He got fired for repeatedly publishing opinion on the Huffington Post. His blog was part of the problem, but the firing offense was publishing opinion _regularly_ at the HP. The handbook said that he could not write for non-approved outlets - and the HP is definitely an outlet.
Large hardware makers have consolidated like crazy, been spun off/sold, and/or gone out of business because the margins in computer hardware manufacturing are notoriously thin. Now Venezuela comes in offering computers for 75% (not 60% as Chavez innumerately claims) of the cost of the big manufacturers. What gives?
Frankly, they're not really "cheaper" so much as they're just subsidised. If I lived in Venezuela, I'd rather have press freedom, foreign investment, affordable food (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti cle/2007/02/08/AR2007020801240.html), and more expensive computers than propoganda, state-owned industry, price controls, and cheap computers.
I'm all in favor of FOSS and cheap hardware, but anyone who can't see through this guy's cynical bullshit is blind, stupid, or willfully ignorant.
First, if your building your own computer, chances are good you're not running to tech support every time something goes wrong. So the tech support issue is a red-herring for the home-built crowd.
Second, it's not like you just turn on the Dell and run. Dells come pre-loaded with a bunch of crap that consumes too many of the limited resources available to a low-end PC from the first boot. To remedy this takes a lot of time. I daresay as much time as it takes to throw together the parts for a basic PC.
Third, you are seriously misinformed about the OEM = no warranty issue. Your assertion is just not true. I've personally received excellent warranty support on several OEM components purchased through Newegg. I've heard that that Windows is unsupported by Microsoft when purchased with an OEM license, but I don't know the facts on that and I've never personally called MS technical support.
Finally, notice that $95 of this $362 machine from Newegg is a license for an OEM (unsupported) version of MS Windows Vista HOME BASIC?! With Dell, that cost is bundled in automatically. You can't remove it a la carte. You can only get it refunded by prostrating yourself in public while chanting "please, please, please." Building your own, you just don't buy windows and you save 26% on the purchase price (making it a full $122 less than the Dell).
If Ubuntu is a strong competitor to Windows (and I've found it that), there is substantial savings to be had for those interested in building their own computer to run linux vs. buying from Dell or any other mainstream manufacturer to run linux. Which is how this whole discussion got started anyway.
Perhaps when human beings no longer compete for scarce resources (e.g. mates, food, energy, water, land, etc.) we will be beyond war and conflict. Until then (i.e. for all eternity), we should prepare for the worst and work for the best. Attitude has relatively little to do with it.
Yeah, you were only off by at least 33%. Close enough, right? What's a hundred thousand dollars...give or take? Additionally, the chart does not specify whether the middle column is median or mean, so you can't say it's the median and I strongly suspect that it is a mean. There are many other similar surveys out there, and this one has the highest reported salaries I've seen. Color me skeptical. Also, the chart gives no perspective on how many physicians there are in each category. There are a helluva lot more pediatricians than there are cardiovascular surgeons and a lot more general practitioners than there are procedural subspecialists in any area. Alas, a true arithmetic mean of physician salary is going to be skewed upwards by procedural subspecialist pay while the median is likely to be significantly lower since the vast majority of docs are not procedural subspecialists. I assure you, the mean physician pay is nowhere near $300K and the median is even less than the mean.
Also, keep in mind that the numbers you're citing are physicians 3 years into practice. At a minimum, these physicians have 7 years of post-graduate training. Sub-specialists generally have at least 10 years post-graduate training. Most carry substantial educational debt, pay substantial malpractice premiums, and residency pay is generally between 35-45K per year with significant lifestyle impairment. I am subspecializing and am in my 5th year of residency training. I am currently making $10K less than several of my business/engineering friends made straight out of college 11 years ago. Let's assume for a moment that I wasn't subspecializing and instead became a general pediatrician. Take $45K per year as the average salary for a business/engineering grad x 4 years and $10K per year x 3 years (the minimum difference between residency salary and a business/engineering grad salary 4-5 years out). If these numbers are accurate, the average engineering/business undergrad going straight into the workforce made at least $210K more than the typical general pediatrician before they were eligible to make starting pediatrician money. If you factor in the time value of money and the average medical school graduate educational debt of $120K, the gap is even greater (closer to $300-400K).
That said, again, physicians are paid well. There is no doubt about it, and I am not complaining. But the physician salary and job security is not achieved without substantial opportunity cost and it isn't because we're in a union. No professional physician organization can/will call a strike. We don't negotiate collectively for salary or benefits (I'm 33 and have never been eligible for a 401k with employer matching). Any physician can do any procedure/test so long as they are properly trained. Unions effectively attempt to "monopolize" the workforce. This gives them power when negotiating with management. Physicians are clearly not "unionized" into an economic monopoly.
If anything, there is a monopsony in health care and not a monopoly (i.e. one buyer, not one seller). Medicare and Medicaid are enormous government programs (over 50% of all dollars spent in health care flow from Medicare and Medicaid), and third party payers very often base thier own reimbursement off of these government programs. Because Medicare and Medicaid often reimburse (especially hospitals) at a rate that is below cost, providers must make back their costs from other patients. Once you realize that private third-party payers are consolidating and basing reimbursement off of government, it's not hard to see why prices are rising in health care. The difference from most other industries is that few "customers" in health care are actually affected by what the provider charges. Medicare, Medicaid, and most third-party payers care very little about the price charged for care. The government calculates what they'll pay (in a price insensitive manner) and third-party payers base much of their reimbursement off that number. Consequently, the
As a doc, I can't help but wonder where you got your data about physician compensation. I assure you, the mean compensation is not 300K. It may be the mean for some sub-specialists (especially surgical), but it sure ain't the average overall. Academic neurologists are often lucky to make over $100K, and I can say comfortably that $300K is far more than double the median salary for general pediatricians. Pediatricians, representative of most generalists, have 7 years of post-graduate education. Neurologists have 8 years. I'm a pediatrician and went to state medical school. During my three years of residency (after 4 years of medical school), I made less than the starting salary of many engineers with whom I graduated. I currently owe over $120,000 in student loans (with accumulated interest), and I'm one of the lucky ones with no undergrad debt.
I'm not saying that physicians are "under-paid." However, it's a long road before they start collecting "real-doctor" pay. Physicians do have substantial job security and we are reimbursed well. The AMA has had something to do with that, but it is not a sine que non relationship. That organization is hemorrhaging members and it certainly cannot call a strike. Docs have job security because of demographics, disease, and the third-party payer system (which, as currently structured, essentially destroys the supply demand relationship). As you rightly point out, the cost of health care has been rising substantially. However, utilization has been increasing faster! In such a market, how could one NOT have job security?!!
Finally, this is not some kind of gravy train. This too will end. You can bet that there will come a reckoning. No union will be able to prevent that, and, to the extent that unions inject rigidity when flexibility is necessary, one could almost certainly make it worse.
I haven't read the *!&^*@# article, so I'm certainly vulnerable to that criticism. However, the Slashdot summary was enough to beg the question. In what way have unions prevented or ameliorated the effects of outsourcing in other industries? Which of these industries, if any, is on an economic course IT should emulate?
Medical care is a scarce resource. There are only so many MRIs, CTs, trained providers, pacemakers, etc. Government-run distribution systems for scarce resources are generally inefficient and bureaucratic. Market forces are generally efficient, but "cold." In the government-run system, committees limit demand by rationing. In the market system, demand is limited by price (as a proxy for supply). At the end of the day, it is a value judgement. One of enormous consequence.
Cananda and other government-run systems offer many services developed only because the US market exists. The bastardized US "market" system (such as it is) still generally allows the makers of medical technologies and products to set their own price. Companies take advantage of this by setting their US price such that they usually make back their development investment and fixed costs in the US market. They can then compete aggressively for foreign contracts that allow them to expand marketshare and realize economies of scale. Even if they sell their products just slightly above their variable cost; every dollar over that variable cost is profit.
If the US system goes "government" and the feds start bargaining for price, one of two things will happen. The creators of these health products will either be squeezed out of business, or they will have to raise prices on the stuff they sell to other government-run systems. Translation: the gravy train will run out for Canada and systems like it. The corollary is that R&D investments in health technologies will become a far less attractive than they already are (they aren't exactly pretty now given the costs of FDA approval and potential liability).
Advertising that you go to the doctor "without worrying about how I'll pay for it" is basically like advertising that you go to the car dealership "without worrying about how I'll pay for it." You're either very wealthy or spending someone elses money. Healthcare is not a right. It is a scarce resource we are privileged to have available. Those who say it is a right generally don't plan on providing that "right" themselves or with their own money.
I'd be happy to explain how subsidies ensure cheap food to the majority of American consumers. 95% of all tax revenue is payed by the top 50% of all incomes, so subsidies are generally paid by the rich. Subsidies encourage farmers to plant MORE, because they are paid for each acre planted (ironically necessitating the program by which farmers are actually payed to let land fallow).
Farms therefore have incentive to overproduce, as evidenced by commodity prices (especially grains like corn, wheat, and soybeans) frequently selling below cost. Farmers narrow their losses, or even gain a profit, by producing more efficiently. So the motivation to be efficient is intact. Large farms get more subsidy and leverage economies of scale that allow them to produce more effieiently, thus the trend towards farm consolidation.
Because food prices are driven low by overproduction through subsidy, food is economically available to more people. The wealthy are gonna be able to afford food anyway. The "wealth redistribution" to which you refer is not so much from the government to the farmer as it is from the wealthy to the poor.
It's a bit like saying that it only costs $5 to make 30 pills of a prescription medication that they sell for $30. Sure it may cost that much to make the pills from raw materials. However, it takes a lot of money to invent the medication, test it, and then get it approved by the FDA. Those costs aren't represented in the amount it costs to mass-produce the medication itself.
Read my post again. They "claimed" to have embedded it too tightly to extract. Removing IE may be technically possible, even desirable, but doing so would ipso facto expose the falsehood of Microsoft's previously held positions. For this, and several other reasons, removing IE from Windows is not really an option for Microsoft.
I really agree. I use Firefox preferentially, and this Slashdot story made me aware of K-Meleon. Given how much I like Firefox, I was excited to try it.
I downloaded the newest version and installed it. It installs cleanly, a feature I appreciate greatly (no registry entries or system files to be orphaned). It loads very fast. I manually brought in my bookmarks from Firefox and started browsing.
So far, it loads fast and then goes about as fast as Firefox. K-Meleon uses a scheme that creates "layers" instead of tabs which I personally find much less intuitive. One features I use most in Firefox is the "Open in Tabs" selection from the bookmarks menu.
Instead of an "Open in Tabs" option within bookmarks, K-Meleon has you create "groups" of "layers" which you then label. To create a group, you have to open individual layers for each page and then point each layer at a page I wanted in the group. You can then save them with a name like "news." You can then just type "news" in the address bar and hit Shift+Enter to bring up the group in different layers. It is slick and fast once the group is created. Of course, don't accidentally type in "News" b/c the group names are case-sensitive.
All in all it's interesting and fun to play with new software. Yet with my N=1 sample of me, I'd say that I found tabs and their implementation in Firefox much more intuitive than layers and groups. There was no simple method to import Firefox bookmarks from within K-Meleon, but it did import IE Favorites quite easily and has methods that supposedly work with Netscape and Opera bookmarks. Also, while the browser itself feels light and nimble, its menu structure is cluttered and not particularly intuitive.
All of this is written with about an hour and a half of use on a 0.9 release, so my impressions must be taken with a grain of salt and improvements are sure to come. However, this brief experience certainly makes me think that an IE user would adjust more readily to Firefox than K-Meleon. Consequently, I think K-Meleon is more likely to convert Firefox users than IE users.
Criticism is not, by definition, disrespectful. Yet, idea-based criticism requires a modicum of thought. So what too often passes for "criticism" these days is little more than unimaginative ad hominim attack.
I posted the "Anonymous Coward" comment above, I logged in on a public terminal and the cookie did not set. It was not an attempt to disassociate myself from the comment.
Actually, the P in GDP stands for Product, not Production. And I did not insert profit into the GDP, I just showed that profit is a component of the Gross Domestic Income which is equivalent to the GDP (as is the Gross Domestic Expenditure). Again, familiarize yourself with the subject before asserting authority in it.
Product is basically a term meaning, "something with value." The best approximation for "value" currently available is price. So product is basically anything you can obtain for a price from someone willing to sell it.
You may not believe that labor is product, but you are rebutted by centuries of history and common sense and yourself. On your website, you charge for tutoring on an hourly basis. Therefore, you charge people for the transfer of knowledge. Earlier in this discussion you asserted that all knowledge should be free. This, of course, begs the question: are you a hypocrite or just confused. In any case, you seem to feel that this service, which produces nothing consistent with your definition of "product," has value.
I personally think that your tutoring does have value and that it is proper for you to charge for the transfer of your knowledge. I also know that this "knowledge transfer" is a product because you produce it for a price. Consequently, it is part of the Gross Domestic Product is correctly counted. Despite your confused protestations to the contrary.
Nice try, but you should really study the sham science before you act like an authority in it. GDP equals one dollar in that scenario, and it certainly does not equal the cost of making the widget.
The cost of production in that highly simplified example is just his labor, for which he is compensated one dollar. Because there are no input costs, his profit is one dollar. Therefore, GDP is one dollar.
HOWEVER, to extend the example to include a cost of production, let's add a person to our world and say that the widget is a stack of stones. This third person digs up stones out of his land and sells them.
Our stone stacker buys stones from the stone seller for 60 cents. He then stacks them and sells them to our buyer in the hypothetical universe for one dollar.
The GDP in this example is still one dollar because the final good (the good with the most value added) sold for one dollar. If you counted every sale from the raw materials up, you'd end up double counting the cost of the raw materials, so only the final good counts.
The Gross Domestic Income is one dollar. GDI equals wages + rent + net interest + profit. So, in this example we have 0 wages, 0 rent, 0 interest, but one total dollar of profit (60 cents to the stone seller and 40 cents to the stone stacker).
The Gross National Expenditure is the one dollar our stone stack buyer payed. The expense of the raw materials to make the stone stack does not count towards the calculation, only the purchase of "final" goods is counted (again to avoid double counting).
Really, a lot of people smarter than you and me have thought and written about this. The concept of GDP is not perfect, anyone who examines it can see that. But you fundamentally misunderstand it and then dismiss it out of hand. It does not reflect well up on Marxists.
There are two people in the country. Over a particular time period, one makes a single widget. The other buys that widget. They exchange one dollar. The person who buys the widget doesn't sell anything over that same time period.
In this case, over the arbitrary time period specified, the Gross Domestic Product (i.e. the value of all of the goods sold) is one dollar.
The Gross Domestic Income over that time period is one dollar.
The Gross Domestic Expenditure over that time period is one dollar.
Lots of people have observed that price does not necessarily reflect actual value. But it's the best estimate we've got. Come up with a better one and you'll with the Nobel Prize.
I looked at the rest of the distributism website after you first mentioned being a 13th century peasant b/c I knew you couldn't be pulling that randomly out of a hat. It's full of vim, but there is no meat. They talk endlessly about the benefits of distributism, but in the end it is only a flavor of capitalism that "limits" the ownership of property. Of course, important details like who would be responsible for saying this is too much or that too little is not discussed beyond the "guilds," but the persistent reliance upon the pope is not reassuring to me.
Here is a website that discusses the middle ages. It's from the Annenberg foundation. Taken verbatim from it's front page:
In this "feudal" system, the king awarded land grants or "fiefs" to his most important nobles, his barons, and his bishops, in return for their contribution of soldiers for the king's armies. At the lowest echelon of society were the peasants, also called "serfs" or "villeins." In exchange for living and working on his land, known as the "demesne," the lord offered his peasants protection.
So even though the nobles got the food "last," they were the ones who owned the land, collected tribute, and did not work the land themselves. You can bet your ass they were the last to go hungry. So I fail to see how this is more or less moral than any other economy. The peasants exchanged their labor for protection and land to farm. Asserting that they were compensated more "justly" for their labor than todays workers is dicey at best.
Your protests regarding production are just a matter of perspective. To calculate Gross Domestic Product, I just have to sum up the value of the goods and services produced for sale during a given time period. I could calculate the amount spent for goods and services produced domestically. Alternatively, I could calculate the amount earned for goods and services produced domestically. Those two numbers have to be the same AND they have to equal GDP. In other words, Gross Domestic Product = Gross Domestic Expenditures = Gross Domestic Income by definition. Go ahead...google it.
BTW, an equation to calculate GDP is not invalid because it does not include the term "product" in it's calculation. To believe so is so concrete it's almost child-like. The expenditure method of assessing the GDP is basically like calculating the number of human brainstems in the country to get at the census. You're gonna get one brainstem per person, so the number of living people = the number of functioning brainstems. Consequently, I could say that the living population of the country = the number of functioning human brainstems and be correct without ever putting the term "person" in the equation.
You admit it, refinancing is not the same as defaulting. You thus undermine your main argument to date regarding U.S. government debt! The U.S. Treasury is considered a generally safe investment because the U.S. government has NEVER DEFAULTED on a monetary debt obligation. Period.
The Platonic Maximum Salary? I guess that's one way to disguise the arbitrary nature of your choice. You are a Marxist aren't you. You still didn't say why you have more claim on their assets than they do.
BTW, the current federal minimum wage is $5.15 per hour. If you take that $5.15 per hour times 8 hours per day times 10, you get $412 per day. Take that times 261 non-weekend workdays per year (i.e. working all holidays) and you get about $108,000 per year as the Platonic Maximum Salary. So again, your claims just don't add up.
The 13th century economy was based on morality? As in peasants paying arbitrary tax to the nobility while the nobles hung out in the castle eating grapes? Again, this assertion about an economy being based on "morality" is demonstrably false and hopelessly idealistic. It's the kind of idea that leads to violent ideologically rigid totalitarianism. Whatever you're smoking it's not healthy. Put down the pipe and slowly back away.
Also, you again produce no evidence to back your claim that these peasants could afford good musical instruments and home school their children in anything outside agriculture/homemaking. You just skirt the issue and claim that the economy was based upon "morality" with no support for your position. The entire "wage-slave" idea/test is without historical foundation.
Regardless what you "learned" GDP is generally calculated as I outlined. Another statement of the formula is GDP = Consumption + Investment + Government Purchase + Net Exports. These are expenditure based ways to measure GDP. There are others, but they all equal eachother (by definition). And consumption is not a negative because this is an EXPENDITURE based calculation of GDP! If it is consumed and not an import (already accounted for by the formula), it was produced in the U.S. and therefore part of the GDP.
Yes, we import a shitload of stuff, but our GDP is positive and growing. That doesn't mean that I favor increasing the trade imbalance, either. It just doesn't mean what you think it means.
Production means creating something of VALUE, not necessarily something you can touch or hold in your hand. Consider the classic knowledge worker: the non-surgical physician. If they improve or preserve their patient's health using their knowledge, they produce something of value. The patient pays the doctor for this service. None of this economic activity is "parasitical." Quite the contrary. So stating that production shoud be production is not only circular, but meaningless.
What you describe may or may not be happening, but it is not defaulting any more than it is to take out a second mortgage.
Your comments regarding pain are dangerous and wrong. It is neither the most effective nor the only punishment to correct behavior. Hopefully you do not have children.
Who is rich and therefore in your crosshairs? What defines someone as rich and gives you more claim to their assets than they have?
I took your challenge and can tell you confidently: I am not a "wage-slave." I also challenge both you and the author of the "distributism" website to produce evidence that the average 13th century peasant could afford "good musical instruments" for their children or school them at home in anything beyond agriculture/homemaking. You know the 13th century was no cake walk for Peasants. It's wasn't just like the Medieval Times restaurant you went to last weekend.
GDP = consumption + investment + exports - imports. It neither has been, nor currently is, negative. Moreover, all the NDP represents is GDP adjusted for capital stock depreciation. It is generally deprecated because its calculation requires more estimation. The real GDP rose between 1995 and 2000 at 4.3% per year while the NDP rose 4% a year over the same time period. The NDP is generally lower than the GDP because of the high cost and rapid depreciation of modern capital stock like software and IT infrastructure. http://www.bea.gov/bea/articles/beawide/2001/0301m ne.pdf
I'm not sure what you're thinking of, but that ain't it.
The fundamental problem, is that there is no real money in the "trust fund" cited by the NYT article again and again.
What we're talking about, in the broadest sense, is moving from a system where current workers pay for current retiree benefits to one where current workers pay for at least a portion of their own retirement. The costs of transition are less now than they will be at any time in the foreseeable future b/c there are more workers per retiree now than there will be for some time hence.
God save us from those who are saying, problem...what problem? We've got a trust fund.
People redeem U.S. government securities every day, and they are repayed with interest. The U.S. has never defaulted payment on a government issued security. Prove the converse, if true it should be easy.
It takes one with a particularly narrow sadistic mind to consider bodily injury the only kind of punishment.
Inflation makes debt worth less, but it also diminishes the buying power of individuals and degrades their quality of life. Inflation is devastating, just ask the citizens of Argentina.
The federal debt must be placed in context. The more you earn, the more debt you can bear. Expressing the federal debt as a function of GDP places it in this context. Appreciating it as a percentage of GDP, the federal government debt held by the public (not federal government accounts) was 36.1% in 2003. In 1993 it was 49.4%, 1983 32%, 1973 22%, 1963 42.4%, 1953 56.8%. So placed within the proper economic and historical context, the federal debt burden is currently within historic norms.
The problem is Social Security. In particular, Social Security taxes are either payed out as benefits immediately OR invested in Treasury Department securities. The money the Treasury Department gets in exchange for the paper certificates goes into the general treasury. This is referred to as the "Trust Fund," but there really isn't money in the fund in the same sense as money sitting in a separate bank account. It's not even still in the treasury, it's been spent.
Consequently, violent revolution, won't recover the money from the trust fund. In fact, it will make recovery from the trust fund nearly impossible. Ergo: your "obvious" solution is actually lunacy...remarkably consistent with the totality of the arguments you've forwarded thusfar.
Starving population? 100% failing to have basic needs met? 13th Century pesant? You are a wingnut.
Slashdot Mirror
He got fired for repeatedly publishing opinion on the Huffington Post. His blog was part of the problem, but the firing offense was publishing opinion _regularly_ at the HP. The handbook said that he could not write for non-approved outlets - and the HP is definitely an outlet.
Large hardware makers have consolidated like crazy, been spun off/sold, and/or gone out of business because the margins in computer hardware manufacturing are notoriously thin. Now Venezuela comes in offering computers for 75% (not 60% as Chavez innumerately claims) of the cost of the big manufacturers. What gives?
i cle/2007/02/08/AR2007020801240.html), and more expensive computers than propoganda, state-owned industry, price controls, and cheap computers.
Frankly, they're not really "cheaper" so much as they're just subsidised. If I lived in Venezuela, I'd rather have press freedom, foreign investment, affordable food (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/art
I'm all in favor of FOSS and cheap hardware, but anyone who can't see through this guy's cynical bullshit is blind, stupid, or willfully ignorant.
Second, it's not like you just turn on the Dell and run. Dells come pre-loaded with a bunch of crap that consumes too many of the limited resources available to a low-end PC from the first boot. To remedy this takes a lot of time. I daresay as much time as it takes to throw together the parts for a basic PC.
Third, you are seriously misinformed about the OEM = no warranty issue. Your assertion is just not true. I've personally received excellent warranty support on several OEM components purchased through Newegg. I've heard that that Windows is unsupported by Microsoft when purchased with an OEM license, but I don't know the facts on that and I've never personally called MS technical support.
Finally, notice that $95 of this $362 machine from Newegg is a license for an OEM (unsupported) version of MS Windows Vista HOME BASIC?! With Dell, that cost is bundled in automatically. You can't remove it a la carte. You can only get it refunded by prostrating yourself in public while chanting "please, please, please." Building your own, you just don't buy windows and you save 26% on the purchase price (making it a full $122 less than the Dell).
If Ubuntu is a strong competitor to Windows (and I've found it that), there is substantial savings to be had for those interested in building their own computer to run linux vs. buying from Dell or any other mainstream manufacturer to run linux. Which is how this whole discussion got started anyway.
Respectfully,
uimedic
No one suggested that Gutmann was a medical imaging specialist. You misread the quote. Quite ironic really.
Pid
Also, keep in mind that the numbers you're citing are physicians 3 years into practice. At a minimum, these physicians have 7 years of post-graduate training. Sub-specialists generally have at least 10 years post-graduate training. Most carry substantial educational debt, pay substantial malpractice premiums, and residency pay is generally between 35-45K per year with significant lifestyle impairment. I am subspecializing and am in my 5th year of residency training. I am currently making $10K less than several of my business/engineering friends made straight out of college 11 years ago. Let's assume for a moment that I wasn't subspecializing and instead became a general pediatrician. Take $45K per year as the average salary for a business/engineering grad x 4 years and $10K per year x 3 years (the minimum difference between residency salary and a business/engineering grad salary 4-5 years out). If these numbers are accurate, the average engineering/business undergrad going straight into the workforce made at least $210K more than the typical general pediatrician before they were eligible to make starting pediatrician money. If you factor in the time value of money and the average medical school graduate educational debt of $120K, the gap is even greater (closer to $300-400K).
That said, again, physicians are paid well. There is no doubt about it, and I am not complaining. But the physician salary and job security is not achieved without substantial opportunity cost and it isn't because we're in a union. No professional physician organization can/will call a strike. We don't negotiate collectively for salary or benefits (I'm 33 and have never been eligible for a 401k with employer matching). Any physician can do any procedure/test so long as they are properly trained. Unions effectively attempt to "monopolize" the workforce. This gives them power when negotiating with management. Physicians are clearly not "unionized" into an economic monopoly.
If anything, there is a monopsony in health care and not a monopoly (i.e. one buyer, not one seller). Medicare and Medicaid are enormous government programs (over 50% of all dollars spent in health care flow from Medicare and Medicaid), and third party payers very often base thier own reimbursement off of these government programs. Because Medicare and Medicaid often reimburse (especially hospitals) at a rate that is below cost, providers must make back their costs from other patients. Once you realize that private third-party payers are consolidating and basing reimbursement off of government, it's not hard to see why prices are rising in health care. The difference from most other industries is that few "customers" in health care are actually affected by what the provider charges. Medicare, Medicaid, and most third-party payers care very little about the price charged for care. The government calculates what they'll pay (in a price insensitive manner) and third-party payers base much of their reimbursement off that number. Consequently, the
I'm not saying that physicians are "under-paid." However, it's a long road before they start collecting "real-doctor" pay. Physicians do have substantial job security and we are reimbursed well. The AMA has had something to do with that, but it is not a sine que non relationship. That organization is hemorrhaging members and it certainly cannot call a strike. Docs have job security because of demographics, disease, and the third-party payer system (which, as currently structured, essentially destroys the supply demand relationship). As you rightly point out, the cost of health care has been rising substantially. However, utilization has been increasing faster! In such a market, how could one NOT have job security?!!
Finally, this is not some kind of gravy train. This too will end. You can bet that there will come a reckoning. No union will be able to prevent that, and, to the extent that unions inject rigidity when flexibility is necessary, one could almost certainly make it worse.
I haven't read the *!&^*@# article, so I'm certainly vulnerable to that criticism. However, the Slashdot summary was enough to beg the question. In what way have unions prevented or ameliorated the effects of outsourcing in other industries? Which of these industries, if any, is on an economic course IT should emulate?
Pidgas
Medical care is a scarce resource. There are only so many MRIs, CTs, trained providers, pacemakers, etc. Government-run distribution systems for scarce resources are generally inefficient and bureaucratic. Market forces are generally efficient, but "cold." In the government-run system, committees limit demand by rationing. In the market system, demand is limited by price (as a proxy for supply). At the end of the day, it is a value judgement. One of enormous consequence.
Cananda and other government-run systems offer many services developed only because the US market exists. The bastardized US "market" system (such as it is) still generally allows the makers of medical technologies and products to set their own price. Companies take advantage of this by setting their US price such that they usually make back their development investment and fixed costs in the US market. They can then compete aggressively for foreign contracts that allow them to expand marketshare and realize economies of scale. Even if they sell their products just slightly above their variable cost; every dollar over that variable cost is profit.
If the US system goes "government" and the feds start bargaining for price, one of two things will happen. The creators of these health products will either be squeezed out of business, or they will have to raise prices on the stuff they sell to other government-run systems. Translation: the gravy train will run out for Canada and systems like it. The corollary is that R&D investments in health technologies will become a far less attractive than they already are (they aren't exactly pretty now given the costs of FDA approval and potential liability).
Advertising that you go to the doctor "without worrying about how I'll pay for it" is basically like advertising that you go to the car dealership "without worrying about how I'll pay for it." You're either very wealthy or spending someone elses money. Healthcare is not a right. It is a scarce resource we are privileged to have available. Those who say it is a right generally don't plan on providing that "right" themselves or with their own money.
UI
I'd be happy to explain how subsidies ensure cheap food to the majority of American consumers. 95% of all tax revenue is payed by the top 50% of all incomes, so subsidies are generally paid by the rich. Subsidies encourage farmers to plant MORE, because they are paid for each acre planted (ironically necessitating the program by which farmers are actually payed to let land fallow).
Farms therefore have incentive to overproduce, as evidenced by commodity prices (especially grains like corn, wheat, and soybeans) frequently selling below cost. Farmers narrow their losses, or even gain a profit, by producing more efficiently. So the motivation to be efficient is intact. Large farms get more subsidy and leverage economies of scale that allow them to produce more effieiently, thus the trend towards farm consolidation.
Because food prices are driven low by overproduction through subsidy, food is economically available to more people. The wealthy are gonna be able to afford food anyway. The "wealth redistribution" to which you refer is not so much from the government to the farmer as it is from the wealthy to the poor.
UI
It's a bit like saying that it only costs $5 to make 30 pills of a prescription medication that they sell for $30. Sure it may cost that much to make the pills from raw materials. However, it takes a lot of money to invent the medication, test it, and then get it approved by the FDA. Those costs aren't represented in the amount it costs to mass-produce the medication itself.
Read my post again. They "claimed" to have embedded it too tightly to extract. Removing IE may be technically possible, even desirable, but doing so would ipso facto expose the falsehood of Microsoft's previously held positions. For this, and several other reasons, removing IE from Windows is not really an option for Microsoft.
I downloaded the newest version and installed it. It installs cleanly, a feature I appreciate greatly (no registry entries or system files to be orphaned). It loads very fast. I manually brought in my bookmarks from Firefox and started browsing.
So far, it loads fast and then goes about as fast as Firefox. K-Meleon uses a scheme that creates "layers" instead of tabs which I personally find much less intuitive. One features I use most in Firefox is the "Open in Tabs" selection from the bookmarks menu.
Instead of an "Open in Tabs" option within bookmarks, K-Meleon has you create "groups" of "layers" which you then label. To create a group, you have to open individual layers for each page and then point each layer at a page I wanted in the group. You can then save them with a name like "news." You can then just type "news" in the address bar and hit Shift+Enter to bring up the group in different layers. It is slick and fast once the group is created. Of course, don't accidentally type in "News" b/c the group names are case-sensitive.
All in all it's interesting and fun to play with new software. Yet with my N=1 sample of me, I'd say that I found tabs and their implementation in Firefox much more intuitive than layers and groups. There was no simple method to import Firefox bookmarks from within K-Meleon, but it did import IE Favorites quite easily and has methods that supposedly work with Netscape and Opera bookmarks. Also, while the browser itself feels light and nimble, its menu structure is cluttered and not particularly intuitive.
All of this is written with about an hour and a half of use on a 0.9 release, so my impressions must be taken with a grain of salt and improvements are sure to come. However, this brief experience certainly makes me think that an IE user would adjust more readily to Firefox than K-Meleon. Consequently, I think K-Meleon is more likely to convert Firefox users than IE users.
But that's just my opinion.
They claimed to have embedded IE so tightly with Windows that it cannot be removed. So dropping it all together isn't really an option for them.
I posted the Anonymous Coward comment. It was due to a snafu on a public terminal, not an attempt to disassociate myself from the comment.
I posted the "Anonymous Coward" comment above, I logged in on a public terminal and the cookie did not set. It was not an attempt to disassociate myself from the comment.
Product is basically a term meaning, "something with value." The best approximation for "value" currently available is price. So product is basically anything you can obtain for a price from someone willing to sell it.
You may not believe that labor is product, but you are rebutted by centuries of history and common sense and yourself. On your website, you charge for tutoring on an hourly basis. Therefore, you charge people for the transfer of knowledge. Earlier in this discussion you asserted that all knowledge should be free. This, of course, begs the question: are you a hypocrite or just confused. In any case, you seem to feel that this service, which produces nothing consistent with your definition of "product," has value.
I personally think that your tutoring does have value and that it is proper for you to charge for the transfer of your knowledge. I also know that this "knowledge transfer" is a product because you produce it for a price. Consequently, it is part of the Gross Domestic Product is correctly counted. Despite your confused protestations to the contrary.
The cost of production in that highly simplified example is just his labor, for which he is compensated one dollar. Because there are no input costs, his profit is one dollar. Therefore, GDP is one dollar.
HOWEVER, to extend the example to include a cost of production, let's add a person to our world and say that the widget is a stack of stones. This third person digs up stones out of his land and sells them.
Our stone stacker buys stones from the stone seller for 60 cents. He then stacks them and sells them to our buyer in the hypothetical universe for one dollar.
The GDP in this example is still one dollar because the final good (the good with the most value added) sold for one dollar. If you counted every sale from the raw materials up, you'd end up double counting the cost of the raw materials, so only the final good counts.
The Gross Domestic Income is one dollar. GDI equals wages + rent + net interest + profit. So, in this example we have 0 wages, 0 rent, 0 interest, but one total dollar of profit (60 cents to the stone seller and 40 cents to the stone stacker).
The Gross National Expenditure is the one dollar our stone stack buyer payed. The expense of the raw materials to make the stone stack does not count towards the calculation, only the purchase of "final" goods is counted (again to avoid double counting).
Really, a lot of people smarter than you and me have thought and written about this. The concept of GDP is not perfect, anyone who examines it can see that. But you fundamentally misunderstand it and then dismiss it out of hand. It does not reflect well up on Marxists.
The Gross Domestic Income over that time period is one dollar.
The Gross Domestic Expenditure over that time period is one dollar.
Lots of people have observed that price does not necessarily reflect actual value. But it's the best estimate we've got. Come up with a better one and you'll with the Nobel Prize.
Here is a website that discusses the middle ages. It's from the Annenberg foundation. Taken verbatim from it's front page:
So even though the nobles got the food "last," they were the ones who owned the land, collected tribute, and did not work the land themselves. You can bet your ass they were the last to go hungry. So I fail to see how this is more or less moral than any other economy. The peasants exchanged their labor for protection and land to farm. Asserting that they were compensated more "justly" for their labor than todays workers is dicey at best.
Your protests regarding production are just a matter of perspective. To calculate Gross Domestic Product, I just have to sum up the value of the goods and services produced for sale during a given time period. I could calculate the amount spent for goods and services produced domestically. Alternatively, I could calculate the amount earned for goods and services produced domestically. Those two numbers have to be the same AND they have to equal GDP. In other words, Gross Domestic Product = Gross Domestic Expenditures = Gross Domestic Income by definition. Go ahead...google it.
BTW, an equation to calculate GDP is not invalid because it does not include the term "product" in it's calculation. To believe so is so concrete it's almost child-like. The expenditure method of assessing the GDP is basically like calculating the number of human brainstems in the country to get at the census. You're gonna get one brainstem per person, so the number of living people = the number of functioning brainstems. Consequently, I could say that the living population of the country = the number of functioning human brainstems and be correct without ever putting the term "person" in the equation.
The Platonic Maximum Salary? I guess that's one way to disguise the arbitrary nature of your choice. You are a Marxist aren't you. You still didn't say why you have more claim on their assets than they do.
BTW, the current federal minimum wage is $5.15 per hour. If you take that $5.15 per hour times 8 hours per day times 10, you get $412 per day. Take that times 261 non-weekend workdays per year (i.e. working all holidays) and you get about $108,000 per year as the Platonic Maximum Salary. So again, your claims just don't add up.
The 13th century economy was based on morality? As in peasants paying arbitrary tax to the nobility while the nobles hung out in the castle eating grapes? Again, this assertion about an economy being based on "morality" is demonstrably false and hopelessly idealistic. It's the kind of idea that leads to violent ideologically rigid totalitarianism. Whatever you're smoking it's not healthy. Put down the pipe and slowly back away.
Also, you again produce no evidence to back your claim that these peasants could afford good musical instruments and home school their children in anything outside agriculture/homemaking. You just skirt the issue and claim that the economy was based upon "morality" with no support for your position. The entire "wage-slave" idea/test is without historical foundation.
Regardless what you "learned" GDP is generally calculated as I outlined. Another statement of the formula is GDP = Consumption + Investment + Government Purchase + Net Exports. These are expenditure based ways to measure GDP. There are others, but they all equal eachother (by definition). And consumption is not a negative because this is an EXPENDITURE based calculation of GDP! If it is consumed and not an import (already accounted for by the formula), it was produced in the U.S. and therefore part of the GDP.
Yes, we import a shitload of stuff, but our GDP is positive and growing. That doesn't mean that I favor increasing the trade imbalance, either. It just doesn't mean what you think it means.
Production means creating something of VALUE, not necessarily something you can touch or hold in your hand. Consider the classic knowledge worker: the non-surgical physician. If they improve or preserve their patient's health using their knowledge, they produce something of value. The patient pays the doctor for this service. None of this economic activity is "parasitical." Quite the contrary. So stating that production shoud be production is not only circular, but meaningless.
Your comments regarding pain are dangerous and wrong. It is neither the most effective nor the only punishment to correct behavior. Hopefully you do not have children.
Who is rich and therefore in your crosshairs? What defines someone as rich and gives you more claim to their assets than they have?
I took your challenge and can tell you confidently: I am not a "wage-slave." I also challenge both you and the author of the "distributism" website to produce evidence that the average 13th century peasant could afford "good musical instruments" for their children or school them at home in anything beyond agriculture/homemaking. You know the 13th century was no cake walk for Peasants. It's wasn't just like the Medieval Times restaurant you went to last weekend.
GDP = consumption + investment + exports - imports. It neither has been, nor currently is, negative. Moreover, all the NDP represents is GDP adjusted for capital stock depreciation. It is generally deprecated because its calculation requires more estimation. The real GDP rose between 1995 and 2000 at 4.3% per year while the NDP rose 4% a year over the same time period. The NDP is generally lower than the GDP because of the high cost and rapid depreciation of modern capital stock like software and IT infrastructure. http://www.bea.gov/bea/articles/beawide/2001/0301m ne.pdf
I'm not sure what you're thinking of, but that ain't it.
The fundamental problem, is that there is no real money in the "trust fund" cited by the NYT article again and again.
What we're talking about, in the broadest sense, is moving from a system where current workers pay for current retiree benefits to one where current workers pay for at least a portion of their own retirement. The costs of transition are less now than they will be at any time in the foreseeable future b/c there are more workers per retiree now than there will be for some time hence.
God save us from those who are saying, problem...what problem? We've got a trust fund.
It takes one with a particularly narrow sadistic mind to consider bodily injury the only kind of punishment.
Inflation makes debt worth less, but it also diminishes the buying power of individuals and degrades their quality of life. Inflation is devastating, just ask the citizens of Argentina.
The federal debt must be placed in context. The more you earn, the more debt you can bear. Expressing the federal debt as a function of GDP places it in this context. Appreciating it as a percentage of GDP, the federal government debt held by the public (not federal government accounts) was 36.1% in 2003. In 1993 it was 49.4%, 1983 32%, 1973 22%, 1963 42.4%, 1953 56.8%. So placed within the proper economic and historical context, the federal debt burden is currently within historic norms.
The problem is Social Security. In particular, Social Security taxes are either payed out as benefits immediately OR invested in Treasury Department securities. The money the Treasury Department gets in exchange for the paper certificates goes into the general treasury. This is referred to as the "Trust Fund," but there really isn't money in the fund in the same sense as money sitting in a separate bank account. It's not even still in the treasury, it's been spent.
Consequently, violent revolution, won't recover the money from the trust fund. In fact, it will make recovery from the trust fund nearly impossible. Ergo: your "obvious" solution is actually lunacy...remarkably consistent with the totality of the arguments you've forwarded thusfar.
Starving population? 100% failing to have basic needs met? 13th Century pesant? You are a wingnut.
Later.