Applied Philosophy

Let us assume that the US will implement healthcare reform that provides adequate care to those without insurance and those who are underinsured, what would be the consequences of such a move?

For the sake of argument I will assume that any reform is actually affordable. Increased healthcare will result in the following:

1. Longer lifespan: This will put pressure on both Medicare and Social Security from the state point of view, while putting more pressure on family members who have to care for the elderly from an individual point of view.

2. Increased disability: This has been the case with the military, improved battle care resulted in increased rate of injured soldiers putting pressure on the veterans infrastructure that could not support them. Is society (economically) ready to support the increased number of disabled people?

3. Lower child coast: Children might be the future, but they coast money even before they are born. If healthcare coast declines, then this will most likely spur childbirth, which is good in principle, in practice it will put pressure on the education system from the kindergarten level all the way up to higher education, it will also means millions of people entering the labour force 15 years down the road, will there be jobs for them?

4. Increased unemployment: Some claim that a 100,000 die in the US each year because of lack of insurance, this means that providing insurance will mean there are 100,000 who either want a job or dependent.

5. Doctor where are thou? The West has been suffering medical professionals shortage for decades, their first solution is to suck publicly educated professionals from poor countries, then from the former Warsaw block countries. Now the whole world is in the grip of the shortage.

“State officials have acknowledged the problem. “Health-care coverage without access is meaningless,” Gov. Deval Patrick said in March.”

—Doctor Shortage Hurts A Coverage-for-All Plan

Nothing ruined the newly independent countries of Africa and Asia than adopting financial and social systems totally unsuitable for their needs and unsupportable by their economies. Providing health subsidies had the same effect as any public subsidy would have, namely a bubble. When the economy started to crumble in the seventies the result was a collapse that caused the death of millions (through war, hunger and disease).

Credo

I believe that the current level of human productivity can easily support 15 to 20 billion people around the world. This can happen, I believe, without the harmful practises of industrial agricultural and with a higher level of sufficiency. I also believe that development of land in Africa, Siberia, Central Asia and South America can open the possibility for a total world population of 25 billions.

One plus one equals zero
Fuel and a match are nothing

One plus one equals one
Water and water is water

One plus one equals two
A man and another man are two men

One plus one equals three
A man and a woman are parents to a child

One plus one equals four
A product of two lines is a square

One plus one equals five
A line on a square makes a pyramid

One plus one equals six
A man and his peacemaker are six shots

One plus one equals seven
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

I could go on, but Shakespeare seems a good point to stop.

Will the future bring deflation or inflation? Some have reasoned that since there was deflation during the thirties and as we are going into a similar situation then we should expect deflation. The events since last year has certainly confirmed their predictions.

The fact is life is never that easy and such simplistic—typically English empirical—analysis based on analogy is almost always wrong, especially in historical analysis.

The problem arises from their view of the so-called ‘Great Depression’, they think that it ended by the 1940’s; in fact it did not end then. In reality the ‘Great Depression’ has not ended yet!

All attempts to solve the economic problems of the 1930’s failed until the war started and the depression did it patriotic duty and quietly went away. However once the war ended, just like the devil, it came back and demanded its due. The realisation that war elevates economic depression gave rise to the state of permanent war that has lasted since 1947. Of course, just like the devil, permanent war had its price:

The price of permanent war

Above (see Defining Inflation) is graph of the value of a US dollar from 1947. The dollar has lost 90% of its value in 60 years, equal to a yearly rate of -3.76% . Now we are entering a similar depression-like situation with defunct fiat currencies, ongoing wars, social dissolution, et cetera.

Some think that the government will not be able to inflate the economy because the banks are holding all the ‘printed’ cash and sucking all the liquidity into their black-hole balance sheets. The method of historical analogy is also used here by comparing the situation of the US with that of Japan during the last twenty years.

My first problem with this comparison is that they are comparing an independent country, nay an empire, with a colony that has been ruled by collaborators under a constitution written by the US military! To say that Japan did “everything” to get out of deflation and failed, is to forget that Japan was not allowed to do everything and only did what it was allowed by its masters.

If a government really wants to inflate then it can pull inflation from the moon. No better proof than Zimbabwe achieving hyperinflation in a couple of years. It seems that the world’s second economy, Japan, has less political independence than an African land-locked country.