New Jersey Validates The Laffer Curve

Posted on 17-Jan-2012 by Highvoltage

There was a story on NPR today that validates the much maligned Laffer Curve and this is a problem for Obama and the rest of his tax and spend Liberals.

The Laffer Curve (shown below) states that the amount of revenue a government receives from taxes follows a bell curve with tax rates on the x-axis and tax revenue on the y-axis.  This is intuitively simple to grasp – governments that charge 0% tax rate will get zero tax revenue and governments that charge 100% tax rate will also get zero revenue because people will choose not to work.  Why would you work when all the money goes to the government?

New Jersey passed a new law in 2005 that added a 6% tax on cosmetic surgery and it was aimed at the super rich and was seen as a quick way to increase tax revenues.  The merits of this law were explained in the following quote from the NPR article:

“Back in 2005, New Jersey Assemblyman Joseph Cryan explained the rationale for the tax on CBS’s The Early Show.

“This is an income situation where people are able to afford elective surgery, they’re not medical necessities,” Cryan said. “Clearly, reconstructive surgery would not be part of it. So it’s optional surgery designed to enhance one’s appearance, as opposed to the necessity or quality of one’s life.”

But as Liberals consistently do, they forget that economics is always about motivations and people just went to neighboring states to have their plastic surgery performed.  Another quote from the NPR article:

“Dr. Christopher Godek of the Personal Enhancement Center in Toms River, N.J., is one plastic surgeon who has been working hard to eliminate the tax.

Because New Jersey is one of the only states in the Northeast with the tax, Godek says patients go into other states without the tax to have their procedures performed to save that 6 percent.

Godek is also president of the New Jersey Society of Plastic Surgeons, which commissioned an economic study that suggests New Jersey is actually losing revenues because of the tax, not gaining them.

“When someone has plastic surgery, they’re not only coming to a plastic surgeon,” Godek says, “they’re utilizing a hospital or a surgery center; they’re staying in local hotels; their family is eating in local restaurants; they’re utilizing pharmacies to fill their prescriptions. So all of that revenue is lost.”

For Conservatives, this result was to be expected and sure enough the New Jersey State Legislature has approved a repeal of this law and it is on the Governor’s desk for signature.

Let this be a lesson to those who say we need to tax our way out of our current economic malaise.

Posted in economics, politics | 9 Comments

Focus Like A Laser

Posted on 16-Jan-2012 by Highvoltage

I have no doubt that you have heard a politician or someone at work say that they are going to “focus like a laser” on some particular area but for someone who understands the actual workings of a laser, that phrase is so wrong from a physics standpoint.  If you hear someone say “focus like a magnifying glass” then they’d be on sound physics ground but lasers obtain their energy by not focusing light but by a method that is far more interesting.

I will detail the operation of a laser in this post and then assert how we can use these principles to affect the way we interact with others in our daily life.

To understand lasers we must first understand atoms and quantum physics so let me hit this main points in a way that those of you who don’t have a science background can understand. 

Everything around us is comprised of atoms – cats, dogs, baseballs, iPads, trees, desks – and each atom is comprised of three main building blocks (protons, neutrons and electrons).  Every atom has a nucleus where protons and neutrons reside and then there is a shell, or cloud, where electrons orbit the nucleus.  It was determined a long time ago that these electrons don’t orbit in some random or continuous fashion but instead occupied very specific orbits or energy levels.  The laws of quantum physics prove that electrons can only occupy certain energy levels and to move an electron to a higher energy level requires an energy input.  Once the electron is moved to this new energy level it will stay there until it drops back down to its ‘normal’ or ground state. 

When the electron decays to its ground state (or a lower energy state) the electron gives off energy in a strange particle called a photon.  Photons are small packets of energy that make up all electromagnetic radiation and they take on both wave and particle characteristics.  Each photon vibrates and has a particular frequency/wavelength and this frequency is important because the energy of the photon is directly proportional to its frequency (i.e. high frequency photons have high energy).

There are two methods to move an electron from an energized state to its ground state – Spontaneous Emission and Stimulated Emission.  The electron will naturally ‘want’ to move to its ground state so eventually it will drop down and this is what’s called spontaneous emission.  There is a much more interesting type of transition called stimulated emission which happens when a photon interacts with an atom that has an electron in an excited state and that interaction causes the electron to drop to a lower energy level.  This new photon that is released via stimulated emission will have the same frequency as the photon that interacted with that atom and essentially creates a twin moving in the same direction and same frequency.  This is important because it is the essence of what makes a laser work (which will be explained below) and a diagram of this type of emission is shown below.

Now that the basics of atoms, photons and quantum physics are out of the way, let’s move on to the laser operation and the basic components of a laser are shown in the diagram below.

There is a media that is excited by an energy source (usually a flash lamp) that moves electrons to a higher energy level.  After a while, through spontaneous emission, photons are emitted in all directions and those that are perpendicular to the mirrors will start bouncing back and forth.  When these photons interact with atoms that have excited electrons, stimulated emission takes place and we have an increase in the number of photons that match the frequency and direction of the original photons and as they bounce back and forth there is an amplification of the photons at a specific frequency and direction (called coherent in physics terms).  The mirror on the left is 100% reflective but the mirror on the right is less than 100% reflective and the laser light emerges from this mirror and is translated to the fiber optics that deliver the laser energy. 

You can now see why the term ‘laser’ stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

There is no focusing that generates this high energy light but instead it arises from photons bouncing back and forth and creating twins of itself through stimulated emission.  And it was this understanding of stimulated emission that led Charles Townes in 1953 to perform the pioneering work that led to the invention of the laser and he was eventually awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1964. 

The laser has changed the way the world operates from manufacturing, retail, communication and defense but there an object lesson we can take from the operation of a laser.

Think about political movements.  There is a ‘flash lamp’ that starts the process – i.e. the Tea Party movement – and then all sorts of random emissions come forth from that stimulation.  The good ideas are bounced around and that stimulates others to join the movement and soon you have a whole host of individuals who are coherent in their views and actions.  Each individual is powerless on their own but when a large group of people join forces around a common ideal and combine their resources a powerful movement is created that can do great things.

Think about Christianity.  The Holy Spirit, the ‘flash lamp’, starts the process and excites humans to a higher energy level.  This generates all sorts of initial excitement but only the individuals who really understand the message proclaim it and this gets others involved.  In His infinite wisdom, God set up Christianity so that others come to belief through the interaction with others.  Even after Jesus was resurrected, His message to the Disciples was to go and tell others about Him and in Matthew 29:10 Jesus said the following to the women who found him resurrected at the tomb:

“Do not be afraid.  Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee’ there they will see me.”

Witnesses who share their faith and the saving Grace of Jesus Christ are the vessels that the Holy Spirit uses to share the Gospel to others.  In over 2,000 years, very few have had a Damascus road experience like Paul but instead, most come to the saving knowledge of Christ through the interactions with others.

Think about business.  A good CEO will communicate a vision that will inspire all sorts of ideas from the employees.  As these ideas get communicated and vetted, only those that contribute to the corporate goals get traction and eventually the whole organization is moving in the same direction to accomplish the goals. When people are moving in different directions or if there is infighting then the company is not coherent and can’t move in a direction that supports the business model. 

Learn the theory of the laser and understand that people can be like photons – We can influence others by just coming in contact with them.  When we decide to occupy our time with what is really important and cast aside the trivial minutia that gets in the way, we can be a force to be reckoned with.  Don’t be afraid to come in contact with others and speak you mind because you shouldn’t discount the power of an individual photon.  Social media (Blogs, Twitter and Facebook) provides us with tools that were unthinkable 20 years ago and we should use those to spread our influence and stimulate people who are energized but need motivation to move from their chair and enter the conversation. 

Posted in christianity | 1 Comment

A Social Security Reform Plan

Posted on 12-Jan-2012 by Highvoltage

This is the first in a series of periodic investigations into so called “entitlement” programs which include Social Security, Welfare, Medicare, Medicaid and Unemployment Insurance.  I hope to address each one in a separate post and answer such questions as “Do we really have a problem with this program?”, “Is it Working?”, “Why was this program created?” and “Can we fix it?”

I’m working on these posts not because I’m an expert but because I want to learn more about them and posting my findings and proposals on my website and reading the comments and dissenting opinions is the best way I know how to do it.

This first post will look at Social Security.

History and Current Structure

There is a complete history (and pre-history) of the Social Security Administration (SSA) here and I’ll hit some of the high points below but I think the following paragraph from the SSA site describes the climate in the US right before the Social Security Act was passed.

“So as 1934 dawned the nation was deep in the throes of the Depression. Confidence in the old institutions was shaken. Social changes that started with the Industrial Revolution had long ago passed the point of no return. The traditional sources of economic security: assets; labor; family; and charity, had all failed in one degree or another. Radical proposals for action were springing like weeds from the soil of the nation’s discontent. President Franklin Roosevelt would choose the social insurance approach as the “cornerstone” of his attempts to deal with the problem of economic security.”

On 14-AUG-35 President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law and gave the following statement:

“We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.”

 The SSA continues about the SSA’s humble beginnings (emphasis mine):

“The significance of the new social insurance program was that it sought to address the long-range problem of economic security for the aged through a contributory system in which the workers themselves contributed to their own future retirement benefit by making regular payments into a joint fund. It was thus distinct from the welfare benefits provided under Title I of the Act and from the various state “old-age pensions.” As President Roosevelt conceived of the Act, Title I was to be a temporary “relief” program that would eventually disappear as more people were able to obtain retirement income through the contributory system. The new social insurance system was also a very moderate alternative to the radical calls to action that were so common in the America of the 1930s.”

The Trust Fund started to receive money in January 1937 once the Federal Insurance Contributions Act was passed.  For anyone who has ever looked at their check stub, that is what a FICA is and why it gets 7.65% of everything you make (6.2% for Social Security and 1.45% for Medicare).   Everyone should also know that the employer also pays a 6.2% tax on the employee’s payroll to fund Social Security so every working American would get a 13.85% raise if we didn’t have these two entitlement programs.  But I’m getting ahead of myself…..

More on FICA from the SSA website:

“After Social Security numbers were assigned, the first Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) taxes were collected, beginning in January 1937. Special Trust Funds were created for these dedicated revenues. Benefits were then paid from the money in the Social Security Trust Funds. “

Through the years various modifications were made:  

Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA) started in 1950 and continued periodically until the COLA was made automatic with legislation passed in 1972.

In 1954 payments were added to cover disabled adult children and those ages 50-64 who were disabled and then Congress expanded these benefits in 1960 to include any age worker and their disabled children.

In 1961 the retirement age was lowered to 62.

In 1977 it was discovered that the Trust Fund would run out of money (GASP!) in a couple of years so a law was passed to increase the payroll tax, broaden the tax base and reduce benefits (note that this would be done again in 1983).

In 2000, a new law allowed someone who was at or above the Normal Retirement Age (NRA), which is 70 years old right now, to work and collect Social Security benefits.

In 1937 Social Security had 53,236 recipients and $1.278 million in outlays.

In 2008 Social Security had 50,898,244 recipients and $615.34 billion in outlays.

Do We Have a Problem?

According to this site, we will have enough money in the Social Security Trust Fund to keep it solvent through 2037.  But what is this mythical Social Security Trust Fund?

According to the SSA, everything is fine and the Trust Fund has enough money in it to pay its projected bills anywhere from 25 to 75 years from now but according to the US Chamber of Commerce, the Trust Fund is just an accounting mirage:

“The government does not save our Social Security taxes for future retirees. Congress borrows this extra money and uses it to make up for deficits elsewhere in the budget. Thus the Social Security trust fund contains nothing but IOUs the government has written to itself. And when Uncle Sam goes to repay those IOUs, you know who pays the bill: we do. That means that in order to repay those IOUs, the government will have to either raise taxes or cut programs.  Social Security is already the biggest tax that most workers pay, but to keep the system afloat payroll taxes will have to rise even higher—to 20 percent of each worker’s wages.”

There is also this article from CNN Money making the case why this Trust Fund (which had a reported value of $2.6 trillion at the end of 2010) is the biggest accounting farce in the United States.  Do you really think our Federal Government, which is so addicted to spending, would leave $2.6 trillion sitting on the sidelines?  They wouldn’t and the only reason the Trust Fund hasn’t been raided is because it doesn’t exist.

So for the sake of my analysis I’m going to assume the worst case scenario – The Trust Fund doesn’t exist and all the revenue the SSA takes in each year goes to pay current retirees. 

In addition to neglecting the Trust Fund, I’ll need to make some other assumptions to run the numbers.

There are actually two [2] components of the Social Security system: The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) which pays for retirement and survivors benefits and the Disability Insurance (DI) which pays disability benefits.  For the sake of this analysis I’ll combine both of these and call them the OASDI but keep in mind that the OASI piece is over 80% of the total OASDI. 

The following table shows the estimated increase in OASI and DI costs for each year (as a percentage of GDP) through 2085.   According to the SSA report, the outlays from OASI will increase as the baby-boom generation starts receiving Social Security benefits, peak around 2035 and level off at a set percent of GDP (in this case around 6%).

“Costs for both programs increase substantially through 2035 because (1) the number of beneficiaries rises rapidly as the baby-boom generation retires and (2) the lower birth rates that have persisted since the baby boom cause slower growth of both the labor force and GDP. Social Security’s projected annual cost increases to about 6.2 percent of GDP in 2035, declines to 6.0 percent by 2050, and remains at about that level through 2085. Under current law, projected Medicare cost increases to 5.6 percent of GDP by 2035, reaching 6.2 percent in 2085, driven in the latter period largely by the rising cost of health care services per beneficiary. These projected costs may well be exceeded because they are based on the assumptions that the deep reductions in physician fees required by the sustainable growth rate system are not waived by legislation and the Affordable Care Act’s reduced provider payment updates are sustainable over the long run.”

For my analysis I am interested in actual outlay dollars and not % of GDP so I need to understand the estimated GDP growth that the SSA assumed and then use the SSA estimates (which take a percentage of that GDP) to get the projected outlays for each year.  Using the SSA projections for actual OASDI outlay dollars (through 2020) and their % of GDP numbers, I back-calculated the estimated starting GDP in 2013 to be $16.8 trillion and then empirically derived a constant GDP growth rate of 5% that matched the remaining OASDI outlays through 2020.  Since this matched their data from 2013 to 2020 (and since we don’t have a crystal ball to predict GDP growth rates past a few months much less decades) I’ll assume the SSA used this same constant 5% GDP growth rate for all their yearly projections through 2085.

It is interesting to note that the 5% GDP growth rate is ambitious and I would’ve chosen a 3% growth rate based on the following graph which shows over recent history that is about what is expected.

But I’ll use 5% for the sake of this analysis and based on this, here are the projected outlays from OASDI through 2068.

Yes, I’d say we have a problem!

My Solution

There are many proposals to reform the Social Security system to improve its solvency and ensure its long term health and they range from investing the mythical trust fund in the stock market, reducing participant benefits, increasing the retirement age, increasing the payroll deductions (which is normally 6.2% but is currently 4.2% thanks to our Congress and the payroll tax reduction bill) or having companies pay more (I mentioned earlier that companies also pay 6.2% of their employees’ salaries into the Social Security system).

But I’m not in favor of reforming it – I want to eliminate it.  I’d rather take that 6.2% deducted from my paycheck and put that in either stocks/bonds or a 401k plan.  I would rather have the responsibility of my retirement resting with me rather than entrusting it to the Federal Government and all this extra investment in companies will help the economy as well. 

I do, however, favor keeping the DI portion of the Social Security plan because I feel we do have a duty to take care of our disabled citizens and especially those who are elderly.  So even though my analysis considers all the OASDI, I would like to see another analysis where we keep the DI portion.   

My proposal is to eliminate the OASDI but we can’t do that immediately since there are people in the system and there are people who are very close to entering the system that have been promised this benefit and we owe it to them to make good on that promise.  But as we saw above the projections for outlays in the coming decades are unsustainable so we have to stop sometime and there will need to be a generation to make the sacrifice of paying into a system to keep it solvent for existing recipients but be willing to take care of their own retirement and not rely on the Federal Government. 

Using a retirement calculator, assuming you put 15% of your salary in a 401k and have a balanced portfolio, a person will need a at least 20 years to sufficiently plan for their retirement (living during the retirement years on 50% of what they made while employed) so my proposal is to cutoff new social security recipients starting in 2034.  That means that the last year to enter Social Security is 2033 and therefore those people who will be 45 years old in 2013 will be the last people to enter Social Security (I’m also setting the retirement age at 65 years old).  Those, like myself, who will be younger than 45 next year will have at least 21 years to plan for our retirement by the time we reach 65 years old (2034) and can, of course, choose to work longer as many are doing now.

Assuming we execute on this plan – when will we be officially done with Social Security (no more outlays because there are no longer any living recipients)?

Since my plan has no change until 2033, the growth rate of Social Security outlays will track the Social Security projections during that time but starting in 2034 I need to reduce each year’s outlays by an amount equal to the number of people that would have been entering the Social Security program.  A little thought needs to be put into how I arrive at this yearly reduction.

Without the mythical Trust Fund, the Social Security program is now set up so that those entering the system will be offset by those who died that year so there won’t be any additional outlays other than cost of living.  We know this will not be true when the baby boomers start entering the system but that surge of new participants will be over around 2030 so for my analysis I am going to assume that starting in 2034, I can reduce my yearly outlays by a percentage that corresponds to the mortality rate of people who will die in that year (those who die will not be replaced by new participants).

To do this I need to obtain mortality rates for various age groups and I used this link.  For ages 65-74 the mortality rate is 2% and for ages 75-84 the mortality rate is 5%.  Note that the mortality rate increases to 14% for ages 85-94 but as you’ll see in a moment, we won’t need to use this.

To make this a worst case analysis, I’ll assume that the ages for all Social Security participants starting in 2034 are the youngest possible at 65 years old.  We know this will not be true and that there will be those much older than that on the Social Security system and those older participants will have a higher mortality rate but to keep things simple and come up with a worst case analysis stay with me.

So for the first year 2034, the normal outlays as predicted by SSA will be reduced by 2%.  The next year, 2035, will have its outlays reduced by 4% (another 2 percent have died) and so on until year 2045 when the mortality rate increases by 5% each year because the participant population is now at least 75 years old.  In 2055 we’d be seeing 85 year olds and the mortality rate should increase by 14% per year but I can’t do that because we are already reducing the previous year by 80% so another couple years and we’d be over 100% which means, statistically, all Social Security participants would have died.  I kept the simulation adding another 5% mortality rate until I reached a 100% reduction which was in year 2059.  The last of the 65 year olds that enter the Social Security system in 2033 would be 91 years old in 2059 so we are safe in making the claim that the system would be practically finished at this point.

Let’s see what that outlay graph looks like.

Not bad and when you over lay both the current and proposed plan on top of each other the difference really is startling.

In 2060 the current system will have Social Security outlays at close to $10 trillion and under my proposal we will be ending the program for all intents and purposes in 2060. 

And that means starting in 2034 (the year newborns in 2010 would be seriously entering the workforce), the amount of taxes paid by US citizens and companies will start going down and in 2060 the payroll tax that both workers and companies pay for Social Security will be gone.   That means our grandchildren will grow up in a world where they will never have to pay social security through payroll taxes.

That should be the goal – handing the country over to our children in better shape than we found it.  We can’t do that without eliminating at least 80% of Social Security entitlements and we owe it to them to make that sacrifice now.  I’m willing to do this and I think many other Americans are with me.

Addendum – Further Study

As I stated earlier, I don’t feel right about eliminating the DI portion of Social Security and I think this should stay and another analysis should be done showing what minimal outlays would remain in that program but that would still cause a significant reduction in payroll taxes paid by workers and their employers.  If the DI portion is only 20% of the current system we can assume that the current rate of 6.2% would be reduced to 1.25% and that would still leave another 10% of extra income for each American worker to use for investment, consumption and retirement planning.

While a significant amount of detailed calculations went into this analysis, I concede that this isn’t the end all study.  I would like to see those in Government who have better modeling tools replicate this study and determine the optimum cutoff point as well as the end date used in that analysis.  Reality will be different than these results but I think it will be better because I used a worst case model (lower mortality rates, including DI in the outlays, etc.).

For those who would like to check my math, here is my spreadsheet.

Social Security Analysis

Posted in economics, Entitlement Programs, politics | 14 Comments

Take That Eric Holder

Posted on 11-Jan-2012 by Highvoltage

If Eric Holder didn’t like South Carolina’s Voter ID law, he’ll really hate this new law that is moving through the Palmetto state legislature. 

A Bill has moved forward in the South Carolina Senate that will change the conditions under which benefits are paid to the unemployed who have not found a job within 6 months.

From the Myrtle Beach NBC affiliate WMBF:

“The SC Senate panel approved a measure today that would state that the unemployed have six months to find a job, and if they are not able to secure one, they should volunteer at a city or county level to receive their jobless benefits. The bill could now move forward in the state house.

Senator Paul Campbell created the bill with the intention of allowing the unemployed to use their skills to get work done around the area. Some say it would also help the unemployed develop a skill-set and network while giving back to the community. “

Sounds like a good plan to me.  City and State governments across the country are struggling to meet their payrolls and the work keeps coming so why not use some unemployed citizens to work part time filing papers, making phone calls or whatever skill they fit into?

The logistics of policing and managing this new law are not trivial but I hope we pass it just to send a message to Eric Holder and Barrack Obama that you can’t keep pushing South Carolina around.  We will not grab our ankles but instead fight you even harder.

Posted in politics, South Carolina | 1 Comment

Education Is The Tide That Floats All Boats

Posted on 09-Jan-2012 by Highvoltage

Over the past two decades we have seen an economic paradigm shift where more of the lower paying manufacturing jobs in the US moved to countries like Mexico, China and India and this is exactly what the Free Market predicted so this should not have been a surprise.  The US should’ve seen this coming but we didn’t and now we are scrambling to quickly transition to a Knowledge Based Economy where more of the white collar jobs are located here and a smaller percentage of low paying blue collar jobs remain in the US . I have written about this here and won’t belabor the point in this post but I’d like to explore how we speed up that transition to a Knowledge Based Economy and equip our children to enter it. 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics published a chart showing how education level is related to Unemployment Rate and median weekly earnings. 

You can see that higher education results in higher median weekly earnings and the lower unemployment.  This also should not be a surprise but it is even more important now since the US is not the center of manufacturing which employs low skilled labor. 

After looking at this BLS data, Education is the obvious area to focus our efforts.  We must start with elementary education and continue through Middle School and High School to give our children the skills they need to equip them for further study in either technical schools or traditional colleges.  From the BLS data, increasing the education level of our children will improve their quality of life and ensure that the US is still the leader in the world with regard to high technology and innovation.

There was a paper published in the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) by Chetty, Friedman and Rockoff that provides insight into how we can better educate our children.  The study looked at Value Added (VA) teachers and their effect on student test scores, college attendance, teen pregnancy and future earning potential.  The term Value Added relates to evaluating teachers based on their ability to improve students’ scores on standardized tests (higher student test scores translates into a higher teacher VA score).  There is much debate on the validity of this evaluation method and the question of whether students are really getting a better education versus performing to a standardized test has been raging for a long time.  This paper concludes that teachers who have a high VA not only improve students’ test scores but provide them with an education to improve their quality of life in the future.

This authors use two databases to derive their conclusions.  The first is a dataset of test scores and teacher assignments for grades 3-8 from a large metropolitan school district (covering 2.5 million students and 18 million tests for math and English from 1989-2009) and the second dataset uses tax records from those students from 1996-2010. 

The paper is a long read and difficult if you don’t have a deep understanding of statistics but there is a summary of the main takeaways from this study here and a PowerPoint presentation here. 

The following quote from the Abstract of the paper states the conclusions:

“Students assigned to high-VA teachers are more likely to attend college, attend higher- ranked colleges, earn higher salaries, live in higher SES neighborhoods, and save more for retirement. They are also less likely to have children as teenagers. Teachers have large impacts in all grades from 4 to 8. On average, a one standard deviation improvement in teacher VA in a single grade raises earnings by about 1% at age 28. Replacing a teacher whose VA is in the bottom 5% with an average teacher would increase students’ lifetime income by more than $250,000 for the average classroom in our sample. We conclude that good teachers create substantial economic value and that test score impacts are helpful in identifying such teachers.”

When a high VA teacher enters a classroom (indicated by the red line on the following graph) the student test scores improve immediately.

Students improve their future earnings when they are taught by a high VA teacher.

When a low VA teacher (in bottom 5%) is replaced by a high VA, students dramatically improve their future earnings.

Women who have a high VA teacher experience lower rates of teenage births.

Students who have a high VA teacher have a higher percentage of college attendance at age 20.

Disclaimer – As a parent of two children I will admit that teachers are not the only people who can influence the education of our children.  Parents shoulder an equally large burden in this endeavor and must work with teachers to ensure their children are receiving the highest education possible.

But here we have data showing that teacher quality directly translates to better student test scores, higher education attainment for the students, higher college attendance, fewer teen pregnancies and increased earning potential.  This paper provides data that show teacher quality had a direct impact on our children’s’ education but we are still afraid to demand higher quality teachers and eliminate those who are underperformers. 

Wisconsin teachers are angry with Governor Scott Walker because he is eliminating collective bargaining with public sector unions (i.e. teachers) and they are calling for his recall.  Governor Walker is merely stating that wage increases over inflation and benefits to teachers such as job guarantees for failing teachers should be decided by the voters and not politicians. Walker’s proposal gets to the heart of why public sector unions should not be allowed to collectively bargain with politicians – The taxpayers have no say in the agreement but yet they are the ones who pay the taxes and bear the burden of sweetheart deals negotiated between union bosses and politicians. 

And it isn’t just in Wisconsin where teachers are trying to avoid accountability. There is a post at Big Government reporting that the United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew is upset about New York expanding its standardized testing session for math and reading.  Mr. Mulgrew is upset because he thinks this will lead to extra test preparations for the students and place an undue burden on the teachers’ time.  The author of the big Government piece quite rightly called this defense “nonsense.”

“Mulgrew’s “concerns” are just a smokescreen to divert attention away from the union’s contempt for accountability. Union leaders know the more time far-left teachers spend covering the approved curriculum, the less time they’ll have to “teach” their political agenda of collectivism and anti-Americanism.”

Education is truly the tide that can float all boats and with this compelling data from the NBER shouldn’t teachers and educators be more interested in finding the best qualified teachers instead of protecting those underperformers who are dragging us down?  Instead of burning energy protesting a Governor who is trying to rein in costs in his state, why not attempt to improve teacher quality?  Instead of griping about test preparation why not just teach the curriculum and ensure the students get the best education possible?

The future of our country and our childrens’ quality of life are at stake and we don’t have time to play politics and protect underperforming teachers – we must address this issue now.  Eliminate collective bargaining with public sector unions and demand that schools fire underperforming teachers and replace them with high VA teachers.

Posted in education, politics | 7 Comments

My Tribute to a 20 Year Old Hero

Posted on 07-Jan-2012 by Highvoltage

Today my family had two monumental ‘firsts’:  My son played his first organized church league basketball game and about 2 hours later my kids saw their father cry for the first time.

Yes, today was one of those days I’ll never forget but when I woke up I didn’t anticipate it being anything other than a normal Saturday.  It was truly one of those days that couldn’t be scripted and events happened that seemed to be divinely controlled and culminated in a situation that I was wholly unprepared for.

I had heard a couple days ago on the radio how a local 20 year old Army PFC Justin Whitmire had died after Christmas when his jeep ran over an IED in Afghanistan.  His funeral was scheduled for today in my home town of Simpsonville, SC and I remember thinking how my family should go to the grave ceremony to pay our respects.  Unfortunately, the radio announcer stated that the services were the same time as my son’s first basketball game so I dismissed this idea.

After the basketball game today something (or Someone) put an idea in my head to make a trip to Lowes and pick up some lawn care products I needed.  The trip caused us to go through Main Street in Simpsonville and we noticed a huge gathering of people blocking the road that caused us to take a detour.  As we continued our trip I put 2 and 2 together and realized this must be the people leaving the funeral service.  After we left Lowes I decided to take the long way home to avoid the traffic through downtown and crossed Main Street about 2 miles down the road from the church but to our surprise that road was blocked by police and there were large crowds here too.  As it turned out, the ceremony was much later than had been reported and we still had time to see the motorcade processional!

So we parked the car and walked to the edge of the road to find that we were still 15 to 20 minutes away from seeing the procession.  Even though we were over 2 miles from the church site, the road was lined shoulder to shoulder with people as far as I could see left and right. 

I’ve encountered emotions from seeing flag draped coffins on TV countless times but when one is about 10 feet from you, the emotions are far different.  I was fighting back the tears as soon as we walked up and saw not only the hundreds of American flags but the vast diversity of people lining the streets which were comprised of varying ages, socioeconomic backgrounds and races.  We didn’t care about our differences; we were united in our purpose in being there – to pay respect to a hero and his family who had paid the ultimate price while protecting our Freedom.

When the motorcade approached I couldn’t fight back the tears anymore and I can’t recall a time when they flowed so freely.  When my kids (7 year old son and 10 year old daughter) looked at me they began to cry and it hit me that this was the first time they had seen their father cry so they knew something terrible must have happened.  I can’t choose the times my kids see my emotions but I couldn’t have scripted a better moment for them to learn about what makes their father abandon decorum and let his emotions take over. 

The sight of a flag draped coffin containing a man who wasn’t old enough to legally drink alcohol but gave his life to protect the Freedoms that we all take for granted every day.  The site of his family riding in trailing cars crying because they will not be able to do what I was doing at the time (holding my son).   The thoughts that must have been going through this hero’s mind as he signed his enlistment paperwork knowing that his country was involved in two theatres of war and knowing that he surely would see combat duty. 

I watched the movie Taking Chance many years ago and if you have not seen this movie then you owe it to yourself to rent it.  It is a movie adaptation of a true story chronicling Lt. Col Trobl escorting PFC Chance Phelps’ body back to his home town for the funeral.  It is an incredibly moving story and if you have never witnessed a procession of a fallen military hero, it is the closest thing.  Here is the trailer.    

My son and I play ‘army’ a lot around the house either with Nerf guns or with his army men and as we walked back to the car after the processional was over I reminded him that the man in that flag draped coffin is what a real army man looks like.

I give my utmost thanks to all the men and women who have served their country in uniform and my prayers go to all the families who have had to bury their sons and daughters after they paid the highest sacrifice. 

“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” – John 15:13 

Here is the video I took of the procession as it passed and it speaks far better than any I could ever do with my fingers on a keyboard.   

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What Would Obama Be Saying Now?

Posted on 05-Jan-2012 by Highvoltage

Remember that Obama announced his plan to bring down Unemployment in September 2011 and called it the American Jobs Act (AJA).  The AJA was really just a sequel to the Stimulus 2009 and the bill would not have helped unemployment and instead it would’ve hurt our economy by adding taxes to the wealthy’ (making over $250k per year) and increasing the government bureaucracy.  I have outlined the trouble with the AJA but in another post I made the claim (half joking) that the Republicans should pass the AJA out of spite.  The theory being – Once the 2012 elections rolled around and the economy hadn’t improved then Obama wouldn’t have a “Do Nothing Congress” meme on the campaign trail.  The economy during the Fall of 2012 is expected to be very similar to the economy during the Fall of 2011 (with or without the AJA) so I figured calling Obama’s bluff might make sense.

Sure enough, over the past few months Obama has done just what I predicted he’d do and all we hear about is how Congress is keeping the Economy in the dump or something like that (the “Do Nothing Congress” meme).  But something interesting has happened over the past few months that was quite unexpected.  The Unemployment Rate dropped by over a percentage point (9.7% to 8.6%)! 

Of course the Unemployment Rate is coming down because more people are giving up and exiting the labor force which is stated in this excellent post from James Pethokoukis at The Enterprise Blog.    

But can you imagine if the House and Senate had taken my advice and passed the AJA out of spite in October 2011?  Obama would be on TV every day showing that the Unemployment Rate is coming down thanks to his plan!  Sure enough, the Unemployment Rate started to drop at that very moment (Octboer 2011) when the AJA would’ve been passed in Congress and Obama would have this graph plastered on every 6:00 newscast while blathering on about how this graph proves his masterful grasp of the economy.  Oh, I’m so glad we don’t have to hear that. 

Posted in economics, politics | Leave a comment

Calm Down Conservatives

Posted on 04-Jan-2012 by Highvoltage

It was a tight race in Iowa and Romney squeaked out a win over Santorum by 8 votes!  Now Conservatives all over America are in full suicide watch mode and gnashing their teeth at the thought of Mittens as the Republican nominee.

Bachmann is out, Perry is still running (but finished in 5th place in Iowa), Huntsman is a joke, Gingrich is sliding back to Earth, Paul’s poor performance in Iowa shows he is done and Santorum is the only “Not-Romney” candidate still showing life.   Romney is all but certain to win New Hampshire by a large margin and barring a miracle with Santorum/Gingrich/Perry, Romney is poised to win the Palmetto State as well.  Winning the first 3 caucus/primary states will be huge and whoever survives past South Carolina faces an uphill battle to topple Romney so for all intents and purposes, Romney appears to be the inevitable Republican Presidential nominee. 

It’s obvious that Romney is not “Tea Party” Conservative and having Mittens as the Republican nominee causes many Conservatives to throw up their hands and contemplate giving up.  Calm down!  I consider myself a Tea Party Conservative and while I would have preferred another candidate for the eventual nominee, I am not only comfortable with the thought of Mitt Romney as the Republican presidential nominee, I’m excited about it.  Here’s why.

Rollback Regulation

Romney has stated that he’ll roll back the Obama regime’s over-regulation (from such agencies as the DoJ, FDA and HHS) which has been killing American business.  He’ll not only repeal Obamacare but also repeal Dodd-Frank and modify Sarbanes-Oxley to give smaller companies a break from its massive regulatory requirements.  Regulations are not only killing businesses but actually killing Americans and if we have a person who promises to roll these back, that is reason enough for me to vote for the guy.  Removing the handcuffs of over-regulation is just what the Market needs to provide positive expectations that will lead to a true recovery.

Reign in Union Thugs

Organized labor has had a field day under Obama, Pelosi and Reid.  They have enjoyed protection from their intimidating tactics and politicians they have bought (Obama included) have tried to push through the controversial Card Check legislation (eliminating secret ballots and allowing unions to intimidate the voting process).  The most heinous of Obama’s union paybacks was the National Labor Relations Board bringing charges against Boeing for expanding in South Carolina (which is a Right to Work state). 

Romney has agreed to stop all of these shenanigans as well as staff the NLRB with people who are interested in enforcing the laws as written instead of promoting a Union agenda.  Businesses can’t operate and expect to thrive in the current labor climate perpetuated by Obama and the NLRB and it appears the Romney wishes to change that climate to be more business friendly.

Energy Policy that Makes Sense

The EPA has been on a mission to kill any new energy project and choke off existing energy production by adding Carbon Dioxide to the Clean Air Act.  Manmade Global Warming Climate Change is a myth and I’ve already debunked that here and Romney appears to favor sensible approaches to the EPA rules and enforcement.   Romney wants to amend the Clean Air Act to eliminate Carbon Dioxide, make sure the rules have accounted for the economic impact, approve new nuclear power plant designs, open America’s energy reserves for development and streamline approval process for permits. 

Fiscal Responsibility

Our National Debt is equal to our GDP, 90% of all tax revenues go to pay for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare or Unemployment Insurance and Government spending is on a pace to hit 40% of GDP by 2075 (compared to a historical average of 18%).   This is not sustainable and in 2013 we need to replace Obama with someone who will reverse this trend.  Romney will do this by balancing the Federal Budget, capping government spending as a percentage of GDP and reforming Medicaid.

He Scares Obama

Obama and his team are scared of Mitt and I know this because several months ago they tipped their hand and let us all know how they are going to fight him in the general election.  They will not be able to paint Romney as a radical “Right Winger” and will instead be forced to characterize him as a flip-flopper with no integrity.  The fact that Obama has let this strategy slip out in public statements means that either his team is so consumed with Romney that they made this fatal mistake or his team was hoping the Republicans would pick up on the leak and turn away from Mitt in the primaries.  Either way, it is evidence that Obama is worried about facing Romney in the General Election and that fact makes me feel good!

So relax angry Conservatives – Romney will roll back regulations, reign in union thugs, follow an energy policy that makes sense, practice fiscal responsibility and scare the hell out of Obama.   Would we have liked a more Conservative candidate?  Sure, but I’m not sure anyone in the current field of “Not Romney” candidates would beat Obama. 

The goal of every Conservative in 2012 should be the removal of Obama from office and as we stand right now, Romney is the only candidate that is showing, according to the polls, that he can defeat Obama in the General Election.  You know the saying, “You have to be elected in order to govern” and it does conservatives no favors to elect a super conservative candidate that is unelectable in the General Election.  I am a big fan of Michelle Bachmann but having her as the nominee would have meant 4 more years of Obama and I hate to say it but anyone else still in the field will mean the same thing according to that Rasmussen poll.  

It’s not like we haven’t had enough debates on national TV to let the general public get to know these candidates.  The polling numbers we see now will be the polling numbers we see in November and the fact remains – only Romney can beat Obama.

Romney is the only candidate to withstand the crucible that every candidate has put him through over the past year.  Think about it, from the day Romney entered the race everyone has been more concerned with the “Not Romney” candidate than the Romney candidate.  A lesser quality individual would’ve folded under that pressure, lack of notoriety and scrutiny but here stands Mitt Romney, still the front runner and scaring the hell out of Obama.  

Posted in politics | 7 Comments

Eliminating the Penny

Posted on 03-Jan-2012 by Highvoltage

The Penny is one of the most useless items we have in America right now.  Most stores have a jar at the cash register where you can place pennies that you get as change so that other customers can use them so they don’t have to break a larger currency and deal with these useless coins.  I think I have a solution to not only make the penny obsolete but provide a way to stimulate the economy in a small but meaningful way. 

Before I get to the details of my plan, let’s review Salami Slice theory and those of you who have seen Superman III and Office Space know what I’m talking about here.  The plot for Superman III centered on a computer whiz who figured out a way to track the fractions of a penny that are truncated in various bank transactions and funnel that money to a personal account.  I am going to take this a step further and propose a scenario where all retail outlets in the US (big box retail outlets, grocery stores, fast food stores, electronics warehouses, sporting goods stores and every small business in the US) employ a system to round UP to the nearest whole nickel of the final purchases.

As an example – If the initial total (including sales tax) was $24.57 then the rounded total would be $24.60 and if the initial total was $10.01 then the rounded total would be $10.05. 

The extra pennies a day each individual consumer would spend would be trivial but imagine what that extra amount would mean for the businesses over a year’s time when all the transactions are added up.  The software changes to the point of sale computers would be a trivial change so in the following analyses I’ll ignore the labor and cost associated with those changes.  In larger stores, such as Wal-Mart, I’ll concede that the changes will be more cumbersome but they have the bandwidth to absorb this work and as you’ll see, it’ll pay for itself real quick.

Before I go through the detailed calculations, I’d like to review two key assumptions.  First – Each initial total can end in a digit from 0 to 9 and if it ends in 0 or 5 there is no need to round up so we can assume that 80% of the transactions (8 of the possible 10 digits) will end in a number that is not 0 or 5.  Second – For totals not ending in 0 or 5 the amount to be rounded up ranges from $0.01 (it the total ended in 4 or 9) to $0.04 (if the total ended in 1 or 6) so the average amount rounded up will be $0.025.

Now let’s see the results that various businesses would see from this type of transaction modification.

McDonalds

From the following link, we see that McDonalds serves 60 million customers worldwide and I’ll make the assumption that there are 3 eating customers per paying customer and that 33% of all worldwide customers are in the US.  I do not have a source for this but I think this is a conservative estimate so indulge me as I perform the calculated yearly profit that McDonalds will see from this transaction change.  As you can see from the calculations below, McDonalds would see a yearly additional profit of $48.18 million and that money could go to share holders, opening new stores, hiring new workers or increasing salaries of existing workers.  

Wal-Mart

From the following link, we see that every day Wal-Mart serves 200 million customers worldwide.  They have 9,884 stores worldwide but only 4,518 are in the US so 46% of the 200 million are served daily at a US Wal-Mart.  Unlike McDonalds, the customers served number that Wal-Mart reports is indicative of an actual transaction so doing the math which is shown below reveals that Wal-Mart will add over $667 million to their bottom line if this new transaction system were instituted.

Small Businesses in a Mall

From the following link showing shopper statistics for the mall in Stamford Connecticut (population around 1 million) I’ll get an approximation for what a small business in an urban setting would see from this new transaction system.   I took the average visits per month to the mall and normalized this to how many purchases would be made in each of the 100 stores in the mall based on the data that shows each visitor shops in 2.4 stores and makes a purchase in 63% of the stores they enter.  Granted this is an average and the ‘big box’ stores would see more than the smaller stores but the following calculations show that the average store in a large urban mall would see an additional $77,475 of profit using this new transaction system.

Typical Small Businesses

The data for a typical small business that doesn’t benefit from a large metropolitan area is a little more difficult to analyze and I could not find hard data to perform these calculations.  I will make an assumption that the average small business gets 20 customers per day and using assumptions that only 80% of these transactions will give an average of $0.025 extra revenue the additional yearly profit for a very small business is not much, $146. 

Macroeconomic Analysis

While the typical small business won’t see a large profit increase from this new transaction system, I’d like to see what the total additional revenue would be for all businesses in the US if we instituted this new transactional rounding system.

From the following link, there are roughly 234 million Americans who are over 18 years old and if you assume that each of them makes at least two purchases per day (which I feel is conservative) then we’d see additional annual revenue to all US businesses of $3.424 billion using this modified transaction algorithm. 

This additional amount is not a huge change to the GDP (currently at $14.5 trillion) and by my calculations it would only amount to 0.02% increase in the GDP but this change is what I call ‘low hanging fruit’ and something that can be instituted quickly and give a capital injection to most businesses in the US.  This transactional proposal also doesn’t take into account the benefit the government will see from eliminating the penny from circulation since it costs our government approximately $0.017 to mint a penny. 

Posted in economics, politics | 1 Comment

A Messenger From The Future

Posted on 02-Jan-2012 by Highvoltage

How many times have you thought that it would be nice to have a message from the future so that you could avoid mistakes? 

Would the executives at Coca-Cola benefited from hearing from the future about the lunacy of changing their formula for their anchor product? 

Would the NASA launch team on 28-Jan-1986 have benefitted from a future engineer telling them of the dangers of an o-ring seal in the Solid Rocket Boosters after being exposed to sub-freezing temperatures the night before the launch?

Would operators at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant have benefitted from hearing about the dangers of non-nuclear secondary pressure relief valve?

Well, as luck would have it, we have a message from the future with regard to the United States’ implementation of Obamacare.  No, we have not mastered the art of time travel and received a message from the future but we have the next best thing – a message from an advanced western country that implemented a very similar system decades ago.

The United Kingdom instituted the National Health System (NHS) in 1946 but expanded greatly in the late 1990’s and over the past decade there have been numerous issues that America should pay attention to because this is our future under Obamacare.

In 2005 over 20% of the NHS hospitals were in the red and set to fail.

In 2006, Health Care professionals saw the government wasting money and not allowing them to use their skills as they deem appropriate.

“Large amounts of money have been invested into the NHS, and while it has certainly had a positive impact, it could have been spent much more wisely.

In 1948 paitients were granted the right to a high quality NHS free at the point of use.

Over the Course of the coming decades, I fear that this could become a very distant memory.”

In 2006, it was obvious that ‘rich’ patients (called private) got bumped to the front of the line and would receive better treatment as characterized by this nurse’s quote:

“I am concerned about the increasing role of the private sector in the NHS and worried that the private sector will ‘cream off’ the more profitable services.

The NHS could be reduced to little more than a logo.”

About half of patients on the NHS system have to wait a month to see a physician for their diagnosis.  If you have cancer, a month could mean the difference between life and death.   

In 2003/2004 only 51% of patient operations were carried out in the UK so that means that 49% sought treatment outside the country.

The Economist published a post recently that provides the most damning reason to avoid government sponsored healthcare. Economics are about motivations and when a hospital has to jump through many hoops to get a government sponsored healthcare system to pay for their services they’ll naturally move the private customers to the front of the line since they don’t require the red tape.  Read the following quotes from the Economist article below (emphasis mine):

“Private patients have long been treated alongside NHS ones: my own department sees a few private patients every week, and the care it offers to NHS patients does not suffer as a result. But if the proportion of private patients substantially increased, that could change.

The basic problem is that private patients are treated differently (in every sense) to those on the NHS. It doesn’t matter how stringent the rules are about care being assigned according to need and people not being allowed to jump the queue just because they have money, it doesn’t work out like that.

My department’s official policy, for example, is simply to see patients as soon as possible, with the most clinically urgent cases given priority. There are some spare appointments to fit in anyone who needs to be seen at short notice (inpatients, for example), and if a doctor wants a private patient seen then we will squeeze them in if we can, but we won’t bump anyone else down the list so the private patient gets seen quicker. Simple, relatively efficient and fair.

At least, that is the theory. And most of the time, that is what we actually do as well. But when they are treating a private patient doctors are more pushy than they are when treating an NHS patient. I would estimate that consultants are perhaps two or three times more likely to chase up whether a private patient has been given an appointment than if the patient is being treated on the NHS.

Sometimes, if my department is busy and the waiting time is longer than normal, a consultant will pop into the office and casually mention that they believe we might have a private patient of theirs on our list and they would appreciate it ever so much if we could find a way to get them seen promptly. Only rarely will a doctor overtly say they want a patient to be seen faster because he is a paying customer, but that is the direction I am being nudged in.

And sometimes, because it is the path of least resistance, the nudging works and a private patient is seen quicker than would been the case had we been left to our own devices. When the number of private patients is relatively small the impact of this on other patients is minimal, but if private patients constituted a substantial proportion of the people being seen in our department, the pressure to bump NHS patients down the list could be considerable.”

With all these warnings from England shouldn’t we be leery of handing over the health care of our citizens to a federal government that has shown it is incapable of managing even small projects?  We must heed the messages we are getting from England.  They are telling us something and if we are wise we’ll listen.

Posted in healthcare, politics | 13 Comments

What Really Frightens Me

Posted on 01-Jan-2012 by Highvoltage

I’m not scared of people like Barrack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.  They are the equivalent of political prostitutes – bought and paid for by wealthy Liberals – and they are ignorant of the destruction that their actions bring upon America.  I am more frightened by the American people who still follow their policies when the overwhelming evidence of Liberal Policy failures is hiding in plain sight.

How can someone look at this chart showing budget deficits by President and not be outraged at Obama?

 

How can someone look at this chart showing how entitlement spending will consume our Federal Government very soon and not scream at Congress to reform these programs now?

 

How can someone look at this chart showing the share of Federal Income taxes paid by the various income demographic groups and still wonder if the ‘rich’ are paying their fair share?

 

How can someone not come to the conclusion that the US is on a path to Socialism once they realize that we spend over 90% of all tax revenues on Social Security, Welfare, Medicare, Medicaid and Unemployment Insurance?

How can someone look at the over regulation from the DoJ, FDA, HHS, NLRB and EPA (here, here and here) that is not only hurting the economy but also killing Americans and not be outraged?

Even with all this evidence, many in the country still claim to support Liberal ideals (especially Obama) and I think this blissful ignorance is characterized perfectly in a song from one of my favorite bands – The Avett Brothers.

A portion of the lyrics from the song “Headfull of Doubt” is pasted below:

“When nothing is owed or deserved or expected

And your life doesn’t change by the man that’s elected

If you’re loved by someone, you’re never rejected

Decide what to be and go be it

There’s a darkness upon me that’s flooded in light

In the fine print they tell me what’s wrong and what’s right

There’s a darkness upon me that’s flooded in light

And I’m frightened by those that don’t see it”

 We are guaranteed life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in America but we are not owed anything, we don’t deserve anything and we should not expect anything from anybody unless we decide what to be and go be it!  You are free to make choices and become anything you desire and it isn’t the job of the government or your neighbor to do that for you.  My beliefs and core values don’t change wiht the person elected and the values of elected officials don’t define who I am and what I will choose to fight for.

I don’t listen to the pundits in order to choose my path or mold my political leanings because my political leanings are based on my education and my principles.  The Main Stream Media will not choose whom I vote for and will make my decision based on what I feel is the best interest for my country and not to support a Liberal agenda that is promoted by the likes of MSNBC.   

There is truly a political darkness that has been flooded by light in the past few years and if you are too blind to see it then you frighten me – Especially if you vote.

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Obamacare – Destroying Jobs, Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Posted on 29-Dec-2011 by Highvoltage

I have already written earlier how Obama and his henchmen (and henchwomen) are not only killing business but also killing American Citizens and just a few days ago came a new report from the DesMoines Register showing the damage that is being left in the wake of the coming Obamacare nightmare.  Witness the carnage below (all quotes are taken from the DesMoines Register article).

Jobs

“Stryker executives last month announced plans to shed 5 percent of its workforce and blamed a 2.3 percent tax on medical device sales that goes into effect in the United States in 2013.”

“A 2.3 percent tax may not seem like much. After all, sales taxes are double or even triple that amount. But this is a top line tax on sales, and it translates into a 15 percent tax rate when applied to earnings. Add the 35 percent existing corporate tax and an average of 5 percent in state corporate taxes, and the combined tax rate for a U.S. medical device company hits 55 percent.”

This announcement can’t be more direct as to why these American citizens are losing their jobs.  For many companies, a 2-3% additional tax represents their entire profit margin for the year so adding this tax on the business will cause them to make choices about whether to stay in business or not.  This is not the case for Stryker who has a profit margin of 16% but taking their sales down by 2.3 percentage points is equivalent to removing close to 15% from their bottom line earnings (2.3% divided by 16% is 14.4% reduction in profits).  Companies can’t withstand that kind of reduction in earnings per share and the Market would destroy them and bring their Market Capitalization down to dangerous levels.  Something has to offset these reductions in profit so the company lowers costs by cutting its workforce. 

Is this what Barrack Obama meant when he promised to pivot to Jobs? 

Entrepreneurship

Imagine if you are a company attempting to attract investors for your startup and at the end of the pitch you mention that you’ll be taxed at 55%.  That means the investor will not see any money until the company pays 55% of their earnings to Federal and State governments.  Is this the type of return on investment that investors have been accustomed to?  Of course not and we will rapidly see a decrease in small business startups in the medical industry and this will neuter a major job growth machine in the US.   

“Investors are already headed for the door. BioEnterprise Midwest Healthcare Venture Report recently found that healthcare startups in the Midwest secured $315 million in investments during the first half of 2011 — that’s down an incredible 24 percent from the same period last year.”

“Cook Medical, the nation’s largest privately owned medical device company, has shelved plans to build a new factory annually in the U.S. — plants that would be similar to the one we opened last year in Canton, Ill., and would have cost about the same as our annual bill from this new tax.”

Is this what Harry Reid intended when he compared opponents of Obamacare to supporters of slavery?

Innovation

“Stryker is not the only company reducing workforce to pay for these punitive taxes leveled against medical device companies in the Obamacare bill.”

“Besides Stryker, Covidien, CR Bard, Medtronic, Boston-Scientific, Zimmer and others have recently announced plans for workforce cuts or job relocations off-shore of about 1,800 jobs.”

What areas of the workforce are suffering from these reductions?  A company will not sacrifice manufacturing or sales force jobs since they’ll need those individuals to generate revenue so the cuts will most likely come from Research and Development.   What do these reductions in R&D mean for the companies and the average American citizen?

America has long prided itself on having cutting edge medical devices (pace makers, stents, implantable cardioverter defibrillators, insulin pumps, etc.) but you can forget about that since the product development pipeline will dry up as companies are forced to remove dollars and headcount in this area.  Companies will be forced to focus on the short term revenue streams and abandon long term product development initiatives and medical care will move into a stagnant period where innovation is dormant.  

Not that product development has had any luck in this current FDA environment anyway but it will get even worse in the coming years.  American citizens will be forced to travel abroad to receive state of the art medical treatment but that will only be for the wealthy and those who voted for Liberals will be forced to deal with the very real Death Panels.

And it takes years to develop new medical devices so even if we repeal Obamacare in 2013 and change the Regulatory environment don’t expect new products to hit the Market for several years.  How many American citizens will pay the ultimate price (their life) for the “mistake” that we call Obamacare?

Is this what Nancy Pelosi meant by saying that we needed to pass Obamacare to find out what was in it?

 

I have often referred to Obamacare as a Sword of Damocles hanging over the head of not only healthcare providers and medical device manufacturers but all American businesses.  For those not familiar with Greek mythology, Damocles realized that a sword, being suspended by a single horse hair, was hanging over his head and could fall at any moment.  This is an accurate analogy of the damage that Obamacare threatens to our economy and it appears that the sword has already started to fall on many of our citizens.  How long will we allow this to happen before it is repealed?  

Posted in healthcare, Over Regulation, politics | 22 Comments

My Favorite Christmas Present

Posted on 28-Dec-2011 by Highvoltage

I received many wonderful presents for Christmas but my favorite was from my son and it came a couple days after Christmas.  We went on our first “guys trip” yesterday and saw my alma mater (University of Louisville) play football in Charlotte, NC at the Belk Bowl and we attended all the fan festivities, the game and spent the night in a hotel.

He is coming of age to the point where he can grasp sports and enjoy them with me and the time we spent together was priceless!  A great Father-Son trip!

 

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A Graph on CO2 Absorption

Posted on 27-Dec-2011 by Highvoltage

The Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) cult is dead wrong about CO2 driving our climate and the graph below reveals their mistake.

 

The top portion of the graph shows the electromagnetic radiation that is both downgoing (from the Sun shown in red) and upgoing (radiated from the Earth to space shown in blue).  All objects that have a temperature above absolute zero (0° K) will radiate electromagnetic radiation at various wavelengths and intensity according to Planck’s law and the center of that distribution will be at a wavelength characterized by the Wein’s displacement law.  So our Sun, which has a much higher temperature than Earth will radiate energy at a peak frequency of about 0.5 µm and the Earth will radiate its energy at a peak of about 14 µm. 

Much of the downgoing and upgoing radiation is absorbed in our atmosphere and the portion of the graph just below the spectral intensity shows where these wavelengths are absorbed.  Fortunately for Humans, much of the UV, X-Rays and Gamma Rays of the downgoing radiation are absorbed in our atmosphere (those wavelengths that are small and are not even shown on the left hand of the chart) and for that reason we exist today.  Since light in the visible range of the Sun’s spectrum are allowed to pass through the atmosphere, we have eyes that have evolved to absorb these wavelengths.  Organisms that had eyes that see only in X-Rays would be ‘blind’ on Earth and would not have had much success catching food. 

Now let’s focus on the upgoing radiation because it is from this radiation that our Earth’s greenhouse effect happens.  The Earth would be a much colder place if we didn’t have an atmosphere to trap a portion of the radiating heat from going to space. From an article at American Thinker that explains the Greenhouse effect:

“The Greenhouse Effect is real and necessary for life on Earth. Without it, our world would be a frozen ball that would not be hospitable for life as we know it. The harmful stuff (x-rays and gamma rays) is filtered out, but the light in the visible spectrum enters, and that light energy warms our Earth. The land and sea then respond to that warming energy by emitting light in the spectrum of the infrared (IR), and that energy takes the form of small packets of energy called photons. When those IR photons reach the atmosphere, some of them get absorbed by certain molecules, and that absorbed energy is transferred into the elements of the molecules. That energy causes the molecules to vibrate and heat the atmosphere, and finally, the atmosphere transfers some of that energy back to the Earth’s surface. Again, this is necessary, because if we didn’t have this blocking of IR wavelengths, our average temperatures on Earth would be about 32 degrees Celsius cooler (-18° C instead of the current 14° C). One of the greenhouse gases (GHG) that reflects these IR wavelengths is CO2, but there are others, such as water vapor, ozone (O3), methane (CH4), and CFCs.”

Now here is the portion of the graph that causes so much heartburn with the AGW cult.  Looking at the bottom portion of the graph and focusing on the line labeled “Carbon Dioxide”, you can see that the wavelengths of upgoing radiation that CO2 absorbs (which is centered around 14 µm) are positioned of the right hand side of the upgoing radiation curve (which is centered around 11 µm) so CO2 isn’t seeing the higher intensity radiation that gets passed to space.  The graph shows that CO2 does a very thorough job of absorbing some of this upgoing radiation (CO2 absorption is pegged at 100% at these wavelengths) and what radiation CO2 doesn’t absorb, Water Vapor takes care of the rest.  Adding more CO2 to the atmosphere will not change its absorption spectrum and as this graph shows, there is no more upgoing radiation that it can absorb.  In other words, CO2’s radiation absorbing duties are already performing at their maximum level so CO2 is at a saturated state right now with regard to upgoing radiation absorption.   

And here is another subtle fact that further shoots holes in the AGW meme.  If the Earth were to get warmer then the upgoing radiation distribution would shift to the LEFT (per Wein’s displacement law).  That would mean the intensity of the upgoing radiation wavelengths that CO2 thoroughly absorbs would be LESS so the greenhouse warming contribution of CO2 for a warmer Earth would be less than a cooler Earth.  Conversely if the Earth were to get cooler (i.e. a little ice age) then CO2 would be a stabilizing factor since the upgoing radiation curve would shift RIGHT and there would be more photons for this molecule to absorb and help bring Earth back into a warmer climate.

CO2’s contributing factor to the greenhouse effect is saturated and even if the Earth warms, CO2’s role in the greenhouse effect will only diminish.  That is a hard pill for the AGW cult to swallow.   

Posted in Climate Change | 62 Comments

Problem Solving 101

Posted on 25-Dec-2011 by Highvoltage

You can’t offer solutions until you completely define the problem.  To those who have analytical minds, this is common sense and you can look at any collegiate Engineering curriculum and you won’t find a class on this topic.  But there are times when we see people jump to solutions that don’t combat the actual problems and I liken this to someone who only has a hammer characterizing every problem as a nail.

We currently see this in the United Nations.  Climate Scientists and Environmental groups have infiltrated the UN and convinced a majority of its members that the Earth is in grave danger of becoming uninhabitable due to global warming climate change caused by increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.  The UN sees an opportunity to redistribute wealth among the nations and are trying to push a global economic collapse under the guise of saving the planet but it is obvious to anyone with an analytical mind that these policies (such as Carbon tax/trading) are really just another case of a solution in search of a problem. 

We saw in early 2009 where the Obama administration also made the fatal mistake of offering solutions before fully understanding the problem.  Obama saw the rising unemployment caused by the great recession and decided the answer was a massive stimulus package.  Prior to proposing this package, they stated that the stimulus was necessary to keep the unemployment rate below 8.0% but we know that the actual unemployment rate rose to 10% and the actual plot of Unemployment over time followed a trajectory that was worse than the one predicted if we didn’t pass the $787 billion stimulus.  There is no arguing that the 2009 stimulus failed its stated goals so the Obama administration was guilty of offering solutions to a problem that they didn’t accurately characterize. 

Unfortunately, it is apparent that Liberals have not learned from their prior mistakes and are still guilty of offering solutions to problems that are misdiagnosed.  There was an NPR article that interviewed Ernestyne James Adams and Althea James Truitt (sisters in Camden, South Carolina) and according to them, the US can move forward out of its economic woes by tackling its biggest problem…..racism.  From the NPR article (emphasis mine):

“Adams and Truitt both have Ph.D.s They had distinguished careers in the Northeast, then moved back home to Camden to retire. They say it’s a different place than when they were growing up, but with some of the same issues — namely, lingering racism. It’s the same thing, Truitt says, that’s holding the nation back right now.”

“How can we not carry on a conversation about the state of America without talking about racism?” Truitt asks.”

I do not claim that racism has been eradicated in the United States and I don’t know if 100% of its population will ever remove this ignorance from its society.  I think that racism is not a unique problem with the US but more a problem with humanity in general and hopefully, through education, all countries and all races will learn to treat everyone with the dignity and respect.  But it is obvious that the world has not reached that goal – there are still idiots in American who subscribe to White Supremacy, Shi’ites still persecute Sunnies in Iraq, Muslims still hate Jews and the list goes on.  So while I acknowledge that racism still exists in the US, I disagree with the hypothesis that racism is the major problem that is holding the US back.

I think our problems stem from the fact that our GPD is equal to our National Debt, 90% of all tax income goes to fund Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare and Unemployment Insurance, Over-regulation from the DoJ/EPA/FDA/HHS, the NLRB telling companies where they can build manufacturing sites and a Government that is addicted to spending. 

How can someone with a PhD come to the conclusion that the main problem in the US is racism?  Is this someone who has a hammer and sees all problems as nails?  There was a time in the US when the Race Card was the right play but we are not in the same environment and those who play it in 2012 should not be taken seriously.

If you want to watch a video showing an analytical approach to identifying our current problem, go here. 

Posted in politics | 1 Comment

The Star of Bethlehem

Posted on 24-Dec-2011 by Highvoltage

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?  We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.” Matthew 2:1-2

These wise men followed a light in the sky that they called a star and ever since Astronomy was ushered in as a branch of science by Johannes Kepler, scientists have sought to determine the source of this light.

Theories have ranged from a close conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, Halley’s comet, a variable star, a meteor and a supernova.  The most likely explanation is a supernova and there are accounts in Chinese records of a very bright supernova in 5 BC which many have taken to be the mysterious star in the sky during the birth of Jesus.

All stars have a birth, life and death cycle and the type of death a star will undergo is determined by its mass.  Our star, the Sun, will have a relatively minor death in about 5 billion years – It’ll expand to a red giant star that will engulf Earth and then turn into a planetary nebula with a small white dwarf star at its core.  But stars that are 1.5 more massive than our sun will undergo a rather violent end to their lives.  Depending on their mass, as they expend the fuel in their core, they’ll collapse, explode violently and end up as a neutron star or a black hole.   Those explosions of far distant and massive stars (even those in distant galaxies) burn so bright that they are visible to the naked eye on Earth. 

There was a Harvard journal which goes through a very detailed investigation that seems to point to either a type Ic hypernova in the neighboring Andromeda galaxy or a type Ia supernova in a globular cluster in our galaxy as the source of the Bethlehem star and for those so inclined you can read the whole paper here. 

It is interesting that the account in Matthew 2:9 talks about “the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was.”  The Magi, being “wise”, would have understood the celestial sphere and how the stars appear to rotate during the night.  As we now know, this rotation of the stars is really due to the rotation of the Earth and as the Magi followed the star and arrived at Bethlehem the star would have been at its zenith and would have indeed been directly overhead. 

Other than Divine intervention, the supernova explanation sounds like the most plausible to me and we’ll probably never know for sure but it’s still fun to go through this exercise.  I am a Christian but I don’t have any problem with looking at the science behind what I read in the Bible and that goes for everything from Creation (which can be reconciled with Evolution) to Revelation.  God gave us brains and the ability to think analytically and if, as I believe, God created this wonderful Universe then I feel that He is comfortable with us validating His Word through whatever tools we have available.  He even stated that in II Timothy 3:16 – “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”        

Have a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays or whatever reason you have to celebrate these coming days.

Posted in astronomy, cosmology | 2 Comments

NLRB Redefines Business Practices in US

Posted on 23-Dec-2011 by Highvoltage

The Economist published an article about the latest National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) involvement in Boeing’s decision to expand in South Carolina and they show that the recent ruling by the NLRB sets a dangerous precedent that will lead to more companies building manufacturing sites in foreign countries.

As a refresher to this issue, you can check out this post at Red State.  Boeing decided to expand in South Carolina and they built a new facility to manufacture its new 787 airplane.  Boeing, which is a private corporation, has the right to build plants anywhere in the world it sees fit and chose South Carolina due to its business friendly environment and also because it is a right-to-work state which means employees are not obligated to join a union.  Boeing’s other airline manufacturing plants are in Washington state which is not a right-to-work state and the union there has caused major issues with Boeing so it is not surprising that they would want to expand in an area that doesn’t contain these anti-business groups.

The International Association of Machinists (IAM) brought a complaint to the NLRB stating that Boeing was retaliating against the Union and chose to expand in a non-union state.  In a sane world this claim would be dismissed out of hand because there was no ‘retaliation’ since no jobs in Washington were eliminated and Boeing was building the plant in South Carolina to cover expansion. 

And doesn’t Boeing have a right to build a manufacturing site where they’ll see little work stoppages due to union strikes which the IAM has participated in over the past decade?  The Red State post states the problem clearly in the following quote:

“The IAM struck Boeing for two months in fall 2008, the fourth strike in a decade. Early the following year, Boeing Chief Executive Jim McNerney told Washington’s congressional delegation the repeated strikes were a major problem and the company would seek another location for its second 787 assembly line unless the union agreed to a long-term no-strike clause.”

But the NLRB didn’t see it that way and continued to review the complaint but miraculously dropped the case earlier this month and while that should have been cause for celebration, The Economist article describes why it was a sad day in US business history.

“It seems that the NLRB, a legacy of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, chose to drop the case only after it was asked to by representatives of the International Association of Machinists, the main Boeing union. The union told the government agency that it had just struck a lucrative deal with Boeing covering its workers in Washington state. With the deal done, the union no longer needed the government to hold a helpful gun to Boeing’s head.

Boeing declared victory, but fooled no one. For this sets a precedent: the federal government’s supposedly neutral representatives will threaten a company with serious harm if it doesn’t make concessions to unions. That gives firms a powerful incentive never to set foot in union-friendly states in the first place. Many will doubtless build their factories abroad, where the NLRB’s bureaucratic bruisers can’t threaten them.”

So the NLRB dropped the claim after the IAM removed their grievance but the IAM didn’t do this until they received concessions bribes from Boeing.

 

This decision by the NLRB defines a new climate in US business where companies will be forced to either build facilities in Union friendly states (and sacrifice market share and profit) or come under the scrutiny of the NLRB.  Businesses will make the obvious choice to move these sites to other countries that are not under the jurisdiction of the NLRB and US unemployment will continue to rise. 

Unions have already destroyed many areas of the country (see Flint Michigan) and they are intent to do this in the rest of the country as well.  Liberals are their accomplice in this injustice since they see Unions as a guaranteed voting demographic but little do they know that Unions are rapidly becoming irrelevant due to their low membership and eventually America will wake up and see them as thugs who are nothing more than a cancer to US businesses.   

Posted in Over Regulation, politics, unionthugs | 8 Comments

Political Disconnect and the Dunning-Kruger Effect

Posted on 22-Dec-2011 by Highvoltage

I was reading an article from The Economist, The Faith (and Doubts) of Our Fathers, and the last two paragraphs were very telling of our current political climate and they appear below (emphasis mine).   

“There is a great irony about all these disputes over America’s creators, whether they pit Christian against Christian, or religious types against secularists. Regardless of their own views on the spiritual, people like Madison, Washington and Jefferson were intensely concerned for the welfare and cohesion of the new republic. They worried not only about religious wars as such but about political disputes which were “religious” in their intensity. They wanted to create a state and political system to which people with utterly different ideas about metaphysics, and many other things, could offer unconditional loyalty. People who disagree over legal or economic matters ought to be able to respect one another and compromise; people who disagree over things they regard as ultimate—and therefore see one another as heretics—usually can’t.

The religious or non-religious character of the constitution (and what children should learn about it) is only one of many issues on which it is hardly possible, these days, to have a calm debate. Perhaps all sides should ponder the words of Jefferson in his first inaugural address: “Let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions.”

If this doesn’t sum up where we are in the United States then I don’t know what does.  Liberals and Conservatives are at loggerheads and we have seen the divide between their ideologies grow farther apart over the past 2 years. 

 

Some of this can be attributed to the divisive politics of our Community-Organizer-in-Chief who still can’t jettison his Alinsky style tactics and is incapable of compromise and leading parties through conflict.  Whether this is due to the Liberal über wealthy 1%’ers that brought him to power and demand he hold to their Socialist dogma or his massive ego that prevents him from realizing that his is wrong on so many issues, we have definitely seen a widening of the divide between Liberals and Conservatives under President Obama’s reign and much of the blame goes to the leader.   

 

But I think some of the blame (although I use ‘blame’ in this sense as more akin to ‘credit’) can be attributed to a shift in the Republican Party after the rise of the Tea Party.  Republicans in Name Only (RINO’s) were also culpable in the mess that we find ourselves in.  They were addicted to massive government spending and crony capitalism and contributed to the problem we have where our GDP is equal to our Debt.  We have basically run out of money to fund our present Federal expenditures and as was pointed out in a previous post, 90% of all tax revenue goes to fund Social Security, Welfare, Medicare, Medicaid and Unemployment Insurance.  In the past, the arguments over government spending centered around large spending increases from Liberals versus small spending increases from RINO’s but now the Tea Party is drawing a line in the sand and sticking to a zero based budget mentality and they are fighting every extra penning of spending and tax increases that are proposed. 

Our problem is simple and the fight has come down to one that resembles theological debates between radically different religions.  Liberals and Conservatives have distilled their fight down to a philosophical argument – Liberals see income redistribution and massive government intervention as the only way to stimulate the economy and Conservatives see the Free Market as the only way to generate wealth and allow the government to promote the general welfare. 

I have made it clear on this blog where I stand on this debate and I side with Capitalism and the Free Market.  But why is it that the Liberals like Pelosi, Reid and Obama stick to their ‘government is the answer’ dogma with all the evidence of history, common sense and Economic literature pointing to the contrary? 

In 1999, David Dunning and Justin Kruger put forth a theory of cognitive bias called the Dunning-Kruger effect.  Their hypothesis stated that for a given skill, incompetent people will a) tend to overestimate their own level of skill, b) fail to recognize genuine skill in others, c) fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy and d) recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they can be trained to substantially improve. 

I think this is the issue at hand with current economic Liberal thinking.  Capitalism and general Economic theory have eroded in High School and College level courses and we are seeing the byproduct of that poor decision.  Earlier this month I showed how Obama has made the false claim that taxing the rich and extending Unemployment Insurance will grow the economy and this not only contradicted common sense but also a peer-reviewed economic paper written by his own top economic advisor.    Conservatives who are trying to bring adult thinking to the conversation are met with vitriol and smear campaigns that seek to tug at the emotions of those who are incapable of grasping the problem (i.e. tax the rich, Republicans want to kill grandma, fair share, etc.).

We have replaced the religious persecutions and heterogeneous theological debates with those about how to generate wealth and provide for the best economic model for our country.  For both sides of the issue there is no compromise and after two years of fierce conversations we are no closer to a compromise than we were when Obama took the Oath of Office in January 2009.  We have a better chance of reaching a theological compromise between Islamic and Christian believers than we do with coming to grips with government revenues and spending. 

Posted in politics | Leave a comment

A Broken Arm and an Indian Hospital

Posted on 21-Dec-2011 by Highvoltage

 

Last night my daughter broke her arm and after the whole situation was over and she was resting comfortably in bed, I again realized what an amazing medical system we currently have in the US and what we’ll lose once we move closer to Socialized Medicine (Obamacare).

During my commute home from work last night my wife called and informed me that she feared our daughter had broken her wrist at Karate practice.  I arrived home around 6:45 pm and after a brief examination it was my belief that she didn’t break her wrist but instead broke her forearm.  So around 7:00 pm my wife and daughter take off for an urgent care facility that is located 5 minutes from our neighborhood and while this facility can’t set bones or install casts, they have X-Ray capability, can diagnose the problem and direct patients to larger facilities.  Sure enough, they saw a green stick fracture in the Radius and a buckle fracture in the Ulna.  They directed my wife to a late night orthopedic facility about 15 minutes away and shortly after 9:30 my wife returned home with our smiling daughter anxious to have her new cast signed by her dad and brother.

So for those keeping score at home – In a little over two and a half hours my daughter goes to two medical facilities, gets accurately diagnosed (with X-Rays), has her broken bones set, gets a full cast on her arm and returns home.  No long lines, quality medical care and very little disruption or stress on the parties involved.

Now contrast this with another medical experience I had while in a foreign country.

In 1998 I travelled to India on three different occasions and spent a total of four months in that beautiful country.  I thoroughly enjoyed my time there and one day I need to capture those experiences in a post on this blog but for right now let me describe an experience I had during my last visit to that country. 

Before I get to the story let me give a few details that you’ll need to provide context.  I was in a very remote area of India and from the US, it took three days to arrive at my final destination.  My itinerary went something like this – fly to Mumbai, spend the night, fly to Pune, spend the night and then drive 4-6 hours to Warana (just outside of Kolhapur).  Warana is a small farming cooperative and the picture shown above was taken of the Warana River and gives you an idea of how rural this place is.  There was a small town/bazaar that I went to occasionally but mainly I stayed near my guesthouse and carried out my engineering work which involved construction, installation and commissioning of an aseptic fruit processing plant.  Now on to the story…..

During my third trip to India I contracted some sort of upper respiratory infection and I was a little over 1 week away from returning to the US.  At first I tried to fight it off with fluids, rest and vitamin C but I could tell my situation was getting worse and I feared that I would eventually develop pneumonia and then die right there in my bedroom.  I had no thermometer but I could tell my fever was getting dangerously high so I needed to do what I always feared I’d have to do – go to the local hospital.  I had seen the “hospital” on the side of the road and always shook my head in dismay for the poor souls that had to place their hope in that run down shack.

Now I was one of those poor souls since my options had run out.  I was going to die (at least I thought I was) so now I’m only debating the location of my ultimate demise – my guesthouse or the hospital.  I decided to roll the dice and summoned my Indian host and told him I needed to get to the hospital.  He went with me since I didn’t speak the local language and he would need to escort me around and translate. 

As we were walking into the hospital I immediately noticed something that didn’t give me a warm fuzzy.  The building was open and birds were flying in and out of the windows since there was no glass installed in them.  Birds were building nests in the corners of the waiting room, resting on the dangling lights and basically having their way with the place.  I sat down while my Indian friend took care of the paperwork and communication with the receptionist and I remember taking comfort in the fact that there were only a couple of people in the waiting room so it didn’t take long to get in the back to see the doctor.

We walked in the doctor’s office and her office really did look like an “office” – she had book shelves, a desk, nice chair and other items you’d expect to see in someone’s office.  There was an exam table but we occupied two chairs that sat opposite the doctor.  The doctor, who spoke fluent English, explained to me that although she was a gynecologist (that explained the strangely shaped exam table) she was the only doctor on duty at the hospital and would be glad to help me.  I had nothing to lose so I happily agreed and the good doctor proceeded with her examination and thankfully she didn’t ask me to get on the exam table.

She first took out a large 6V flashlight (like the one pictured here) and told me to open my mouth.  It was a little odd to say the least but high dollar penlights weren’t abundant in this area and she was making do with what she had.  She felt my head with her hand, listened to my chest with a stethoscope and then sat down in her chair.  The doctor proceeded to have a long conversation with my Indian friend but since they were speaking in their local language, I had no idea what she was saying.  The conversation ended with the doctor writing out 2 prescriptions and handing them to me.  I then asked what was wrong with me and what these medicines would do and my Indian friend very casually said I had a virus and these medicines would fix me up.

Part one of this experience was over so then we headed to the bazaar to get the prescriptions filled.  The bazaar was a narrow road lined with small shops and we came to one which my friend told me was a “pharmacy”.  It was a small store front building about 10 feet wide and 30 feet deep and there was but one person running it and he looked to be about 14 years old.  I took the 2 prescriptions and reluctantly handed them to the kid and he immediately went to work hunting for the magic elixirs.  He brought back a large bottle of liquid and a small bottle that contained three pills.  I think I gave the kid about 60 rupees for both medicines and if memory serves me correctly that equated to about $1.50.  I guess my fever was getting to me because I remember feeling so good thinking I got a great deal!

Fortunately for me the medicine had instructions printed in English as well as Hindi and I surmised that the three pills were a type of strong antibiotic and the liquid was a cough medicine probably with codeine and some decongestant.  I was to take the pills once per day for only three days but could take the cough medicine as needed and since my cough wasn’t bothering me too much I took one of the pills immediately after getting back to the house.   Amazingly enough, about 2 hours after taking the first pill my fever immediately broke and I felt as if I was immediately cured. I do remember having the symptoms come back later but since I was close to going back to the US, I waited to see my personal physician who took care of me when I returned.  As an interesting sidebar, I showed my doctor the two medicine containers I bought in India and he said he was not familiar with either medicine.  Needless to say that was not the comforting reassurance I was seeking.

The fact that I’m typing this blog post tells you everything worked out and while it makes for a funny story now, I will never forget that experience (and wonder what those three pills actually contained that made me recover so quickly).  I realize it is not fair to compare the medical care in a rural area of India in 1998 with the medical care provided in a US metropolitan area in 2011but we must be diligent and fight to protect the Free Market in all areas of our life which especially includes healthcare.  I am truly thankful for the excellent healthcare we have in the US and I will continue to fight against Obamacare and any attempt to move our medical system toward Socialized Medicine.  The last thing we need in this country is the equivalent of a Russian bread line dispensing medical services to its citizens.   

Posted in healthcare | 5 Comments

Nikki Haley Report Card – 2011

Posted on 20-Dec-2011 by Highvoltage

Recently, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley has been in the national news after she endorsed Mitt Romney as the Republican presidential nominee.  Romney lags Gingrich in SC polls and this endorsement might provide the momentum to give Romney the boost he needs to close the gap. 

But shortly after Haley’s announcement, several stories like this one from NPR called into question the power of this endorsement due to Governor Haley’s low approval rating in the state.  In the article, Professor Robert Oldendick from the University of South Carolina stated that Haley has been rocked by recent scandals regarding the Savannah Port Decision and her alleged manipulation of the Health Planning Committee (both will be discussed later in this post).  The final paragraph in the NPR article sums up the reason some doubt the bump that Romney will get from her endorsement.  

“In the recent Winthrop poll, Haley’s approval rating among Republicans was 52.5 percent versus 21.7 percent who disapproved. In February, her approval rating was 65.7 percent. That underscores Oldendick’s point that Haley’s ability to help Romney likely isn’t as great as it once was.”

Some Conservatives are upset because Nikki Haley didn’t endorse a “Tea Party Candidate” for the Republican primary but realistically she only had two choices – Mitt and Newt – and I feel she made the right call.  What good would it have been politically for her or South Carolina to pick a more conservative candidate that is going to lose?  She made the right call and I have no issue with her selection.

Full Disclosure here – I’m a resident of South Carolina and I voted for Nikki Haley.  But anyone who follows my posts on national political topics knows I am not inclined to candidate worship nor do I participate in dogmatic support of a political figure while in office.  Politicians work for us and they need to be held accountable to us.  I will use the balance of this post to review the highlights (or Lowlights depending on how you view them) from Governor Haley’s first year in office.

Dredging Up Trouble

South Carolina and Georgia both have a real problem related to their ports in Charleston and Savannah.  With the upcoming widening of the Panama Canal, larger boats will be allowed through and the ports in these two cities aren’t deep enough to handle the larger boats and they’ll eventually wither on the vine unless something is done quickly.  Both states are working to remedy the situation and there was a claim leveled against Governor Haley that she influenced the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control board (DHEC) to allow work in Savannah that would harm the South Carolina ecosystem and give a competitive advantage to the Georgia port.  It appears that some of this attack stems from campaign contributions that Nikki Haley received from a Georgia fundraiser that occurred 10 days before DHEC agreed to give Georgia the dredging permit. 

From the Post and Courier article, DHEC chairman Allan Amsler issued the following statement in defense of Governor Haley:

“There was absolutely no influence brought to bear upon any Board member in this case, especially in the form of financial payments,” Amsler said in a statement. “That suggestion is offensive to a group of people working very hard to protect South Carolina’s resources.”

In my opinion South Carolina and Georgia can work together on this issue and have both states win in the end and this appears to be what Governor Haley is doing as evidenced by her Op-ed in the Post and Courier and her following quote:

“You don’t undercut people in order to beat them; you beat them by winning,” Haley said. She added, “I know we are going to have the strongest ports in the country and we’re getting ready for that, and the companies that we are recruiting are proof of that.”

This really is a case of the Good ‘ole Boys in Columbia not getting their backs scratched and Governor Haley stood up to them and they didn’t like it.  I agree with Governor Haley’s decision on this and don’t see this as a real negative to her leadership.   

Insurance Exchange Kabuki Theatre

After Obamacare was passed in early 2010 and part of this law mandated Stated to set up Insurance Exchanges by 2014 or be forced to join a National Exchange.  Governor Haley set up a committee to investigate these Insurance Exchanges and recommend a course for South Carolina to take.  The recommendation of the exchange was to do neither Federal nor State run exchanges but instead to institutes private exchanges.  I was totally against Obamacare and I am definitely not interested in either a State or Federal run Insurance Exchange since time and time again we see how inefficient government programs are in providing services to its citizens. 

But that is not the whole story. 

In emails that have been uncovered, it appears that the committee was give direction from Governor Haley to discount both the Federal and State run Insurance Exchanges as shown by the following quote from the Post and Courier:

“In a March 31 email thread that included Haley, her top advisers and the committee member who eventually wrote the report, Haley wrote, “The whole point of this commission should be to figure out how to opt out and how to avoid a federal takeover, NOT create a state exchange,” which is eventually what happened.”

According to the article, to date the State has spent $109,000 of the $1 million allocated to this committee and many are saying it was a waste of money since the conclusions were predetermined. 

“They took the money on the pretense they would conduct an objective analysis of whether the state should do the exchange or not,” said John Crangle, executive director of Common Cause of South Carolina. “But they decided what they were going to find before they even started the research process.”

I can’t disagree with these accusations based on the facts that I have read in this article.  I agree with the committee’s decision (don’t use Federal of State Insurance Exchanges) but they should’ve arrived at that decision based on the independent work of the committee.  It is unclear whether or not the email from Governor Haley influenced the committee but the hint of impropriety does exist.  

I can’t support this kind of political theatre especially when it is done at the expense of taxpayer dollars.  This is what Nikki Haley went to Columbia to stop so I’m willing to give her a “mulligan” on this one.  Prove that the committee acted alone in arriving at their conclusions and admit that trying to influence the process was wrong.  Chalk this up to a rookie mistake, make the necessary corrections at your staff level and then move on.   

It’s the Economy Stupid

But placing aside all these supposed scandals, let’s see how has South Carolina done under the leadership of Governor Haley with regard to jobs.  This is, after all, what matters most to the citizens of South Carolina (at least this citizen) in this economic malaise brought on by Obama and his Liberal miscreants.

The latest report from the Charleston Regional Business Journal states that job growth in 2011 inched up over 2010 with Manufacturing seeing the biggest increases of 5.2% growth.  That isn’t bad considering the debilitating climate of business fostered by the over regulation from the Obama White House.  

 

Douglas Woodward, economist in the research division of the Moore School of Business (University of South Carolina) stated:

“Despite his inherent pessimism as an economist, Woodward said, he sees signs that South Carolina has a bright near-term future. He noted that in its six-month forecast published in October, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia had South Carolina and Michigan leading the nation in its expectations for growth.”

A Great Day in South Carolina

All things being considered, I’d say it really is a great day in South Carolina as evidenced by:  Bridgestone ($1.2 billion investment), Heritage Golf sponsorship for 5 more years, TD Bank (1,600 new jobs), Amy’s Kitchen (700 new jobs),  Nephron Pharmaceuticals (707 new jobs), Continental Tire (1,700 new jobs) and Governor Haley fighting against the NLRB for Boeing.

Say what you want about her mistakes but at the end of the day she has delivered for South Carolina and I still have faith in her.   I give her a solid “B” but admittedly some of that is from good will afforded a first year governor and not deducting for the mulligan of the Insurance Exchange embarrassment.  If we see more of these political shenanigans then I’ll move from a supporter to a foe faster than you can say Y’all. 

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