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Now that Congress has passed another increase in the minimum wage, I assume we can all march into the future together, arm in arm, singing Kumbaya.
Once again feel good politics triumphs over logic and facts, spending other people’s money by increasing the cost of doing business for everyone, aided and abetted by the unions, creating a solution to a problem that can’t really be solved by legislation.
By increasing the floor for wage rates, the compensation for every other position in those firms that employ people at the minimum wage will also have to be increased, in order to maintain appropriate differences between the various positions in the organization, while the unions use the increased minimum wage as the rationale for arguing that it should be used as the basis for increasing the wages of all workers.
Here are some questions for those who support the continuing minimum wage boondoggle:
Does raising the minimum wage for a few low wage workers actually make it possible for them to live? Raising an employee’s compensation, say by $5.00 an hour, would increase their gross pay about $200 a week, or $866 a month. If you add that to the approximately $1,733 a month they may already be earning (at say $10 per hour), their total gross will be about $2,600 a month. Does that make it possible for them to buy a home or live in the affluent communities where many of them are employed?
If a minimum wage can be created by fiat, why not make it $20 an hour, or even $40 or $50? Why not take it to the max and legislate the rate of pay for all jobs? How about $100 an hour for everyone? Sounds good to me.
If paying a minimum wage is a responsible way for government to do business and municipalities, should government money be used to buy goods and/or services from vendors who pay poverty-level wages? How does any city or county avoid paying higher fees to outside contractors, whose bids will necessarily factor in the higher wage mandates? Contractors will certainly not absorb increased labor costs for the privilege of doing work for the government. Obviously, more costly contracts for the government work will have to be absorbed in the budget, which ultimately falls to the taxpayers.
Does anyone know how much the minimum wage should really be? After all, one man’s minimum wage may be another’s poverty wage.
The wage rate that would qualify as an adequate living is clearly in the eye of the beholder and will also vary between different geographic regions and local costs of living. Most people would probably agree that it costs more to live in some communities than others, but we would probably find little agreement on the amount that is needed to support a reasonable lifestyle in any community.
So, just what amount of compensation is necessary to provide an adequate living and who should make that decision? It appears that the federal government, state legislatures and city or county governing bodies are becoming the decision makers in such matters, rather than the free market.
Who benefits from a minimum wage? Certainly not local governments, which have to pay higher prices for goods and services from vendors, who will be required to raise their prices. And, surely not the taxpayers, who will undoubtedly bear the burden of additional taxes to cover the increased costs of doing business that occur every time the minimum wage is increased.
Proponents of the minimum wage argue that it is necessary to provide an adequate standard of living for families. Although it seems pretty clear that the new federal minimum wage, at $7.25 an hour ($11,960 a year), is not an adequate wage on which to support a family, it is not clear how many people who are paid the minimum also have that particular responsibility.
The Employment Policies Institute website notes, “…decades of research have shown that minimum wage hikes take a sledgehammer to the entry-level job market. As employers are faced with higher labor costs, they hire workers who have the most experience or high skill levels. That leaves unskilled applicants, particularly teens, without that critical first job experience. Since Congress began implementing the 2007 wage hike, over 480,000 teen jobs have disappeared across the country.”
How about universal health care plans in general? How well do they work? Do they deliver as promised, or can they? The two most often mentioned systems are those in England and Canada, although there are others as well: Germany, Japan, Sweden, Finland and Russia, for example. There are also a couple of well-known programs in the U.S., notably in Massachusetts and Oregon, that can be studied to see how effective or efficient government run health care actually is.
So, before jumping off the edge ourselves, doesn’t it make sense that we should evaluate how well some of these other plans are working? Looking at just three, Canada, Oregon and Massachusetts, provides some insight into the track record of government health-care programs:
Assessing Canada’s health care program, Dick Morris noted the following statistics:
A 16% higher cancer death rate in Canada
An eight week wait for radiation therapy for cancer patients.
42% of Canadians die of colon cancer vs. 31% in the U.S.
Cutbacks in diagnostic testing.
The best methods for chemo therapy are not available.
No way out of the system; you can’t even pay for services yourself.
David Gratzer, a Canadian physician, writes in the Wall Street Journal (June 9, 2009):
“…Canadians wait for practically any procedure or diagnostic test or specialist consultation in the public system…Canada’s provincial governments themselves rely on American medicine. Between 2006 and 2008, Ontario sent more than 160 patients to New York and Michigan for emergency neurosurgery…Only half of ER patients are treated in a timely manner by national and international standards, according to a government study. The physician shortage is so severe that some towns hold lotteries, with the winners gaining access to the local doc.”
How about Oregon, which established a government-run plan in 1993? IBD Editorials.com noted the following (June 9, 2009), among other observations:
…the state’s Health Services Commission (like the title?) has compiled a list of 680 treatments, only 503 of which will be paid for by the Oregon Health Plan…Got condition No. 504…Treatment for lichen planus, a skin rash, is an out-of-pocket expense…So is therapy for a cracked rib (No. 512), nasal polyps (No. 524), a broken big toe (No. 527) and liver cancer (No. 575).” Oregon residents must pay for treatment of all these conditions themselves, along with many other health problems.
A great many lifesaving procedures that ranked high in 2002 have been relegated to much lower positions in 2009, while procedures only tangentially related to life and death have climbed to the top…Treatment for type I diabetes…was ranked second in 2002 but demoted to 10th in 2009, even though not providing treatment is a death sentence.
So, if Oregon didn’t get it quite right, how about Massachusetts, which adopted its own state mandated health care plan in 2006?
Michael Tanner, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute, wrote a briefing paper in June 2009, “Massachusetts Miracle or Massachusetts Miserable: What the Failure of the Massachusetts Models Tells Us about Health Care Reform,” in which he observed:
Although the state has reduced the number of residents without health insurance, 20,000 people remain uninsured…Health care costs continue to rise much faster than the national average…New regulations and bureaucracy are limiting consumer choice and adding to health care costs…Program costs have skyrocketed. Despite tax increases, the programs faces huge deficits – with its attendant rationing…A shortage of providers, combined with increasing demand, is increasing waiting times to see a physician.
In the final analysis, national or universal health care systems, whatever they are called, are invariably forced to resort to rationing of services, by limiting care on the basis of cost, age, the severity of disease or injury, or various other criteria. It’s unavoidable and will happen in the U.S. if the Obama administration manages to get Congress to pass a health care bill.
Whatever the result, the simplest way to evaluate Obama’s health care plan is to ask your Congressperson and Senator if they will be required to participate in the same program as their constituents. If not, why not? And, if not, why should you?
Watching the reaction of people around the world to the passing of Pop icon, Michael Jackson, set me to wondering about the relative importance of individuals and world events that often have a profound effect on millions of people.
Three popular American personalities died within a few days of one another: Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Billy Mays. All had successful careers, but Jackson’s passing was by far the most notable, capturing the attention of much of the world’s media.
Without getting into the relative importance of these three, or any other celebrity for that matter, what strikes me is the extent to which the news of their passing garnered attention. Jackson, of course, for all his foibles, was a larger-than-life personality, with a tremendous following, while Farrah Fawcett and Billy Mays, although popular, really had little impact on the world at large, other than perhaps within the narrow range of their respective careers.
However, even as Jackson’s remains were being autopsied and the media were digging for every salacious detail of his unfortunate life, events of far great import to the world in general continued to develop. For example, the protests in Iran over their recent election and the way the Iranian leaders responded to their own people, attacking and killing many of them, often at random, imprisoning others, destroying property, were actually overshadowed by Michael Jackson’s death.
Or, the missiles that were fired by North Korea across the bow of the world, threatening to destroy any country that attempts to prevent them from continuing to develop and export nuclear technology for bombs to other rogue nations. Or, the resurgence of violence in Iraq as the U.S. prepares to leave the country. Or, the ongoing threats of Iran against Israel, denying that the Holocaust happened, financing and arming Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine.
These and other events continued to play out in the background while the public mourned the loss of their favorite entertainer of the moment.
Odd, isn’t it? That so much of the public is more interested in the death of a Pop star than the situations around the world that could conceivably affect their very existence. The “man-in-the-street” interviews that are periodically conducted by personalities like Jay Leno and Sean Hannity reveal the public’s appalling lack of knowledge about even the most fundamental aspects of their lives, and they are not aware of it. Questions as basic as the names of the president or vice president of the United States, the three branches of the U.S. government, or where various nations in the news are located, such as Iran, Israel, Iraq and Afghanistan, or how many stars are on the American flag, what the stripes on our flag represent, etc., etc.
The response that is often given when people have no clue about the answer to a question is, “I really don’t follow that stuff.” They rarely seem to be even the least bit embarrassed by having their ignorance openly exposed to millions of viewers on national T.V.
But, ask them who Michael Jackson is, or was, what he did, even details of his life or those of other well known entertainers, and you get immediate answers, in detail: How many albums his “Thriller” sold, the name of his ranch (Neverland), or other details of his life, such as the names of his family members, where the family compound is located, no detail seems to be too small to note.
It’s more than just troubling, it’s cause for great concern about the future of our nation. A society that is populated by people who don’t know their own history, let alone anything about world history, and don’t care, who are more interested in celebrity than governance, who are so poorly educated that many of them can’t do simple math or can barely read, is a nation at risk. While we play with iPods and other hi-tech gadgets and games, other countries are educating their young people in engineering, math and computer science. And, many of them are not our friends.
It’s clear where we are headed, unless we wise up soon. The question is, will we or can we change the course of events in America and do we have the will, or have we already passed the point of no return?
For reasons I do not fully understand, Americans seem to have lost the common sense that has always been a hallmark of our culture, as once again we seem to be routinely shooting ourselves in the foot by adopting public policies that run counter to our own best interests. A good example is allowing the so-called War on Drugs to outlaw the use of hemp, one of the most beneficial crops in the history of the world, by burdening it with unnecessary and restrictive regulation in the name of fighting the War.
Hemp is a harmless plant that is the source of an almost endless list of benefits. Wikipedia notes that it can be used in everything from food products to clothes as well as having multiple industrial or commercial uses, such as “paper, textiles, biodegradable plastics, construction, health food and fuel.”
China, France and Canada are all major producers of hemp and, although more hemp is exported to the U.S. than to any other country, our government generally does not distinguish between marijuana and a type of hemp that is used only for industrial and commercial purposes.
The North American Industrial Hemp Council, Inc. (NAIHC) notes, “The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) classifies all C. sativa varieties (of hemp) as ‘marijuana.’ While it is theoretically possible to get permission from the government to grow hemp, DEA would require that the field be secured by a fence, razor wire, dogs, guards and lights, making it cost-prohibitive.”
The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 “placed an extremely high tax on marijuana and made it effectively impossible to grow industrial hemp…(and) the Federal Bureau of Narcotics lumped industrial hemp with marijuana, as its successor, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, does to this day.” As Groucho Marx famously remarked “Those are my principles. If you don’t like them I have others.”
“Hemp has been grown for at least the last 12,000 years for fiber (textiles and paper) and food.”
“Much of the bird seed sold in the US has hemp seed (it’s sterilized before importation), the hulls of which contain about 25% protein.”
“Rudolph Diesel designed his engine to run on hemp oil.”
“Construction products such as medium density fiber board, oriented strand board, and even beams, studs and posts could be made out of hemp. Because of hemp’s long fibers, the products will be stronger and/or lighter than those made from wood.”
Over 25,000 products can be made from hemp.
“To receive a standard psychoactive dose (of hemp) would require a person so power-smoke 10-12 hemp cigarettes over an extremely short period of time. The large volume and high temperature of vapor, gas and smoke would be almost impossible for a person to withstand.”
“Hemp fibers are longer, stronger, more absorbent and more mildew-resistant than cotton.”
“Fabrics made of at least one-half hemp block the sun’s UV rays more effectively than other fabrics.”
“Hemp can be made into a variety of fabrics, including linen quality.”
“Hemp grows well in a variety of climates and soil types. It is naturally resistant to most pests, precluding the need for pesticides. It grows tightly spaced, out-competing any weeds, so herbicides are not necessary. It also leaves a weed-free field for a following crop.”
“Hemp can yield 3-8 tons of fiber per acre. This is four times what an average forest can yield.”
The bottom line is that by treating hemp as a drug, the United States has effectively shut down one of the most profitable and useful crops in history and once again essentially abandoned the market to other nations that have a more realistic attitude.
We are preventing our farmers from growing a crop that has almost unlimited uses. It’s cheap and easy to plant and cultivate, and could potentially rejuvenate the small farming industry in America. While spending billions of dollars in what has been an almost fruitless effort to keep small farmers on the farm, we have also been unwilling to simply let them to do it for themselves by allowing them to cultivate one of the best cash crops they could possibly grow.
By stubbornly refusing to change or adapt our thinking, we are once again abandoning a major market to our competition by preventing one of our own industries from producing an important product. As the King of Siam said in Oscar Hammerstein’s musical, The King and I, “It’s a puzzlement.”
As much of the world mourns the loss of “Pop Icon,” Michael Jackson, it’s difficult to avoid evaluating the impact that his untimely loss will have on the larger world around us. Reports indicate that the European T.V. audience was greater than here in America, and I can’t help but wonder why.
While a large segment of the population has been fixated on a memorial service that was turned into a media driven entertainment extravaganza, events that will certainly have a far greater and more meaningful long-term impact on mankind continued to take place around the world. A partial list includes: North Korea’s saber-rattling (firing off missiles and threatening the U.S. and Japan); Honduras deposing a leftist leader; Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez’ non-stop denouncing of the United States (while financing other left-leaning leaders throughout Latin America); Iran’s brutal repression of its population dissenting in the streets of Tehran and its continuing push for the nuclear bomb while threatening to wipe Israel off the map and exterminate the entire Jewish population – and, of course, Russia, moving to re-assert power over eastern Europe and influence around the world.
If these aren’t sufficient cause for concern, there are also the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the seemingly endless strife between Pakistan and India, al Quaida and the Taliban, and the Sudan, among others.
We also have a very full plate on the home front, trying to deal with such problems as the state of the economy, the unbridled overspending of our own government at every level, seemingly without any consideration of the consequences, incurring record debt that threatens to destroy the value of our currency.
These are all issues of great concern that can have grave consequences for the future of America, and everywhere we turn, there are major problems, any or all of which are likely to transcend the historical importance of Michael Jackson’s passing. Without question, he was a Superstar and will likely continue to remain one in death. Greater than Elvis? Who knows? Greater than the Beatles? Perhaps, but in my opinion, which is undoubtedly not worth much in such matters, not likely.
What about the great American music that was written during the glory days of Tin Pan Alley, or the memorable music of the Broadway shows that have been written over the years, dating back to George M. Cohan, or before? Or, it might be argued that the truly important composers were people like Bach, Beethoven, Chopin or Wagner, many of whom struggled to put food on the table and died in poverty.
However, my purpose here is not an effort to assess the relative merits or importance of the music of any period or any composer or performer – but rather to consider their significance when viewed through the prism of world history and the events that shape it.
It is in this context that I view Michael Jackson’s passing and the importance of his contributions, that is, against the backdrop of the conditions that will very likely shape the future of the world. Viewed from that perspective, in my opinion, he is or was not really important at all.
His music will probably continue to be popular for many years to come, and he will continue to live on as the entertainment idol of a generation. But ultimately, 40 or 50 years from now, he is more likely to be viewed as an historical artifact in the entertainment world, nothing more. His life will not have had any impact of consequence on the truly important issues of his time. He will not have been the catalyst for world peace or even for calming the unceasing turmoil of the world in which he lived.
No disrespect intended, I just think Michael Jackson is or was not all that important. To me, he was just another victim of his own success, which all too often has become a sign of the times in which we live. MJ’s wealth protected him from having to deal with the consequences of his childlike immaturity and shielded him from any attempts to make him deal with the obvious excesses and risks of his lifestyle: A man-child who was never able to transcend the limitations of the personal world he created to keep the real world at bay.
For another perspective, please take a few minutes and listen to the comments of Rabbi Yaakov Salomon’s “Death of an Icon?” at http://www.aish.com/ci/ss/49681737.html.
How to pay for a national health care plan is one of the big obstacles the Obama administration must hurdle in order to reach its goal of providing health insurance coverage for every American. The question is whether it can be done at all without literally breaking the bank - especially following on the heels of the approximately $10 trillion in expenditures over the next few years that have already been approved by Congress and signed into law.
So, how do Obama and Congress plan to get this done?
First, they talk incessantly about between $1 trillion and $2 trillion in cost savings that can be achieved in the current health care system. He problem is that there is no way to measure it. Not really. It’s just talk.
A number of other ideas are also being floated to pay for universal health care coverage, and the ultimate choice will probably include some combination of the following:
Taxing the “rich”: This source couldn’t possibly cover all the proposed costs of a national health care plan. A graphic illustration can be seen in the fact that if you tax away the profits of the entire Fortune 500 list of companies, it would only bring in around $100 billion. In 2008, the number was $99 billion. This assumes that these businesses would continue to operate if everything they earned is confiscated by the government, in addition to the income taxes they already pay. As for the individual “rich” taxpayers, the result would be much the same. The combined net worth of the Forbes 400 richest Americans is about $1.2 trillion. If the government took everything they have to fund universal health care, it would only be a one-time fix, leaving nothing to tax in the future.
Taxing health care benefits that employees currently receive tax-free from their employers: No doubt this can be accomplished, but not without reducing the incentive employers have to provide health care coverage for their employees. The idea also includes tinkering around the edges of income tax deductions on individual tax returns, such as reducing the deductibility of various expenses. This can certainly generate more taxes, but hardly enough to pay for universal health care on an ongoing basis.
Cutting costs in the current health care system by improving technology, reducing unnecessary or duplicative procedures also really can’t be measured with any degree of confidence. There are simply too many moving parts, all interacting in different ways at different times and continuously changing at the same time.
Reducing payments to doctors and hospitals for Medicare and Medicaid patients: Contrary to the public perception, doctors are already being underpaid by both Medicare and Medicaid, with the result that many physicians are no longer willing to accept patients whose care is paid for by these programs. Furthermore, the government is notoriously “slow pay,” especially the state Medicaid programs. For instance, in California, MediCal is so slow and underpays for services so severely that many doctors refuse to accept their patients. An actual situation I encountered while I was running a hospital illustrate the point: a general surgeon was paid ten cents for a $50 fee that he charged for an emergency room consultation. On another occasion, a neurologist received only 17 cents for an ER consult. Such cases were not all that unusual. So, you can cut payments, but unless you are willing to conscript doctors, you can’t force them to treat patients whose bills are paid by the government.
Lowering the cost of health care insurance by creating a program that will compete with private sector insurance plans seems like a good idea on paper. But the reality is that a government funded health insurance program has unlimited financing available, which means that any losses they might experience will be funded regardless of whether the plan is profitable or not. The private sector can’t compete with this and will eventually be forced out of business, leaving the government plan as the only remaining option. It’s unfair competition, but it won’t be viewed that way by most politicos. There are laws designed to prevent this sort of predatory behavior by private citizens and businesses, but it’s generally OK when the government does it.
It never ceases to amaze me how often people in government seem to think that they are smart enough to structure programs that can control and regulate human behavior without imposing autocratic control over people. It has been repeatedly tried throughout history, and it always fails – eventually. The evidence is abundantly clear in the universal health care plans of other countries that have already adopted such programs.
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