Thursday, April 29, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
FDR and The Great Depression
Did FDR's New Deal end The Great Depression? Many people have been led to believe so but the truth is that it really did very little to get the economy moving again. Read more from the Wall Street Journal.
The interesting thing about this article is that points out that lower taxes are what really help to increase economic output and create sustainable jobs...anybody see a conflict with this and our current Congress and President?
Visit the fairtax.org to if you want to learn about ways we can change our tax system and jump start the economy at the same time.
The interesting thing about this article is that points out that lower taxes are what really help to increase economic output and create sustainable jobs...anybody see a conflict with this and our current Congress and President?
Visit the fairtax.org to if you want to learn about ways we can change our tax system and jump start the economy at the same time.
Health Care Reform?
The recently passed health care reform legislation does virtually nothing to control costs in the health care industry and will do nothing to stop the ongoing rise in health insurance premiums. This is contrary to several of the goals the President originally outlined in his proposal - a major one being to make health care affordable again. The article in the link above points out that public anger over rising premiums likely helped to get the bill passed but the bill doesn't even address rising premiums.
Approval Ratings - US Presidents
This link shows a USA Today comparison of Presidents' approval ratings....
Unemployment Programs Reduce Incentive to Work
Basic economics pretty much sums up what happens when we give richer and longer unemployment benefits to people that lose their jobs...they are less motivated to go back to work thus they stay unemployed longer leading to more federal and state expenditures to pay their benefits. This in turn leads to increases in state unemployment taxes - 2010 saw record increases by the way. The higher taxes raise the cost of hiring workers and thereby reduce the jobs available and contribute to higher unemployment.
Anybody see how this becomes a viscous cycle very quickly?
The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article discussing this and interestingly enough one of the people quoting on this phenomenon was Laurence Summers - one of Obama's top economic advisers....interesting.
Anybody see how this becomes a viscous cycle very quickly?
The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article discussing this and interestingly enough one of the people quoting on this phenomenon was Laurence Summers - one of Obama's top economic advisers....interesting.
Fed Chairman Attempts to Educate Congress
In the video below Bernanke tries to get across two major points to Congress:
- The current budget deficit and national debt projections are almost certainly understated because they assume Congress will stop doing things they have been doing for decades.
- We really need to start fixing our fiscal problems sooner rather than later
Medicare Payment Decreases
It's that time of year again...Medicare payment rates to doctors are scheduled to decline again unless Congress delays them. This kick the can down the road patch to one of medicare's major problems has been going on since about 1997.
The only way the government could seem to wring costs our of medicare was to cut what they pay to doctors for services making medicare patients more costly for doctors to serve than patients with private insurance. The result - as anyone who stayed awake for about 5 minutes in an introductory economics class would know - is that fewer doctors are taking medicare patients on. This drives medicare patients to use ERs and urgent-care facilities which in turn drives up the cost of medicare...anyone see a problem?
The only way the government could seem to wring costs our of medicare was to cut what they pay to doctors for services making medicare patients more costly for doctors to serve than patients with private insurance. The result - as anyone who stayed awake for about 5 minutes in an introductory economics class would know - is that fewer doctors are taking medicare patients on. This drives medicare patients to use ERs and urgent-care facilities which in turn drives up the cost of medicare...anyone see a problem?
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Media Bias
A classified military video was recently leaked to the public that showed what the media outlet leaking the video claimed was indiscriminate firing on civilians by US troops. The Secretary of Defense has supported the soldiers' actions and claimed the video didn't show the whole story. Apparently if the video is slowed down you can clearly see one man armed with a RPG launcher and another with an AK-47. This is just one example of the media making news instead of reporting facts.
Read the article at Fox News' Website
Read the article at Fox News' Website
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Obama Opens Drilling/ Increases Emissions Standards
President Obama recently announced he intends to remove a long standing ban on drilling for oil and gas off the Eastern seaboard. At least this move will help to ease our growing energy dependence on nations unfriendly to us, but not to accused of doing something useful outright the President also reaffirmed commitments to raise fuel economy standards and set stricter emissions limits. Obama giveth and Obama taketh away!
The Cost of Modern Medicine
The March 4th edition of Business Week ran a very interesting article entitled: "Lessons of a $618,616 Death." In the article a woman describes her husband's battle with cancer and ultimately his death and uses it to discuss how our health care system works (or doesn't depending on your point of view). While I don't necessarily agree with all her conclusions or points the article is very interesting nonetheless. Please take some time to read it....
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_11/b4170032321836.htm?chan=magazine+channel_top+stories
and watch the video below:
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