Dana Vashon said something interesting on Red Eye a few weeks ago, It’s not a lack of demand, it’s a drought of good ideas, and it’s got me thinking.

Let’s understand where we are. We’re not in a recession. Recessions are a psychological condition where a people hangs onto its money due to uncertainty. In our case though, the recession has lasted too long, and we know that many of our economic loses are permanent. This is a retraction, a permanent change in size.

We’re undergoing an information and technological revolution, and many of the jobs we’ve lost have been replaced by that technology. Much of the consumer demand our economy became accustomed to was fueled by home equity and wildly available credit. But through the housing collapse we lost over $2 Trillion in home equity, which shut off the easy-credit, and that won’t change because the home equity came from a pumped-up housing market. We’re also seeing our overseas competition advancing in all areas, including technology, America’s former monopoly.

During a recession, stimulus can be effective in “shocking” the economy back by filling in the missing demand and alleviating uncertainty. But in our situation, the lost demand is permanent, that’s why stimulus has been so miserably ineffective (and the fact that it wasn’t honest stimulus). The thing we’re trying to shock awake is gone. Washington sprinkling borrowed money into our economy isn’t going to recreate those lost jobs or consumer spending. Many of the unemployed people lack the skills required by the new jobs, and many of the consumer spenders now have under-water mortgages, are paying high rent, have ruined credit, or are trying to pay down expensive debt. Stimulus won’t make those people spend.

Technically, we’ve recovered from the recession, according to growth figures. The trouble is, we’re still missing the jobs we lost. Businesses and investors both have a lot of money safely penned-up. One of the reasons they’re keeping this money safe, besides the high level of uncertainty, is the utter lack of good ideas to put that money in.

To use Dana’s example, Facebook is valued at nearly $50 billion, and what does it do? It reduces productivity… Why are people investing in Facebook? There are no better ideas worth investing in.

Social Security Act: 1935

Life Expectancy in 1935: 61.5
Age in which SS benefits could be collected in 1935: 65

Life Expectancy in 2010: 79.4
Age in which SS benefits could be collected in 2010: 66

(up to 67 for those born in 1960 and after, which would be 2027!)

Solution:
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2011: 66
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2012: 67
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2013: 68
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2014: 69
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2015: 70
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2016: 71
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2017: 72
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2018: 73
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2019: 74
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2020: 75
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2021: 76
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2022: 77
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2023: 78
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2024: 79
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2025: 80 (or average life expectancy)
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2026: 81 (or average life expectancy)
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2027: 82 (or average life expectancy)
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2028: 83 (or average life expectancy)
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2029: 84 (or average life expectancy)
Age in which SS benefits can be collected in 2030: 85 (or average life expectancy)

The longer we work the more we produce and the stronger our country is. So when we are expected to live to 110 on average and we have 80 years of productive life, which is almost twice what people are doing now, we will be that much stronger without overspending to supplement retirement.

It’s all very logical, the real problem isn’t the facts, which all check out, it’s that the pervasive view of people in the US is entitlement and precedent. Everyone thinks they are entitled to retire at age 60 because they put in their “time” like their parents did, precedent.

They don’t care about the facts because their sense of entitlement has skewed any logic that may cross their tiny selfish brains.

Instead of thinking, “I want to make more money and have a higher standard of living, so I’ll go back to school and become a lawyer instead of remaining on the line at Ford” they think “I’ve put in my time, I deserve to retire at 55. I started here when I was 18 and I better get what’s due me or I’ll commit some violent anti-social crime against the ‘man’ for denying what I’ve earned. I DESERVE it damit, its MINE, MINE, MINE!”

The problem is these people are not like our grandparents, who actually WORKED while on the line at Ford, shaping the country and making a fare days wages for a fair days work. Now, our parents and our generation think they should get the same wages and a shit load of entitlements for much less work and per-person productivity.

Add to that ideology, like the kind that not only panders to these ‘selfish’ people but also makes efforts to give everyone the ‘American Dream’ at the expense of The Rich. And listen – I understand. I hate rich people! But contrary to this ideology’s imagination, The Rich don’t keep all this ‘wealth’ in a big money bin, ready to be ‘raised’ by increasing tax rates. The Rich are businesses and investors – one and all. You can’t take their money and do their job for them. People have tried. Everyone starves to death and ends up living under a paranoid dictator – every time.

When you raise tax rates on The Rich you are increasing the price of business, whether it’s increasing business costs directly or increasing investment costs. You’re not hitting the actual rich people, they keep up their precious fancy lifestyles. That tax you had aimed at The Rich simply passes through them, like watermelon seeds, none the worse for wear.

You increase capital gains tax - The Rich adjust their portfolios for lower risk (risk/reward), sending new ideas elsewhere for money, outside the US, or the ideas take longer to implement, or aren’t implemented at all, or, most likely, they’re implemented somewhere cheap, like China.

You increase income tax on The Rich, Barb at Barb’s Beauty Salon raises the chair rental fee, stuffing your tax down the throats of lower-middle class beauticians (single moms and stuff). And Brutus and Roy at B&R Roofing look at their excel sheet and see they need to wait until next season before they invest and hire that fourth crew – again, lower and lower-middle wage earners eat your tax by not getting hired by Brutus and Roy.

You raise the corporate tax, Big Mean Co. hires fewer people and works the ones it has an extra hour – hitting the little guy again. Or maybe Big Mean Co. raises its prices, again, hitting the consumer, the little guy. Or maybe it’s already dealing with tight profit margins (can’t raise prices without losing business/money) and can’t function with fewer employees. Well, off to Mexico with the whole enchilada!

Better to make the US a hospitable place for business, where new ideas can spawn, salon chairs are cheap, roofers have room to try hiring that fourth crew, Big Mean Co. is always looking for good people, prices stay competitive with garbage being shipped here in containers, and business comes to America rather than flees from it. That way there will be more business and investment (The Rich) to tax, and tax revenues will increase the healthy way, through growth.

1. Expensive Death

We spend 1/3 or more of our overall health care resources in the last year of life, often exceeding hundreds of thousands of dollars, and only achieving a few months of weeks of poor quality life.

But how do we deal with this? Death panels? Will a population that doesn’t trust bureaucracy well enough to send cash in the mail trust one to manage The Plug?

What about the market? Currently, commercial insurance pays away while the family - does whatever can be done – nursing grandma along for months, or years, senile, hopeless, unaware, with a final price tag often exceeding a million dollars – an amount that if spend elsewhere might vaccinate 100 school districts and check another couple hundred for scoliosis.

Dying is scary. But we need to find a way to face death without fighting it tooth-and-nail. We need to stop using enormous amounts of resources on hopeless cases in exchange for prolonged agony. We need to let dead people die – but we won’t.

2. Heath Care is Expensive

When you buy a computer you either go shopping around, looking for a good deal on a system, or you buy a system that specifically meets your needs. Then you pay for it, either with cash right then or with a credit card and pay it off later. You don’t appear at Best Buy and expect everyone to wait on you and bring you the most advanced system available; a state-of-the-art $1500 processor, $450 for water cooling, 1200 watt $300 power supply, $200 case, $800 RAM, $800 RAID of HDs; and ignore the prices, because someone else is paying.

But that’s how we buy health care. We complain about the price of our insurance, but when we need treatment we expect space age miracles, and when we really get sick, we expect the insurance to show up at the hospital with dump-trucks loaded down with cash.

Anything treated this was is going to get expensive, as it should. We are talking about prolonging our lives and improving the quality of life. It shouldn’t cost less.

We need to accept the price of our long comfortable lives, but we won’t.

3. Chronic Illness

Why don’t we treat health insurance more like car insurance? Certain parts of health care, although sometimes expensive, aren’t unforeseen, like regular tests like cholesterol levels and simple treatments for mild illnesses like a sore throat. Why can’t we just pay for this kind of thing like we do everything else, and save insurance for the sudden horrible things no one can afford?

Regardless, chronic illness fits neither the medical insurance model nor the car insurance model. Some people, for whatever reason, are burdened with regular, constant, indefinite health care costs – disproportionate to the population, like diabetics.

We talk about poor people who don’t have access to health care resources. But that’s not the issue. The issue is sick people who don’t have access to health care resources, or don’t have access to enough. In other words, many poor people don’t worry about getting health insurance, even when it’s free, because they don’t need it, they aren’t chronically ill. While some people do have health insurance but they still struggle to get by, because they have numerous expenses due to their chronic illness.

If we want to address inequality, and fix the shortcomings of our health care system, we have to recognize the inequality of chronic illness, but we don’t.

I was watching the news recently and there was a Clean Coal commercial talking about how they already trap a lot of CO2 from their processes and contain it.  The commercial went on to describe new breakthrough ideas and concepts for storing this trapped CO2, like burying it under the ground and at the bottom of the ocean.  These are ideas that have really gained a lot of exposure lately.  This is apparently the next big hope of the global warming camp for saving the planet.  And why shouldn’t it be?  I mean, hasn’t burying toxic, harmful, and other health hazardous materials always worked like a charm?

If I hadn’t seen hour long specials on Discovery about these methods and didn’t know these ideas were serious, I’d totally think they were the product of some 3rd grade science project with the cute little displays assembled in a half box with paper mache and sand held down with globs of Elmer’s Glue.  This IS the most ridiculous idea I’ve ever heard for storing the world’s CO2.  Never mind the general idea of trapping all CO2 in the world in the first place, which is completely ignorant for obvious reason.  If we could and then ram-rodded it all underground and pumped it to the bottom of the oceans, we’d destroy the planet for sure.  It would probably cause some global life ending catastrophe.

Hasn’t the history and success record of storing dangerous things underground or at the bottom of the ocean already proved over and over that we shouldn’t purposefully use this as a means of containment?  All you hear about is how these materials stored underground, or even above ground that seeped underground, contaminate ground and drinking water.  There are cases of CO2, having seeped out of the ground and kept pressurized at the bottom of lakes, is disturbed by a landslide and escapes, killing hundreds of people in their sleep, like a cloud of death.  Community organizations and committees always vehemently protest and fight such things as garbage dumps and underground toxic containment sites from being built near their cities.  Everyone knows these things are bad for the environment and will inevitably cause cancer, birth defects, and worse.

Imagine now trapping all the CO2 in the world and trying to find a city willing to serve as the underground storage site for it.  There would be outrage or probably worse, because everyone knows its a horrible idea.  Common sense tells us this is a disaster waiting to happen.  Why has it taken thousands of scientists, engineers, and others to come up with the worst idea possible?  This is elementary stuff.  Common sense stuff.  Even idiot common sense stuff.  But yet it’s the premier storage idea for all this CO2 they want to trap.  Bury it… Seriously?

A Value Added Tax (VAT) is a tax on the estimated value of products at each stage of production and distribution. And like all taxes on business, it’s passed on to the consumer – making everything more expensive.

A VAT is similar to a sales tax in who actually pays it, but the difference is that the VAT hides the amount the consumer pays. When you look at your receipt from the grocery store you can see the sales tax. It’s right under the subtotal. When you buy a car there’s a special line just for the sales tax.

But the VAT is charged at each state of production and shipping. It’s not marked anywhere for you or me to see. With a VAT, the auto manufacturer would be charged based on the value of the car when it’s sold to the dealer. The shipper for the car would be charged a VAT for the value of the shipping. The subcontractors, the companies that make all the parts for the car, would be charged a VAT for the parts they manufacture. And the producers who make the material the parts are made of, they would pay a VAT too, as would the shippers, as would the producers of the packaging material.

And this huge and complex system would apply to most everything. All the materials and equipment everywhere in between the above process would carry the VAT hidden in its price – everything from tools to toilet paper.

This is why sneaky politicians like the VAT. They can make promises of monetary gifts to get into office, once in office establish expensive entitlements and pass huge goody bills for their friends, and pay for it by raising the VAT without anyone noticing. Historically that’s what has happened in Europe anyway.

If a sales tax is raised everyone sees it. But you can raise the VAT quietly, incrementally, with few people raising a fuss.

So why am I bringing this up? The US doesn’t have a VAT. We have income and sales tax. Well, I bring it up because the US is spending huge amounts of money, adding to the immense pile of debt, and otherwise over the past couple years has been moving in the direction of of a European style of heavy tax/entitlement. Also, Obama says the VAT is, “on the table” with regard to fixing the county’s serious budget problems.

And seriously, what else is there? Is anyone going to cut precious programs in this Liberal climate? Hell, we’re passing new ones. The answer Obama and his Dems have offered to EVERY problem so far is a huge pile of cash or a huge new bureaucracy – but usually both. He promised (pfft) not to raise taxes on anyone making less than blah blah. But he can’t raise income taxes on the rich anymore. They’re already on the down slopping side of the bell curve. (raising their taxes will result in lower tax revenue) What else is there?

So watch out for the VAT. It’s a sneaky tax. Every tax is bad for the economy – but this one dodges accountability with the consumer. It hits everyone including the poorest, which is actually good for the Democrat’s style of campaign/governance. They can suck money out of our society then distribute it back as the clumsy, slow, expensive bureaucracies see fit – VISIBLY – so the politicians can take credit for ‘giving’ assistance to people in need.

Ok, everyone here illegally, you can stay. It was our fault for making you sneak in by making the immigration process a 10-year-long bureaucratic nightmare anyway. But listen up! All you guys thinking of sneaking in now, you better not. The torturous path to US citizenship is just a little bit easier now, according to some American’s more fare, and according to those guys who like to add and subtract it costs more. So there’s no reason to sneak in now, and that goes for you illiterate people too, who only know what they know about the immigration process from what you’ve heard from others.

But if you DO try sneaking in – oh boy. We know it’s not your fault and everything – it’s America’s pre-Obama imperialist foreign policies. But if you do, oh boy, if you do, well, first, we just assume we’ll catch you somehow, especially if you’re a terrorist, and then we’ll flaunt it to the press like we have every other slightly positive anti-terror efforts, damaging those resources for some national defense political points. But oh boy, it won’t be like the old Bush days. We won’t just go giving you medical treatment, food, spending money, and an airline ticket back home. Oh no. We’ll probably take two or three times longer to process you, and then we’ll send you back with even more money so you can afford to take a bag on the plane, assuming we don’t decide you’re case is special, which it undoubtedly is, why the hell else would you be risking your life to get here.

Hey, wouldn’t you know, I realized today I do still have a little respect for Obama still. I thought it was all gone – beaten out of me, blood and screams – but it’s not.

I heard how Gibbs answered the question about removing the tax exemption on that subsidy big companies were getting to keep retirees on their prescription drug plan – the one that saves the gov’t money. Because those companies have to count the lose this quarter, and it’s in the hundreds of millions in loses, and hundreds or thousands of lost jobs, and so on.

lol Well, Gibbs says they just closed a ‘loop-hole’. (Right, because that’s how things should be. You get taxed on your money, you buy something with what’s left. To encourage you to buy something particular, the government gives some money, and then the government taxes that money. LOL

And then Gibbs claimed that the hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of jobs are all figureblown out of proportion. How would Gibbs or the Whitehouse have any idea? No one has given them any figures yet!

So I was pulling some veggies out of the refrigerator while I was listening to this, and though to myself, “Obama’s going to can his ass, we won’t see him in a second term, Obama’s got no excess loyalty like Bush…” Then I realized such a though would require that I trust Obama’s judgment enough to assume he’d can a child like the stammering and inappropriate Captain Weird Gibbs of the Strange Brigade. lol “Yes we’ll can.”

Verizon sent an email out to its employees recently. Here’s the important part:

[Some stuff Verizon likes about the bill…] However, due to the varying effective dates included in the legislation, we expect that Verizon’s costs will increase in the short-term. These cost increases are primarily driven by two provisions.

The first is a provision that affects the Medicare Part D subsidy for prescription drug coverage. Because Verizon offers retiree prescription drug coverage today, the government provides a 28 percent subsidy to help offset the financial burden of offering that coverage. The subsidy was intended to help employers continue to offer prescription drug coverage for retirees so that these retirees would not have to use the Government Medicare Part D program. However, changes affecting the Part D subsidy will make it less valuable to employers, like Verizon, and as a result, may have significant implications for both retirees and employers.

Additionally, there is a provision that taxes high-value health plans expected to begin in 2018. Many of the plans that Verizon offers to employees and retirees are projected to have costs above the thresholds in the legislation and will be subject to the 40 percent excise tax.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YTk1OWNjNGNmYWJiOTIzY2E4YjYyYmJjOTJhMGQwZDg

You might remember Caterpillar being in the news a few months ago. In 2009 their business dropped by 75% and  Obama made a visit promoting the stimulus bill. Well, they’re in the news again, this time in regards to Obamacare.

Since 2003, when Medicare Part D was enacted, the senior citizens prescription drug bill, more than 3,500 companies have received a tax-free subsidy for keeping retirees on their generous private prescription drug plans. Reason being, the subsidy has saved the Medicare money because it would cost more than the subsidy to have these retirees using Medicare Part D.

Well, Obamacare fixes that somewhere in its 2700 pages, and subjects these subsidies to taxes. And in Caterpillar’s case, that’s cutting $100 million out of its earnings this quarter.

More detail: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703312504575142313494421460.html

By the subject line you probably thought this e-mail would be about planets, but I am speaking about rare earth metals.

Rare earths are becoming very important in the latest technologies like military equipment, hybrid motors, nickel metal hydride batteries, and flat screen televisions.  The problem is China is the only country the processes these metals.  They do most of the mining and then separate the metals into uses.  They own 90% of the market share.  Furthermore, China has announced that they are cutting back exports as internal demand rises.

A number of places in the world have these metals: the US, Canada, China, Africa, and Australia.  There are a few US companies that own mines and only one Western company, NEO Material Technologies of Canada, has any expertise in processing/separating these metals (they have a facility in China).  The US companies are all privately owned, so that takes away some incentive to buy stock in one of these companies.

My thoughts are that Western companies in this area are going to make a lot of money over the next few years.  Part of mewishes I could go out and join them, make them more efficient, and then buy out competition like Rockefeller did with Southern Oil.  Part of me wants to go prospect land and buy it.  Most of me just wants to invest in these companies and let them do the hard work while I build rockets.

More of me wants to explore.  Sometimes I wish it was the 1600′s and there was still a lot of land to explore and claim for the crown (or George Washington).  Unexplored land now only resides in space – which is terribly expensive.  There are many explored lands in the world though that have not seen many people even today, like northen michigan.  A lot of this land holds many secrets to be discovered and something inside of me desires to be the one to discover those secrets.

It occurs to me that I have many many interests in life: explosives, rockets, space, politics, exploration, running a business, music, triathlons, investing, theology, writing, teaching/coaching, geology, military, and probably some more.  I have organized my life around many of those things, tried my hand at all of them, did poorly in some, and have succeeded in others.  Do I stay where I am or venture out into something else?  What is next for me?