Don't want social medicine? How about at least socializing medical school.

I still hear a lot of grunting and groaning about Obamacare.  One left-wing news feed I get on Facebook, was making fun of the owners of Papa John's pizza who were, I guess, noteworthy opponents to Obamacare.   The news feed author claimed that all Papa John's has to do is raise their pizza prices by 14 cents a pie and they will be able to offer health care to their workers without a problem.  I guess this is just to illustrate how ridiculous corporate America's stance is on this issue.

Anyway, I think a major issue we face with or without Obamacare is rising medical costs which seem to greatly outpace inflation.  Without government imposed price-caps on medical service, the only way I can see that they could contain costs is making sure that there is an abundant supply of doctors.

With the baby boomers all starting to head towards the golden years, the demand for medical care will go up greatly, and the supply of doctors in the United States will not most likely meet the demand.  This will lead to even higher medical costs. 

Making sure that there is a plentiful supply of doctors should be a priority for Washington, but it doesn't look like they want to do anything about it.  One step they could take is to put a lot money into medical school scholarships.  Free tuition may give a lot more people the incentive to go to medical school  Once the supply doctors is increased medical costs should go down. 

The US government should also give green cards and medical licenses to any foreign born person who can pass the board certifications exams for medical doctor.  Having the most competition possible is the only way we can curb costs. 

The time to take action is now, by the time the 2013 college graduates can enroll and complete medical school there will be more old people in the United States than ever before.  Write your local congressperson and tell them that we need more doctors now and government has to make sure that physicians’ ranks increase as quickly as possible. 

Keep on striking! Walmart workers...

I am so glad to see that Walmart workers are finally taking some nationwide action against their employer. 

The attitude of most employers in America today has become like this:  "Well, you are very lucky to have a job right now, so many people are out of work, so you won't mind if I defecate on your head.  Please bow your head to the ground, while I pull down my pants."

Walmart is notorious for treating its employees in such a fashion and underpaying them.  Walmart's everyday values come at a great price to its workers.  I try to avoid shopping there. I prefer shopping at Target which has a slightly better reputation.  Sometimes you really don't have a choice because your wages are stagnant, and discount stores are usually very convenient and have the best prices, what can you do?

I got a kick out this Jibjab animated video called "Big Box Mart" which sums the situation at Walmart and how the powers-that-be are purposely driving the United States into the ground.  And it does a great job of explaining our current predicament in under three minutes to the tune of "Oh, Suzanna."

Please check it out here:  

http://www.jibjab.com/originals/big_box_mart

It is time that Walmart workers unionize at fight for better wages and working conditions.  And if this eliminates Walmart's competitive edge in the market that's too bad.  Maybe it will make it easier for smaller retailers to compete.  Markets do best when there is competition, right?

Let's jump off the "Fiscal Cliff" and see what happens!

I don't like all of this media hype about the "fiscal cliff' we are going to fall off of if we let the Bush tax cuts expire in 2013.  Did you notice that no one bothered to mention this before the Presidential election?  All of the sudden this is a big problem, but I don't think it is really. 

If there is such a great concern over the deficit then increased tax revenues when the Bush tax-cuts end will certainly be welcomed.    I don't think it will slow economic growth much more than it is now.

President Obama has to behave like a real lame-duck and stand his ground on this issue and make sure wealthy people pay their fair share of taxes.   "Well, if you tax all the wealthy, how will they create all those jobs people need?" you ask.   We are not taxing them so much now, and they are not creating jobs.  American workers are a bad investment, we are too expensive, they would rather hire capable Chinese workers who are available in the hundreds of millions at the fraction of the price.  And even better Obama-care doesn't extend to China, so they won't have to worry about providing health care for those people.

Also we have to look at history.  Traditionally, when taxes on the wealthy have been increased the economy has improved.  Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman in his book "End This Depression Now." says that there is no real provable correlation between raising taxes on the wealthy and economic improvement, that it just looks like it could be a coincidence that the economy improves when taxes are raised on the wealthy.  However, I think there could be a real correlation.  Perhaps when the wealthy start realizing that they will have to start picking up the tax bill, they start working on fixing the economy in order to have the tax burden shifted back on the middle class.  They really want to run the economy into the ground, that is why they are having the Republicans in the House trying to stand their ground on not raising taxes on the wealthy.  I am by no means Nobel Prize material, so what really do I know, but let's raise taxes on the wealthy and see what happens.

President Obama, please be a real lame-duck and don't let John Boehner and Mitch McConnell walk all over you.  Please grab hold of them and force them to jump down the "fiscal cliff" with everyone else.

Those annoying ads from Thomas Peterffy.

During the presidential election campaign, we were bombarded by ads from billionaire Thomas Peterffy telling us how bad things were in the socialist country of Hungary where he was born, and how we had to get Mitt Romney into office because along with making the rich poorer, socialism would make poor poorer as well.  He allegedly spent eight million dollars of his own money on this message, which I am sure was chump-change for him.

The only problem is that Hungary did not really have a socialist system.  They were under control by a Soviet military dictatorship pretending to be communism. 

Peterffy fails to mention in his ads the success of Norway's socialist democracy, and that Norwegians enjoy a better standard of living than Americans do. 

What I really would like to see is a study of Scandinavian socialist countries and what makes it work for them, and why can't we make socialism work in the United States.  The corporate controlled media seems to steer clear of this topic.  There also doesn't appear to be any American based academics interested in this topic.  I think Norway's socialist policies could be applied to the United States, and our employment situation and quality of life would improve greatly.

Of course Thomas Peterffy is only interested in hanging on to his billions, and not interested in helping the masses.  For the wealthy there is no common good.  Common is bad, and only rich is good. 

There is also the problem that President Obama's policies are far from socialist which probably helped get him re-elected.

Don't worry Thomas Peterffy you will have plenty of money for the rest of your life.  Instead of warning Americans about how bad socialism is, why don't you go back to Hungary and straighten things out there.  I think they could use your help, once the Soviets withdrew from Hungary things only got worse economy-wise for them.  I am sure that you could show them just how great the capitalist system is and how it can work for them.  Good luck.

Is it one party time?

If you  are like me, you have Republican friends who are still in a state of shock, still sitting or standing around with their mouths open.  They were sure that President Obama was going to be another one-term wonder like Jimmy Carter, absolutely sure.  How could the American people not see what a mess President Obama's evil socialist agenda has made of their country? Of course it had nothing to do with George W. Bush's economic agenda that brought the economy down shortly before President Obama took office in 2008.

Well, the American people are not that stupid after all, but there are enough pockets of stupid people around to allow for the Republicans to retain control of the House of Representatives, you can't win them all.  And of course, they still have the agenda of not taxing the wealthy under any circumstances, another battle looms over this issue and I hope Preisdent Obama will be able to make some headway on this problem over the next four years, but I am doubtful.

Your Republican friends are probably also, saying stuff like, "Well, I guess we are going to have a one party system now, only Democrats, the GOP is kaputsky!"   I was surprised to hear this from a couple of different friends on a couple of occasions, therefore I am wondering if they are quoting someone else from Fox News or another right-wing media source. 

You can respond to this statement by saying that there is plenty of room for two parties, there will be the Democrats as always, and new Socialist party, won't that be great?  Then watch your Republican friends' faces go beet red with anger.

This of course will be a hollow victory for us if President Obama cannot now turn the  tide and get the rich to pay their fair share of taxes and regulate a more fair system of trade in order to turn the American economy around. And then if Obama fails, your Republican friends are going to turn to you and say,"See, I told you so...."

My baby boomer retirement conspiracy theory...

Could it be possible that Republicans want Barack Obama to win?  Could it be that the wealthy powers-that-be know that the American economy is not salvageable in the immediate future and they want to see a Democrat in the White House for at least another four years to prove to Americans that the Democrats are incompetent and they cannot run this country?

I have a theory involving the dreaded baby boomers and the upcoming massive retirement that we are going to see probably coming around 2017 or sooner.  At least by 2017 there will be so many of them retired that there is bound to be some impact on the economy. 

I myself believe (and I bet the top 1% of earners believe this as well) that the economy will continue to flounder for quite some time.  There is no point in getting a Republican in the White House because then the blame will be put back on the Republicans for the perpetually sagging economy.

Now if the Republicans win the 2016 election, and at least the employment situation recovers thanks to the retiring boomers, they will look like they have solved the employment crisis and due to their diligence and good economic policy. America is making a comeback thanks to them.  Of course all the time it will really be the retiring baby boomers we will have to thank and not the Republicans. 

However, the baby bommer retirement may not be enough to open up the job market.  Automation has been and will continue to eliminate jobs probably more quickly than off-shoring will.  I already see that a lot companies are not replacing retirees because there are now more efficient ways of doing buisness mainly thanks to computers, the Internet, and the Information Technology revolution. 

I have also conisdered the possibility that the ecomomy is being deliberately screwed with in order to keep employment costs down.  The goal of the wealthy always seems to be to increase the labor supply to make labor costs go down. 

There is no way to tell if any of my theories are correct until we get to 2017, but whatever the outcome is it will be interesting to see what kind of impact the baby boomer retirement will have.

Betwen Barack and a hard place.

Now that the Republican and Democratic National Conventions are over, Americans will have to turn to media ads and the debates to see and hear the final mudslinging before casting their vote.

I understand that the choices are not very good.  The Democrats for me talked the talked, telling the American middle class what they wanted to hear, that they are the middle class's party and they are the only ones interested in its preservation.  But they haven't walked the the walk, and taken the right actions to restore the economy.

What really scares me is that they have accused the Republicans of actually planning to raise taxes on the middle class in their vision of economic recovery, and the Republicans are not vehemently denying it!  They should have been at their national convention quoting George H.W. Bush's infamous line, "Read my lips, no new taxes!" but they know they are not dumb enough to let history repeat itself.  The Republican economic plan would only add gasoline to the fire.

So the choices are basically, another four years of a do nothing President, who will now be a lame duck with really little incentive to do anything, and a crazy Republican who thinks that that by raising taxes on the middle class and slashing government spending left and right, that all of our economic woes will be over.

I am going to have to vote for Obama, because I truly feel that doing nothing, is a much better scenario than what the Republicans have proposed.