Do No Harm

I have a new standard for judging politicians and political policies.  The standard is "Do No Harm".  In other words, does this proposal improve something somehow?  If yes, then pass the damn bill.

So we have the specter of labor unions fighting free trade which is one of the few things supporting manufacturing in this country.  I know, anti-free trade types like to cite the fact that manufacturing moved to Mexico under NAFTA, but we export a lot to Mexico and jobs in Mexico means there are fewer Mexicans seeking work in the U.S.A.  And many more jobs have been lost to China than to Mexico, and we have no free trade agreement with China.  And China is not part of the Asian trade agreement at this time, and if they were, it would open up China for U.S. exports, which are currently hindered by anti-free trades policies of China.

You would think that having watched technology and global wage pressures in global manufacturing destroy jobs, that labor unions might have figured out that technology gains need to be respected as they have been increasing standards of living for 200 years across the world.  The U.S.A. is a leader in that technology advance and we cannot be an island.  Where would this economy be if the U.S. were not a leader in technology?

You have to get with the program which is the reason the retraining of workers is a foolish thing to vote down, just because you have the power to do so.  The exercise of that power brings harm and therefore is a bad policy decision.  I could say the same thing for many GOP policies, but there is no need to do so here.

The Democrats in the House of Representatives have been so beaten down, they needed a morale boost from this, but that was stupid because if the U.S. doesn't create a framework for free trade in Asia, China will, and it will favor China, not the U.S.A.

China is engaged in a global economic war on the U.S.A. to benefit China.  They know they have advantages on us, (i) lower labor costs (but they are losing this one quickly); (ii) a dirtier environment (but they know their citizens want them to clean it up and that is expensive); (iii) they have a big influence on interest rates in the U.S.A. through their purchase of bonds; and (iv) they supply the goods at low prices that keep inflation low in the U.S.A.  But they also need the U.S. to buy those goods and keep employment high in China.  So they need a stable U.S. which is why I don't understand why their Army hacks away at U.S. computers.  It is something that needs to be dealt with somehow in a manner that does not disrupt the economy.

But back to my standard of "Do No Harm".  Many in the GOP acknowledge that climate change is happening, but don't want to believe that 200 years of carbon energy consumption that pumps CO2 in to the atmosphere has any influence on it and certainly don't want to pay anything to reduce carbon consumption.  That is why the GOP developed Cap & Trade (back when they acknowledged Climate Change) and the Greens were ones who were anti-Cap & Trade because it didn't go far enough.  But Cap &Trade would be an economic incentive to find economically sound ways to deal with carbon production.  It would be gradual and smooth, unlike draughts, floods, and other changing weather patterns that are very disruptive.  This is not say that any of this won't happen, but you would think when faced with the possibility of massive costal flooding, the GOP would at least like to have a discussion about this rather than bury there head in the sand and hope for the best.

And as for Iraq, we should have split the country up from the beginnings but didn't for some reason that seemed to make sense at the time (I think it was perhaps all the oil being in Shiite and Kurds parts of the country).  But the Sunni- Shiite war is fed by money from the Gulf States, Iran and Turkey and it can only be solved by those states.  The U.S. should be banging heads there while we split up Iraq into democratically governable segments, not the arbitrary colonial combination what Britain or France decided upon for reasons we now know to be flawed.

And finally, for the GOP, whatever you want to do with healthcare, remember the old system drove healthcare costs to represent 20% of GDP, and the boomers are retiring heading into their peak healthcare cost years.  Either we promote preventive choices by people who understand what it takes to be healthy (i.e. not smoking or being obese for a start) or we will need strong end-of-life counseling for families that want to keep their diabetic obese fat f*cking relative alive. Most of them are GOP voters because they hate the nanny state, but death management does have an inevitability about it that might save Medicaid and Medicare some big dollars if pallative care and universal health insurance were supported by the GOP.

Almost everybody ends up in the individual health insurance market eventually, and we would all be better off if employment and access to health insurance were separated.  We only have this combination of health insurance through employment because of wage controls in WWII.  I understand why the War demanded this, but it certainly created a harmful future situation.  I am studying for a health insurance sales license and the study materials are based upon pre-affordable care act materials (I wonder why this is?).  Active discrimination against pre-existing conditions is considered a basic mode of operation without the Affordable Care Act because it is the key to proper pricing for profitable insurance companies.  That makes sense, except for the fact that Congress passed a bill and President Reagan signed the bill, saying every hospital must treat whomever shows up with a need.  That needs to be paid for and paying for it without sound preventive care increase that cost.  And society has decided that the elderly should not go bankrupt because they don't have access to health insurance, so why should people under 65 go bankrupt because they have pre-existing conditions?  The GOP needs a positive health care policy and they do not have one.

Thank you to the following columns for stimulating my thoughts this Sunday morning.

Nicholas Kristoff on Bad Choices Matter but are not everything

Maureen Dowd on Obama's Bad Choices

Ross Douthat on Too Many in Prison?