all illegals deported, not giving consideration that large segments of society and business have been established around illegals that directly affect legals.

For years the government has been negligent. And now we want to disrupt legal businesses built around the consumption of these illegals. See why you must ALWAYS enforce the law? If you do not, then you put even the innocent at risk. That is almost criminal given the responsibilities of the government to the citizenry.

Yet we seem impotent in the face of this issue.

The problem is a lack of will and leadership. On all sides. And not to mention an abundance of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy because in this case, politically it seems to pay. Big time.

What ever happened to NAFTA - that was supposed to raise living standards in Central America? See where dishonesty gets us? We lose good paying jobs and now we are getting people in who suppress wages. That is an immigration policy?

People, you do not have a government. What we have are gate keepers. Protecting different interests at the expense of the majority.