Doug Comes to Maryland

Doug and Becky Larson were kind enough to include us on their trip up to DC from NC. They stayed for two nights. It was great. Just like old times. We even went running a couple of times (I'm so out of shape.), as Doug showed off his 5-finger shoes (it was too wet for him to run barefoot, which he often does). I hope all of you will stop by for a visit eventually.

We talked a little about this USA, Inc. business. Doug was mostly interested in the health care side of things. His first suggestion was to blow up the tobacco industry, somehow forcing all smokers to cover their own health care cost. Personally, I think it's a nice idea, but as one who has just been snacking on Easter candy, I can't point the 'be healthy' finger. I can't see anything like that happening politically.

Doug also pointed out that we are much more overweight and have many other health problems that other countries don't, so comparing health costs may not be a fair comparison. Plus, we pay a lot for studies (to get approved by the FDA) and the medical trials and basic medical science that we do here is like a gift we give to the rest of the country. Of course, he also recognizes, much better than I, all of the problems with our health care system, and I suppose he'll post here himself and explain them one of these days.

Becky thinks everyone should need some sort of end of life plan in order to receive Social Security. We waste so much money in end-of-life care, when often the person receiving treatment wouldn't even want that done. I like this idea, especially if it can free doctors (even a little bit) from fear of lawsuits.

There are lots of ways our health care system could become more efficient. Obama's budget plan depends on being able to make it more efficient. Even if he does so, I found his plan to be severely lacking. I'm not even against taxing the richest people a little more. I think everyone is going to have to sacrifice some, but Obama's speech wasn't about sacrifice. He basically said, "Hey, we're America. We can afford everything. We just need the rich people to pay their share."

I think all avenues of getting the budget problems fixed should be on the table. USA Inc. ignores defense because it's not that different than historical levels. It's nice not to blame everything on the wars, but we've got to be better in all of our spending.

I have been listening to this book called 'The Black Swan'. It goes into some detail about how wrong economic predictions are. They have quite a terrible track record. The reason they are so terrible is because they always miss big, rare events, such as 9/11, etc. These models that all of this budget talk is based on... they are almost assuredly all wrong, that goes for both political parties. Just like how it always takes you longer than you think to paint a room, the budget will surely turn out worse than people think.

As a government employee, I know that there are a lot of inefficiencies in the government. I expect there are inefficiencies in most companies, too, but companies are better a scaling back and adjusting when things go wrong. I don't have much faith in our politicians' ability to fix our debt problem. I hope I'm wrong.