I probably shouldn't be blogging right now. Sometimes you just can't help it. Business often seems so easy but people mess it up so badly. Today GM says they are delaying construction on their Chevy Volt plant. I understand that they are running out of money, but it is hard to understand why it has taken them so long to focus on a product that the public actually cares about. And now they have to delay production on it. I don't think that bunkering down to sell more of the cars people don't want is going to help their situation.
Other things are driving me crazy too. I'm on a college campus half of my week and downtown Phoenix the other half of the week. I regularly witness places that sell overprice food going out of business. At the same time, American families are struggling. Why is it that you can't buy a sandwich at most places for less than 6 dollars, and 8-10 is all too common. Granted, I understand that If I were a business owner I'd need to charge that kind of money to stay afloat, but that isn't what the public needs right now. With so many people out of work, and so many on the edge, you should be able to buy a cheap sandwich for 99 cents, or maybe 1.50. You know, a tuna fish sandwich on wheat bread or maybe a peanut butter and jelly. Maybe a piece of Naan bread with a swipe of Hummus on it. There should be little lunch carts on every corner of America right now selling affordable food that is healthy too. As it is, you have to pay 6-8 dollars for a little bowl of rice with some sugar sauce on it. Man, that is ridiculous. Neither sugar nor rice costs much. I don't care about eating in a place with a 10 foot tall horse in front. Hold the decor and heavy on the low price for me!
How about housing? Why do we all live so far from work? What's up with the 100 year old perspective on zoning? Wouldn't it be nicer if we didn't have to own expensive vehicles in order to get to work and buy food? We should have housing mixed with business disctricts in ways that are beautiful and functional. We could have better quality of life by not polluting so much, and having more time with our families. We'd also make better use of public transportation.
How about health insurance? This is a really divisive issue. Despite spending far more than any other country in the world on health services in general, statistics show that we don't live any longer. Meanwhile, each new drug that comes out is perceived to be the right of every American to have, subsidized by all the other Americans of course. I can appreciate the sentiment of those who say they would work every last day of their life without retirement so that their child can have good health care. But what happens when there is a tremendous social cost to everyone participating in such a system? How can we afford to have our businesses spend at least $10,000 a year on employees for health insurance? How can we afford to pay our own portion of health insurance on top of that? How can you ever truly live a free life when you feel that you can't live without the assurances that $10,000+ a year in health insurance brings? How can we compete with other countries for manufacturing jobs when we demand that our companies spend so much on our people? A win by a union to get such benefits for its employees is a nail in the coffin of that business in the long term. It seems reasonable that each working person should put a couple thousand a year into a health system, but that anything beyond basic care should be something you have to pay for out of your own pocket. If you want the $5,000 a month acne cream, you should buy it yourself. If you want the $150,000 a month cancer treatment, you should pay for it yourself or be entered into some type of lottery for treatment or get your neighborhood/church to pay for it. Sure, it sounds mean, but if health services aren't provided in a competitive way according to people's budgets, then the whole innovation of services/increase in health insurance premiums cycle never ends, and we all lose. I like doctors, but if the only way for them to make a dollar is to lower what they get paid, they would. I like pharmaceutical companies, but if the only way they could get paid was by competing to deliver low cost goods that people could afford without health insurance, you can bet that they would find a way.
And in brief, how about another topic of conversation: power consumption. Who wants to have all their energy payments (oil) being funneled overseas to people who want to kill you? Hopefully nobody. We really should be looking for ways to be energy independent. The only realistic way to do that is through nuclear power. Nevertheless, if we try to rely on the meager contributions of wind and solar, we need to find ways to make our devices more efficient. If solar power and such provides very little power, then we should make houses and businesses that use very little power. This requires new science to create better devices, as well as a change in behaviors. Maybe we need smaller televisions, for example.
