We’ve been disdainful of the Gold Bugs during our entire career, seeing most of them as gun-toting, canned-food hoarding, doomsday-awaiting crotchety old geezers with little good to say about society generally, and much bad.
For anyone new Walker is the old mining town in Northern Arizona where I live.
6 comments:
This reads eerily like Democratic political operatives describing those opposed to socialized health care.
T
You don't really need a "Democratic political operative" to portray the anti-healthcare bill crowd. Just look at these people perform on stage at the town hall meetings. They're the element that want "guv'mint" to keep its hands off Medicare!
There is a lot of buzz right now about China opening up gold and silver investments to its citizens. China is also ramping up gold production, which it has room to do since it hasn't been mined out since the 19th century... Maybe PRC will start handing out revolvers next ;)
As for the health care debate there are a lot of ignorant people on both sides that politicians and the media are trying to influence. Jim L. why do you think the most ignorant toothless people are edited to show up on your TV during coverage of opposition to government run health care LOL!
In the health care debate people either see the current situation as
1) private industry maximizing profits and driving up costs
2) hybrid of private and public with trillions of tax dollars being used to distort the health care market and drive up costs
If you subscribe to #1 then the obvious answer is to squash private providers. The big problem with this theory is that markets always drive costs down not up - at least in the absence of government granted monopolies.
If you subscribe to #2 then the obvious choice is to just remove distortions such as tax breaks for employer provided insurance, inter-state limits on health insurance, certain aspects of medicare and medicaid, agricultural subsidies (high fructose corn syrup anyone?), etc.
I've lived in Europe for 10 yrs and have seen both sides of health care. I also have worked in the medical field. With our present system, there is no way to substantially reduce the annual medical cost increases. Everyone in the chain is aspiring to make a profit...from the physicians to insurance companies to the individual lab to the company providing care-givers to the drug manufacturers. While I was in Europe, I noted most medical staff worked in the medical field because of altruistic goals, not for the monetary awards. In the U.S., one company I worked for did not provide certian medical services because they were not cost effective. Other services were provided just because they would induce physicans to order other tests in conjuction.
We need to face the fact that the US system is profit-motivated, and even though competition can slow the annual increase, there is no feasible way to systematically reduce cost.
Re Matthew: "markets always drive costs down not up " I'm sorry, I know the healthcare debate is a side issue on this blog, but a statement like this cannot be left unchallenged as we survey the ruins of our largely unregulated "market system." Just look around you, Matthew; does our healthcare system work? Does anyone lose an arm, a foot, a leg, a life because insurance was not available and/or unaffordable? This is not a time for spouting claptrap about the wonders of capitalism. Healthcare is a basic human right regardless of economic or social status and one of the few things, like defense, highways, water and food quality, that is government's function to assure (not necessarily provide) to its citizens. -Jim L.
Hopefully a little health care discussion is interesting to folks - it definitely touches on retirement planning I suppose.
Jim L. you seem to have a pretty strong reaction to anyone raising questions about the federal power grab for control of health care. If you re-read my post you will hopefully notice that my main plea was that we correctly diagnose the problem so that a effective solution can be reached.
Health care is the third leading cause of death in the USA, and costs are growing much faster than the economy. We need a solution, unfortunately most people yelling about health care can not correctly articulate the cause of the problem.
If one can not correctly describe our current health care system then that person is not qualified to attempt a fix. To repeat myself one of these descriptions is better than the other:
1) private industry maximizing profits and driving costs up.
2) hybrid of private and public with government market distortions driving costs up.
If you subscribe to #1 then there are some difficulties you need to explain away including A) Half of all health care spending is government programs, and everything connected to health care is regulated front to back. This makes it hard to describe our system as "private". B) Nowhere in economic history has a freely functioning market delivered shortages and sky-rocketing prices. If you can show that this is the case now you should publish a scholarly paper and win fame for yourself.
cheers!
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