Monday, August 19, 2019

The cause of the Northern Triangle problem

Most migrants coming today are from the northern triangle. They are El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Now I'm going to read their history to explain why they cant fix their countries like the Republicans keep saying that they need to do. Here is a brief history of these countries

el Salvador in the 1980s had the juntas that were trained and supported by America. This led to a 12
year civil war. These junta during this war committed massacres and war crimes. These are the
people that were trained and supported by the USA doing these terrible things. After the war they had the peace treaty were they disbanded the police because they were part of the terrible crimes. So while they were rebuilding their government and police force, the USA sent the gang known as MS-13 to el Salvador. This gang was created in the USA not El Salvador. The gang quickly got a good hold of the country but it wasn't until they met Ernesto Deras that they became a true threat. Ernesto Deras also known as Satan was a trained veteran that was by the US. He turn these simple gang to a transnational threat that is heavily militarized.

Honduras in the 1914 US banana company owned a million acres. 1920 they owned all the good land and Hondurans had to work under them. The government was annoyed and wanted to do something about it. So the US government started to interfere into their government either politically or with the military led to the only thing truly standing by the 1960s was the military in Honduras. The military was political institution standing in the country. By the 80s we had full control of the country. We then militarized the country to deal with the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Which was another country we destroyed. This led to tyranny were certain political leaders were assassinated or disappeared. in 2006 Honduras finally got someone that was going to fix the country. but after 3 years the USA supported a coup that overthrew the government. since then the tyranny came back, 2/3 of the people live in poverty, and ms-13 and Barrio 18 which is modeled after ms-13 took hold of the country

Guatemala in the 1900s had the united fruit company run the company. They controlled everything and had the government as a puppet. So guatemalians decide to fix their country so they overthrow the government. The USA sends troops and threaten to overthrow the government if they don't do what they say to this new government. Telling them to be exactly like the last government. in 1931 a dictator takes control and tells the landowners that were supplying the bananna for the country to punish their employees however they want. This included murder and rape. in 1944 They overthrew the government and had a panel to run the country until 1950s where they had free elections. Finally fixing their country until 4 years later when the CIA overthrew the government triggering 40 years of civil war. in this time period the Maya Genocide also known as the silent Holocaust happened. This was when the government killed 42000 plus maya civilians. The government created by the USA. This mess led to giant poverty and gangs ruling the country, and tyranny.

This happened to most of central America and alot of south America by the way im just talking about these country in specific.

Thursday, August 15, 2019

Life in Denmark vs USA

To make this simple we are going to be following two imaginary girls life. Jane lives in Denmark while Sarah lives in the USA

Jane family pays more in taxes but gets a lot of social programs for it. Sarah family pays less taxes but they also pay for all out these programs out of pocket for a lot more.

Jane has access to high quality preschool for at most 25% of the cost or if they don't make enough then free. Sarah family if they make to much to get Sarah into a head start program then they have to pay for a daycare or leave Sarah with family. Daycare could cost up to 22 thousand a year making it that one of Sarah parents probably would have to take a second job

Jane family would also get $225 per month until Jane turn 7 and $140 per month until she turns 17. This is to everyone no matter income in the hope of helping cover the cost of having children.

Sarah has to maybe move to get into a better public school because some schools in low income or rural school don't get funded completely so don't perform well. Jane doesn't have that problem all of Denmark public schools are funded completely so they are all world class school.

They both go to college. Jane gets free college and a thousand dollars a month for living expenses. Sarah has to take out loans to go to school. The average amount of debt being 38,000 dollars. so Jane goes into the work force with no debt and Sarah with 38k of debt.

They both go into the workforce afterwards. If Sarah is lucky she get 2 weeks of vacation but doesn't necessary as the United states doesn't have any laws mandating it. Jane gets 5 weeks of paid vacation and probably gets a 6th week as many in Denmark get around Christmas plus the 9 federal holidays making Jane get 7 paid weeks of vacation.


Jane will probably make more dollars per hour and work less then Sarah. Sarah will probably work a hour and 15 min for every hour Jane will work just to make the same income. Jane will gets about and a hour and a half more to enjoy herself after work then Sarah does.

If Sarah loses her job she will be entitled to unemployment that pays half what she earned up to 6 months. Jane loses her job and she is entitled to 90% of her income for up to 2 years. And the government will help Jane find a new job and train her if she needs new skills for a job.

If Jane gets injured then she has access to healthcare as Denmark covers everyone. If Sarah gets injured there is probably a giant deductible or copay. Denmark covers everyone with better quality and efficiency than the United states according to world health organization. They also cover everyone unlike the USA who has about 28 million. Denmark also pays for half per person than the USA. Denmark also had private insurance before but had almost 40% of the country was uninsured until they transition to a single payer system.

Jane and Sarah will eventually have a kid. Sarah will probably pay $5000 out of pocket with Jane paying 0. Sarah has no guarantee to paid family leave and if she takes unpaid leave there is no guarantee that her job is their when she comes back.

Jane and her husband will get a full year of paid leave that they get divide between the two of them. Jane will probably have a union contract that allows her to full salary during that time if not the government will pay 600 per week in that time.

Sarah will probably work two more years than Jane before retiring. Jane will make 2/3 what she made before retiring while Sarah will make less than half through social security.




Monday, July 29, 2019

Why a Mix of Keynesian Economics and Middle Out Economics is Needed

Definitions
Laissez Faire Capitalism: also known as pure capitalism; the market run themselves with no government intervention. Economic system used in the USA until the Great Depression

Supply Side Economics: USA current economic system brought by former President Reagan and the republican party in the 1980s. Idea is that you cut taxes and regulations on the rich and the corporations and it will grow the economy. We also cut government intervention allowing for the market to run itself with little intervention.

Keynesian Economics: System were the government intervenes into the economy. The point to fill in the area that the private market fails.

Middle out Economics: System is were the government intervenes into the economy specifically by investing into the middle class through multiple of ways like investing into public work programs, education, healthcare, housing.


This graph shows that starting the 80s the rich wage that grow at the same rate as the rest of America skyrockets. This is because of the disaster economic theory of Reaganomics or Supply Side economics. This grew a mistrust for the government. It tried to create a Laissez Faire capitalism system at least as close as it could. But instead of generating economic growth it generated stagnant wage for the 99% that has barely kept with inflation.
 Before wages kept up with productivity but wages has kept stagnant while productivity has skyrocketed. Instead while growth has happened it has gone to the one percent while the 99% percent barely kept up with inflation. So while workers deserved better wages since they were more productive instead the wages went to the one percent. It did not go to immigrants like republicans would want you to believe.
 The rich have concentrated the same amount of wealth right before the 2008 Great Recession as they did right before the Great Depression. Income inequality has skyrocket. While the 99% has struggled to succeed the 1% wealth has skyrocketed.
 This graph shows how the wealth of three American men have so much wealth than they have more wealth than the bottom half of this country. That is a tremendous showing of income inequality that 3 men have more money than about 165 million people. The one percent has stolen all the wealth from the American worker.
This one showing of exactly that. While the wages of the American worker has been stagnant the CEO's wage have grown drastically while under supply side economics
This graph shows that the share of the wealth of the bottom 90% has decreased while the top 5% wealth has increased.

The economy isn't as great as our president would like you to think. First 70% of our population lives paycheck to paycheck. That's 230 million people. 230 million people that make barely enough to live. Not increase consumer spending by buying anything. They go to work and buy just what is necessary for their homes. a large percentage working multiple jobs to survive. If a 500 dollar emergency happened they wouldn't know what to do. They have multiple people working in the homes with some having two or three jobs. This not a good economy for those workers.

 There is 45 million people with student debt of a combined total of 1.6 trillion dollars. They can't buy homes or cars. These are people who did everything they were supposed to. They went to school for a career and now they graduated some with so much debt that they can't do what they are supposed to do like buy a home or a car. They can't follow their dreams because the debt is so much. This a growing problem that wont allow the next generation participate in the economy.

People work more hours, more jobs,and don't get vacation. It takes longer to buy a home. Some are literally are blocked out of the economy because of debt. This is not a sign of a good economy.

This is what happens under supply side economics. The rich get all the wealth while the middle and lower class get nothing. They instead get a economy that doesn't work for them. Corporations have killed the small businesses. If you were to go drive through America in the 70s you would see a bunch of small businesses. If you drive today you see a few small businesses but mostly the same stores and restaurants. This is because after we cut taxes on businesses and we cut regulations we allowed for monopolies to grow. If we look today there is entire industries that are controlled by monopolies. Their is usually 2 to 5 companies controlling the entire industry. They usually control certain regions of the country and don't compete with each other. They grew in a period of low regulations and taxes. When there was a period of high regulations and taxes small businesses and competition flourished. Today there is no competition in certain industries allowing these companies to charge whatever they want.

If you were to travel to the 1920 the concentration of wealth made the economy unstable. It made it that a large of people lived in poverty. Up to 60% of people lived in poverty. Not everyone enjoyed from the economic uprising of the peacetime of the Roaring 20s. Not only did people not enjoy from this uprising the economy was extremely unstable. Eventually this came crashing down in the Great Depression. While this was all happening the economy leading up to the 20s had monopolies of certain industries. The most famous being John D. Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Company. The only reason there wasn't more was because of government intervention in antitrust laws under some of the presidents before. Other than that the county had a Laissez-Faire capitalist country. No government intervention at all. The market ran it itself. Under this pure Capitalism system the market created monopolies, large inequality, large amount of poverty, and a unstable economy that eventually collapse in what we know as the Great Depression. See the problem is that Laissez Faire capitalism and to not the same extent but pretty close Supply Side economics is extremely unstable.

So Pure Capitalism and Supply Side Economics causes

  1. Monopolies
  2. Large amount of inequality
  3. Large amount of poverty
  4. Unstable economy that collapses


While this is all in the idea that these low taxes would create jobs. This isn't necessary true. During Reagan the master of this economic system he created 16.5 million jobs. Bush after cutting taxes created 5.8 million jobs. While Bill Clinton after raising taxes and investing in the American people through things like education created 18.6 million jobs without the side effects.

If we look at Keynesian Economics in the from the 30s to 70s few things change. One during the Great Depression the government would create social programs to help the American people like social security. They also created different public work programs that gave a ton of unemployed Americans during the Great Depression. The government become the largest employer during this time. This is after Herbert Hoover didn't intervene in the economy and things just got worse. So FDR had to intervene to help Americans out of this crisis because the market wasn't fixing itself after it crashed. This continued with the government giving relief until world war 2 where the economy mobilized every resource possible into the war effort. This got the USA out of the Depression but not of the Keynesian Economics. The USA had the GI Bill where it gave the veterans free college, access to affordable housing and medical care. This program invested in our workers creating the greatest middle class the world has ever seen. To pay for everything they taxed the rich every high even up to 94%.

Through the 50s, 60s and the 70s standard of living was better because of this economic system. With one person working they could afford a home, a car, a vacation, healthcare, to pay for their kids college, and even retire with a pension. Wages rose as productivity rose. Income inequality was nowhere near as bad. The economy wasn't as unstable. People could live off a high school degree. Things were better overall.

Small businesses flourish and there was no monopolies. Businesses because of the high taxes would invest into their own companies allowing them to grow instead of taking home the profits. Companies because of antitrust laws never were allowed to turn to monopolies. They were forced to compete against each other and invest into itself to allow for it to actually grow. This created a economy that worked for everyone.

They had public work projects like the interstate highway system. This infrastructure bill gave 5 dollars into the economy for every dollar it gave back while creating jobs. LBJ great society program creating many different social programs like medicaid and medicare.

If we invest in our middle class they have more money which they spend. This creates more demand that makes companies expand to meet the demand because they have no reason to expand under the current system. This creates more jobs. This is especially important since our economy is 70% consumer spending. If we invested in things like infrastructure it would create jobs that would give Americans more money to spend increasing the demand.

For this system to work now we would today we would invest into a large public work projects to create more jobs. This would give more money to spend increasing demand. We would also invest in education and allow for more access to college through things like free college. Invest into cheaper healthcare so Americans have access to cheaper healthcare through things like subsidies and Medicare For All. We need increase the wages through things like increasing the minimum wages especially for bigger companies. We would need to invest into cheaper housing. We would need to have tougher antitrust laws to break up monopolies that we have now. We need to expand our social safety net. We need trade deals that help the American worker not the corporations.

A country that does this to some extent is Denmark. In Denmark the people have free healthcare. They have free college and get payed 1000 dollars a month to pay for living expenses. They get help finding a job if they lose theirs. They get world class education. They have real vacation time of a entire month. They have paid parental leave for both parents. They have a social safety net that actually helps there civilians. They are known as one of the happiest countries in the world.

Saturday, July 20, 2019

Green New Deal part 2: Cost Debunked

First this is the second part of the Green New Deal of three parts. I cannot do the Green New Deal benefits until I do the benefits without doing a video explaining Keynesian economics, middle out economics, and some historic aspects. Since I'm doing a debate the video will have to wait. So this will be a blog breaking down and debunking the figure of 93 trillion dollars.

First I'm going to quickly say where the figure comes from. The number comes from the American Action Forum, a self-described “center-right policy institute.” The report  says the cost would be 51 trillion to 93 trillion. Republicans have taken the figure of 93 trillion and says it over and over even though the American Action Forum that they shouldn't just take that figure. The figure is kinda extreme and isn't explained very well.

Also many economist have pointed out the fact that the Green New Deal is a set of ambitions which at the moment has no real plan. There is no real way of even giving estimates. They can give ballpark concepts but even then you should take it with a grain of salt. here are what a few experts says about the cost of the GND.

“I’d say that it is *way* too early to even pretend to put cost estimates on the ‘Green New Deal.’ It’s at this point a still-amorphous construct,” said Josh Bivens, director of research at the labor-funded Economic Policy Institute, in an email to FactCheck.org.
Noah Kaufman, a research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, agreed. When asked what one can say about how much the Green New Deal would cost, he said, “basically nothing.”
The Green New Deal, he said, is a set of ambitions, not policies, and how much things cost will depend on what the policies are.
“You can’t use policy analysis if you don’t have policy,” said Kaufman, who previously served as President Barack Obama’s deputy associate director of energy and climate change. “It just seems definitely premature and a little misleading to try to claim we know how much.”
Here are the figure the report comes out with


So first on the Low carbon Electricity Grid estimate comes out as 5.4 trillion. Now this is a high estimate as some other estimates have said between 1 and 2 trillion. Now this is trying to add that wind and solar power are becoming cheaper and more efficient but this should also be taken with a grain of salt. While figures change from over 1 trillion to 5.4 trillion dollars.

Now Net Zero Emissions Transportation System says it would cost 1.3 trillion to 2.7 trillion dollars and this unlike the other figure has literally no vision. While the low carbon Electricity Grid has a good idea what it would look like, The transportation system has so many ways of changing that there is no way of actually showing the cost of this system. We know that there would be more electric vehicles and more electric public transportation but no idea to what extent and what city would have public transportation. 

On the federal job guarantee it says it would cause 6.8 to 44.6 trillion. I would like to point out the fact that this number of 44.6 trillion is a exaggerated number. To show you the exaggeration here is  some math. 44.6 trillion divided by 47,000 (average salary) divided by 10 the years according to this report equals 95 million people. There is about 160 million people in our workforce. The Green New Deal is not calling for more of our workforce to be employed by the federal government. It calls for those who are unemployed and need a job you can get one. There is about 6000 people unemployed people right now and about 160 thousand in oil and gas. That's about 166 thousand times 47000 equals about 7.8 trillion. There is no way of actually knowing how many people would get a job actually. Of Course take it with a grain of salt.

They say Universal Healthcare would cost 36 trillion. So if you look at that cost and add it to our government spending according to multiple right wing think tank this would cost our government 57.6 trillion over ten years. While over ten years our current system would cost us 59. 6 trillion. This would save us 2 trillion dollars. Now if you remember that all every other countries single payer systems eventually cost half what we spend. Eventually we would see that our health spending would be close to 30 trillion compared to 59.6 trillion. adding those savings would put the cost down to 13 trillion to 55 trillion. This is the only part of the cost that the estimates can actually be taken and trusted more closely but of course not 100% exact. 

They say the cost of transitioning every building to new green tech and standards would be 1.6 to 4.2 trillion dollars. Of course take it with a grain of salt especially no one knows what these green tech and standards actually are.

They say that food security would cost 1.5 billion dollars. There is no actual definition what food security means. So take it with a grain of salt.

So these numbers adding with the savings of universal healthcare would be 13 to 55 trillion dollars. If you dont exaggerate the cost of jobs guarantee and make it 7.8 trillion like that quick estimate and over estimate everything else the 55 trillion would turn to 18.2 trillion. So 13 to 18.2 trillion of course there should be taken with a grain of salt. All of this should be taken by grain of salt.


Wednesday, July 10, 2019

Medicare For All Explained

Medicare for All is a bill that would create a single payer system created and made famous by Bernie Sanders. The bill would expand Medicare to include vision and dental. Then through a four year transition period expand to include every American. While Representative Pramila Jayapal's bill does it in two years. This would essentially create government run insurance for all Americans. This would give 28 million Americans that don't have health insurance. We would meet every other rich developed country. They all got a single payer system and for good reasons.

The bill would make that no American would have to pay out of pocket for doctor visit. The bill would not pay for brand name prescription drugs but would for generic drugs. But even with prescription drugs you would not be charged more than $200 a year. It would make it illegal for insurance companies or employers to duplicate the coverage of the bill. In theory abolishing private insurance companies as they will become useless at this point. It would keep hospitals and doctors private but make insurance public. Private insurance would still exist for elective surgery like plastic surgery as Medicare would everything except elective surgery.

Here is some of what Medicare for all would cover

· Hospital Services, including patient and outpatient hospital services, 24 hour emergency services and inpatient prescription drugs
· Ambulatory patient services
· Primary and preventative services, including chronic disease management 
· Prescription drugs, medical devices, biological products including outpatient prescription drugs
· Mental Health and substance health abuse treatment including inpatient care
· Laboratory and diagnostic services
· Comprehensive reproductive, maternity, and newborn care
· Oral health, audiology, and vision services
 The bill also would allow for the secretary of health to look through to the benefit package and change it if there has been a change in medical treatment, new medical improvement or device, etc. In theory to make the single payer system more effective if new medical practice is found and adopted.

The bill would be payed for by a list of options

· Creating a 4 percent income-based premium paid by employees, exempting the first $29,000 in income for a family of four
· Imposing a 7.5 percent income-based premium paid by employers, exempting the first $2 million in payroll
· Eliminating health tax expenditures
· Making the federal income tax more progressive, including a marginal tax rate of up to 70 percent on those making above $10 million
· Making the estate tax more progressive, including a 77 percent top rate on an inheritance above $1 billion
· Establishing a tax on extreme wealth
· Closing a tax loophole that allows self-employed people to avoid paying certain taxes by creating an S corporation
· Imposing a fee on large financial institution
· Repealing corporate accounting gimmicks
Polling show that 70% of Americans support Medicare for all. Multitude of studies have found that America is being beat by performance of our healthcare system by single payer systems across the world. Medicare for all would save money. Mercatus, a libertarian think tank funded by the Koch Brothers shows it would save the USA at least 2 trillion dollars over 10 years. You cant get any more biased then that and it still proved that it would save the USA 2 trillion dollars. The University of Massachusetts PERI says that it would save 5 trillion. Friedman would say it would save 11.5 trillion. The USA spends twice as much on healthcare on person than other countries with single payer system.
Cost of Healthcare per Capital



With a single payer system we can eventually cut the cost of our healthcare cost with more benefits. The USA is actually falling behind  in our healthcare results. If we look just in life expectancy compared to some of the countries that have single payer systems.

Japan: 84.118
Switzerland83.706
Australia: 83.314
France: 82.946
Sweden: 82.864
Canada: 82,782
Netherlands: 82.218
Austria:82.036
United Kingdom: 81.932
Belgium: 81.558
Germany: 81.436
Denmark: 81.066
USA: 79.772

According to the World Health Organization The USA ranks 37th in overall quality and efficiency of our healthcare system.

1 France
2 Italy
3 San Marino
4 Andorra
5 Malta
6 Singapore
7 Spain
8 Oman
9 Austria
10 Japan
11 Norway
12 Portugal
13 Monaco
14 Greece
15 Iceland
16 Luxembourg
17 Netherlands
18 United Kingdom
19 Ireland
20 Switzerland
21 Belgium
22 Colombia
23 Sweden
24 Cyprus
25 Germany
26 Saudi Arabia
27 United Arab Emirates
28 Israel
29 Morocco
30 Canada
31 Finland
32 Australia
33 Chile
34 Denmark
35 Dominica
36 Costa Rica
37 USA

Finally the USA has the highest amount of avoidable death. This is especially true since we pay more for drugs than other similar countries. So we have people dying because they can't afford to pay for their medication and sometimes to visit the doctor.

Bernie even claims that families would pay less. Here is one of the claim


Medicare would even save businesses money with change in healthcare prices depending on the size of the company
This is the change of healthcare spending for businesses.
· Small businesses (0-9 employees): –36.1% (decrease)
· Medium-sized businesses (10-19 employees): –10.5% (decrease)
· Medium-sized businesses (20-99 employees): –7.6% (decrease)
· Large businesses (100-499 employees): –9.8% (decrease)
· Large businesses (500+ employees): +5.7% (increase) = only +0.1% of gross receipts

In the end
1. Medicare-for-All Single-Payer provides more options: A single-payer system like Medicare-for-All will increase people’s options of doctors, hospitals, and treatments  regardless of where they work or their income level.
2. Medicare-for-All Single-Payer is better for the economy: The country overall will spend less on healthcare. Families will save thousands of dollars compared to what they currently spend on healthcare. Patients will have no additional out-of-pocket expenses (ex: deductible, co-pays) for a robust array of benefits.
3. Medicare-for-All Single-Payer is better for the public and private sector: Private and public hospitals and healthcare professionals will save money and focus more on their patients because they will be free from the bureaucracy and burnout that comes from dealing with multiple insurance payers..
4. Medicare-for-All Single-Payer is better for business: Businesses will save money because they will no longer have the burden of providing healthcare for their employees. And workers will no longer have a gap in coverage when they switch jobs.