Universal Healthcare

China says will have healthcare for all by 2020.


08 April 2009

Paul Krugman is a bad influence... ?

A reader's comment on Krugman's "The Market Mystique"

" A pretty good piece, Mr. Krugman. It embodies the views supporting it very well – that the purpose of any humanly engineered framework (such as markets, governments) is to improve the lot of man irrespective of individual efforts.

Don’t get me wrong: while I disagree with the underlying premise, it certainly is a legitimate view to hold, and is held by many.But it’s wrong. At least for America.We start from very different premises.

To me, the purpose of government is NOT to tell me what I must do but what I must not do (for the benefit of all, or at least the great majority). It’s up to me to improve my own lot and, to the extent that my abilities and character permit, to improve the lot of man.

I work within a framework of law that tries to keep me honest and seeks to protect others from my possible predations.To you, the purpose of any such framework is to advance the material well-being of people. Sounds great, but it’s never worked – nothing planned and acted on by anything other than individuals ever has. Beyond that, it’s dreadfully condescending – in that world people are incapable of transcending difficulties and natural challenges through hard work, risk-taking and guts, and coming out the other side as winners in life; they require organized help from a paternalistic system, a market that’s gerry rigged to try to guarantee an outcome that some believe is good. So, while I acknowledge your premise I disagree with it.

The “Market Mystique” is not invalid because it occasionally fails without appropriate controls, and that’s bad because markets have as their purpose some social good. They don’t. They’re merely mechanisms that allow people to do what they want to do – it’s people who either embrace social advance or don’t and through their own actions validate themselves or don’t.

So, by all means, re-regulate those markets to limit potential for catastrophic failure. But stop thinking that they’re the answer to poverty, disease and the failings of the human spirit.

They’re not. You are. "

Richard Luettgen, New Jersey

Stop begging! Work hard!

No matter. Just keep writing...

" ...If Singaporeans share no idealism except the logic of the free market, we will sell our citizenships to the highest bidder, the country that can accord us the better standard of life... "

The Online Citizen.

And why not! (In a moment of despair...)

06 April 2009

Voodoo Economy

CEO to leave GM with US$20m

Good deal!

Now, he can do without the work stress and still get to keep US$ 20, 000, 000.

What is US$ 20, 000, 000 ? This amount is just too mind boggling for lesser mortals to comprehend.

How the world economic system can get so out of whack that we can pay a person twenty million US dollars, while 1.1 billion people are living on US$1.00 and another 2.7 billion people living on US$2.00 a day ?

How do you value money? Imagine with all the money in this world put together, can the earth produce enough to meet the money? If not, then the prices of these "produce" will have to be increased until such point where all goods equal all these money.

But with this rise in price, the very poor might as well go kill themselves!

02 April 2009

Do world's corporate leaders know the value of money?

Straits Times Forum 02 April 2009

" REFER to Mr Liew Kai Khiun's Forum letter, "Review executive rewards", last Thursday.

I agree with him that companies should always review their top executives' remuneration packages periodically to stay in tune with the economic situation and communicate to the public a sense of fairness and decency - more so in these challenging times.

What is happening to our world's top corporate leaders?

Minutes after the Edinburgh home of RBS bank's disgraced former chief executive was vandalised, an e-mail message that was sent read: 'We are angry that rich people like him (Sir Fred Goodwin) are paying themselves a huge amount of money and living in luxury, while ordinary people are made unemployed, destitute and homeless.'

Among his excesses was the 5.3 million pound sterling (S$11.5 million) refurbishment of a building - styled "Sir Fred's Pleasure Dome" by staff - that was barely used.

Do the world's top corporate leaders have so much money that they have forgotten its real value?

The wealth wasted could have been used to save millions of people out there who are homeless and struggling to have a simple meal.

United States President Barack Obama has indeed a mammoth task ahead of him to try to cleanup this mess that has been left behind by these so-called 'most successful' corporate leaders.

Phang Geak Lean (Ms)
http://www.straitstimes.com/ST+Forum/Online+Story/STIStory_357434.html

Protests flare in London

" We have been robbed. I am coming to support the older people who have been working all these years. If we did any stealing we would go to jail. "

Vinzcente Oliver, 22, from northern England, protesting about how low interest rates have hit savers and pensioners

No wonder they are so angry !

02 April 2009

Performing CPR on a Voodoo Economy

" How did so much of our economy become defined by the process of turning money into more money, with no new product, service, or innovation in between?

And merely openning up the flow of credit is not going to create jobs -- already, there are many who would qualify for loans, especially at these low rates, but don't borrow, because there is no demand for whatever enterprize they are investing in.

The economy is a living system -- and just as multi-organ failure creates vicious cycles that make survival nearly impossible, it feels as though there are too many things that have gone wrong, too badly, to expect a single solution to work.

It is like trying to feed a banana to someone in cardiac arrest because they have low potassium.

What they really need is potassium IV, oxygen, a defibrillator, intubation, a ventilator, and dialysis -- with a lot of close monitoring to be sure the patient isn't brain dead. And if there is active bleeding, that needs to be stopped too, and the blood replaced.

I know "the problem was building up over a long time, and won't be solved overnight" -- but this doesn't address the fact that our living economy is at risk of becoming brain dead as we speak -- the life support of bailouts will create the illusion of survival for a while, but the patient may never wake up.

We really only have about four minutes to get this initial resuscitation right. "

— Randall, Minnesota

http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/03/27/opinion/27krugman.html?s=3&pg=9

02 April 2009

How many swedish cheese can you buy with...

US$ 50,000,000,000,000

50 trillion dollars in perceived value have been wiped off the world's books.

US$ 50,000,000,000

50 billion dollars was the cost of just one fraud.

50,000,000 jobs

50 million jobs are likely to be lost by the end of 2009.

David Rothkopf Consider this final point: How can Sweden (which got the bank nationalization thing right, by the way, Tim Geithner's comments about how the United States is not Sweden aside) afford to say no to bailing out Saab, a national icon, while we can't afford the same with GM? Which country is more committed to letting the markets work in healthier ways? Which therefore might be seen as more truly capitalist? The reason they can make it happen politically is because

they have a social system which ensures no Swede fears that economic upheaval will leave him or her destitute or without healthcare.

Thus they can afford the creative destruction of markets, but we cannot. Their "socialism" is in this respect more capitalist than our system of bailouts for the richest and subsidies for the greediest. The United States needs new models and to be open to new ideas and we had better start thinking about looking elsewhere because to date precious few are coming from Washington.

But Krugman says...

European Stability

"... I think it’s important, however, to distinguish between the role of the welfare state in stabilizing society and its role in stabilizing GDP.

On the social front, there’s a quantum difference. For given depth of recession, the human suffering in America — where losing your job means losing your family’s health insurance, and unemployment benefits are minimal at best — is vastly greater than in Europe.

On the macroeconomic front, however, the strength of Europe’s “automatic stabilizers” has been exaggerated. Yes, government is about 12 percentage points of GDP larger; so each 1 percent fall of GDP automatically increases deficits by more than in the US. But unless the slump is much deeper than even pessimists expect, that won’t be enough to offset the stronger US discretionary action.

The IMF has tried to incorporate the automatic stabilizer effect; by their estimates, it still comes up short. So yes, the European response is better than it might seem at first sight; but it’s still pretty bad." (Revision 30 March 2009)

24 March 2009

What is your price ?

Everyone has a price.

Read Aaron Smith's Big Pharma opens wallet to Dems.

You, How much ?

20 March 2009