Health Care and the Environment

One of the changes we need to see is a vast reduction in subsidies in industry, especially those subsidies that re well hidden, such as taxpayer-funded export finance subsidies, and the massive damworks that make for "cheap" electricity for the aluminum industry.  It is such subsidies which tends to obscure costs and lead to degeneration in other areas.

For example, not only does "cheap" electricity (cheap if you do not count the cost of environmental disaster and other industries literally flooded out by dams) make for cheap jets, it makes for cheaper and lighter packaging, which means coupled with artificially cheaper finance, big firms can concentrate production of food, and buy other big firms cheaper produced corn, and ship it farther.  So we get food with less nutritional value, shipping in poisonous containers, over long distances, and then we need more expensive health care to deal with the health problems from such a program.  And then we need the landfills to dump it, except where we pay for recycling, a program where we pay to sort trash and then it is dumped in the landfill anyway. What a mess!

Since this is expensive, we then shift from "cure" to "care."  We know will pay bazillions for health care, no one even bothers mentioning medical cure.  Health care is diet and exercise.  Cure addresses a problem.  We need cures, not care. It gets so tangled so fast.

If we did not have our system of subsidies, our housing would be built better with better materials, rather than these flimsy macmansions which deteriorate without constant maintenance.  We'd have clothes that lasted longer than fashion dictates, we'd have food that nourished instead of attacking the heart.

How about shoes that last for 30 year or more.  I have 2 pair I bought over 30 years ago, cost me $250 at the time.  I resole them every year or so.  New now they are about $300, since the same quality would cost about $800,  so the company is using cheaper materials... sigh... the $800 shoes would be a better buy.

Take cheap electricity and you can grow flowers big and bright colors fast, but no scent and they do not las long.  So the flower industry is hurting because their raw material is poor.

With everything so disposable, gift giving has pretty much disappeared, with the warming of relations that goes with it.  No wonder people are getting lonelier.

If we get back to property rights, and see subsidies as what they are, theft, we'll see quality return and more employment.  Good stuff takes good materials and skilled hands.

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