75 years out, GDP may grow 3 trillion a year (on Kevin Drum)

"Estimates of the Social Security shortfall over the next 75 years are between 2 and 3.7 $trillion."

75 years out, GDP should do about 100 trillion a year (in today's money): 4 times the GDP per person (GDP per person doubles every 40 years); 2 times the number of persons (population doubles every 80 years) -- today, 12.5 trillion dollars.

75 years out the GDP may GROW between 2 and 3.7 trillion dollars every year or so!
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Social Security is taxed regressively and paid out progressively. Does that make it a flat tax? Someone pointed out to me that the top still subsidizes the bottom, so I guess it's a flatter tax.

Right now the top 1% of incomes have been raking in the lions share of all economic growth for over three decades.

Top 1% incomes took 7.6% of overall income in 1972 (just before the race to the wage and benefit bottom began* -- in America, not in Europe where sector-wide labor agreements prevent same*), by 2001 the top 1% took in 17.6% , by 2005 they took 21.5%: very possibly on their way to 27.6% within a short timeline.

Until the race to the bottom is dealt with on this side of the pond, removing the FICA cap might be a good idea, like anything else that partially rebalanced some income misdistribution -- just because it rebalanced it some.

* http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2007/11/

had-adam-smith-lived-to-see-1800s.html

Posted by: Denis Drew on November 28, 2007 at 3:16 PM | PERMALINK

S.S. wage adjustment gives away truth of wage inequality (on Kevin Drum)

"The current system pegs initial benefits to the prevailing wages at the time of retirement."

Actually the wage adjustment -- if we are talking about the same thing -- only adjusts wages of each year (one by one) used to compute your benefits. Thus, you might expect that if you made $25,000 in 1967 you would get credit for $50,000 today in computing your benefits -- average income having DOUBLED since 1967.

However, the index must be geared to median wages or some pay gauge that reflects what economists call inequality -- that began to hit labor in this country in the early 1970s (I call it the race to the bottom* ).

Interestingly, should American labor ever get its act together and get back its proper share of the growing economic pie, that would surge FICA receipts -- currently collected with a tax cap -- by leaps and bounds beyond current projections.

* http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2007/11/had-adam-smith-lived-to-see-1800s.html

Posted by: Denis Drew on November 26, 2007 at 2:01 PM | PERMALINK

Will our great-great-grandchildren pay for their long dead grandparents? (on Kevin Drum; Washington Monthly)

Today, Social Security retirement costs 4% of GDP. By around 2050 that should grow to 6-7% of GDP and remain there ad infinitum -- at which point average income should have doubled.

IOW, if you make $50,000 a year, your equivalently employed grandchild should make $100,000 in 2050. You now pay 12.6% FICA (divided w/employer); your grandchild may have to pay 20% FICA (w/employer): leaving you with $44,000 to pay for everything else; leaving your grandchild with $80,000 to pay for everything else (adjusted for inflation -- which adjustment wont, for good reasons, even take into account 3DTV for the same $600 price tag). Sound like a monumental crisis?

Today, we use excess FICA inflow to pay for "government owned" bonds that go into a so-called "Trust Fund" which supposedly insures Social Security when today's (arbitrarily frozen-for-all-time?) FICA tax is no longer enough to cover the multiplying baby boomers -- on or around 2017. At which 2017 point we are to gradually raise the income tax -- instead -- to cash the otherwise meaningless Trust Fund bonds. Without such "advance planning" for our retirees futures we would be forced to raise the FICA tax a whole 1/10 of 1% a year -- as average income rises 1 1/2% a year -- an unexplained taboo.

Actually, in the vicinity of 2017, we wont be forced to raise the income tax to cash the bonds, after all -- we could, instead, run up the national debt by selling bonds to cash Trust fund bonds instead (only if politicians are less than responsible): raising the specter of our great-great-great-great grandchildren paying for the retirement benefits of their long-long dead grandparents.

Today we pay for on budget items (army, farm subsidies) through a combination of short falling income tax and excess FICA receipts. By 2047, or whenever the Trust Fund bonds run out, we will no longer pay out Social Security with a combination of excess income tax (or bond sales?) and short falling (25% short) FICA.

At which whenever point we are scheduled to begin paying for Social Security retirement exclusively through FICA (after a big one-jump increase) -- and begin paying for on budget items exclusively through income tax (after a proportionate cut). What a unique in all the world retirement system -- could only have been hacked out by some easily confused politicians.

Posted by: Denis Drew on November 28, 2007 at 11:06 AM | PERMALINK

Maximum practicality of the minimum wage (on notsneaky.blogspot)

I can't do the advanced math but: in everyday experience when the minimum wage is raised the first thing that happens on the price/demand graph is what would have happened anyway: the demand curve keeps creeping up nominally in step with consumers gradually getting their wages adjusted for inflation. Prices creep carefully along behind, so as not to alienate consumers.

The federally mandated minimum wage is so (objectively) low (it was $9.50/hr in 1968 when average income was half of today's) that I think you can assume intuitively a gigantic amount of monopsony at work.

The minimum wage is so low that it has effectively shipped minimum wage jobs out of the country (caused native born workers to no longer be employed at that wage level). When Bush I's minimum wage raise went through McDonalds was experiencing 70% employee turnover every 90 days. These days I see the same smiling Mexican faces behind fast food counters (also Chinese in San Francisco) year in and year out.

And want about redistribution of demand towards businesses that minimum wage earners might potentially patronize (if they could afford fast food!). Since Illinois minimum wage rose from $5.15 to $7.50/hr, business has picked up substantially in my neighborhood (also recently upgraded) Mac's -- the noticeable increase being very "third world".

Also since $7.50/hr arrived here, some native born workers actually started showing up behind the counter.

Even if a $10/hr minimum wage costs left some jobs behind, doubling the wages of those still on the job would be a huge boon for lower income families.

Raising the minimum wage from $206/wk to $500/wk would add all of 3.5% cost to GDP output (and presumably no more to inflation not counting other wages pushed up) -- the simplest, most effective anti-poverty (poverty ending program really) ever.

If we could somehow have predicted to Americans of 1968 that, by early 2007, 25% of our workforce would be earning less than LBJ's minimum wage, the only thing they could have imagined happening would have been a small nuclear war, multiple depressions or plagues. We would have to explain that average income doubled but that he race to the bottom can be just as catastrophic. It is time to begin seriously shoring up the bottom as much as possible (while considering instituting federally mandated sector-wide labor agreements or the (e.g., French) equivalent -- the OEDC standard for ending the race to the bottom; see http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2007/11/had-adam-smith-lived-to-see-1800s.html).

The forebrain works for the midbrain (economistsview.typepad)

"Greene proposes an evolutionary answer. He points out that our ancestors evolved in an environment in which they could only choose to save people that they knew personally, not total strangers living continents away."

Another factor is that our social INSTINCTS are not computed in our massive forebrain, but in our pea sized midbrain, a.k.a., limbic system -- which is not nearly as flexible in its (not?) thinking as our forebrain. Thus, a million lawyers are able to rise for the judge without making the comparison that they do not have to salute the flag -- operating on some raw social instinct.

In general terms, your forebrain is what you know; your peabrain is what you want -- the seat of your motivations -- inherently putting the midbrain in charge of the forebrain's doings. Thus, Alan Greenspan may be a perfectly nice guy who is out of social contact with the poor side of town -- which allows him to totally miss the tragedy of the halving of the minimum wage as average income doubled. His midbrain is as dumb as everyone else's midbrain.

I hate to bring up the subject but: in the future, when a second trimester fetus can be removed from the womb for medical treatment and then returned, it will travel as a legal person and must (in our subjective motivations) retain that status upon return to the womb. I once thought that this would ensure legal equality for all similarly situated fetuses -- but now I wonder whether we will very easily be able to retain the same dichotomy of human rights between born (at least for a time) and unborn: raw social instinct question.

Posted by: Denis Drew | November 22, 2007 at 07:44 AM

Had Adam Smith lived to see the 1800s... (on TAP)

Had Adam Smith lived to see the industrial revolution he surely would have provided a seminal contribution to our understanding of the build-into-industrialization race to the wage and benefit bottom.

The race to the bottom hit American labor only sporadically (late 1800s, interwar and starting early 70s) and never as harshly or as it hit European workers steadily from the early 1800s on. By the last half of the twentieth century Europeans got a grip on the problem of out of control wage tailspin: sector-wide labor agreements (or equivalents like the French/Quebec practice of requiring all firms to work under conditions negotiated by union firms) -- a solution that makes life easier for ownership as well as labor according to its users.

The worst of the race to the bottom works like this: The maximum business can possibly pay labor in any market is just short of the labor expense that push it into the red. The lowest wage labor can possibly accept is enough to barely keep body and soul together. In between is room for fair free market play. Upon the advent of industrialization the maximum ownership could pay sometimes became the least labor could accept -- both meeting at the (not quite dead) wage bottom.

Individual weavers who once made a fair living were succeeded by 100 (?) times more productive, but replaceable, steam loom operators who were reduced not merely to subsistence but to the lowest level of same, living on oat cakes three times a day, unable even to afford wheat bread. In like manner California supermarket workers today cannot hang on to their previously settled pay scales because poor paying Wal-Mart is entering the retail food market.

American workers (and their progressive professional helpers) mostly seem not to have sensed the nature of the unnecessary lid that has been placed on their economic prosperity for over a third of a century now.

If we could somehow have predicted to Americans of the 50s and 60s that, by early 2007, a quarter of our workforce would be earning less than the minimum wage of the late 60s (approaching 10$/hr in today's money), the only explanation they might have been able to think of for such an astoundingly bleak economic future might have been a small atomic war, multiple depressions or even a mini-ice age.

It is long overdue for progressive professionals to alert mostly economically unaware Americans to what is happening. Begin by creating an alternative, "Team B" poverty standard (the 2002 book Raise the Floor contains a professionally worked out example) for the media to talk about to -- which should double the currently mis-reported poverty rate to about 25%. No more news organizations limited to reporting only on a grossly misleading poverty rate -- based on three (3) times the price of a barely survivable diet (dried beans only, no canned beans allowed -- no oat cakes: mid-twentieth century standard)!

It is also overdue for unfettered market theory to take its place along side (yes) communism as an equal no-brainer -- for exactly the same reason -- both all promising panaceas completely neglect the one factor it takes to produce fair and balanced human interaction: adequate checks and balances.

BTW, supercharging labor's economic power will simultaneously supercharge labor's political power. Who could ask for a better American prospect?

Labor (like all else) worth MAXIMUM price (economistsview.typepad)

NFL rookies definitely have to get a rookies union, or at least a first three-yearers union, to force teams -- who could not operate without them -- to pay them closer to what they are worth. Where is the rookie Jimmy Hoffa?

I finally figured out for myself this morning (as many doubtlessly have figured out before) that labor -- or anything else -- is worth the MAXIMUM that it can extract from the market before the market says it is not worth it: (morally?) justifying the economic function of labor unions. Ownership getting labor for any lower price than it would be willing to pay because of labor bargaining weakness is the same as ownership collecting rent from labor (an all the market will bear minimum wage also comes to mind).

I suspect that (morally?) overpriced CEOs and ballplayers (seeming to contradict myself) are a product of lack of pressure on their incomes beginning right at the bottom of the income chain (did I invent "income chain" too?; good day's work for a cab driver) and works its way up the income scale until some bargaining pressure from labor's side of the table finally appears: if you squeeze a toothpaste tube on the bottom it comes out the top syndrome.

CEO incomes in particular would certainly be under more pressure from stockholders if corporations were struggling under maximum labor pressure for their share of the profit -- instead of dancing on American labor's grave and vacuuming up all the cream for ownership.

Perhaps corporations would have less money to pay ballplayers (through buying game TV commercials) if they were not floating in so much profit that the players agents sense the very much can be skimmed (not blaming players or CEOs -- blaming American labor for mostly all sleeping at the pressure switch).

Posted by: Denis Drew | November 17, 2007 at 01:03 PM

Post-Hubert Humphrey labor law (economistsview.typepad)

The legislating needed today is revamping sorely outdated labor laws -- to end the race to the bottom -- by making unionization practicable and effective (effective ultimately means sector-wide). Newt Gingrich himself stated on Hannity the other night that 90-95% of Americans don't want workers deprived of the right to free elections. Of course Newtie's version of free elections was Catch-22, where you have to have an election -- but you cannot get past the gauntlet set up by management to get one (Newtie wants to deprive labor of the card check TOO).

Taking Newtie one more logical step (in the right direction) we could propose unionizing elections, periodically, in every workplace -- or perhaps more practically, that a 10 or 15% unionizing sign up (card check?) would require an election.

More fundamentally, what new labor law must end is the race to the bottom. If Adam Smith had been born 50 years later he would have viewed the newly instituted race to the bottom in newly industrial England and would surely have included a cogent description of it in his writing.

It took (I think) Europeans about 150 years to produce a full answer to the race to the bottom: sector-wide labor agreements or their equivalent. America (I think), even in the late nineteenth century still had enough diversity of opportunity to create enough of a permanent labor shortage to hold off a full-fledged race to the bottom.

America's downward wage and benefit spiral only began post-1973 as productivity growth finally slowed and after the winners and losers had finally sorted themselves out after the "great compression" (depression and WWII) so there was a reason to squeeze wages and someone to do it (I'm sure there is more to it -- especially American complacency given no previous experience racing).

If you told Americans of 1968 that by early 2007 a quarter of our workforce would be working for less than LBJ's minimum wage and would be below a realistic poverty line (not three times the price of the lowest survivable food budget), they might have speculated a small nuclear war, repeated depressions, plagues or some combination of same could be the only explanation.

The race to the bottom can produce just as devastating an economic catastrophe. In 1972 the top 1% took home 7.6% of overall income;l by 2001 it was 17.6%, by 2005 22.5% -- when will it be 27.6% the way we are going [a very recent story; can't put my finger on web address at the moment].

The simple answer to the race to the bottom -- worked out before our race even began around the better paying OECD world -- is some form of sector-wide labor agreements. Walmart has exited Germany (88 stores!) because its business model could not survive paying the same wages and benefits as everyone else. Let's wish WalMart better luck back in the states once sector-wide collective bargaining becomes the norm (Hubert Humphrey will be looking down smiling).

posted 11/15

Social Security -- crisis??? (http://economistsview.typepad.com)

Something like one-tenth of one percent a year hike in payroll tax until sometime around 2040 (after which S.S. outgo forever flattens) would cover the baby boomers -- as average income increases an average of two whole percent a year: a crisis?

Under the current setup an equivalent amount of income tax will go to cash in Trust Fund bonds to cover the payroll tax shortfall -- beginning sometime around 2017. If we are back in Clinton style surplus mode by then no one will notice. If we are in deficit we will face the choice of either raising the income tax (or some other on-budget tax -- tarrifs? :-]) just a mite or selling just a few more bonds to cover the TF bonds we are cashing -- some crisis.

By 2040, by current projections, we will be paying S.S. retirement about three-quarters out of payroll tax and one-quarter out of income tax -- clunky but, hey, this is government. At whatever point the TF bonds are all cashed in we can decide whether to go on with the same clunky setup or whether to add a few points to payroll tax (at a point in time when average income will have doubled) while making an equivalent chop in the income tax (who cares).

Cutting benefits to avoid doing either will be about as sane a possibility then as would be today (less so -- there will be relatively more seniors). What a crisis.

posted 11/16

If Adam Smith were born 50 years later + Catch 22 elections

I got the bright idea that if Adam Smith had been born 50 years later and lived to observe the industrial era he would have added an easy to understand delineation of the "race to the bottom" to his insights -- the race to the bottom being the chief difference between his era of more or less natural perfect competition among small entrepreneurs and skilled artisans, and the industrial era of 100 times more productive but interchangeable workers who are solely dependent on big entrepreneurs for the tools of their trade (e.g., steam looms).

I hope to come up with a simple delineation to serve in Smith's missed out on place -- not that I am any big brain; I just suspect that, from what I have seen so far of unfettered- free market misconceptions, untangling the economic truth may not be too un-simple. Anybody who wants to try, please have at it.
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Typical of Republican economic fairy tales: Newt Gingrich on Hannity the other night (same as Mailer broadcast) attacked the card check as depriving workers of the right to free unionizing elections which right he claims 90-95% of Americans support. Of course, the "Catch 22" election that Newt is talking about is the election that labor cannot get because of the gauntlet set for labor to run by current so called-labor law and super-bean counter management -- which is why labor is going for the card check in the first place, Newty baby. I assert that 90-95% of Americans might support a union election in EVERY work place (you don't have to run an obstacle course to vote for mayor), periodically, or that unionizing elections may be triggered by a 10% card check (the same percentage that triggers political party participation in nationwide presidential debates (e.g., Ross) and could plausibly be used to trigger public campaign matching funds -- or some equivalent of easy access unionizing elections.

posted 11/16

The simple answer; the mechanical answer; the only answer (In These Times; re: Hayes)

Since Adam Smith’s “perfect competition world” of small entrepreneurs and skilled artisans was replaced by the industrial world the simple (if catastrophic) problem for (100 times more productive) interchangeable workers has been the RACE TO THE BOTTOM. The simple solution now practiced all over the better paying world is SECTOR-WIDE labor agreements (or some equivalent).

This is not ideology. This is merely mechanical. It is that simple.

Posted by ddrew2u on Nov 13, 2007 at 8:59 AM

The missing marbles of the "free marketeers" (In These Times -- Chris Hayes)

• I have lately been thinking that the “free marketeers” are every bit as bereft of reality as their communist nemeses ever were and in exactly the same way: the theoretical structures of both equally ignore the impact of the same all important aspect of human nature—greed.

  The communists never appreciated the need for greed (how self-interest motivates efficiency and innovation).

  The free marketeers never understand the need to rein in greed with an adequate system of checks and balances (which hasn’t occurred naturally—that is without state intervention—since the beginning of industrialization). The belief that the oldest story of mankind—who’s going to eat whose lunch—can give way to some blind (market) mechanism is something psychologists (and rationale economists) might describe as “magical thinking”.

  (Uniquely) in America we have a deep seated, long running problem with this literally mindless ideology. It is an ideology which on an operational basis reduces all solutions to: don’t do anything about the problem ("government isn’t the solution; government is the problem"). Hopefully, we are now in a period in which America can permanently shed this literally missing-marbles ideology.

  Milton Freidman wrote that crisis is the only opportunity to change. By early 2007 (before the recent slight increase in the minimum wage), 25% of American workers were earning less than the minimum wage of 1968 (I wonder if Americans of 1968 would have seen that as a crisis if somehow they could have foreseen it). Using a realistic poverty measure, 25% of Americans could also be found living below the real poverty line (not the official—three times the price of the lowest possible food budget—poverty line) in 2007—up from 15% in 1968.

  But, Americans must “find out” about the crisis first. The number one way to alert them could be for progressives to construct a realistic poverty line (a “Plan B” poverty line—the formula found in the 2002 book Raise the Floor sounds perfect) and to begin to refer to the realistic line in all their writings and attempt to get the media to follow suit (at least as an arguable alternative). Once Americans wake up to find out that poverty is approaching doubling since the LBJ began the war on poverty (even as average income doubled) a new national conversation will be on.

  Then it may be time to note that in 1972 the top 1% of earners took in only 7.6% of overall income; by 2001 it was 17.6%, by 2005 22.5% and to wonder when it will reach 27.6%—that sounds like a crisis…

  ...for which there is a very simple solution: legally mandated, sector-wide collective bargaining (or some equivalent like the French system where all firms work under conditions agreed to by unionized firms)—the perfect, permanent checks and balances solution to the super bean counter management used all over the better paid OECD world.

  Posted by ddrew2u on Nov 10, 2007 at 10:15 AM

How smart is Hillary, really? (Real Clear Politics w/Conason)

I finally have to wonder just how intelligent Hillary really is: with her two-note permanent tune of either answering with memorized boilerplate about anything she is willing to discuss and her endless lack of defense against questions she wishes to duck beyond going brazenly off point -- over and over and over. Isn't she capable of putting on a more convincing show when ducking -- instead of simply not answering in a direct way, every time? Seems too, too easy a formula to repeat over and over for supposedly presidential timber who should be able to put up more of a genuine rhetorical skirmish.

What changed back? (TAP; "Who's to Blame for the Brave New Economy?")

Something changed to make [American CEOs and Wall Street financiers] greed and lack of social concern far more dangerous to our economy and democracy. What was it?"

Something changed BACK during the dot.com boom; what was that?

As a cab driver, not an economist, I find it easier to understand simple motivations than a whole economy. During the dot.com boom, as during the fair-share growth period following the great compression", high growth meant everybody could make money so everybody was allowed to make money (if you ask me) -- so the pressure on labor was off.

Post-postwar prosperity to pre-dot.com boom, productivity growth sloughed off so the profit grasping pressure on labor was high.

I think the same motive thing is what allows CEOs to water down their corporations' stock with untoward options -- stock holders would not tolerate such chicanery if profits were not pumped so high by the looting of (unorganized) American labor.

Post-dot.com boom the pressure came back on because today's super-bean counter corporations needed the DOUBLE-bubble of simultaneously returned high-productivity gains and the tech-bubble to feel the freedom to ease up on labor. (I know motive isn't the whole explanation for fairer income growth during the double-bubble; I just think that was most of it.)

Of course, the flip side of the motivation thing is that American labor has nothing like the awareness of European labor of the absolute need to organize to protect itself in the free market (and in the national legislature). So you have heavy pressure from the side of the heavy bean-counters and little back pressure from sleeping at the switch American labor: a sure formula for a race to the bottom.

As the fellow said in the post just above (that was me!):
If our media -- and our progressive professors -- would just stop parroting the official federal poverty line and establish a new line from realistic measurements
-- just do that one thing --
that would announce almost a doubling of the number of folks living in poverty (both from the current official number and from 1968's more realistic official number -- which would revolutionize the labor discussion in this country overnight.

Posted by: Denis Drew | Nov 8, 2007 11:43:48 AM

What middle class? (from: TAP; "Who's to Blame for the Brave New Economy?")

Pete,
The MEDIAN wage in this country is about $17/hr = about $680/wk before taxes -- while average income per hour if you throw in dividends, etc. comes to more like $35/hr. That's a lot of missing potential.

Does $680/wk sound like it would support a "middle class life"? And that's the median/typical American wage. How about the $7/hr Target or Walgreens worker? That is a catastrophe. (Last I looked $10/hr was the 10 percentile wage in Germany.)

Suppose we were somehow able to forecast to Americans of 1968 (when the federal minimum wage was $9.50/hr in today's money) that, by early 2007, a quarter of our workforce would be earning less than LBJs minimum wage -- what explanation do you think they would have conjured up: nuclear war, multiple depressions, Communism won :-)?

Would they have guessed American labor would allowed itself to become so helpless that it would have to take anything management dished out -- or that the media would allow labor to become so uninformed that it would not even know what was happening to it?

Guess what: a quarter of our population is now below a realistic poverty line (see the 2002 book Raise the Floor) -- not the official federal line based on three times the price of an emergency (cheapest possible) diet -- of all crackpot standards.

If the media -- and our progressive professors -- would just stop parroting the official poverty line and establish a line with realistic measurements -- just do that one thing --
it would revolutionize the labor discussion in this country overnight.

Posted by: Denis Drew | Nov 8, 2007 10:37:40 AM

Save federal retirement and health benefits -- with Medicare for all (from Real Clear w/Joe Conason)

Since the proportion of GDP going to Social Security payments will go from 4% today to 7% (max) 40 years out (and stay there for the foreseeable future) -- when, 40 years out, average incomes should have doubled, leaving 186% (!) of today's average income to splurge on everything else (not even counting the free gifts of better technology for the same price!) -- if anything the retirement age in America (where the population is growing not shrinking -- the latter being real European problem) should be gradually lowered and benefits could be painlessly hiked. [disclosure: I am 63.]
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The (non-complex) reality of the trust fund will become abundantly clear around 2017 when for the first time income tax will be used to cash "government owned bonds" to cover payroll tax shortfall.
This has happened before -- temporarily -- while waiting for Congress got around to a passing a modest increase in the payroll tax. This kind of -- temporary -- bridging a shortfall being a sensible purpose of even a (possibly much smaller) trust fund. On or around 2017 such bridging will become a permanent fixture -- the alternative being to begin raising payroll tax (I have heard) about one-tenth of one percent a year (as average income grows one and one-half percent a year).
********
While Social Security retirement is expected to soak up 7% of GDP, 40 years out, health care may take up 75% of GDP 80 years out (when average income -- which doubles every 40 years -- should have grown 400%). IOW, we would still have 100% of today's average income left over for everything else.

Per capita GDP grows 4 times as fast as population which is why Social Security was never a problem ( just what method you want to pay for it with) while health care costs are growing 5 times as fast as our ability to pay for it. Ergo, today's 15% of GDP spent on health care may grow to 20X (4 X 5) 80 years out -- 20 X the 15% of GDP soaked up by health care today or 300% of today's GDP, when GDP should have grown 400%.

The thing to do is get health care down to 200% of GDP, 80 years out, with Medicare for all (including underfunded Medicaid patients).

Purpose of this blog

The purpose of this blog (my first blog was www.onsamepage.blogspot.com) is to have a place to record day to day emails and blog posts on other blogs -- while saving my "core" sample of posts for the On Same Page blog.

This way anyone who wants to review my core outlooks wont have to sail through a sea of hundreds or eventually thousands of posts on On Same Page -- while my thoughts from day to day will be still accessible on On Same Day.