Single Payer, not public option

What health care reform proposal is supported by a majority of doctors, an overwhelming number of nurses, has over 70 co-sponsors in the house but is off the table due to the corporate control of our economy and political system?

Single Payer Health Care.

The cost of health care is destroying businesses. In 2008 it cost a small business $12,700 to ensure a family of four. That is expected to rise by nearly $900 in 2009. Who can afford that? This is what the for-profit, private insurance system has delivered.

Add to that the administrative burdens to the employer, the out of pocket cost to employees plus the constant fear of being dropped, denied, or let go and other psychological cost as well and you have a system that is harming this country.

This must change and single payer is the solution. The so called "public option" being discussed by corporate supported Democrats doesn't go far enough to address the root problems in our health care system.

I believe the "public option" will fail to solve our problem and will actually be a major set back for those of us who simply want this problem solved.

Nick Skala, an expert and advocate for single payer recently was in Washington to speak to Democratic Progressive Caucus about single payer. Here is a story about his experience and a link to his video report.

The unfortunate problem is a federal government controlled by corporate interests and lobbyists. The industry spends far in excess of a $1 million per month and all the people making decisions about health care reform have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the industry.

We need campaign finance reform as much as health care reform but that is another discussion for another day.

Corporate control of our system is one of the root causes of our collective predictments. Corporate media, corporate lobbysists, corporate agendas, corporate control. If you want to learn more about corporate domination, I recommend the movie "The Corporation" and/or When Corporations Rule the World by David Korten.

Local banking, David Korten and more

I want to remind my Portland readers that David Korten will be speaking tomorrow night (Saturday) at the First Baptist Church at 12^th and SW Taylor.   There is a community celebration starting at 5pm, David’s presentation at 7pm and we step outside for the Starlight Parade after the talk.  It should be a fun evening.  Please bring your family and friends to learn about, discuss and implement the new economy.

The Sustainable Business Network of Portland (SBNP) is beginning a campaign to get people to move their money from multi-national banks designed to serve shareholders to local banks designed to meet community needs.  I recently moved my daughter’s college fund CD from WAMU/Chase to Albina Community Bank and ShoreBank Pacific.

SBNP used three simple questions to help you gauge how your bank relates to your community.

1. Is your money rooted in your community?  (The more a bank operates in multiple communities, the less commitment they have to yours).
2. Who owns your bank? (Where do the profits go and who controls it?)
3. Do your deposits create good loans in YOUR community?  (This can range from progressive lending policies to help underserved communities to predatory/subprime lending.)
   

Needless to say, the major banks all scored low on this assessment.  Moving your money to a community rooted bank will help your business community thrive.

Random thoughts

David Korten will be on KBOO Monday morning at 8am PST.  David Korten’s most recent book is Agenda for a New Economy, which I highly, highly recommend.  KBOO is a community radio station in Portland located at 90.7fm on the FM dial.  You can also find them here.

David Korten will be in Portland, Saturday, May 30^th at the First Baptist Church (12^th and SW Taylor) starting with a 5pm celebration and a 7pm lecture.  More information is here.

Congratulations to my friend Joel Garbon, and his co-author Jeane Manning, for winning the Silver Award by the Independent Publishers in the category “Most Likely to Save the Planet.”  Their book is entitled “Breakthrough Power: How Quantum-leap New Energy Inventions Can Transform Our World” which you can learn more about here.

Finally, I’ve been invited to join the BGI faculty next year to teach accounting and finance.  I’m honored and excited at this opportunity and look forward to helping the incoming graduate students learn the language of business.

Economic bubbles

The cornerstone of the CPA profession is independence, integrity and objectivity.  I wish I could tell you that our financial system was going to be okay and that President Obama and our elected and appointed leaders in Washington were going to save the day.  Unfortunately, I'm highly skeptical and I have obligations to my friends, clients, family and readers to share my concerns.  Your future depends on understanding these matters.

Economic bubbles exists when asset price inflation rises beyond what income can sustain.  The ride up a bubble is exhilarating as everyone thinks they've found a fountain of gold and the ride down is devastating, as the economic system collapses and the artificially inflated values people assigned to certain assets retreat to their actual value.

One of the most famous bubbles was the Dutch tulip mania that peaked in 1637.  On the run up, people actually believed a single bulb was worth more than a house.  

We've actually experienced two bubbles in the past ten years (dot.com and housing).  These were partially fueled by cheap credit (corporate, governmental, private).

Ludwig Von Mises (1881-1973), an influential Austrian Economist wrote:

“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion.

The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.”

If this is true, current government actions to expand credit (print a $Trillion and get banks lending again) will ultimately lead to the collapse of the US currency.  A collapse occurs when people no longer have confidence in a fiat currency. Historically, thousands of currencies have collapsed.  Given time, is it possible that they all will? 

It would be unfair to freak you out without providing a solution.  The first step is to get educated and then to take action.  Two items I'm imploring you to read/watch are 

1. Chris Martenson's Crash Course.  The first sentence on the home page reads, "Ready to learn everything you need to know about the economy in the shortest amount of time?"  
2. David Korten's Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth

I'm on Chapter 17 of the 20-Chapter Crash Course, and I'm in Section 2 of Korten's book.  

Don't Fix Wall Street, Replace It

That is David Korten's message and you can read his short essay over at Yes! magazine.  (That's a picture of the Wall Street bull as seen from the backside in case you are wondering.)

I've also been reading Dr. Riane Eisler's (The Chalice and The Blade, The Real Wealth of Nations, et al) recommendations about investing in a new "Caring Economy."  According to her,

"we should create and subsidize more jobs in childcare, education, healthcare, eldercare, and other “caring industries” through the Job-Creation and Economic Recovery and Reconstruction Plan. This will quickly stimulate our economy, help families, radically reduce poverty and violence, reward women’s economic contributions, save billions in crime and prisons -- and is an essential investment in the “high quality human capital” needed for our post-industrial economy." 

You can read Riane's Roadmap here.

I read The Real Wealth of Nations a few summers ago and highly recommend it.  In case you aren't familiar with Dr. Eisler, here is a little bit about her background and credentials from her website.  

"Her newest book, The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics – hailed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu as “a template for the better world we have been so urgently seeking,” by Peter Senge as “desperately needed,” by Gloria Steinem as “revolutionary,” and by Jane Goodall as “a call for action” – proposes a new approach to economics that gives visibility and value to the most essential human work: the work of caring for people and planet.

Dr. Eisler is the only woman among 20 great thinkers including Hegel, Adam Smith, Marx, and Toynbee selected for inclusion in Macrohistory and Macrohistorians in recognition of the lasting importance of her work as a cultural historian and evolutionary theorist. She has received many honors, including honorary Ph.D. degrees, and is included in the award-winning book Great Peacemakers, as one of 20 leaders for world peace, along with Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Martin Luther King."

$3 Trillion, get ready to be ripped off

I woke up to a liberal talk radio host interviewing a conservative FOX business guy and their prediction and conclusion was that next week, the government should and would set up a new federal bank, capitalized with $3 TRILLION to buy up all the bad loans in the system. What the hell?

Even before the latest crisis, it is a Wall Street myth that the old economy worked. Sure, it made some people fabulously rich and it did supply many needed goods and services, but even more glaring is the fact that it failed on so many levels (Think of unmet NEEDS and environmental and social havoc). Spending trillions of dollars to restore the economic system to its previous condition is a reckless waste of time and resources.

Have you gotten your copy of David Korten's new book Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth? Here is a link if you need one.

I'll leave you with two good links today.  First, is a real nice review of David's book so you can get a taste of what is covered.

Second is an excellent article by Prof. John McMurtry from Global Research on the current problems and the choices we face. Near the end he concludes:

The most instructive moments in America’s history have been forgotten - for example, the 1776 American Revolution itself which Benjamin Franklin said was most of all to wrest back control over the issuing of money from the private Bank of England; Abraham Lincoln’s issue of “greenbacks” to go over the head of the New York bankers’ demand of 17% compound interest to fund the war for the Union; and FDR’s historic New Deal which guaranteed minimum economic security and put people back to work in rebuilding the real economy. Yet not even the Depression has demanded the economic reset now required to resolve the coinciding energy, environmental, employment and financial crises confronting America and the world.

Agenda for a New Economy

Let us be honest.   We don’t need to fix the old economy – We need to create a new economy.

David Korten’s new book, Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth, has been in bookstores less than 10 days and I implore you to get this book and read it immediately.  We have a unique opportunity to change this system and create a sustainable, life-affirming economy.  We must rid ourselves of the Wall Street menace. 

Last night I attended the first of a 4-session workshop to explore David’s new book.  There were at least 30 people in attendance which seems huge given the fact the book was launched January 23^rd, 2009!

We started by watching David give a presentation at Trinity Wall Street, a church in the heart of America’s financial district on the 23rd, which coincided with the launch of his book.  If you do nothing else this week, watch this presentation.  You can fast forward to 6:15 to see the introduction of the presentation, followed by a short video bio.  He concludes at 59:30.  There is a Q&A that follows.

I’ll be writing more about this in the future but let us take this opportunity to get to the root cause of our problem.  It is time to treat the system, not the symptoms.  The system solution is to fix the system so the problems go away.  Isn’t that what we learned in business school?