Economy Rant

Time for Trickle Up Economics

I’m going to rant a little bit here. First off, a confession: I’m an NPR junkie. The upside of that is I’ve been listening to some great minds talk about the economy. The downside is that there’s not a lot of synthesis (you know how they take all sides – so annoying).

So here’s my rant:

One guy will talk about Detroit, and how the Big Three are “saddled” – and they invariably use the word “saddled – with spiraling health care and retirement costs. In another segment, a guy, or woman, will talk about how we can’t afford universal health care with the economic downturn. Then someone else on another program will talk about how the consumer is so loaded down with debt, unable to get additional credit, afraid of becoming or actually becoming unemployed, or what not (or all of the above) that no one is buying, so more and more businesses will close down, and we’re just all done for.

Could we tie these things together, please? Why are the Big Three suffering because of health care costs when their competitors overseas are not? Honestly, I’ve never heard a reporter in any situation ask that follow up question. If your expert says "well Detroit has these spiraling costs that their competitors don't" will someone please ask: "Don’t the Japanese use people to make their cars? What about Germany, certainly there are people working in the automotive industry there, and certainly they are subject to the same illnesses we suffer. But Toyota and VW don’t have spiraling heath care costs to worry about. What do they do instead?"

And why is the consumer so saddled with debt that he/she/me won’t shop like a wild woman anymore? Can you say: medical bills? I knew you could. Medical bills are at least a part of it (something like 60% of people in bankruptcy site medical bills as the reason, and believe me I have thought about it myself).

So if we don’t do anything about medical costs and getting everyone access to health care soon, people like me are never going to be able to be the little economic engines we were born to be. The American consumer needs relief if we’re ever going to get out of this downward economic slide.

What just gets me is the miserable job the media does of covering this issue. How much will it cost? Does anyone in the press ever sit down and compare the total cost of health care we are paying, including the cost of uninsured medical care, the cost of uncompensated care, and the upward pressure that puts on the cost of care for the rest of us? Figure that all out and see the gigantor number (15% of our GDP). Shaving even a few percentage points off of that price tag would save us the money we are spending on the Wall Street bailout in one year.

And next year we could save the amount of money we are going to spend bailing out Detroit. And the bail out, coincidentally will be smaller and more likely to succeed because we’ve solved their health care issue.

Someone very smart needs to figure this out. God bless you Mr. Obama!

P.S.
Got the Goose. It’s kind of this giant flesh-colored frozen mortar-shell-shaped thing in my freezer right now. Thawing begins Saturday.