Medicine in the UUnited States
- First, as a country we need to accept that health care is not something that can be given in unlimited amounts to everyone. A smart man named Say coined a concept now referred to Say's Law: it states that in some situations supply creates it's own demand. And that is exactly what happens with medical care. As a society we need to ration out medical care in a rational way. At the present one of those ways is to limit the number of emergency room slots available in major cities so that it is harder for the uninsured to use the emergency room as their primary deliverer of medical care. If we don't consciously limit the allocation of medical care we will inevidabley end up in situations where prices spin out of control or bad allocations of medical care are made. We have that situation in the United States right now. Prices rise because the demand is nearly limitless. Yet, some people without insurance can't get the kind of medical care they need without siting in an emergency room.
- The (relative to other countries) abundance of medical care - for the insured - in the United States does not mean better overall health. There was a study released in the Journal of the American Medical Association in May of 2006 and recapped in the New York Times a few days later. The study compared the health of British and Americans. It stated that "The United States spends more than twice as much per person on health care as Britain and yet, according to new data released today, older Americans are "much sicker" than their English counterparts". It went on to state "wealthier and better-educated people in both countries were much healthier than poorer and less-educated people. "Differences in socio-economic groups between the two groups were so great that those in the top education and income level in the U.S. had similar rates of diabetes and heart disease as those in the bottom education and income level in England." Later it stated "health insurance cannot be the central reason for the better health outcomes in England because the top socio-economic status tier of the U.S. population have close to universal access but their health outcomes are often worse than those of their English counterparts." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/02/health/02cnd-health.html?ex=1304222400&en=3ccb7daab5e6c270&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
So, in my opinion it would be better to just get over the idea that we have a basically non-governmental medical system and start building a system that is rationally alocated between the government and private.
One Bad Ass!
Diversity
Colleges and universities are often a good example of these conflicting tendencies of diversity and conformity. On a college campus a cry is often heard to make the school more diverse in all possible ways: "we need more female staff because...; a person of color is needed to fill that history position because no European person could understand...; the only reason we don't have more lesbians is because they feel threatened by...". And on and on it goes.
One place that I fondly remember was the work lunch table that I enjoyed for a number of years. There was little diversity of age or sex. Two of the four of us were white Christians, one was a cultural Jew and the other was a Japanese American who I assume is an agnostic. But no topic was "off limits". There was a real diversity of opinions and discussed topics. The only thing we all agreed on was our strong dislike of "political correctness". Many items discussed could have gotten us disciplined or even fired if heard by the wrong person.
When there is a great diversity of sexes, cultures, religions and ages I don't think there usually is much diversity of opinion. Everyone is afraid of offending someone else or, depending on the environment they are in, getting in trouble with the thought police. As a result, in these diverse environments there is a stifling conformity where things are talked about only from the viewpoint of the current dominant paradigm.
I would match the real diversity of my previous lunch group with just about any other group of people out there. So, what is really more diverse, a group of 50 - 60 year old guys who don't look all that different from one another or a group of people, with different sexes, ages and backgrounds, all afraid to say what they really feel?
The World Food Crisis
The World Bank estimates that global food prices have risen 83 percent in the last three years. Hence, food riots in Haiti, Egypt and Ethiopia, and the use of troops in Pakistan and Thailand to protect crops and storage centers. Many countries are banning or limiting food exports. World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick says that 33 countries are at risk of food related upheaval. Famine may revisit North Korea, parts of Africa or Afghanistan.
To many, the villain is biofuels. U.S. and European ethanol programs, intended as an antidote to climate change and an alternative to OPEC oil, stand accused of snatching food from the world's hungry. According to India's finance minister, ethanol is "a crime against humanity." But ethanol's impact should not be overstated. The International Food Policy Research Institute, which is critical of ethanol, pins about 25 to 33 percent of the recent price rise on biofuels; the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization guesses about 10 to 15 percent.
(Note dated 7/7/08: National Public Radio reported that a World Bank report is being quashed that states biofuels are responsible for 75% of the world food price increases.)
Most of the crisis is rooted in three other factors: Drought in grain-exporting Australia. The surging price of crude oil, which raises food prices through the costs of shipping and petrochemical fertilizer. And booming demand for food in China, India and other newly prosperous areas of the developing world. These areas consume not only more staples such as rice and wheat but also more meat from animals fed on grain.
This trend is here to stay --and, unlike Australian drought or oil inflation, no one should want it to go away.
In richer developed nations, where people spend an average of 10 to 15% of their disposable income on food, price hikes have been a growing irritation. But in the developing world, where most poor people spend at least half of their income to eat, rising costs threaten to create major social unrest.
In Haiti, at least five protesters were killed this month after hungry mobs tried to storm the presidential palace, and later lawmakers voted to dismiss the country's prime minister. Food riots have also flared across Africa's Sahel and in Mexico, Uzbekistan and Morocco. Egypt's government has put the army to work baking subsidized bread. All told, 33 countries around the world are at risk of social upheaval as a result of acute increases in food and energy prices, said Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, in a speech this month. In countries where buying food requires half to three-quarters of a poor person's income, "there is no margin for survival," he warned.
One example of how this all fits together. The US, Mexico and Canada create NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. As a result of NAFTA Mexico started importing a lot of it's corn from the US instead of growing it. Then the Bush Administration and Congress create a "biofuels policy" to turn corn into gasoline. This has resulted in much more corn being grown to meet the new demand but has had a major side effect…. corn now is priced for it's energy content and not for it's food value. And it is much more valuable for it's energy. So corn more than doubles in price. So, the price of tortillas in Mexico more than doubles. Food riots occur. Hunger grows. More Mexicans come North to survive. The same corn scenario is happening with soybeans. The biofuel that is being sold mostly comes from soybeans. Biofuel is big in Europe. Soybeans are being priced for their energy content and not their food value. Some wheat and, especially, rice land is being diverted to soybeans (and some corn) in foreign countries. So guess what's happening to the price of rice and wheat? Why are all of these things so interrelated? Because, as an energy product, they are nearly perfectly "Fungible"
"fungible - of goods or commodities; freely exchangeable for or replaceable by another of like nature or kind."
The Bottom Line and what to do? Globalization is creating world prosperity, but it is not even. Growing world prosperity is driving up commodities, especially food and oil. People and countries not on the wining side of globalization are being severely hurt. Biofuels (especially ethanol) are exacerbating the problem and not doing any good for anyone except farmers. Don't vote for politicians who talk about growing our way out of the lack of energy. Maybe, someday, more efficient biofuel production will make sense. But we would still need much more land to grow the biofuel on so we aren't taking food out of peoples mouths. The US needs to take the agricultural land it pays farmers not to grow crops on out of that program and put that land back into production. In a food market of scarcity droughts, etc. can also have much more severe affects than would be typical.
