A Thought on Healthcare

The debate over the future of health care in America is going on across the country, the main argument centering on how involved the government should be. My answer to that question is: not very much, but more than you might expect from me.

Government's job to is be prepared for the unexpected catastrophe, for things that we otherwise would not prepare for. A local fire department is a good example. No one really expects their house to catch fire, so no one hires a personal fire fighter to be on hand in case it does. However, the government in many cases provides a fire department so that if a house does catch on fire, they will be ready to fight it.

FEMA, though it has performed rather poorly recently, is a good example to the positive role of government. No one can expect or prepare for a catastrophic hurricane, but the government needs to step in and help if it does occur (they need to do a better job than Katrina).

If we translate this philosophy of catastrophic assistance to health care, we can see that it is government's job to protect us from the things against which we are vulnerable - catastrophic disease, automobile accidents, cancer, etc. We cannot in a million years be expected to save enough money to cover these costs, and most HMOs do not help much here.

However, it is NOT government's job to pay for every time we need to visit the doctor. Any cost reductions achieved will be completely nullified by the increase in doctor visits anyway. People will feel that they are already paying for the visit with tax dollars (or wage decreases from rich people paying their workers less to cover taxes), and will therefore visit the doctor at the drop of a hat. Government paying for every doctor visit is equivalent to fire fighters blowing out ever candle you light in your house. People should expect to have minor illnesses, and therefore must factor in these costs when planning how to spend money.

More Bureaucracy and Little Else

An excellent article in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/health/07health.html?pagewanted=all) recently pointed out that doctors spend incredible sums of money dealing with insurance companies. Doctors often must hire two office workers just to submit documents and talk to insurance reps. That means they have to make enough money to pay for those workers, meaning they squeeze more patients into thinner time slots. It is impossible to know by how much the quality of care is reduced, but it is certainly significant. One doctor said that by going off the hmo, he was able to see half the patients for twice the time, and was able to offer much more individualized and quality care.

The uselessness and cost of extra bureaucracy is a great argument against government run health care. It is an even better argument against the ludicrous cap and trade bill currently before Congress. Instead of implementing a simple carbon tax and using the revenue exclusively to combat environmental degradation, cap and trade sets up a complex system that will end up doing little to limit carbons but will do plenty to make ordinary Americans suffer.

Even before the bill has been passed, oil companies are already saying that they will be passing off all the new costs to consumers. Even worse, they will not limit production as the plan intends, but simply purchase oil from foreign importers (Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a1ZiIqv3E4QE). Basically, its a triple-threat of bad policy: it will not limit carbons as intended, ordinary Americans will be hit hard in a bad economy, and Americans will lose jobs when oil companies close local plants to save money.

What we're going to get from this bill is an expansion of government and little else. It's bad for the economy, it's bad for the environment, and it's bad for America.

Seeing an Old Neighbor

Yesterday after church, I ran into two old neighbors of mine, Mr. and Mrs. Dormani. I hadn't seen in them in a few years, and they were certinaly two of the most friendly people I have ever met. George, who is 85 but has the energy of a man 25 years younger, immediately remembered my name and shook hands as if he was my best friend and we saw each other every day.

Then he turned rather serious and said, "Do you know where I was 65 years ago today?" I knew that George was a World War II vet, and this was the 65th aniversary of D-Day, but I still only managed to stumble out "D-Day." Then he said, "Yes, I was sitting in a boat in the English Channel. We couldn't go ashore yet because they hadn't cleared the beach, so we waited for the artillery to make way for us." I asked him if he was frightened. He smiled at me and said, "Well, I was 20." I said, "George, I'm 20. I'd be scared out of mind." "I don't know about that," George said. "When you're young you just know it's what you have to do, and I was more excited than anything else." I was struck by his demeanor. He was serious, yet he remembered it almost as one recalls an important sporting event. Very matter of fact and calm.

Over 2 million Americans eventually fought their way through Normany in June of 1944. My own grandfather had been part of a similar attack on a beach in Anzio, Italy in January, that led to the defeat of the Axis in Rome. He didn't talk about the war much. He mostly reminisced about the Italian girls and his favorite restaurants - though my Dad says he always complained about the idiocy of the generals - I don't know why, but I'm not surprised that a Pergament had a problem with bad decision-makers.

Before we left church, George told me to do what I love, and to recognize what I had to do when I had to do it. He also said to tell everyone that I talked to a veteran of D-Day. So that's I'm doing.

To George, my grandfather Hyman Pergament, and to everyone who served and serves our country, thank you.

Ebbetts Country Club II

If the Los Angeles Dodgers meet the New York Mets in the National League Championship this year, a definite possibility, the Dodgers will have a distinctive home field advantage, no matter which team had a better regular season record. They'll have three or four at home in L.A., and three or four more at what will strike them as very familiar territory - the Mets' CitiField.

When the Dodgers' team bus pulls up to the stadium, the players will recognize a facade in perfect imitation of Ebbetts' Field, the Brooklyn Dodgers' home when they played in New York half a century ago. Then, they'll walk in the front doors to see an enormous tribute to Dodgers legend Jackie Robinson, including a huge display of "42," Robinson's number.

The Dodgers are already the best home team in baseball, and Citi's friendly confines will only add to it. All this so Mets' owner Fred Wilpon can relive his boyhood as a Dodgers fan before the team abandoned the city.

Mets fans are not ignorant of Wilpon's obvious tribute to the Dodgers. Many have complained that CitiField is devoid of any Mets history or team pride. Anything not dedicated to the Dodgers is blatant corporatism, from the Pepsi Porch to the Delta Restaurant in left field to Caesar's Lounge behind home plate. Worse, most of the prime seating behind home plate is dedicated to an emperor's throne luxury terrace for Wilpon and his family, and the rest to more luxury boxes.

Fans are not even allowed to explore the stadium despite paying outrageous prices for tickets. You are only allowed to walk on your own level.

Baseball is not supposed to be a country club where you sip whiskey and relax in lounge chairs. A baseball game is about a couple of franks and what's happening on the field. Tennis and golf are supposed to be the elite's entertainment, but Wilpon wants to kill baseball and turn our Queens Metsies into the Southhampton Metropolitans.

But Wilpon can't hide his intentions to remake the Mets as the Dodgers, even if he can segregate fans with idiotic rules. There was a trivia text poll at the game on Sunday. It asked, "Where did the Mets first play home games?" - Shea Stadium, Ebbetts Field, or the Polo Grounds?

On the scoreboard, they showed live updates as the votes came in. At first, the tally was overwhelmingly for the correct answer - the Polo Grounds, at 88 percent. Shea and Ebbetts came in at 6 percent each.

But then, fans realized it was their chance to send a little message. Without any organization, they started texting away to vote for Ebbetts field, in a clear display of displeasure that Wilpon built Ebbetts Field II instead of a new home for the Mets. The next update showed Ebbetts field at nearly 60 percent, and the stadium crew stopped showing the results, switching to a silly poll about "Where would you like to go on vacation?"

The message, however, was clear. Mets fans did not want Dodger stadium. But Wilpon did, along with his fancy country club, and that's what we got.

I Am a Firefighter, and I Have Dyslexia

The New Haven Fire Department administers a written test to evaluate, in part, which firefighters should be promoted. Blacks and Hispanics taking the test performed about half as well as their white counterparts. Gee, you say, was the test about golf and tea? No, it was an intelligence test that tries to figure out who the most qualified firefighters are.

Now, you might say, why would a person's race affect how they do on a test? Wouldn't the people who studied the hardest do the best? How would skin color ever cause you to do poorly on a test?

Apparently, New Haven politicians think that being black or Hispanic made those people do badly, so they threw out the test results. Pretty racist if you ask me. But maybe the test was really that hard and unfair. Maybe they didn't have a chance.

Meet Frank Ricci. Ricci has dyslexia. He studied as much as 13 hours in a day for the exam. He hired someone to record the textbooks onto audio tapes so he could listen to them. He is very bad at taking written tests.

Still, Ricci managed to work hard enough to do well and qualify for a promotion. He beat a lot of black and Hispanic and white people who don't have dyslexia. He simply worked harder.

But all of that hard work will go to waste if the Supreme Court does not rule in favor of the firefighters who want the test to count. In fact, Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's pick for the court to replace Justice Souter, ruled against the firefighters on the Appeals level, saying the city was right to throw out the results because it was discrimation.

Obama said he wanted to appoint a judge who would be empathetic to ordinary Americans. There are no Americans more oridnary than firefighters working hard for a promotion. What Obama meant to say was that he wanted a judge who would be empathetic towards minorities, even at the expense of other hard-working Americans who just happen to be white.

Hopefully, the John Roberts-led court will rule in favor of the hard-working firefighters, especially Mr. Ricci, and they will get their well-deserved promotion.

I have less confidence that Ms. Sotomayor will show any empathy for anyone who's skin isn't brown.

A Word on the First Amendment and the Acts of the Apostles

"About noon the following day as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles of the earth and birds of the air. Then a voice told him, "Get up, Peter. Kill and eat."

"Surely not, Lord!" Peter replied. "I have never eaten anything impure or unclean."

The voice spoke to him a second time, "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean."

- Acts of the Apostles 10: 9 - 15

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

- First Amendment to the United States Constitution

Anti-gay rights activists often use religious justification for their views. God is against homosexual behavior, they say, it's in plain black and white. Let's see if that's true. People with Bibles like to quote them to their advantage, so I see nothing wrong with cracking open the good book to see if there's anything in there.

True, Leviticus 20:13 seems pretty explicit: "And if a man lie with mankind, as with womankind, both of them have committed abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them."

But the entire trend of the Bible points in a different direction, especially if we take something out of the atheist playbook - a modification of the problem of evil.

Atheists say God can't exist because there is evil in the world. By definition, God must be all-powerful and all-good. If God can prevent evil but doesn't, he is not good. If he can't prevent evil, he's not all-powerful.

Fast forward to issues of homosexuality. God created the world and everything in it. In fact, man was made in his image. So, if God created someone to be homosexual, than he or she is naturally good, because he or she was made that way by God. I think the above passage from Acts, which deals with Kosher food laws, is also apt.

The Kosher laws list all types of impure and unclean things that people should not eat. In Peter's vision, God says, "Nonsense. Would I make something unclean or impure?" In other words, if God made it, it's good, so chow down Pedro.

Or if God made Johnny like James, and James likes Johnny, then why shouldn't they be together?

That's a religious argument, which I think is very interesting, but is actually irrelevant to the current political debate over gay marriage in the United States. Marriage has been, since its inception, a religious event. I believe it should stay that way, and that when government becomes involved in marriage, it is in violation of the first amendment.

I don't think government should ever be able to decide who's married and who isn't. Why not give the same tax and hospital benefits to straight and gay couples through "civil unions" and leave "marriage" to the church, where it belongs.

That way everyone is equal under the law, and the sanctity of marriage is protected. It seems like a fair compromise that gives everyone what they deserve, and actually retracts the power of government ever so slightly. Which is why it will never happen, but hey, this is just a word after all.

Mr. and Mrs. Pontiac

There was a very interesting story in the Times this morning (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/us/04land.html?hp) about two families in western Pennsylvania who have been selling Pontiacs for generations and are now in trouble because GM is phasing them out.

At first, I immediately reflected on the microeconomics I had been catching up on for my final over the past few days. It's all well and good to right about "average variable cost" and companies "exiting the industry in the long run," but those are real people who's marginal cost and marginal revenue curves aren't lining up the way they used to.

People like the Arnolds, who opened their Pontiac dealership in 1916, are the real victims of the economic downturn. They really didn't take part in GM's idiotic decision making. They didn't negotiate an unsustainable deal with the union, and they didn't want GM to focus on gas guzzlers while oil prices skyrocketed. They simply tried to sell Pontiacs and make ends meet.

Or so the media and the economy-planning left would have you believe.

There is another family of Pontiac dealers mentioned in the article: the Mikans. Ivan Mikan started selling Pontiacs in the 1920s after trying Chryslers for a while. His grandson, who now runs the dealership, said Pontiac sales have steadily declined recently. But here's where the Mikan's stand out:

"David Mikan, who runs the dealership now, says their sales of Pontiacs have steadily declined: 100 sold last year, compared with twice that in 2000. Although the emphasis has shifted to their Volkswagen line and their used cars, he says, the Mikans have always considered themselves a Pontiac family.

Still, a few days ago he removed all the preening Pontiacs from the front of the dealership and replaced them with shiny Volkswagens. Partly out of anger, he says, and partly because Volkswagen, not Pontiac, is central to the Mikan future.

Back in Houston, there is no Volkswagen fallback. The Arnolds have been hitched to Pontiacs since 1926, the year the car made its debut."

At some point, the Mikans looked at the auto-selling situation in their town, and made a decision. They realized that people didn't want Pontiacs as much anymore, for whatever reason. They wanted Volkswagens. Maybe it was the quality of the car, or maybe the prices. In any case, real people decided that Volkswagens were better than Pontiacs, so they bought them instead.

The Arnolds, on the other hand, romanticize selling Pontiacs, like its some sort of family custom.

"Because of Pontiac, Bob Arnold the elder attended the General Motors Institute in Flint, Mich., more than a half-century ago. Because of Pontiac, then, he happened to meet his future wife, Angela, at an institute dance. “Girls got in free,” recalls Ms. Arnold, whose first car was a 1955 Pontiac Star Chief Catalina, turquoise and ivory. Now she drives a 2005 Pontiac Bonneville, candy-apple red."

Here's the problem. I really like Babe 2: Pig in the City. True, it's not as good as the original, but I've been watching Babe movies all my life. I just think that pig is the cutest thing. It's basically my childhood.

Let's say I love Babe so much, that I open a dvd store. I decide to only sell Babe and Babe 2. The thing is, nobody wants to buy Babe or Babe 2. Even though I really really love it.

If the government bails me out to save the "American Babe 2 industry" and all the other businesses it serves, including dvd box manufacturers and pig trainers, I'll keep my store. But the American people already decided they don't want a Babe 2 industry. When the government takes money away from productive businesses through taxation and gives it to unproductive businesses like Babe 2 Stores, it basically says, "People, you don't want Babe 2, but guess what? You're going to buy it anyway with your tax dollars. Let's get the economy going again by producing more things nobody wants, like Babe 2."

Madness, right? Perhaps, an auto company may have to sell its cars at too-high prices because of sales taxes, taxes used to subsidize the production of goods no one wants to buy. Sales taxes probably weren't the downfall of the auto companies, but the point is, once the government tries to get involved in economic planning, everything gets messed up.

Really been a while

I haven't posted on here in a very very long time. A bunch of cool stuff has happened though. A couple weeks ago I went to a big press event for Michael Bloomberg where he was launching a new Service initiative. I went with a couple of my friends on united student government, and it was cool to see Bloomberg up close. I got a picture of him as he walked by, but he didn't stop to talk because he had to drop his kids off at the pool, apparently. Caroline Kennedy was there, too, and so was Eliot Spitzer's far too loyal wife. I saw Lizzy Edwards on tv recently as well. What is it with all these wives who stick with husbands who have affairs with disgusting women that sometimes result in children? I dunno. Anyway, that same night, Newt Gingrich came to Fordham and spewed some pretty good conservative stuff and then some not so good neo-conservative fear-mongering, but it was awesome to see him. I asked him a question about the Fed causing the recession, though I was incredibly nervous and I stumbled all over myself, which is very unlike me. Anyway, he said unsustainably low interest rates defnitely contributed to recessions, which was good.

I've also been getting attention again for the newspaper, though this time it hasn't been bad. First, an article I wrote about our mascot beating up some kid who tried to beat him up ended up on a national sports blog (check it out: http://deadspin.com/5225053/mess-with-the-fordham-ram-you-get-the-horns) and then I beat up the school for not talking to the New York Times when they do bad things (here: http://www.theramonline.com/opinions/sorry-no-comment-is-not-enough-1.1737413) and then a report about the dean breaking up a party got me some street cred because I was shockingly objective (here: http://www.theramonline.com/news/spring-weekend-party-bust-1.1738792)

Angry Whopper

Today I conquered the Angry Whopper. Two burger patties. Jalapenos. Cheese. Angry, angry onions. So hot. So spicy. So good.

The Angry Whopper was merciful in defeat. However, I still await the Revenge of the Whopper. Just in case.

let's try this

1. People need certain stuff, like food. They learn how to grow food and become pretty good at it.
2. Some people realize they're better at making clothes than food, and that other people make way better food than them. They start to focus on making clothes, and then trade some of the clothes for food.
3. The people who make clothes realize they also want an iPod. But the people who make iPods don't want the clothes, they want duct tape. The people with the clothes can't get any duct tape. But they find out that the people with the duct tape want French poetry books. They trade clothes for French poetry books, which they trade for iPods. Then the iPod people trade the French poetry books for the duct tape they want. Everybody is happy.
4. Eventually people realize that although French poetry is a very desired commodity, gold is easier to carry around and divide into smaller parts. People sell the things they make for gold, and then sell the gold for things they want.
5. Some people discover a new gold mine. All of a sudden, there is twice as much gold in the town (they have a town now) as before. Everyone doubles their prices because of all the new big spenders. At first, it's difficult or the people who didn't find the new gold, but eventually, through trade, it spreads around to everyone.
6. Everyone is really happy. They make things that they think other people in the town will want. They sell these things for gold. Then they sell the gold they got for their products for stuff they want.
7. Then something bad happens. The town is attacked by a group of wolves. The townspeople decide they need to provide for their common defence. They form a government to oversee it.
8. Unfortunately, the government cannot tax the people enough to support all of the expensive anti-wolf equipment it wants. It doesn't want the people to hate it and pick a different government, so it says the government should control the currency, in order to defend against the wolves. Then, it says all the gold will be stored, to protect it from the wolves, in a heavily guarded tent. The government gives out pieces of paper it says represent the gold.
9. The government decides that to afford the new anti-wolf moat it wants, it needs more money. Instead of taxing the people, it gives itself some new pieces of paper. The new paper doesn't exactly represent gold in the tent, but it's ok, because it represents a certain percentage.
10. The government starts to make a lot of paper that it uses as money to buy stuff. Prices in the town start to go up because the government has more money to spend, and it gives some of it to its favorite people in the town. The people who make things think that there are now more people who want more things that cost more, so they make those. They go to the bank to take out loans because they think that it will pay off later because of all the new spenders in the market.
11. The government realizes it can't keep making pieces of fake money, because prices are going up too much, and the people are starting to come to the tent to ask for their money back. They can't give them their money because they gave too much of it away to other towns when they spent the fake money. They stop giving away money to their friends.
12. All of a sudden, there are less people spending money. The producers who assumed that there would continue to be a lot of people spending money in the future cannot sell their new, more expensive products and can't pay back the loans they took out.
13. There are lots of people in debt, and the banks are wary of giving out loans for new investments because they are not sure if anyone can pay them back.
14. There is a depression.

I'm just experimenting, but I think this is exactly what always happens to the economy. Thoughts?