Steve's barking; What's with happiness and pay?

A survey was taken that about happiness and pay and the winner over Tech Firms ( Google, Apple, Microsoft) was Costco. What's with that?

Steve's barking; Being employed, so what.

There is great pride in the nation and in states that the unemployment is going down.
If you are one who is employed and can't feed your family while working 40, 80 hours a week or in the case of two spouses working 120 hours a week and the pay check or checks don't pay the rent, feed and clothes your family so why should you care if your part or the reason the unemployment rate is going down.
Getting back to basics taking care of yourself and your family is the primary reason we work.

We have to ask ourselves, if more of those who are working and can't take care of the basics, big sh*t if the unemployment rate is going down.

Steve's barking free healthcare, is it used more then if you have to pay for it?

I just finished reading Think Like A freak.
One of the authors suggested to Tony Blair that it might be a good idea to have a voucher system for their healthcare system. With out going into specifics as what it entails, this is an illogical solution, that if implemented would do just the opposite as to what it is intended to do, reducing cost to the government. Of course sometimes my logic can seem to be totally illogical.

One of the suppositions in the book was that if you give things (health care in this case) to people they will misuse it. I turned the the pages over and over again looking for proof.
Because there was no poof that because healthcare is free ( though it's not free because it's paid by taxes) it would be misused by those who are getting free healthcare.

Now I propose a study in the US of at least 500 recipients of Medicare ( the last I checked, they don't pay a co- pay) against 500 of the poor who get their medical insurance from a job but have to pay a co-pay.
I would break this down still making 250 in each category workers, 250 non workers. 250 non workers getting their health insurance from their partners.
To be fair the numbers should be triple what I'm suggesting in the same group under 55, in the same zip code, half with children, half without. This would reduce variance.

What can't be judged from this study, if some believes tag they have paid for this healthcare insurance  
are they compelled to use it more.

I noticed at parties when there is left overs people rush up to bring as much food at home as possible.
This is not the same as being in a doctors office for a half hour to four hours.

Steve's barking; The landlord gets all the insurance money

What if all the tenants of an apartment building pooled their money with their landlord to buy insurance and the building Burnt down. Instead of giving the insurance money to all the tenants  the insurance company gave the money to the landlord. Now the landlord can keep all the money and make a grand profit on his ex building or he can give most or part of the money to his ex tenants.
 A person may ask what has this got to do with real life after all no tenants pool their money with their landlord to buy insurance? If you think of the Federal Reserve as the insurance company, the banks as the landlord, and the banks customers as the tenants you can get the impression that the Fed buying bonds isn't a very effective way of  fighting unemployment.
 The one good consequence of the Federal Reserve buying bonds it reduces the debt (off the books).

Steve's barking: What stimulus

Every time I hear the term the stimulus didn't work my blood pressure rises 10 points.
Replacing partially what is lost does not a stimulus make.
Buying bonds from banks and having the same bank hold a big reserve does not a stimulus make. All the banks are doing is replacing bonds with cash.

A true stimulus would be doubling the minimum wage.
A true stimulus would be hiring more government workers at high wages.
A true stimulus would be fixing the infrastructure with high wage earners.

The first suggestion doesn't cost the government anything.
The second suggestion would be payed for by grater tax revenue of having more people with the ability to buy more goods and services from the private sector.
The third suggested stimulus would pay for itself by cheaper energy and less ware and tear on tires and ease of transporting of goods.

I'm really tired of dumb a** economics who use gigo statistics to justify there points.

* Computer term garbage in garbage out.

Steve's barking at too much of a good thing

In my city, the big apple were having a resurgent of good jobs. This is the goal of all cities, states and countries. No one would think that this is problematic, with probably the exception of  your truly.
Along with these good jobs and the job creators who come with them come inflation. Well inflation when it comes to rent. In the big apple these good jobs may or may not go to the native population.
Most likely they go to aliens from places like Boston. Fact of the matter, that good job being mayor has gone to persons from Massachusetts and horrors of horrors they're Red Sox fans. If taxes that the Big Apple was getting because of these good jobs, it might not be so bad, there by helping the natives one could say put up with this housing inflation, our schooling is being payed for as is our police by these aliens, but I'm not sure that this is the case. One can make the same case for the city by the bay, and evens states like the Dakota.

Steve's barking: Is the US becoming the new USSR?

No the US is not becoming communist, nor even socialist. It just that some characteristics that the Soviet Union had when it collapsed and just after it appear to be taking place in the good old US of A.
Our  infrastructure is collapsing. Were afraid to try something new. (New sources of energy for example).
Few people run the country and the same tired faces seem to appear with the same tired ideas.Same as the Soviet Union. The old Soviets use to call every one that didn't agree with them a fascist and we like to call those who disagree communist or socialist. The best way to get a good job in the US is to know some one just as in the old Soviet Union. The old Soviet Union news was propaganda TV and Newspapers, just as Fox news tends to be a propaganda arm of the Republican party and MS NBC tends to be the propaganda arm of the Democrats. The health care system of both the collapsing Soviet Union deteriorated just as the US is deteriorating.( The US is closing hospitals right and left. For every 2 doctors that retires only 1 and 1/2 doctors replace the retired one). The collapsed Soviet Union had a hard time paying it's veterans, think of the US VA. The old Soviet propaganda machine would tell the same lies over and over again that the people became to believe that the lies were the truth. Think of the NRA, the Tea Party, the Cato institute (I could go on and on including left leaning groups). Aren't they the same kind  propaganda machines as the old Soviet system? When the Soviet System collapse didn't it fall into an rich oligarchy  type of system just as we are falling into now?



                 THINK
                 USE YOUR IMAGINATION

Steve's barking; what if there were no refs in the NBA

What if there were no refs in the NBA?
After all we've all seen some terrible calls.
Would teams ref themselves? Would the rules of the game fall by the wayside?
If there  no refs would anybody care about the game?
What would happen if countries had no regulators? After all they make some lousy calls like NBA refs.
Probably the economic system as we know would collapse.

Steve's barking;thining of the herd

The world is in trouble. There are more people alive today then in all the history of world ( I think).
(Mother) Nature and man himself thinned the herd. Mother nature by disease, man by war.
Man is destroying the earth, but then again we were always destroying the earth.
Man has always been running out of food. In the17th century economist said we will run out of food, not knowing that man would create ways to increase crop production.
Getting back to subject, through out history man has thinned the population through wars, the only mass death in war is the Middle East and in Africa, but in those places you have a population explosion.
The question now is will mother nature thin the human herd by disease, even though we seem to be curring  the old ones on  a record pace new and nastier ones seem to be popping up every day.
Maybe man will thin the herd with sugar. I keep hearing about how obesity going to make the life span shorter in man.
Well instead of war we've created climate change, that maybe man helping mother nature thin out the herd.

Steve's barking; Ultra conservatives and ultra liberals being alike

Why can't we all get along. Were is the common ground between ultra conservatives and the few remaining ultra liberals. I don't count obstructionist such as those in the tea party as conservatives. I consider most of them as space cadets.
Anyway were was I.
Oh that's right I was comparing the ultra conservatives with the ultra liberals. OK , lets start off that both these groups are arrogant. Both groups think the other is stupid. They both like to make fun of each other. Both groups can't take a joke when it's on them.They both like to preach to the choir and think that's getting their message across.
 They both have their own television networks. The conservative network hires a few liberals and the liberal network hires a few conservatives. These people are hired as foils just as the World Wrestling Association has bad guys, these network need people who are foils to add a little spice to their narratives.

Steve's barking; It's the midus touch

The more one watches business news on the boob tube one gets the impression that there are so many  people in America that have the midus touch.  Every thing that they touch turns to gold. There is even a suggestion that a company isn't worth a dam unless it's profits this quarter aren't greater then they were last year at this time.
Now I'm going to look into my crystal ball and proclaim that all those who think they have the midus touch and every thing they touch turns into gold are in great trouble, for the gold that they think they are creating is really fools gold. Unless there is greater income for all, most if not all companies in America and the world are in trouble.
Simple economics will tell you that if there isn't enough people with enough money to buy products and even the bare necessities, businesses collapse even if that business is a farm that  can't sell it's produce, it's not going to be around for too long.
Now I'm thinking that if there are fewer products to buy, what's the use of having all that gold (money) if  there's nothing to buy. Kind of like that fabled king of old called Midus.
Now this blog may not make any sense to everybody but it's a warning of  the possibility of a depression that isn't  with the collapse of the banking system.