Health care reform and the Democrats

Has anyone been reading about the latest tactic of the Democrats for health care reform? The idea is that they will simply deem the bill passed by a 51-vote majority in the senate and then vote on all of the provisions separately. The Republicans are calling them a number of nasty names.

The most telling point, in my opinion, is the comment I read that, if the Democrats do this and actually pass some form of health care reform, we will spend the rest of the year dealing with attempts to get it overturned. My opinion is that we need to get something passed completely aboveboard. This has taken so much time and energy already. We can spend a little more time now to save time later.

Of course, this may be a moot point. As I've noted in earlier posts, planning for the future instead of looking at the (very) short-term gains seems to go against human nature.

banking regulation proposal

Apparently Senator Dodd of Connecticut has proposed a new bill to make sure that what happened in 2008 won't happen again. The banks were too big to fail and were completely unregulated. I see his point. I would like to note, however, that the new regulatory office he is proposing will need to have actual enforcement power. Otherwise it's just a sop.

school closings

Earlier this week I heard that Kansa City is planning to close about half of its schools. Apparently, due to increasing budget problems and lower enrollment, the majority feel this is the best solution. As an impartial observer who does not live in Kansas City or have children in any public school system, I can see the logic in the decision. If they don't have to maintain as many facilities or pay as many teachers and maintenance staff, they should be able to help the schools that will remain open.

Of course, a lot of people are unhappy. Their children will have to change to schools that are further away. They may no longer be in the same schools as their friends. Bus drivers will have to change routes and add new ones as more students start taking busses to school. And no one wants to be the ones to lose their jobs.

It seems like schools all over the country are in trouble. As people leave an area due to foreclosures and loss of employment, the population goes down and the high school dropout rate goes up. Marshaling the remaining resources to provide a decent primary education for the students who remain is absolutely essential. Better that they should have to travel further for safe buildings and well-equipped facilities. I know that in an ideal world compromise wouldn't be necessary. As I have said before, we do not live in an ideal world. Welcome to reality.

Housing - Again!

So anyone have any thoughts on whether or not the $8000 new home buyer tax credit will be extended again? Yeah, I didn't think so.

The economy is still settling. The housing market is one of the things that is just going to have to settle into a lower state of equilibrium.

LEt me explain. For a long time, American businesses and consumers were living under the assumption that expansion was always the best move. Getting money for this expansion involved taking out loans. And then leveraging to take out more loans. And so on to the nth degree. This is what's known as living beyond your means, or trying to create virtual wealth. Real wealth, of course, is created with real assets (such as ideas, natural resources, and industries). Again, the party can't go on forever.

So what does this have to do with the housing market and the new home buyer credit? As I said, housing prices are still declining to what they really should be rather than their inflated levels. Unfortunately, no one wants to buy a home, and, even at the lower prices, fewer people can afford them. We still have a long way to go to reach any kind of stability in the housing market. Hence the continuing efforts of the politicians to cushion the fall by enticing more people into buying a home...

Policy making

I'm going to elaborate a bit on my last post. It just boggles my mind that supposedly intelligent leaders and scholars expect people to always behave rationally. A person can be rational and unselfish and all of that. People in groups just don't behave that way. Any student of history can tell you that. It's one of the human race's inevitable flaws. We're not perfect. By our nature, we can't be perfect. Therefore, any public policy or economic plan has to take that into account.

Oh, I'm not saying that people need to be led around like sheep. I just think that sensible regulations and an acknowledgment that a lot of folks don't give a toss about the the common good (especially when it adversely affects their pocket books) is necessary for successful policy making.

Simple, right? I'm thinking not.

2008 and today

I was just thinking about how lucky I actually am economically-wise. I mean, I have a steady government job with medical benefits and I spend less money than I make. It seems like I have it made compared to a lot of people I know or have heard about.

It's awful what's been happening since the big economic meltdown in 2008. It's just hard for me to quite believe that no one in power saw this coming. I admit that the second Bush administration scared me from the start. Dubya surrounded himself by yes-men and pandered to his vision of what the world SHOULD be, not what it actually was. Nor did he and and his team have the ability to make long-term plans based in reality instead of fantasy to fulfill their vision. I could go on and on about Dubya and his meery men and women (and I'm sure I will in a later post), but he was not the only one at fault.

I've heard a lot of people complaining that no one could have predicted the 2008 collapse. That's just not true. People did predict it. Several award-winning economists predicted it. The sad part it that some of these economists had been making correct predictions of economic trends for decades, and still no policy maker wanted to listen to them. For more specifics, look up Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, both Nobel prize winning economists with new books out on the current situation.

Okay, so we can't say that we weren't warned. The truth is that no one wanted to hear it. The politicians were remaking the market into their ideal while pleasing their wealthy campaign-funding consituents. Traders knew on some level that, if they did the responsible long-term planning thing, their short-term profits would be cut. Who wants the party to end? Why should we look inot our policies and our mortgage and lending policies while we're making so much money?

Something that is often forgotten by high-minded idealists in any field in my experience is that people aren't perfect. As a general rule of thumb, people focus on the short-term and don't worry about the long-term, expecially when working in groups. Honestly, how many times have universities decided to put off repairs on an older building for yet another year in order to maintaing the annual pay raises? Or politicians focused so much on winning the next election that they don't think about what their votes and rhetoric will actually mean twenty years down the line? Or people selling their bodies on the street in order to feed themselves? It's not pretty or idealistic or high-minded, but humans can't just be wished into behaving the way we think they should!

Enough ranting abuot the past. The present administration is having problems. They are, as a group, inexperienced in political maneuvering or holdovers from the previous administration. At least their hearts seem to be in the right place. At least they're trying. Some people think the current administration is being too indecisive and not getting anything done. I would like to remind those people that the legislature in this country has the lion's share of the power, with good reason. And right now, the legislature seems more interested in tearing itself to pieces than actually coming up with some realistic, workable compromises.

So this is my very first post. I intend to write about (as you can probably tell from the title of my blog) America. The United States is going through a very interesting time right now. I have my own opinions on the situation, and will be expounding on them at length in later posts. For now, just know that I welcome moderated, intelligent comments on my future posts.