Where are the Economists in the 2012 Election?

I have memories of past presidential elections going all the way back to 1960, and it seems to me that past elections spent more time with actual economists in the spotlight?   Have you seen any economist this election year?  In the past, CBS, NBC and ABC would routinely interview economists about politics, but I haven’t seen hide nor hair of them this year.  Has politicians and the public given up on the Ph.D.s of the dismal science?

We have numerous computer climate models to predict the weather, and we have gigantic cosmological models of the universe, telling us how our universe was formed 13.7 billion years ago, so why don’t we hear about super computers contemplating the economy?  You’d think both the Republicans and Democrats would offer some kind of scientific proof to back their economy philosophies.  Are we supposed to just believe what the candidates tell us without reference to academic authority?

From what I’ve read, economists work with computer models all the time.  They have been refining their equations for decades.  So why don’t we see economic superstars interviewed on television?  Why aren’t their computer models shown on the nightly news?

First off, it’s impossible to predict the future, but we can model rough trends.  Modeling complex systems is hard.  Modeling the Big Bang and the formation of the universe is easier than modeling the weather, which is more successful than modeling the economy, but modeling the world economy should not be impossible.  Most Americans would want a model of the U.S. economy, but I would imagine it wouldn’t be very accurate without it being part of the model of the world economy.  No matter what Romney or Obama get to do for Americans, it will affect the rest of the world, and then they will affect us right back.

I know very little about economics, but I wonder why economists can’t build an economic model that allows the average citizen to understand  how various tax plans would affect the economy.  What would happen if Romney did get to kill off PBS and Big Bird?  What would happen if we added three trillion to the national debt while the economy recovers?  What would balancing the budget do to the economy?

Here’s the thing about computer models, the more data points the more accurate the model.  A data point would be like a weather station collecting all kinds of measurements.  The best economy model would contain 311,591.917+ data points, one for each citizen of the United States, and to be really accurate, have 7,043,958,151+ points for every person in the world.  We also need one data point for every business in the world.  Another for each aspect of government.  And each data point would measure many factors, such as various tax rates, incomes, assets, debts, etc.  And we’d need equations for every interaction.  So if we lower the corporate tax, how would it affect all other data points?

For example, Romney claimed his criteria for deciding on government spending was:  Does the cost of a program justify borrowing the money from China?

Okay, I can accept that.  But how do we decide for each program?  It can’t be just whim.  Let’s take PBS.  I heard that $450 million of the Federal budget goes to PBS, and that’s just 15% of it’s funding.  What do we get for borrowing $450 million dollars from China by giving it to PBS?  If we had an economic model, could we calculate the early childhood educational benefit of Sesame Street?  PBS teaches me a tremendous lot about American History.  How valuable is American History to American citizens?  Can you put a dollar amount on it?  PBS teaches me a lot about science and nature.  Does that have value?  Can that kind of educational TV be quantified as expanding the economy in some way?

PBS might be an economic powerhouse of early childhood and adult education that generates many times it’s $450 investment.  Just because conservatives want to save a few bucks on their tax returns are we being penny wise and pound foolish to get rid of PBS?  Can we really know without numbers?

I hate it that politicians expect us to take their opinions as facts.  I also hate that so many of my fellow citizens think opinions are facts.

Romney tells people we should say no to PBS, but other than his opinion, what’s backing that idea?  Is his opinion about PBS right?  I’d like to see an economic study done on the impact of PBS before I’d accept cutting  PBS from the budget.  Even as a jobs incentive program, how many jobs are created with that $450 million dollar investment?

Economics might be the dismal science, but I’d rather hear facts and figures about the economy from an economist than a politician.  I just can’t accept opinions from the left and right, I want some hard cold facts to chew on.

JWH – 10/6/12

The Country & The Country–America in 2012

In 2009 China Miéville came out with The City & The City, a fantasy novel about two cultures, living in one physical location, that were so alienated from each other that they believed they lived in two separate cities, even though both cities were located in the same geographical location.  Citizens of each city spoke a different language, had different laws and culture, and they had been trained since birth to ignore each other so well that they were invisible to each other.

When I read The City & The City I thought the idea too far out to believe, but the 2012 Presidential election is making me change my mind.  This afternoon was I was reading news feeds on my iPad with the app Zite about climate change.  There were two kinds of stories.  90% of the stories were science articles about the effects of global warming around the world.  Not stories theorizing the coming of global warming, but reports of its effect right now.  The rest of the stories were from climate change deniers.  They no longer try to attack the science of global warming, they laugh at the the absurdity that anyone should even consider the possibility of climate change.  They sneer at liberals who believe these science fictional fantasies.  They applaud Romney, Ryan and the Republicans for giving zero thought and time to such Chicken Little fears.

We’re now living in The County & The Country!

What I’m writing now is completely invisible to conservatives.  If they read this essay they would only see some silly story that sounds like nonsense.  It’s doubtful any would even try to read it.  And I’m not writing this to appeal to their reason.  I know I’m invisible to them.  They can’t hear me.

We have become so polarized in the United States that we can no longer see members of the opposite political party.

I could take the time to list many pro and con articles I read today, but what’s the point, those that see, do – those that don’t, can’t.  Anyone can go to Google Alerts and set up a news watch on any topic.  Just set up a “climate change” News Alert.  You’ll be sent an email once a day with all news of any kind about the topic.

Global warming has been happening for decades.  The effects have been felt for decades.  Humans change the planet all the time in endless ways.  We affect the weather all the time.  And it’s all invisible to you if you choose to ignore it.  I think even people who understand that climate change is happening refuse to pay attention.  People do not want to change their lives.  People do not want to make sacrifices.  People do not want to believe that bad things are going to happen.

New Scientist has an interesting article that asks:  “If 2013 breaks heat record, how will deniers respond?”  I often wonder about that.  At what point do the people who can’t see climate change suddenly start feeling the heat?  Will they ever?  How powerful is mind over reality?

The Republican party claims President Obama has been a failure as a leader and now it’s time for Republicans to lead the country.  Only they can lead us out of our economic mess.  I’ll admit that Obama hasn’t been a great leader.  I’ll also admit that Republicans can be great at leading the country.  But they are a one trick pony when it comes to leadership.  All they know how to do is lower taxes, regardless of the economic impact.  Voting Republican means voting to lower taxes on the wealthy.  You can be absolutely sure they can lead the country into lower taxes.  Whether they can lead us anywhere else is doubtful.  But it’s also a 100% guarantee, that they won’t do anything about the environment, other than run away, or stick their heads in the sand.

Voting Republican means:  “We want NO leadership on environmental issues.  Zip.  Nada.  Nothing.  Nix. Zero. Zilch.”

America is now two countries coexisting in the same spatial plane.  There are two cultures, liberals and conservatives.  They do not speak the same language.  They can not communicate.  Conservatives see reality on the North American continent different from liberals.  It’s cool and refreshing where Republicans live.  All they see is high taxes, wasteful governmental programs, welfare squatters, sin and a black man as President.

They want to grow the defense budget to protect America from any harm when our only real enemy is ourselves and climate change.  Is that leadership?

[One reason I don't give Obama high marks for leadership is he hasn't lead on climate change.  He does accept the problem, he just hasn't made it a political issue.  Read "Obama and Romeny on Climate Change Science" at the Washington Post.]

 

JWH – 9/3/12.

The Clear Choice: Socialism v. Social Darwinism

When Mitt Romney selected Paul Ryan to be his running mate, conservatives were overjoyed, proclaiming America now had a clear choice in November.  Republicans feel America is going down the drain and voters should choose between Socialism and Capitalism.  As a liberal, I feel the choice is between Socialism and Social Darwinism, but I don’t think it’s a clear choice.  Romney and Ryan are already claiming the Republicans will save Medicare, because even though they’d like to delete it from the budget, they know millions of voters want it.  Conservatives are far more socialistic than they are willing to admit.

I’m more than willing to accept the Socialistic label, but I believe conservatives need to accept the Social Darwinism label.   The United States has been socialistic since the 1930s.  Republicans obviously want to reverse that trend, although I doubt many of them want to return to absolute free market capitalism.  I don’t believe there really is a clear choice, but I do believe the overall directions of both parties are clear.  Liberals want to spend the money on social support systems to give everyone a minimum level standard of living, and conservatives want to dismantle the safety net and introduce a kind of Social Darwinism so nobody gets a free lunch and everyone competes.

Over population and the removal of real survival of the fittest cruelty, has produced an excess of humans that can’t compete.  The world is fat with people, and there’s not enough natural jobs to let them all survive.  Republicans want to go on a diet and let the excess fat die off.

Either we’ve got to create a safety net, or let nature take it’s natural course.  Free market capitalism is based on survival of the fittest competition.  As a liberal, I don’t want to see the kind of suffering that real Social Darwinism will create and wish to fall back on Socialism.  Nor, do I think Republicans really have the stomach for tooth and claw competition.  What the leaders of the Republicans really want is unrestrained competition to pursue wealth and they see the safety net, environmental protection, and other social engineering as getting in the way.

Most conservatives aren’t rich, and just as vulnerable as liberals to fall victim of Social Darwinism.  In their struggle to stay afloat they have developed a tremendous resentment against others who don’t struggle because they are protected by Socialism.  You can’t blame them, but do they really want to see millions suffer without government handouts?  Would the Republicans really have let the banks and car companies go bankrupted a few years ago?

If we could reach some kind of consensus most people wouldn’t mind giving food stamps and welfare to the truly needy, if we also had an effective system that could distinguish the Meek of the Earth, from the free lunch opportunists.  Americans give billions to charity every year to help the helpless, but Americans also hate ineffective charities that waste money.

There is no clear choice in how be efficient with tax money.  Republicans scream they want to reduce spending, but all they ever do is reduce taxes, and going into national debt is no solution to the problem.  Neither Obama or Romney offer an effective solutions to problems we face.  All they do is play on people’s emotions.  I really believe many Republicans feel the United States will suffer an economic collapse if we don’t elect Romney.  They really are in an emotional panic over this, but us liberals just as strongly believe Romney has no magic bullet to save the country. 

Predicting the future is impossible, but I’m to describe the liberal’s fear of the future.  Republicans will win in November because the party in power seldom maintains power in a bad economy.  Wall Street will be overjoyed at this Republican victory and the economy will heat up, and the unemployment rate will go down.  Republicans will then start dismantling Socialism in America to a small degree reducing the middle class and increase the poor.  Unless there is some kind of new economic bubble, growth will be slow, and hidden unemployment will be high.  The Republicans will cut taxes but not pay off the debt.  If there is a bubble that heats up the economy, it will eventually pop like the housing bubble and we’d go into an even worse recession than we’ve just had.  The Republicans will not do anything about the Environment and will work to dismantle the EPA.  In the next twenty-five years global warming will become obvious to all, but it will be much too late to do anything about it.

See, us liberals fear for our country too, just as much as conservatives.  There are real solutions to our problems, but the clear choice Republicans talk about from both parties in 2012 won’t help us all find them, and we can’t find them without working together, which appears to be unlikely in this ever growing politically polarized society. 

I think both current choices will lead to doom.  We need a third option, but not a third party.

JWH – 8/16/12

Is Cynicism a Side-Effect of Aging? – The Mark Twain Syndrome

Samuel Clemens, known famously as Mark Twain, became extremely bitter and pessimistic about the human race as he got older.  I’m 60 and I’m starting to feel I’ve caught a touch of pessimism myself, so I’m wondering if I’m developing the Mark Twain Syndrome?  And will I get more negative as the years pile up?

Is cynicism a side-effect of aging?

Now Twain had a lot of reasons to feel depressed and bitter.  His wife, and two of his three daughters, died before he did.  He made fortunes and lost them.  He ran up staggering debt.   In his old age he had to constantly tour the world giving talks so he could honorably pay off his creditors.  Plus he saw a lot of the world that he just didn’t like, and he felt he had good reasons to think humans were a nasty species.  Twain died in 1910, so he never knew the horrors of the 20th century, but the vicious satirical stories he wrote in his later years feel spot on to modern readers.

I would think anyone following the highly polarized politics of the 2012 presidential election would feel depressed about our political system.  I would think anyone studying how humans treat the environment and our fellow creatures would feel gloomy about the Earth.  I would think anyone comparing the growing greed of the rich versus the expanding misery of the poor would feel doomed over the fate of mankind.  It’s hard not to believe that homo sapiens aren’t going to use up every last resource on this planet and never feel guilty.

How can you have faith in Congress when the national debt grows and all they can talk about is tax cuts?  How can feel good about America when one party stonewalls the other for four years in hopes of winning the next election?  When did serving the party become more important than serving the country?

Our current economic calamity is due to a man-made economic catastrophe.  Billions were stolen but no one was ever put on trial.  And the rich are spending billions to get a President in office so they can go back to business as usual.

I can’t help but believe that a perfect storm of national collapse is brewing.  Is the U.S. in decline like the Roman and British empires were long ago?

Here some of the factors:

• Growing economic chaos
• World-wide shift to fundamental religious thinking
• Global warming
• Diseases becoming immune to our medicines
• Population growth
• Dwindling resources
• Relentless pollution
• Accelerating species extinctions
• Uncontrolled debt
• Political polarization
• Aging population
• Growing segment of population that’s not in labor force
• Escalating crime and corruption around the world
• Rising healthcare costs
• Rising food costs

Now, do I dwell on all of that because I’m getting older?  If I was young would I feel that all of those issues were just problems to be easily solved?  I don’t know.  It’s not like I want to walk around with a sandwich sign proclaiming “The End is Near” but I feel like I’m on a fast train and the brakes just went out.  Is that feeling caused by getting older?

How do you know when things are bad or when you’re just feeling bad and think civilization is in decline?

Conversely, when I read about developments in science, technology, medicine, I feel positive and my thoughts about the future are uplifted.  Science is the one constant positive – but most people reject science.  What makes me feel good makes other people feel bad.

When I was young and read about Mark Twain I hoped I’d never become bitter and negative like he did.  Even now I try to stay positive.  But its not easy.  Oh, if I keep busy and ignore the problems I’m as happy as a two-year-old with a box of cookies.  And I tend to think that’s how most folks handles the problem–they eat more cookies.

When I was young, growing up with the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space programs, I assumed we’d have permanent bases on the Moon and Mars by now, and men and women would have explored the entire solar system.  In my teens, I felt before I died engineers would be drawing up plans interstellar spacecraft.  Maybe not manned ones, but at least for interstellar robotic explorers.  I think part of my disappointed about getting old is none of this has happened.

I’ve read enough history to know that the present has always been on the tipping point of chaos.  I should feel confident that we’ll continue to bumble though.  But I’ve also read enough history to know that nations rise and fall, and that all over the globe there are sites where people live who think about their country’s former glory.  We revel is the decline of communism, but who is to say capitalism will last?  Personally, I think free market capitalism will fail under overpopulation.  We have over 12 million people defined as unemployed, but we have over 87 million people not employed, or considered unemployable.  This population is over 16, not in jail or in military service that doesn’t work.  They are retired, mentally or physically can’t work, gave up trying to find work, or won’t work.  Less than half the U.S. population has jobs and they must fund the living expenses for the entire population.  Capitalism isn’t creating enough jobs.  It’s worse in other countries.

And the people who are working and paying taxes want to pay less.  This is at a time when our economy depends on socialism.  The reality is the U.S. has been a socialistic country since the 1930s.  To reject socialism now means condemning tens of millions of poverty.  The growing nostalgia for fundamental religious beliefs and conservative values is no solution at all.  It’s just a plea, “Stop the world I want to get off—why can’t things be the way they used to be?”

Now I’m dwelling on the bad again.  Are my worries just from getting old?  Or do we all have something to be depressed about?

JWH – 7/15/12

Have the Climate Deniers Won the War–Or Just Built the 21st Century Maginot Line?

How often do you see a big documentary on Global Warming on TV now-a-days?  Sure, the nightly news often mentions global warming when it runs stories on hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fires and other extreme weather events, or when it does stories on habitat changes for animals, plants and insects, but you seldom see big documentaries about climate warming anymore.  Nor is climate change a hot political issue for the presidential elections.  Obama hasn’t made it an issue, and when climate change does come up in Congress or State Capitols it’s often by politicians suppressing climate change data or bills, or even writing laws against collecting climate data.

Read these articles to see what I mean:

• Climate-change deniers winning long-term fight
• Climate “Deniers” Winning the War
• Key Components of the Climate Change Denial Machine
• Besieged by Climate Deniers, A Scientist Decides to Fight Back
• The Dirty Dozen of Climate Change Denial
• Climate Cover-Up
• Climategate: What Really Happened?
• The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science
• What Exxon doesn’t want you to know
• Right-Wing Climate Denier Strategizes To Smear Wind Energy
• Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name
• Climate scientists not cowed by relentless climate change deniers
• World Climate Report

Are the climate change deniers and skeptical scientists right?  Do we have nothing to fear from global warming?  Or are they complete deniers of reality and have built a political Maginot Line to convince the American public we’re all safe from the global warming threat?

Many of the reports above are from writers attacking the idea of global warming and climate change.  They consider themselves fighting fear mongers.

Now you can read for yourself the reports about the climate from NOAA – State of the Climate.  This ain’t light reading and you have to concentrate on the data, charts and graphs.  If you search the web you can find reports from other agencies and countries.  On one hand you have the scientists studying the data, and on the other hand people, including some scientists, but mostly right-wing activists who say the data is all wrong, deceptive or incomplete.

Who do you believe?  The folks you want to believe?  Doesn’t that make us all reality deniers?

We spend untold billions on defense because we fear attacks on the United States.  If global warming is the threat scientists say it is, it’s more of a security threat than we’ve ever faced by any war.  We have a long history of going all paranoia over reds, but why greens?  Some people even believe the greens are the new reds.  But the greens are trying to protect America, but the public doesn’t want to believe that.

There is something deeply psychological going on here and I don’t know what it is.

If everyone is sticking their heads in the sand, what do you do?  If the collective says, “Let’s pretend nothing is happening, and it will all go away,” what do you do?

If you look at the climate history charts, the scientists appear to be right, so how long do we keep looking at the data and seeing it relate to reality before everyone with their heads in the sand and their butts in the air start thinking, “Hey, my ass is on fire!”

To tell the truth, I’m starting to wonder if there’s a huge scientific reality to denying.  That’s it’s part of human nature.  That no matter how bad things get, the deniers will keep denying global warming, and finding reasons to think things are okay.  That denying reality is MUCH bigger than science.  That if I read enough history I’d find that the deniers have always won the war on denying.

Or is it simply, to conservatives liberals always have to be wrong, no matter what, and on every subject.

JWH – 7/11/12

Global Warming On Trial–A New Type of Reality Show

Although global warming is well accepted in the scientific world, the concept has been strongly rejected by much of the American public.  Since CSI type television shows are very popular, as well as court and crime dramas, I’ve wondered if this conflict on global warming doesn’t present us with a potentially new type of reality TV show.

Put global warming on public trial.  Let both sides of the argument present witnesses and testimony.  Let the TV viewers be the jury.  It will be hard to develop the show without bias, but if it’s designed right, we might get close to impartiality in the structure of the trial.  The prosecution will be the scientists with the crime being that humanity is causing global warming.  The defense will be all the people who believe humanity is innocent.

To make the show more interesting, it would be appealing to have real trial lawyers working each side of the case, and maybe even a real judge, or judges to preside over procedures.  This would be an expensive show to produce, and it could take months to play out.  To make it more appealing, we should allow the public to vote on the progress in each episode, and to vote on aspects of how the trail is being conducted.

I know the public will vote the way they feel now about the subject – how impartial is Dancing with the Stars?  It will be interesting to see if the numbers change though.  Can people be persuaded by facts?

This could be the trial of the century, and people love those.  Certainly, global warming could be the crime of the century.

If such a show was developed, it could be very popular.  I’m tired of the old reality shows.  Having a more realistic reality show is appealing.  And once this case is over, pick another.

JWH – 7/7/12

Clear Explanation of Fast and Furious Scandal

I highly recommend watching this video – it’s enlightening on so many levels.

By the way, I’m all for gun ownership.  Maybe if all us liberals joined the NRA they’d feel less paranoid.  Obama has done nothing about control and that’s caused immense fear in the NRA community.  Fear drives people to desperate thinking and this video explains how.  Maybe Obama should join the NRA.

I’ve been hearing about the Fast and Furious scandal in the national news and wondered what the hell was going on.  This video makes everything clear.

Thanks to Bill at That’s interesting… for the link.

JWH – 6/23/12

How Would Life on Earth Be Different if Everyone Was an Atheist?

Belief in God and an afterlife affects how people see reality.  What if one day we all woke up without any superstitious beliefs in the metaphysical?  What if science caught on and everyone began thinking in the same way about how reality works – would that change the social fabric of Earth?  Does religion help or hurt when it comes to doing good?

Think about what John Lennon suggested in his song “Imagine”

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace

You, you may say
I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world

If religion and metaphysical ideas disappeared would we come together as one?  I doubt it, but I think we could start working on the real problems we face.  I can’t help but believe that if people didn’t think a better life awaits them after death they would take this world more seriously.

I think religious divides us, but I think something else divides us more:  politics.  But politics are just the outward manifestation of our inner beliefs which are tangled up in religious beliefs.  The litmus test for that division is how we treat the poor.

Some people hate giving to the poor.  They feel the poor should work.  They feel the poor are undeserving of charity.  Welfare makes their heads explode with anger.  Paying taxes for public schools galls them no end.  Foreign aid and food stamps just annoy the hell out them.  Their resentment knows no bounds when it comes to paying taxes.

Other people want to divvy up the wealth and make life on Earth decent for all.

What’s strange the first group tend to be Christians and the second tend to be secular or spiritual rather than religious.  To the first group, socialism is a dirty word, even though their God was known for dividing the fishes and loaves so everyone could eat.

So, I’m not sure if religion disappeared life on Earth would be any different.

We are going through transformative times.  Communism failed.  But capitalism cannot provide enough jobs for all.  There will always be a certain percentage of the population that are idle.  We have incorporated many socialistic solutions into our economy, and many people hate that.  If we revert to a complete free market, where it’s dog eat dog capitalism, we will have a world where the rich lived in armed enclaves and the rest struggle to survive in a cruel uncontrolled Darwinian conflict.  The early Christians saw Jesus’ teachings as a solution to this problem, but modern Christians have moved away from those socialistic beliefs.

I tend to wonder if modern Christians haven’t jettison all the Christian philosophy and just hung onto the belief of heaven.  They want to be rich on Earth, and rich in Heaven.  If these people turned atheists one night I doubt anything about the world would change.

Religion is a distraction like watching TV.  Believing in vampires or angels, it doesn’t matter, it’s all fiction.  To get the world that John Lennon imagined doesn’t come from giving up religion.  What we need is for everyone to stop thinking about themselves and resenting others. 

The real solution is to think global but act locally.  We have to solve the problem of creating a healthy Earth, and how to create an economy that provides the basics of a decent life for all seven billion people that live on Earth.  Our problem is the 10% want everything for themselves and expect the 90% to go fuck themselves.  As far as I can see religion is irrelevant to this problem.

Like I said, we’re going through a transformative age that people in the future will name and analyze.  Will the Earth survive?  The rich want to ignore that issue.  They want to get as much as they can for  themselves.  They do not care what happens to the Earth.  They do not care what happens to future generations.  They do not care about the rest of the people living on the Earth now.

Humans are a cancer consuming this world.  Unless we get our greed under control we will consume everything, including ourselves.

To answer my title question:  Unless becoming atheist means becoming liberal and socialist, the disappearance of religion would mean nothing to life on Earth.  The real issues to how we live on Earth lies elsewhere.  I don’t think greed is a belief.  It’s genetic, conditioned and animalistic.  Religion neither helps nor hurts in solving greed.

I think people who want to help the world do so because they just want to help the world.  But those people aren’t enough.  Unless the greedy are brought under control, and we’re all greedy, we can’t save ourselves.  Christians want to be saved, but the plight of the Earth is another kind of salvation.  Unless we’re all saved, then we’re all lost.   Whether a God is watching us or not, it does not matter, because we can only save ourselves.

JWH – 5/16/12

What Republicans Don’t Know About Obamacare

Conservatives are running like a pack of wolves to pull down and kill Obamacare, while they dream of killing Medicare afterwards.  What they don’t recognize is killing Obamacare will promote socialized medicine, not kill it.  Obamacare was designed with Republicans in mind.  It’s the free market solution to universal healthcare.  When Republicans get their way and Obamacare is destroyed, the only solution left will be socialized medicine, and Medicare will become the model.

Most of the world has moved to universal healthcare, Americans are just slow to see that.  It’s an idea that it’s time has already come, we don’t see it because we cling to outdated notions about capitalism.  Wake up and smell the roses, capitalism is constantly evolving and it’s incorporated aspects of socialism to be more efficient.  Sooner or later as universal healthcare becomes a success in all but the poorest countries, Americans will realize they have been left behind.

Obama and the Democrats designed the healthcare system we call Obamacare based on private insurance to appease the conservatives.  Obamacare is the experiment to prove free market capitalism can do the job when it comes to universal healthcare.  Killing Obamacare means killing the belief that there is a non-socialized solution.  That’s okay by me, I never liked that idea, I always thought Medicare was a better model.

What’s going to happen is conservatives are going to kill off Obamacare and we’ll be forced to expand the scope of Medicare to cover the poor and uninsured.  Most people with jobs will stay with private insurance – for a couple decades.  Over time more and more private businesses will stop providing health insurance as more and more of the population will shift into a Medicare type system.

Sooner and later Americans will wake up and realize the rest of the world has a better solution.  Obamacare was the Republican solution, they just don’t remember it.

JWH – 3/29/12

Should We Preach Science to the Faithful?

Now there are two ways to interpret my question:  Should we preach science to the faithful?  First, the religious right in America already believe atheists are trying to convert them through liberal education, so the question becomes:  Should we not teach science to protect people’s faith?  The second way to look at that question is to assume the faithful have a war on science which turns the question into:  Should we teach science so everyone will understand that faith is fantasy?

Evangelical America already knows secular American has declared war on them.  Liberals say, “Oh no, not us,” but I think they are avoiding the issue.  Most liberals are not atheists, or even agnostics, and cling to bits of religion, mysticism and theism.  They want to be modern, educated and embrace science, but deep down they want God and heaven to exist.  They want everything science can give them, like brain surgery, GPS, television,  computers, cell phones, antibiotics, and so on, but they don’t want to let go of God.  The conservative religious right have always known deep down that science invalidates religion.  That’s why they want to do away with The Department of Education, change goals for higher education and rewrite K-12 textbooks.

For decades liberals have embraced the idea that all we need to do is embrace the separation of church and state and the religious will be protected and the liberals can keep science and education.  They see this as fair, ethical, legal and most of all high minded.  Sadly, this is completely clueless as to what the faithful want.  They want America to be a Christian nation.  Liberals have no idea what this means, or what it implies.

It would be fantastic if religion was a personal belief that was never political and always personal, but that’s not the case.  For decades the religious have wanted to take over politics to get what they want.  They are pushing their agenda so I’m asking should liberals push back?  Of course, the faithful will claim we’ve been pushing them for decades and they are only defending themselves.  It’s a complicated issue.

Nevertheless, we have to ask:  How hard should we teach science, skeptical thinking, and evidence based reasoning?  Essentially, the faithful are saying, “God says things are like this…” and we’re saying “There’s no God, but science tells us this….”  As much as some people want to believe that God and Science can coexist that’s just not true.  Early humans embraced metaphysical fantasies long ago and it’s taken millennia for some people to break out of those fantasies.  Our choice is accept the fantasies or accept the truth about reality – there is no sitting on the fence.

I’ve never liked proselytizing.   I’ve always thought the idea of missionaries traveling to other cultures to convert those people away from their own religion as offensive.  I’ve always been a skeptic, an unbeliever, an atheist, and I’ve never wanted to go convert the faithful to my way of thinking – until now.  What’s the harm in letting people believe in God, or believing they will go to heaven and meet all their old relatives and friends.  It’s a wonderful dream to dream.  What harm could there be in leaving people alone to believe in religion and all the things religion promises them?

But the Republicans are forcing me to make a choice.  They have made their religious goals political.  They have put education and science in their gun sights.  They have essentially made the two political parties Democrats=Science and Republicans=Religion.

I use to believe it was important to let people believe whatever they wanted until I realized the faithful had begun an anti-Education campaign.  Conservatives believe liberals are pushing education as a way of destroying their religious beliefs.  Many liberals disagree with this, and even I don’t think it’s a conscious agenda, but I do think a good education tends to dispel religious beliefs.  It’s natural for the faithful to fear higher education and to want to control the K-12 curriculum.  I think liberals are being disingenuous not to recognize that a good education does erode religious belief.

But I think the faithful and conservatives need to realize that attacking the Department of Education, Higher Education, and the money we spend on K-12 schools is equal to the idea of liberals wanting to do away with Churches.  The educational system is essentially the secular church of liberal beliefs.  Now fundamentalists know this and that’s why they are attacking the educational system.  Liberals have their heads in the sand if they don’t see this.  Atheists believe in science and education, it’s not a religion, but it a belief system.

I know conservatives can’t understand this, but liberals and most atheists are very big believers in the freedom of religion, and they don’t want to challenge religious thinking directly, and especially not politically.  But conservatives don’t see that, and they have decided to attack the educational system.

The faithful feel its their duty to spread the word of their faith and to attack evil where they see it.  Of course, Muslims and Mormons believe this too, and they are growing faster than Christianity.   All the aggressive faiths are in a battle for the hearts and minds of the people of Earth.  My question is:  Should atheists, skeptics, free thinkers, and other non-believers get in on the action by converting new recruits?  Among the religious the war for souls is really a battle for who describes God best.  Even though most Christians and Muslims hate each other, they do share the concept of God. 

If atheists become missionaries for science, it will become a battle for God versus Science, and that could lead all religions to band together, and they’d have a big majority.  Lucky for believers in science the faithful don’t get along.  However, does that mean we need to make scientific converts to win the battle for scientific thinking?

When you think about it though, isn’t that what’s already happened around the world?  Fundamentalism is pushing back against the secular all across the globe, in a disunited front?  I think the recent rise of atheism is a retaliation to that movement.  Maybe it’s time we all put our cards on the table and be honest.  There are many Christians out there that want America to be a Christian theocracy.  I think they are jealous of Islam innate relationship with politics.  I want politics that’s based on reality and science.

On the surface Republican politics appears to be about reducing taxes, especially for the rich.  And the rich members of the party see reducing the size of the Federal government as the best method to this goal.  Below the surface are the religious members of the Republicans, and they’ve latched on to making a smaller Federal government as their method to undermine liberal education.   The reason all candidates fall all over themselves claiming to be the one true conservative and the reason why they fear being called a moderate is because they are united in in their goals even though they want to achieve different outcomes.

For 2012, the question becomes:  Are there enough pro small government voters to elect a small government president?  Conservative politicians think they represent the majority of Americans but I can’t believe that.  We’ll find out in November.  Who are you going to vote for – the Party of God or the Party of Science?

JWH – 3/11/12