Recently in Economics Category

Frustrated emergency-room doctor Paul Hochfeld explores why U.S. health care costs so much and argues that a single-payer system is a good solution.

"The majority of Americans want some form of a national health plan. Lobbyists continue to foster the political wisdom (myth?) that embracing anything that resembles a single payer system is political suicide. Reality check: our health care system will remain broken until the focus shifts from profits to health. That won't happen until somebody, other than insurance companies, takes control. This is now a political problem. Our citizens need to make enough noise and put enough pressure on our politicians to get them to listen to us, instead of the lobbyists."

Marissa and I watched "A Crude Awakening" last night via Apple's iTunes movie store. (It's quickly becoming apparent to me that downloading is so far superior to the NetFlix model it's not even funny. I'd rather watch what's available via download than pick from the broader NetFlix catalog but have to wait 2 days for it to arrive, and there's never an inventory issue.)

The movie is definitely worth watching, regardless of your view on the "peak oil" theory and/or climate change. Frankly it doesn't even touch on the environmental / "Inconvenient Truth" component of fossil fuel usage - it simply examines the history of production peaking in the US and other previous "oil center" nations and the reasons why the current leading producers have heavy incentives to overstate their reserves (and may be doing so by 100% or more of their actual remaining reserves.) It also touches on the immense economic implications this would have for the markets and world economies, both developed and developing -- the global economy is massively dependend on the availalability of cheap energy, especially for the transportation of raw and finished goods worldwide. There would also be huge implications for newer cities in the US and abroad that developed around the "car economy" - think anywhere but the East Coast and maybe Chicago, basically.

One of the best quotes: "...will my grandchildren know what it's like to fly in a airplane?"

"A household with income under $13,000 spends, on average, $645 a year on lottery tickets, about 9 percent of all income. Aside from the financial toll, the moral toll is comprehensive. Here is the government, the guardian of order, telling people that they don't have to work to build for the future. They can strike it rich for nothing."

David Brooks - The Great Seduction by Debt - NYTimes.com

(At the same time the government is doing this, they're criticizing housing lenders for encouraging people to gamble on rising housing prices continuing to ascend. I'm not a fan of the subprime lenders, but at least the odds there were a little better than the lottery.)