Author: Dave Davis

The Long Journey to “More”

Dave Davis The Long Journey to "More"

In the Musical “Oliver” the title urchin asks simply for “More”.  Over our long history the vast majority of humanity, having “More” than the bare basics of food, clothing and shelter was a dream.  Sometimes they didn’t even have even those and failed survive.  Anatomically modern homo sapiens  appeared in Africa  about 200,000 years ago. If we go by the introduction of The Big Bang Theory, we think mankind’s progress was  pretty straight line march from there.   Actually it wasn’t till 12,000 year ago that we got around to domesticating plants and animals to have agrarian societies.  It it is only in the last few centuries a good part of humanity has risen beyond subsistence.  Given the history of mankind, is this real and sustainable progress or just an aberration.  If we use as a baseline our earliest forebears we can determine what constitutes “More.”  Even though being blessed with a better brain and opposable thumbs, they spent their time much like the rest of the animal kingdom, finding food and  shelter, resting and procreating.  All they had to work with was their own physical abilities.  In order to actually have more required first of all was taking time from there basic pursuits and investing it thinking of new ways to improve and physically putting it into practice.  Better hunting and gathering tools and practices, fire, domesticating dogs and then other animals and finally agriculture to name some milestones on the way to “More”.

Unfortunately, it took enormous amounts of time to achieve to these breakthroughs.  Even though our ancestors had some tools 2.6 million years ago, it took another 800,000 years just to get to fire or 400 times the the birth of Christ to the present.  Given this timeline major innovation was a rare occurrence.  Even when it happened it often was lost and had to be reinvented again and again.  Just because something was discovered or invented in one place didn’t mean was duplicated elsewhere.  Innovation was hardly early on the path to more. Continue reading →

UPDATE TIME

Dave Davis Commentary

We took some incoming over our our April 17th post “All in the Plan”.  While most of the media was awaiting for Hillary’s coronation, we put forth that Pres. Obama would sandbag her and clear the way for a weaker candidate such as Elizabeth Warren to lose to the Republican.  This would leave the party machinery in his hands and clear the way for Michelle’s ’20 bid.  Now Hillary is a justice department criminal investigation away from being history.  If one goes forward, our prediction looks spot on.  Just look for the administration to leak that there would be a justice department revolt if they didn’t allow the investigation to go forward.  They’ll say that they would’ve liked to protect Hillary but their hands were tied.  Of course, we know from the IRS Scandal and other actions or non actions that the Justice Department Marches  to the Obama tune.  It will be fascinating to see if we’re right .  So far we like our chances.

“Dave’s Plan” to Reform Obamacare, first proposed in a policy post last October, had some of its principles endorsed by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.  His plan includes direct tax credits to buy Catastrophic Health Insurance across State Lines.  While welcome moves in the right direction, it lacks the costs savings inherent in “Dave Plan” of people spending their own savings and the credit and paperwork reductions that drive the plan.  If people like where the Governor seems headed, we urge them to look at the far more comprehensive “Dave’s Plan” that stands to deliver the greatest system wide savings.  Maybe this has opened the door for this discussion.

It would be hard to find a greater difference from our advice in for the Mideast in the “Sssshhh! Mideast Policy” postings from November and January and what has actually transpired.  We proposed aligning with those we had the most common interests, the Israelis and the Kurds.  While protecting our interests and humanitarian goals, we would let the Shia and the Sunnis sort out  their ideological differences with reform being the ultimate outcome and none of them getting nuclear weapons.  This meant pushing Iran to the wall while their oil income was disappearing, even entertaining an air strike.  What  actually happened is that we guaranteed Iran will get a nuclear weapon thus assuring that an arms race including nuclear weapons will sweep across the Mideast.  Could anything be more dangerous?  We’ve given very little to the Kurds thereby failing to utilize a people that could really help us towards  our goals.  We have great fears about how all this will turn out.

Also ignored was our advice to Urban America to continue to support the police and not throw them all under the bus for the possible actions of a very few bad apples.  What we have instead is a “Black Lives Matter” movement that celebrates in Ferguson Missouri the death of a thief who physically assaulted a policeman who was acting in a perfectly proper manner.  That officer lost his career and lives in fear for his life.  No wonder police across the country are holding back and doing the minimum.  This puts our urban areas on a downward slope from which they will have a hard time recovering.  It’s been a long time since race relations have been this bad and they seem to be getting worse.

No, we won’t get discouraged and will continue add our thoughts to the public discussion.

A CHANCE TO COMPARE, A HIP STORY

Dave Davis Dave's Healthcare Plan, Policy

In their 7/7/2015 Op-Ed “The Coming Shock in Health-Care Cost Increases”  Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the guiding forces behind the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and Tophor Spiro state:

Still, most analysts expect that the growth in health-care costs will rise without further action. And the latest data from the Census Bureau indicate this acceleration may be starting. The country is at an inflection point: Will we let our foot off the brakes, or will we permanently bend the cost curve?

Just a few years in and not fully implemented, The Affordable Care proponents are out giving dire warnings of uncontrolled rise in heath-care costs. Isn’t this exactly what the ACA’s opponents predicted?  Ah, Emanuel & Tophor have come up with a solution:

 Before it is too late, the Obama administration must focus on a reform that can be scaled. Medicare should lump together physician services, hospital costs, tests, medical devices, drugs and rehabilitation services related to common ailments—such as broken hips, heart stents and cancer treatments—into a bundle. It could then pay a medical provider a discounted amount for the whole array of services.

Wow, what a discovery!  Imagine common procedures sold as package or bundle at an all inclusive price. Why hasn’t anyone ever thought of this before?  Oh wait, in areas not commonly covered by insurance or government programs, package pricing has been the norm.  For instance, Cosmetic surgery, Lasik and many dental procedures  are ones that people pay for out of their own pockets  and are regularly priced as a package.  Google Lasik or breast augmentation and you’ll have offers covering what the whole procedure will cost.  Even if you were going to pay yourself for a hip replacement or stents by Medical Tourism, you’d be offered a package price covering everything often including transportation.  More importantly the cost history of any of these compares very favorably to areas where the Government and insurance companies dominate.  Taking inflation into consideration Lasik has had hardly had a price increase.  The same seems to b true of breast augmentation surgery.

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You didn’t listen, now what?

Dave Davis Commentary, Policy

We all can see what has happened in the Middle East, Isis gains, Iraqi Soldiers run away and the battle between the Sunni and Shia camps  rages across the area.  United States Policy has moved to an even more confused state, if that’s possible.  We ship arms to the Shia led Iraqi army that promptly leaves them on the battlefield for Isis as they run away.  So we are in a slightly roundabout way arming Isis.  We are negotiating the timetable for Iran to go nuclear but giving some support to Saudi Arabia in Yemen.  We attack Isis in both in Syria and Iraq while arranging training for rebels to fight Iran’s ally Assad.  There may be a brilliant strategy behind all this but unless we are missing great genius, the U.S. has the confused and lost the trust of everybody involved.

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Where do you find the Answers? Try Milton and Rose

Dave Davis Policy

We, of course, expected cries of war mongers about our position on Iran, but we stand by it. The alternative is far worse.  On the other hand, people who might agree with our stand on zero tolerance for rioters in Baltimore or anywhere else, still ask what would you do about the underlying problems that lead to these protests?  In order to  provide answers we have to move from commentary to actual policy proposals.  To do so, we need help from some notables both living and dead.  The first one we turned to was President Obama who when faced with a long entrenched policy he felt was at a dead end said ” I do not believe we can keep doing the same thing for over five decades and expect a different result.”  While he said in reference to Cuba, the point was well taken. Instead of doing the same unsuccessful things decade after decade, it just might be worthwhile to head in a different direction.  Baltimore like many other of our cities have had one party rule for decades.  That means a certain political philosophy has governed the decisions and the general direction that have brought them to their present deplorable state.  Democrats who ruled all these years, adhere to a big government creed that goes back to the great depression.  Then It received its economic gravitas from John Maynard Keynes who proposed that government action could ameliorate the negative aspects of the business cycle.  After his passing, like minded economists such as John Kenneth Galbraith expanded on this government primacy philosophy to a system where government was the supreme arbitrator between Capital, represented by Big Business, and Labor represented the unions.  On the level of cities like Baltimore this has come to mean unaccountable positions for public employee unions, such as the police and teachers unions. They provide the money and reliable voters to for democrat politicians to prevail. The cost is unfunded pensions and an inability to fire bad or unproductive employees.  Businesses close to City Hall get contracts, zoning and tax breaks in return for their support.  How else can you explain more than 2 billion dollars Stimulus money not making any notable difference in Baltimore’s major problems in education,employment and overall economic growth.  Only the politicians, crony capitalists and unions seem to  made out.  Freddie Gray’s Sandtown-Winchester  neighborhood just continued its downward spiral. John Maynard Keynes was never without contemporaries who pointed to a different path forward.  Chief among them was Friedrich von Hayek, who saw this government dominance as leading us down “the Road to Serfdom” in the book by that name.  Later the Neo–Keynesians moved us further down this road, but also had opposition and one who stood out was Milton Friedman along with his collaborator wife  Rose.  From Ronald Reagan to today’s majority of the Nations Governors, his smaller government individual centered way forward has offered an alternative to the philosophy that has brought Baltimore and similar cities to their present dire circumstances.  In light of this we may do well to ask what would Milton and Rose do? Even though both he and Rose are gone, they left us with starkly different policy proposals from those practiced in these faltering cities.  Education, employment and and how a city achieve economic growth were all tackled by the Friedmans.  It was Milton that said “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” Continue reading →