National Governments, Global Corporations

Someone I know invested part of his IRA in a Mexican transportation stock. I've resisted the temptation to invest my own in Chinese and Russian stocks - and glad I did, since the Russian ones have certainly taken a loss. I wonder how much stock of American companies is foreign-owned? Shares in our companies are certainly traded on exchanges around the world.

When our government props up an "American" corporation, who really owns it? Who owns the companies we rescue? We obviously cannot rescue just the American-owned shares. Are we not then rescuing the shares of investors around the world?

When ownership is global, what can be the national interest in rescuing a company? There is one answer I can see.

Jobs.

The global interest may be profits. The national interest is jobs.

Is Wealth Enough?

Twenty percent of the U.S. population has acquired 84% of the wealth. The other 80% of the population owns only 16% of the wealth. One fifth of the population owns more than four fifths of the wealth.

Capitalism has succeeded.

Now what?

The Health Care End Game

Sooner or later...

Opt-in public health care. Pay ten percent of your gross income. Have all expenses paid until end-of-life. Accept palliative care in hospice at end of life. Buy end-of-life insurance ahead of time if more is desired.

Let those who want to spend their fortunes squeezing a last painful month out of life do so. Let the rest of us see that each other are cared for.

If unions can provide a better plan, then they will. If insurance companies can provide a better plan, then they will.

Painted Into A Corner

Between the devil and the deep, mankind is.

Helplessly breeding, competing with nature even as she feeds us, destroying jobs for profit points when economies depend on consumers, blindly man heads for a fall.

Mankind has painted itself into a corner. There it shall live.

We didn't want nuclear waste, so we burned carbon and got a poisoned sea.

We wanted new voters, new parishioners, new customers. We bred like flies.

We must stop breeding. Must nurture consumer quality instead of consumer quantity. Go electric.

We must let population dwindle to fit the electric power supply available.

We must wait for the paint to dry. We must restore the garden.

Then we can walk away. Out of the corner.

Can we let population dwindle?

Should An End-Of-Life Decision Lower One's Health Care Cost?

I will be signing soon a Living Will and also a Healthcare Power of Attorney. This is so that someone close to me will be able to tell the doctor to pull the plug when all is lost. Doctors love to go on and on and run up the bill.

Suppose I were to get a discount in my monthly insurance bills for doing this?

Suppose those people who do want to have an extended service plan at the end of life were to prepay that expense - using their own insurance plan, with appropriately higher rates?

Having seen one friend die in home hospice, I will welcome it. I can recommend it. Have a friend see you off. The hospice caregivers visit almost every day. It's a cheap way to die. It should be cheap to pay for, too.

Would a reward to those of us who choose hospice make health care cheaper?

Does The World Need More New Employers?

Jobs are scarce. Businesses are closing or consolidating. The number of employers is dropping like a stone. But we count jobs, not employers.

Last month, another 159,000 jobs were lost in the United States alone. How many of these were due to employer loss? From which there is no return?

Could new jobs be created by creating new employers?

Suppose "How To Start And Run A Business" became a required course for high school graduation?

How many bright new businesses would be hiring?

Obama's "To-Do" List Wins Nobel Peace Prize

Stay humble, brother.

We love you.

Have We Already Won In Afghanistan?

Only 100 or so Al Qaida members remain in Afghanistan. They are in hiding.

America has defeated Al Qaida in Afghanistan to the point that no one is left to sign a surrender document.

We cannot leave without a surrender document.

So we stick around to fight all the people who want us to leave.

This includes the Taliban, who think that strict enforcement of religious law will set society straight. If Afghan society were perhaps a little less stressed by our warring presence, their perception of a need for religious government would probably decline.

Our presence - drunken, naked, carousing embassy guards and all - is no gift to Democracy, only to the power of those we befriend.

We had hoped to leave them with a functioning democracy. But our protege, their president Hamid Karzai, already likely for re-election, decided to stuff the ballot boxes just to be sure.

This appears to be a part of the world where love of power exceeds love of Democracy.

Can we fight them into loving Democracy? Or is Democracy rather a garden to be watered?

Forget nation-building. How can we nurture Democracy?

Perhaps we can set an example. Now that Al Qaida is gone, can we hold a vote and Democratically decide that we have won?

That would give us the document we need.