Recent polls show that only 29% believe the country is headed in the right direction. Only 16% approve of the job congress is doing. How is this possible in a country where citizens have authority over government?
The following are universal thinking errors.
1.) Americans are independent minded and autonomous when they vote.
2.) Politicians seek office out of a desire to serve.
How is it then that Americans are constantly dissatisfied with the results they get in government? If those two assertions are true, there is no way the country could be in its current situation.
The answer is simple. Americans are not independent minded and autonomous. Politicians do not seek office out of a need to serve.
The Common Sense Economics political model makes realistic assumptions about human behavior. Rather than act think independently and act autonomously, people act compulsively when making political decision, in line with instinctive behavior.
Our system of government gives citizens authority over government but they are unable to assert authority because they are instinctively prone to worship leaders. Politicians run for office to attain power. Goodness does not even enter into the picture.
Humans instinctively engage in collective action and relate to government much like a child relates to a parent. As a concept, the idea of freedom is only about 600 years old. For all previous years people served masters. People are legally free but they are still hardwired to serve a master.
So, if one is trying to make sense out of politics, throw out the bad assumptions, know that people act compulsively out of instinct and things start coming together.

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Is patriotism a virtue? The Germans thought it was a virtue before and during WWII. So did every country that participated in the war. When King David sent multitudes of his subjects to die fighting the Philistines, certainly patriotism was seen as a virtue. In herding behavior patriotism is defined as a virtue and life is lived on the basis that it is.
What is patriotism, though, when one removes the euphemistic definition we give the term? In its worse form, patriotism is a method of enslaving people. Such was the case when destitute poor people in the South during the Civil War, died defending ideas that benefited them in no way.

Patriotism can be used to buy the labor of others for far less than it would be worth in a market setting. In terms of Common Sense Economics, patriotism turns out to be a way to steal the labor of those with little or no political power.

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Anthem Inc. is in the process of trying to buy Cigna Corp. For anyone who doesn’t know these are Giant Health Insurance providers. There are only a handful of these companies. The story is that consumers will benefit because cost savings will be passed on to patients.

This is the same logic that was employed in Texas as tort reform was instituted. Will lower costs be passed on to consumers? Since all of economics is based on one incentive, self interest, there is no chance at all that there will be savings for consumers. Corporations merge for the purpose of making additional profits and there is no other reason. There is nothing wrong with two corporations merging in order to improve profits. It is wrong to point to a benefit for patients when that is not even a possibility.

What passes for health insurance is actually a payment management system that extracts money out of patients and physicians. Corporations like Anthem and Cigna have no true utility to society. They are a cause of high health care prices. Government guarantees their market. The insurance companies simply skim income off of everyone by using government to force patients and doctors to deal with them. Americans don’t seem to mind but they are being impoverished by this system. In the long run these entities will not survive but they are inflicting a lot of pain in the mean time.

Monopolies, even those created by government, eventually destroy themselves. The process is slow but consumers are constantly searching for substitutes for what monopolies provide. Remember that “only phone company in town.” High prices for land lines and high long distance rates helped usher in the mobile phone. One of the consequences of squeezing physicians is that it creates an incentive to charge patients without providing treatment. Who has not had the experience of going to a family physician and being referred to a specialist for a run of the mill condition. This is how mass marketing medicine works. Herd them in, herd them out and collect collect a fee. This is not a preference of doctors. They have a choice of getting paid for not treating patients or taking a loss. Actual health care is becoming rare.

What happens next? People everywhere are discovering the curative nature of everything from Aloe Vera to oral supplements made from cannabis oil. Watch for doctors in foreign countries to start offering Skype appointments. More Americans will start traveling to Mexico and other countries to get treatment. The black market drug business will flourish even more than it already is. Eventually a few doctors will figure out that they can make a good profit by offering cash patients a hefty cash discount. What is a physician’s profit for an office visit? It is probably less than a patient’s insurance copayment

Don’t look for Americans to complain. They have been told they have national health care by authoritative elected representatives. It may take the average Joe twenty years to figure out that there can be a difference between what a system is called and what it actually does. For those of us who are euphemism free and use commonsense this is not a problem. There are not many of us.

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How do firms like Ameritrade, Schwab, Fidelity and Scottrade make a profit charging $7-$8 per trade? Easy, they cooperate with high speed traders by giving them data on their customer’s positions. Basically, retail brokers set up their customers for a profit. The model fits. Check it out.
It is open season on retail investors from all directions. Government wants you buying at the top so as to provide buyers for clients of congress who are liquidating stock. High frequency trading firms scalp any trader who places a stop order. The Federal Reserve needs the public to be buyers of stocks so the rich can borrow against their holdings.
One would think there would be loud anti high frequency trading protests by retail brokers since their clients are being butchered in the market. That would happen except that high frequency traders make it profitable for retail brokers to sell their customers down the river.

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I call them miracle cures because I don’t know why they work. Also, the medical community doesn’t seem to acknowledge them. My criteria for trying a cure are that there is no possible harm in trying it.
Jean and I do not bore people by talking about our health, usually. Today I am making an exception.
For 5 years I have been fighting sjogren’s syndrome and lupus.
After taking sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) for 5 days all symptoms have disappeared. I will knock on wood. There is no guarantee they won’t return. In addition, my blood pressure has dropped back to what it was in high school, with no medication.
I became interested in baking soda after reading accounts of cancer being cured by changing the blood from being acid to alkaline. Baking soda accomplishes this. The claim is that cancer cells cannot survive in a body unless it is acid based. The stories of people doing this are pretty convincing. If I had cancer, I would sure try the baking soda therapy because there is nothing to lose.
Another cure is the raw honey and cinnamon theory. Since ingesting this combination my blood sugar level has dropped to around 85 where it was previously well above 100. I don’t know why it works either.

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Who is getting high these days? Certain cannabis users of course, but they pay for what they smoke. Supporters of Texas marijuana laws get high on the self righteous feelings they muster up within themselves. Unlike the smokers, they don’t pay the cost of maintaining their sanctimonious feelings. Society pays those costs. That is what happens when laws on the books serve only as social statements. Most are familiar with the drain on law enforcement resources involved with these laws. Few stop to think that drug laws create the market that organized crime is happy to exploit. Much of terrorism is financed by illegal drug profits. Immigration problems are heightened, because the illegal drug trade destroys legitimate economic opportunities for Mexican citizens and makes their own country unsafe for living.
So, do American drug laws cause a reduction in usage? No, not even in the slightest way. Laws are always useless a plurality off the population is offended by the behavior a law is intended to prevent. Reform of Marijuana laws is being prevented by the only people who benefit from the laws. Those are folks who get high on their own sanctimonious feelings. The costs to society for this luxury are enormous.

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How can a bunch of independent minded Americans all acting as individuals, let their government get out of control the way it is today? The answer to that is easy. Americans simply define themselves as independent minded. In real life people don’t act as individuals. They adopt a group opinion and profess it to be their own. Public opinion is easily managed in this regard. The public ends up serving the government and agreeing to do so. Much of what people do is driven by instinct just as is the behavior of herd animals. This is especially true in the areas of economics and politics.

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Wall Street Justice
Dialog
Government: We think you are breaking the law. We are going to prosecute you.
Wall Street: If you prosecute us, Main Street will suffer. If you hurt us, the whole economy will fail.
Government: Then we will fine you instead.
Wall Street: O. K. we will pay a fine but it better not be a big one. If it is, we will retaliate and that will hurt Main Street.
Government: The fine will be something you can afford. We are sorry to inconvenience you.

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Ben Bernanke has provided you with the chance of a life time and there are two ways to handle it. Up to this point, the general public has been shunning the stock market. By the tradition, the general public buys stock at the end of a bull market, serving as buyers for the well financed few who are selling. The job of the public is to come in as bag holders before stocks go down and they always do. But, there is a choice. An alternative is to liquidate what stock holdings a person might have and use the cash to buy with when stocks are a lot lower. Either way, it is the chance of a lifetime.

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