Children can be more creative than adults because they are less constrained by the certainty of knowledge. As we age, we lose ignorance and we gain knowledge and from knowledge comes certainty. But that costs us our imagination and creativity.
It’s as though we are born seeing a vast plain of possibilities, and with passing years, walls of knowledge descend, blocking our view until we find ourselves living in an ever-constricting tunnel of certainty.
The most creative among us are able to break small viewing windows into the walls of that tunnel, while the less creative resent the damage to the walls.
I think about that when I read about “dark matter” and “dark energy.” Here is a concise description of these two effects:
Dark matter produces an attractive force (gravity), while dark energy produces a repulsive force (antigravity). Together, they make up 96 percent of the universe—and we can’t see either.
Astronomers know dark matter exists because visible matter doesn’t have enough gravitational muster to hold galaxies together.
Dark energy, on the other hand, is why our universe is expanding. In fact, in 1998, astronomers studying distant supernovae were shocked to learn that, around 7.5 billion years after the Big Bang, the universe began expanding faster.
That indicates some unknown force is fighting gravity’s pull, causing galaxies to speed apart from one another.
That is what we know and that is what we believe — except gravity may not be a force, but rather a feature of space-time, and anti-gravity may exist only in comic books, and anyway, no one knows exactly what a “force” is.
That is the wall we have built from our limited knowledge to separate us from the infinite range of ignorance and explanations for what we think we see.
The truth is we have given names to things we don’t understand, and then invented relationships we don’t understand, to gravity — which we don’t understand. And that is the extent of our knowledge.
So for your amusement, and my pleasure, I will use ignorance to propose a different possible solution. What if dark matter and dark energy were exactly the same thing: Normal, everyday gravity.
DARK MATTER
It commonly is believed that the mass ofmatter creates gravity, so where mass is greater, gravity is greater.
That is why the gravity of the massive sun is greater than the gravity of the less-massive earth, which is greater than the gravity of an asteroid, etc.
A teacher explains that objects with mass dent spacetime, which gives an illusion of attraction.
So more-massive objects dimple space-time more than do less-massive objects, and what we perceive as attraction merely is objects “rolling down” the space-time dimple supposedly created by mass.
Stars in distant galaxies move around the center of the galaxy (usually dominated by a supermassive black hole) and are kept from flying off into space by the gravity dimple of the center.
But scientists observed that the visible mass of the center could not possibly create enough gravity to hold the stars. (The stars were moving too fast.)
So the assumption is that there exists some other matter we cannot see, i.e. “dark matter,” and this dark matter creates the extra mass and gravity dimples needed to keep the stars in their orbits.
But what if the mass of matter does not create gravity? Imagine if gravity itself permeates the entire universe, and rather than being smooth, it itself is randomly dimpled.
Imagine gravity exists as a randomly dimpled sheet
And imagine if, instead of the dimples being created by mass, this already-dimpled gravity accumulates mass according to the depth of the dimples. Larger dimples accommodate larger mass; smaller dimples accommodate smaller mass.
This would cause the illusion that the mass creates the dimples but in reality, the dimples accommodate the mass. It’s not creation; its accommodation.
Imagine the dimples can merge, like two whirlpools, into larger dimples, and this merger would send shudders along the gravity “sheet,” which we call “gravity waves.”
So larger/deeper dimples accumulate more matter than do smaller dimples, and — this is important — there isn’t enough matter to fill all the dimples — so some dimples are left empty or partly empty.
And these empty or partly empty dimples are what we have named, “dark matter,” because of our belief that gravity is caused by matter rather than gravity accommodating matter.
This would mean the dimpled sheet of gravity exists everywhere, even where there is no matter at all.
When the astronomers look at distant galaxies and notice the stars moving faster than they should because matter is scarce, imagine it’s because of unseen gravity dimples that have not been filled by matter.
It’s not “dark matter.” It’s just invisible gravity.
DARK ENERGY
It long has been known that the universe is expanding. It was thought that this expansion was residual inertia of the “Big Bang” that originally created the universe from a minuscule dot, and that eventually the expansion first would slow, then stop, then reverse culminating in a “Big Crunch” as the universe returned to being a dot.
Recently, to everyone’s amazement, it was found that the expansion rate actually is increasing.
“Dark energy “is thought to be some sort of unknown repulsive force that causes the entire universe to expand, and not just expand but at an accelerating rate.
No one knows what this repulsive force could be, but the increasing expansion rate demands some sort of explanation, so lacking knowledge, we have determined there must be a repulsive force, and we have named it “dark energy.”
Multiple universes causing other universes to expand faster and faster.
But now imagine there is no “repulsive force.”
Rather, there just is gravity that permeates our entire universe.
Then, imagine there are multiple universes, of which ours is just one among the myriad.
Multiple universes mean multiple gravities, so our expanding universe would be surrounded by the gravities of other universes.
The effect of gravity is to make things accelerate. For example, things affected by the gravity of the earth accelerate at about 32.18 ft/s2 (32.18 feet per second per second), which means that the farther you fall toward the earth, the faster you go.
Now visualize our universe expanding from the Big Bang and being influenced by the gravities of all the other surrounding universes. The farther our universe expands, the more it will be influenced by other nearby gravities, and so, ever-faster it will expand.
Another way to visualize the same effect is to think of yourself on a small boat, floating in the Niagara River.
As you approach the Niagara Falls, you will go faster and faster until you drop over the edge, at which time you will go even faster.
Just like the universe.
Now if you think all of the above is mere ignorant prattle, you very well could be right. But until someone definitively determines what “dark matter” and “dark energy” are, all the various attempts at explanation also are ignorant prattle, one no better than another.
You might as well claim the universe is held together by infinitely small threads.
Oh wait, that’s string theory, which was proposed years ago and never proven, though still believed by many scientists.
The merits of Medicare-for-all, have been pushed off the front burner of the news stove.
But academic research in that area has not stopped. And over the past few months, several studies have examined one of the key questions on Medicare-for-all: namely, would it save American society money?
The moral and practical questions, “Would it improve America’s health and business efficiencies,” often are forgotten. But even the “save-money” question doesn’t receive a straight and believable answer.
The unanimous answer is yes. Putting everyone on a world-class universal Medicare program — with no premiums, no deductibles, no co-insurance, and almost no co-pays, paid for with taxes— would leave most of us with more money in our pockets.
And other research demonstrates that there would probably not be a giant increase in health care use if it is passed.
Before continuing with the THEWEEK article, we’ll give you the real answer to the title question: Federally funded Medicare, Parts A, B, and D, plus long-term care for everyone would:
Save Americans many billions of dollars
Improve America’s health
Improve business efficiency, and
Narrow the Gap between the rich and the rest.
And it would not have to be paid for with taxes
To be fair, a few commentators have been keeping the discussion going. John Oliver, for instance, provided a quite good breakdown of Medicare-for-all in his show Last Week Tonight:
Oliver notes that some studies have found enormous savings, and even the libertarian Mercatus Center found a small cost improvement.
However, the Urban Institute concludes it’s impossible to say what might happen on costs.
The Urban Institute did not actually study the Medicare-for-all bill sponsored by Bernie Sanders. Instead they substituted their own plan in which reimbursement rates are assumed to be 15 percent higher than in the Sanders plan. That’s why their cost estimate is so high, but it simply has nothing to do with what the actual bill in question might do if implemented.
By analogy, the Urban Institute saw the movie “Dumb and Dumber” and concluded that “The Godfather” was silly, frivolous fluff.
The moral: Never trust Urban Institute’s evaluation of economic proposals or movies.
Furthermore, they seriously underestimate the potential administrative cost savings for hospitals (relying on a fact sheet from a lobbyist group), and simply assume “utilization,” or use of medical services, will dramatically increase (more on this later).
Well, “relying on a fact sheet from a lobbyist group” certainly sounds like the kind of research you should trust, wouldn’t you say? It’s a real credit to the Urban Institute.
Christopher Cai and others surveyed the best 22 studies on the subject, and aggregated the results. They found that 19 of the analyses “predicted net savings … in the first year of program operation and 20 … predicted savings over several years; anticipated growth rates would result in long-term net savings for all plans.”
More recently, Alison P. Galvan and others examined the cost of Sanders’ bill directly. They constructed a mathematical model to examine what setting the various parameters of a Medicare-for-all model would cost, and plugged in the figures in Sanders’ bill and their best estimates of other factors.
They calculated “that the Medicare-for-all Act would reduce national health-care expenditure by more than $458 billion, corresponding to 13.1 percent of health-care expenditure in 2017. We also project that the Medicare-for-all Act would save more than 68,500 lives every year, compared with the status quo.“
All of the above would be quite exciting if federal taxpayers funded any Medicare for All plan — but better yet, federal taxpayers don’t fund any federal expenses.
The federal government, unlike state and local governments, is uniquely Monetarily Sovereign, so federal taxpayers (also unlike state and local taxpayers) do not fund federal government spending.
Alan Greenspan:“A government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency.” Ben Bernanke:“The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.” St. Louis Federal Reserve:“As the sole manufacturer of dollars, whose debt is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government can never become insolvent, i.e.,unable to pay its bills. In this sense, the government is not dependent on credit markets to remain operational.”
Federal taxes are destroyed upon receipt — they cannot be found in any money-supply measure. Try to learn how much money the federal government has, and you will not discover an answer. The answer is: “Infinite.”
The federal government creates brand new dollars every time it pays a bill.
Discussions of cost, as it relates to affordability or federal tax, are essentially meaningless.
That brings me back to utilization. Dr. Adam Gaffney found that when lots more people got access to care, use generally did not increase — instead it was redistributed across the population.
The people using the most care used a bit less, while the people formerly shut out of the system used a lot more.
This argument is sure to lead conservatives to shout about the dread “rationing,” presenting the Medicare-for-all future as some kind of Soviet breadline.
(However,) Gaffney et al. cite suggestive evidence that medical providers under our current system tend to dial up their recommended care to keep their facilities full, even if that requires frivolous or unnecessary procedures, while dialing it back when everyone has coverage and there are plenty of customers.
In actual practice, not only would federal support for Medicare-for-All encourage the creation of more hospitals, more doctors, more nurses, and more health-care facilities, but America already verges on surplus.
That is why so many unnecessary procedures are recommended. In business, it’s called “filling the pipeline.”
America already has a tremendous amount of rationing — by price. About 28 million Americans have no health insurance, and a further 44 million are underinsured.
Across the country, every day tens of millions of Americans are rationing their insulin, taking taxis to the emergency room, walking around with wrecked joints or rotting teeth, or begging bystanders not to call an ambulance when they are grievously injured.
In the United States today, rich people can get all the care they want, even if it’s pointless or elective, because they can use their money to cut to the front of the line, while poor routinely have to wait for months or simply go without.
The U.S. currently has only 2.3 doctors per 1,000 residents — about a quarter fewer than Norway, a third fewer than France, and less than half as many as Cuba. We could surely use a couple hundred thousand more physicians — and if their pay was more in line with international norms, it wouldn’t even cost much.
This last is a critical point. For reasons having to do with the myth of unaffordability, current Medicare skimps on medical payments. You who have Medicare see the bills. A doctor bills $500 and receives $150.
So to pay for those years of education and intern semi-slavery doctors have to load up on patients and (sorry to say this) schedule questionably necessary procedures.
There are zero reasons why Medicare is so frugal. The federal government cannot run short of dollars. It has the infinite ability to pay for anything.
If Medicare paid more, there would be more medical facilities and more medical personnel. People and businesses go where the money is.
To give you an example: My former primary care physician saw 2,500 patients. Getting an appointment could take weeks.
I suggested he become a concierge doctor and cut his load. But he was locked in by his contract with his hospital group, and even then he can’t make hospital visits. Those are made by hospitalists — doctors who are hospital employees.
So, my wife and I decided to switch to concierge doctors. We pay an annual fee of $2,500 each, and our two doctors each have 300-400 patients.
Not only can we always get same-day appointments, if we wish, and not only do our doctors know us intimately, but even more importantly, when there is a crisis, the doctor is there for us.
Recently, my wife had a serious situation that required two separate, two-week hospital stays. Her concierge doctor, who was at her bedside every day, and knew her entire medical background, consulted with the various specialists. There was no need for medical personnel to waste time “getting up to speed.”
And it was very comforting, as doctor and nurses I didn’t know, rushed in and out of her room, to have her doctor, whom I did know, patiently explain to me what medicines and procedures were being administered and what the prognoses were.
That is the way medicine should work in America, and easily could work in America — personal, one-on-one, caring and knowing.
And it would work that way if not for the persistent myth of unaffordability that permeates every discussion of Medicare-for-All.
But that’s a question for the future. At bottom, the research is clear: Medicare-for-all would save the United States money, probably quite a lot, and save tens of thousands of lives.
Once a baseline of universal coverage is established, we can start fixing up the rest of the health care system. With some time and effort, Americans could have their health care cake and eat it too.
The history of medicine is littered with ignorance.
The phrenologist, astrologist, and the snake oil salesmen have been replaced by the debt Henny Pennys, who claim we simply can’t afford medical care for everyone (except for the rich, that is).
With some time, effort, and an understanding of what Monetary Sovereignty can accomplish, every man, woman, and child in America could have free, informed, professional medical care.
Sadly, ignorance has its penalties, and we suffer for it.
Those who regularly preach doom because of government budget deficits (as I regularly did myself for many years) might note that our country’s national debt has increased roughly 400 fold during the last of my 77-year periods. That’s 40,000%!
Suppose you had foreseen this increase and panicked at the prospect of runaway deficits and a worthless currency. To “protect” yourself, you might have eschewed stocks and opted instead to buy 3 1/4 ounces of gold with your $114.75.
And what would that supposed protection have delivered/ You would now have an asset worth about $4,200, less than 1% of what would have been realized from a simple, unmanaged investment in American business.
Gap Psychology describes the common desire to distance oneself from those “below” in any socio-economic ranking, and to come nearer those “above.” The socio-economic distance is referred to as “The Gap.”
Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics.
Implementation of Monetary Sovereignty and The Ten Steps To Prosperity can grow the economy and narrow the Gaps:
How many errors/lies can you find in this one little all-caps tweet?
ERRORS/LIES
1. “FORMERLY TARGETED.” No explanation for this weird phrase is given, but we assume Trump is implying Democrats “targeted” (whatever that means) farmers, and now that Trump is President, this “targeting” somehow no longer is happening . . . . except for Trump’s tariffs that have cost farmers billions.
(Farmers also suffer from the global warming that Trump continues to deny.)
2. “THE TRADE DEALS . . . FULLY KICK IN” The non-existent trade deals never will “fully kick in,” and the reason Trump has to offer “ADDITIONAL AID” is because he has cost farmers vast amounts of money already, with his amateurish attempts at trade negotiation.
He does not know what he is doing, and he has exacerbated the situation by replacing knowledgeable and experienced trade negotiators with ignorant sycophants. That is why we are stuck in the current trade mess.
It’s our little secret. Don’t tell the people we don’t use their tax dollars.
3. “PAID FOR OUT OF. . .” Most people don’t know (but the President of the United States should know) that unlike state and local governments, the US federal government does not use income to pay its bills.
The federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign, never can run short of its own sovereign currency, the U.S. dollar.
(Ben Bernanke: “The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.”)
The federal government creates brand new dollars, ad hoc, every time it pays a bill. Having the unlimited ability to create dollars, the government has no reason to save dollars. So incoming dollars are destroyed, and new dollars are sent to creditors.
4. ” . . . THE MASSIVE TARIFF MONEY COMING INTO THE USA!” Either Trump does not understand, or he hopes his tweet readers do not understand, that US tariffs do not “come into the USA.” They are paid by US businesses and US residents, not by foreign nations.
Tariffs are a tax on Americans — a direct transfer from Americans to the federal government.
Could Trump really believe China is paying tariffs to the USA? Is he that ignorant?
In short, the entire tweet is one, gigantic lie, written to fool the gullible.
Fortunately for Trump (but unfortunately for America) this nation has a supply of ignorant and gullible people on whom Trump easily can prey. For some strange reason, these people choose to wear red hats to identify themselves
Gap Psychology describes the common desire to distance oneself from those “below” in any socio-economic ranking, and to come nearer those “above.” The socio-economic distance is referred to as “The Gap.”
Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics.
Implementation of Monetary Sovereignty and The Ten Steps To Prosperity can grow the economy and narrow the Gaps:
You might think that a guy who is a businessman, a multi-billionaire, a guy who provides massive financial information to the world, a guy who has been both a Republican and a Democrat — you would think that guy would understand money.
I’m Michael Bloomberg and I (should) know money.
Sadly, no. Or at least he doesn’t understand federal money.
It’s so disappointing, so disheartening, to read the same-old, same-old ignorance coming from this new guy on the Presidential block.
How Mike Bloomberg’s new retirement plans stack up vs. other Democrats
Dhara Singhand, Ben Werschkul, Yahoo Finance•February 16, 2020
Mike Bloomberg unveiled on Sunday his presidential campaign’s plans for retirement and Social Security, tackling the subject for the first time as a contender for the Democratic nomination.
In laying out his retirement security plan, the former Republican and New York City mayor’s plan echoed most of his fellow Democrats by promising an increase in Social Security payouts.
Yet he also drew distinctions between their proposals and President Donald Trump’s, by introducing a new minimum benefit to ensure that all recipients are at least above the poverty line.
O.K., so far, so good, depending on how big the increase will be and what form it will take.
I’m not a fan of trying to determine whether a person is above the poverty line; it’s too difficult because of the many different forms of “income” (free food, free education, free housing, etc.), but the sentiment is good.
That said, it all falls apart:
With Social Security projected to run out of funds in the coming years, Bloomberg’s proposal also made mention of “consider [ing] options for preserving and strengthening Social Security’s long-term finances, while maintaining and enhancing benefits for the neediest recipients.”
Social Security is an agency of the U.S. federal government. Social Security’s long term finances are identical with the long-term finances of the U.S. government, i.e. infinite.
The U.S. government cannot run short of dollars. Who says so?
Well, Alan Greenspan says so:
Greenspan
Alan Greenspan: “A government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency.”
Who else says so?
Well, Ben Bernanke says so:
Ben Bernanke: “The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.”
‘
Bernanke
Who else says so?
A representative from the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank says so:
St. Louis Federal Reserve: “As the sole manufacturer of dollars, whose debt is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government can never become insolvent, i.e.,unable to pay its bills. In this sense, the government is not dependent on (borrowing) to remain operational.”
So, if it is impossible for the U.S. government to run short of dollars, it makes no sense to say that an agency of the federal government, the Social Security Administration, can run short of dollars. It is just plain wrong.
Yes, it impossible for Social Security, an agency of the government, to run short of dollars, unless that is what the government wants — or wants you to believe.
So, Mr. Bloomberg, please spare us your “considering of options.” There’s nothing to consider. Simply fund Social Security with federal spending. Period.
Get rid of the phony and regressive and useless FICA tax. It pays for nothing.
It also lays out a plan to “supplement” lower-income retirement options by creating a public savings option with automatic contributions for all income earners — similar to what South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar have also proposed.
“Americans who have worked for decades deserve the opportunity to retire without facing constant financial pressure,” Bloomberg said in a statement.
“As president, I will strengthen Social Security to allow seniors to do just that.”
Sounds good on the surface, except for that “automatic contributions for all income earners” part. Is this one of those “work-’til-you-drop” plans, where you get nothing unless you have a job?
The rich love those kinds of plans because the rich always think of the poor as lazy slackers who will take unfair advantage of handouts from the government. (Of course, the rich sweat from their hourly labors, and receive no breaks from the government.Right?)
However, the candidate was vague about how he’d pay for his ideas, especially with some estimates showing the retirement trust fund could become insolventsometime within the next 20 years.
Bloomberg’s rivals have released much greater detail on how they’d fund big-ticket changes, which include taxes on higher salaries and capital gains.
But if federal taxes were necessary to fund federal spending, how did net deficit spending total well over $20 Trillion (with a big “T”) in the past 80 years? That’s $20 Trillion of spending that was done without taxes.
Apparently, Bloomberg is like the rest of the pols, afraid to say the truth, that the U.S. government, being Monetarily Sovereign, neither uses nor needs tax revenue, as it creates new dollars, ad hoc, every time it pays a creditor.
Or, Bloomberg is like the rest of the pols, unwilling to say the truth, because he wants to prevent the poor from coming any closer to the rich — an example of Gap Psychology (the desire of those higher in any social hierarchy to separate themselves from those lower).
I had great hopes for Bloomberg, because much of his thinking is good, and he has the money to kick Trump’s butt.
I just wish, at long last, someone would tell the truth about Monetary Sovereignty, and cut the “How will you pay for it”? nonsense.
Gap Psychology describes the common desire to distance oneself from those “below” in any socio-economic ranking, and to come nearer those “above.” The socio-economic distance is referred to as “The Gap.”
Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics.
Implementation of Monetary Sovereignty and The Ten Steps To Prosperity can grow the economy and narrow the Gaps:
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 