I carefully step in to the tank, one foot after the other, into the super thick and unusually slippery water. Once the lid is closed, I’m immersed in complete darkness. As I lay back, my body is forced upward, floating on the surface of the water. I’ve done this a few times now and my […]
I’m continually surprised that many people do not understand what I mean when I say that Medicare spending at the federal level is growing at an exponential rate. I recently discussed this issue through Twitter with Jeffery Sachs, a Harvard Ph.D. and long time advisor to the United Nations, and even he didn’t see that […]
In 2012, I created this chart, which mapped out US federal government spending on healthcare from 1960 to the Congressional Budget Office’s projections up to 2022, which was the most recent data they had available at the time. For a while now, I’ve wanted to update that chart to address some criticisms people had. First, […]
Normally, I prefer not to comment on the traditional political discourse, mostly because these days, politicians are all the same. The two parties ultimately serve the same “Washington Consensus,” that is, corporate interests who in turn control the money power. Political personalities like Obama and Romney only look radically different because they argue very intensely […]
Indeed it is and it will take with it any sucker foolish enough to enter the industry. Like the housing bubble and the dot-com boom, its collapse goes against all conventional and establishment thinking, but it’s an easy call to make if you examine the evidence. At first, the industry looks healthy, robust and likely […]
If there is any one word that will define the next 5 years, I would argue that it is “sustainability” or more specifically, “unsustainability.” We are going to be repeatedly forced into discussing this because like it or not, much of what we do is unsustainable. Our society is in denial. We look at big […]
The Wall Street Journal has produced a series of charts to explain the president’s 2013 budget. It shows the usual information we’ve come to expect from government reports, yet another year of deficits, most of it going to entitlements and little evidence indicating the budgetary situation is likely to improve anytime soon. However, even that simplistic view […]
Most Americans have no idea how perilous the times we live in have become. They know the economy is in bad shape. They know the yearly deficits are significant. Americans are war-weary even though they have been largely shielded from the consequences of a decade of constant war and broken promises. The more perceptive critics […]
Many of us on the internet have written about how growth is dead and that the GDP growth we are now experiencing (minor as it is) is due to massive deficit spending at a rate of about $1.6 trillion per year. Once you sit down and do the math, the unsustainability of almost our entire […]
