If you want to make yourself really useful...

Oh, onward into the really crazy ideas I come up with.

Health care costs.  Whoa.  Why is all that stuff so expensive?

The answer is that it's what the market will bear.  Nobody's coming out with a Magnetic Resonance Imaging machine at a quarter of the cost of those being sold today.

Nobody's allowed to produce life-saving generics at  much cheaper prices until a certain amount of time goes by and the patent expires.

So, using those two examples, companies (hospitals, etc.) that have MRI machines charge a lot for each use, because they want to be reimbursed for their expense.  And pharmaceutical companies getcha for every last dime they can, folks, while that patent is still working in their favor.

Now really, tell me why pharmaceutical companies are coming up with drugs like Viagra.  Really?  The need for Viagra is greater than the need for researching cancer?  No, of course not.  The profit to be made from drugs like Viagra is great.  And the pharmaceutical companies are willing to remind you that your body is aging and if you want to have a healthy sex life, you must do what this ad says:  Ask your doctor about Viagra.

Eh.  I have a better idea.  Find out if your problem is caused by atherosclerosis first.  Maybe consider changing your diet and exercising more, and see if you don't find yourself doing better.

But I digress.

Why do we let companies making profits lead us around by the nose?  Are there no more grants to be had?  Can nobody open up a not-for-profit pharmaceutical organization?  Are universities only interested in staring at their own navels?

Yeah, I know.  It's a crazy idea.  Why would anybody want to make an organization for the sole purpose of kicking the legs out from under the profit-earning giants?

Well, anybody besides me, and I don't have the ability to do these things.  All I can do is blog about my frustration.  But if you'd like to argue, inform, or enlighten, please do.  I would love to hear more ideas.

Meow.

-Spottedcat

We need a third political party.

At first glance, it would seem that a third political party would be a bad idea.  After all, we have two right now, at least two major political parties.  Countries with three, or eighteen, or fifty-two, don't seem to be doing much better in the politics department than we are.  Or maybe they're even worse.  Hmm.  Have to think about that one.

But again, it's something that needs to be approached with thought and careful planning. 

We need moderates.

I know I can't be the only one who is tired of watching both parties gravitate towards the extreme, leaving those moderate enough to talk to each other in a severe minority, ridiculed by their own parties.  Nothing worthwhile is going on in Washington DC.  Every bill creates a reaction against it, and one side continually vilifies the other. We can't get a national health care plan passed because the two parties won't consider being flexible to the concerns of the other side.

What if there were a fair amount of moderates in our government?  Ah.  Then the two big parties would need to be willing to talk with these moderates, because if there were enough of them, neither big party could be sure of getting enough votes for their side.

They would have to talk to the moderates.  And they would be forced, by moderates, to talk to each other, and even *gasp* work with each other.

Maybe the federal government isn't the best thing to run a health coverage program.  All right, let's talk about what the federal government can and can't do well, and what individual states can and can't do well.  Can we split the costs and the arrangements out between them?  Can we at least talk about this?

One of these days, I'm going to talk about lobbyists.  But not today.  Today, just consider moderates in all their common-sense glory.

-Spottedcat

Your tax dollars at work?

The days of the Civilian Conservation Corps are passing out of living memory. 

During the Great Depression, the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration crafted a plan to get the United States working again.  It meant spending government money on, among other things, hiring young men (who were, for the most part, unemployed) to do hard physical labor across the country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Conservation_Corps

These days, it would be really hard to get young men to send the bulk of their income back to their parent(s).  But even if it just kept them so busy that they had no time to get involved in gangs, I wouldn't care if they kept their money for themselves. 

Could our national and state parks use help?  Of course they could.  All you have to do is take a day hike on any trail and you'll see that winter and the spring melt take a heavy toll on some of those trails.  Hiker shelters could be re-built.  In some parks, whole roads could be restored. 

You'd have young people (women as well as men) making an income, keeping out of the worst troubles they might normally encounter, and being able to flex their well-earned muscles for their friends.  They'd have an actual job on their resume. 

Could these same young people be paid to work, not only in parks, but perhaps in helping to repair houses for senior citizens on welfare?  Yeah.  They could.  A roof that doesn't leak, insulated ceilings and walls, and plumbing that works well would make the difference for many elderly between staying in their home and being warehoused somewhere.

Hey, we could try it for--say, five years.  Then we could compare the demographics in our jails and prisons and see if young people aren't so over-represented, as they are now.

Oooo.  Sounds like socialism. 

Is it better to warehouse our elderly and let our younger generations wander into gangs?

I dunno.  Seems to me that a bit of socialism in the right place could be a good thing.

Wow.  I'd better write something from my conservative side soon.

-Spottedcat

Way crazy idea here

Hi, folks.  I've been busy for a few days.  So I come back here with a strange idea.  Oh, wait.  I'm full of strange ideas, so this shouldn't be much of a shock.

What about providing little houses that can be moved, instead of Section 8?  At least to those who are open to the idea.

I'm talking about single people living in something about the size of a park model mobile home.  In tornado country, this would mean that the trailers would need to be anchored to a concrete pad, and that a tornado shelter would need to be available, but think of the advantages.  If the resident needed to move, they could pack all their stuff into boxes, set the boxes carefully on the floor, put their dishes and breakables in boxes and take them with them on moving day... and have their trailer towed to another park specially set up for those who live in these little houses.

We could be picky and drug-test those who are issued these little houses.

It would not be legal to sell said house, but if the person wanted, it would be theirs for the rest of their life.

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled thoughts. 

Meow!

-Spottedcat

Carrot and stick

Jobs.  In my last post, I talked about taxing wealthy corporations for outsourcing jobs.  I talked about, or at least hinted at, my annoyance about wealthy corporations and people getting tax breaks.  They need to pay their taxes. 

That was talking about the proverbial stick.  Let's talk Carrots.  (Not Carrot the cute kitty here, but rewards.)

Wouldn't it be a good idea to provide tax breaks for companies, large and small, according to how many people who live in the United States that they hire?  And if that turned out to be the ONLY way to get a tax break for a company?

I foresee a big stick to make politicians consider that one.  Any suggestions on that?

-Spottedcat

I wince as I consider posting this.

Why do I wince?  Because I don't want to sound paranoid.  I am neither a right-wing nor a left-wing extremist. 

But as I look at the employment situation in the United States, I see a real problem.  Not enough jobs.  Not enough jobs that earn enough to live on in these expensive times.  One answer that has been put forth is that we need to be educating people for the jobs of the future.  People need to learn to do... whatever it is that's considered the leading edge of the working world.

There is a problem here.  I will say it delicately.  There are a lot of people out there who are not able to learn the new jobs, no matter how much education they get.

I'll say it indelicately.  A lot of people, whether because they've fried their brains, because they were born that way, or because they have talents that are no longer useful in common life, are... well, some (of the "fried the brains or soaked 'em in alcohol variety) are stupid.  If you do it to yourself, you're stupid.  If you had it done to you (brain damage from birth, accident, genetic mutations, autism, and so on) you're not stupid.  You're unfortunate.  But you're probably having a really hard time finding a job, even so.  And if you can't even figure out how to make your computer work for you, a career in IT is not in your future.

We need living-wage jobs for everybody.  Not that everybody needs to be (or can be) wealthy--I'm not saying that.  But we all need jobs, and we need to be able to meet the necessities of life (housing, food, clothing, medical care, and yes, recreation) from these jobs.

This means a couple of things.  Either SOMEONE needs to provide living wage jobs (and by this, I mean either the government or private industry, or a combination of both) enough for every person who wants to work or SOMEONE (again, this can be the government, private industry, or a combination of them) needs to provide the necessities of life to those who need it. 

Oh, dear.  Now that does sound like an issue, doesn't it.

How many owners of private industry are willing to provide lots of living-wage jobs to whole bunches of Americans?  Really?  These are the companies (and the CEOs and the CFOs) that are outsourcing jobs to countries where the cost of living is lower, and thus the amount they pay for the work is lower. 

How many owners of private industry are willing to provide housing, medical care, food, and all that) to people in the United States who need it, and who don't even work for them?  Ha!  Laughable! 

Okay, now the government side.  First, is anybody willing to guess how much it would cost the government to house, feed, and otherwise provide for every person in this country who doesn't have a job?

Let's pause here to cross our eyes. 

Talk about deficit spending.  Whoa. 

Now, let's see how many politicians would even suggest such a thing.  Keep in mind that a politician's first goal trumps all others:  they want to stay in office.

I don't see the government seriously taking up this issue.  The government can't even figure out how to do one part of this mighty mess--medical coverage.

Deficits.  Trillions of dollars.  Taxes.  Separation between the very rich and the very poor.  Hold onto your hats, folks.  The divide is getting wider, and statistically, you're more likely to fall down to the depths of the very poor than to scrabble up to the heights of the very wealthy.

Yikes.  Do I sound paranoid?  Yeah, a little.  But more seriously, if you lose your job and can't get another one that pays nearly as much, or if you lose your job and can't get another one at any amount of pay, you're in trouble.  Ask anybody who's lost their home to foreclosure.  It doesn't take much to find someone like this.

So.  In a simplified fashion, that's the problem. 

Answers, anybody?

Let's start here.  Why do the wealthy get big tax breaks?  In the past, one could excuse it by saying, "Well, these big corporations provide jobs for the less fortunate, so to encourage them to hire more people, we should give them a hefty tax break."  This doesn't hold water anymore.  The world has changed.  Big corporations now provide jobs to people in third-world countries.  They are providing bonuses to their own management.  They are providing increased values for their stockholders. 

I cannot see any reason why a person, or a corporation, that is wealthy doesn't pay the same percentage of tax, or a higher percentage of tax, than I do, or than my coworkers do.

To me, a good place to start is here:  Every company that outsources work, even a small percentage of work, to a country outside the United States loses every tax break, and picks up several "outsourcing" taxes that negate the amount they save by outsourcing. 

Let the stockholders whine.  Let the CFOs scream.  Why do stockholders and managers, who are after all just people with enough money to spare, decide how much they will pay in taxes? 

Okay, I'm all tired out.  I need another cup of tea.  I'll have to continue my thoughts in my next post.

-Spottedcat

What's Spottedcat speaking about?

I'm accused of being a whiner, and I have reluctantly claimed this as part of who I am.  I whine about whatever doesn't work right in my world.  I live in the United States.  We are in the 21st century.  This gives me a lot of whineable subjects.

But I don't merely whine.  I have great ideas, if only somebody would consider them.  Well, I mean someone besides my friends.  How about this?

Why are there not enough jobs to go around? 

The United States expanded across the North American continent in great part because there were things to do--to get paid for doing, or to make a living--and there were more of these opportunities than there were people to take advantage of them.  "Go west, young man." 

And so Americans came to believe that anybody who wanted to succeed in this country could do so.  All they had to do was be willing to work.

Is it still so? 

You tell me.  I'm working part-time, and I can't get full-time at my job because of the budget crisis.  I can't live on what I make.  I am willing to work full-time.  I would love to work full-time.  I'm an office worker and I have years of experience.  Word processing?  You bet.  Customer service, including face-to-face?  I've got that too.  Confidentiality?  Yes, in every job I've held.  I'm a good employee.  I don't get sick very often.  I am clean, have a college degree, and I sincerely want to do my best at my job.

Why can't I find a job that will support me in these expensive times?  Is there a reason I am eating ramen noodles for supper so I will hopefully be able to pay my car insurance, my home insurance, my medical bills (and it doesn't take much to get a whopping medical bill even with medical insurance) and am worried about being able to take my cat to the vet?

Does this sound familiar?  Yeah, I thought so.

What I am looking for is answers.  This will lead to more questions, which will need more answers.  Want to help me look?  Sure you do.  Why else would you have read all the way to the bottom of this post?

Answers, then.  We pursue them.

-Spottedcat