	Generational Dynamics
	Forecasting America's Destiny ... and the World's

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 23-Mar-2010
23-Mar-10 News - Obama's health care reform passes

Web Log - March, 2010

23-Mar-10 News - Obama's health care reform passes

President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu meet on Mideast peace

I'll be busy on Tuesday evening, and do not expect to have a news summary for Wednesday.

President Obama's health care bill is passed

I've heard a lot of wishful thinking on the part of both Republicans and Democrats.

The Republicans are saying that the passage of this bill will automatically turn voters against the Democrats in November. The Democrats are saying that once voters understand that it contains things like no rejection for preexisting conditions, then voters will love the bill and the Democrats in November.

Both sides are wrong. The effect that this bill will have on the November elections will depend on chaotic events that occur between now and then, and can't be predicted.

If the stock market bubble continues to grow, which is the assumption that the Democrats are making, then they may do OK. But if the stock market bubble begins to burst, as must happen at some point in the not too distant future, either before or after the November elections, then the Democrats may be blamed for causing the panic by passing the health care bill. In other words, it will depend on what happens to the economy, and whether the health care bill is credited or blamed for what happens.

In September of last year, I called Obama's health care bill a proposal of economic insanity, and I've heard nothing to change my mind. From Economics 1.01, we know that the only way to reduce health care costs is to increase supply -- have more doctors, more hospitals, and more medical equipment. Instead, the plan is to increase demand, by adding more patients, and decrease supply, by restricting the pay of doctors, and thereby driving doctors out of the business. That's economic insanity. The bill is a rehash of President Richard Nixon's wage and price controls, applied to health care. That was a disaster, and Obama's proposal is sure to be as well. As usual, I can only shake my head in disbelief that politicians can be so stupid.

The most moronic argument I've heard is that the bill is going to reduce the deficit. Politicians ALWAYS say that they're going to reduce the deficit, and yet the deficit has been growing exponentially for decades. As I've written many times, the deficit has gone down only during economic bubble periods -- the late 1990s and the mid 2000s. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the current bubble has to burst, and then the deficit will continue even more rapidly its exponential climb. (See my 2008 article, "One, Two, Three ... Infinity.")

As if to prove this point, I noticed during the talk show debates that the Republicans would claim that the Democrats were double-counting money in order to make the deficit seem lower. Every time I heard a Republican make this charge, the answer from the Democrat was always to the effect, "President Bush was the worst offender of all." In other words, the charges went unanswered, from which I concluded that the charges were true.

So the best thing that I can say about this situation is that there isn't a snowflake's chance in hell that this bill will survive as envisioned. At some point, a financial crisis will force many of its provisions to be repealed. Actually, Medicare is headed for bankruptcy even without the Obama bill, but now Obama will actually be blamed for the Medicare bankruptcy, whereas before he might have succeeded in blaming it on the Bush administration.

However, there's a good chance that, in the long run, President Obama will get what he wanted. Ten or so years from now, after the financial crisis is over and the Clash of Civilizations world war is over, then senior statesmen of the time, including former President Obama, will be looking for ways to rebuild the world. And one of those ways will be to construct a realistic universal health care protocol, building on President Obama's original bill. President Obama will get a lot of the credit, and his legacy will be secure.

Obama / Netanyahu meeting expected to end in failure

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is dining with American VP Joe Biden on Monday evening, and will meet with President Obama on Tuesday.

According Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Netanyahu hopes to heal bruises that were caused when Israel announced plans to build 1600 new Jewish settlements in the East Bank, right in the middle of Joe Biden's recent visit. (See "12-Mar-10 News - Mideast peace talks collapse in humiliation.")

Undoubtedly, Biden and Obama plan to pressure Netanyahu to back off on the settlement question, but according to Times Online, Netanyahu will not budge.

This was signaled by Nir Barkat, the Mayor of Jerusalem, who insisted that the settlements would go ahead. "I do not think anybody intended, naturally, to try to insult," he said. "But let us not get mixed up. Planning in the city of Jerusalem has to, should and will continue. We want to be sensitive to the American Administration but I want to make sure people realise there is no [housing] freeze in the city of Jerusalem."

As always, whenever I write one of these articles, I always have to repeat what I've been saying since 2003, when President Bush launched his major peace plan. (See "Mideast Roadmap - Will it bring peace?") Generational Dynamics predicts that there will be a major new Mideast war re-fighting the 1948-49 war between Jews and Arabs that followed the partitioning of Palestine, and the creation of the state of Israel. There will be no peace agreement.

Additional Links

Google has carried through its threat to stop censoring searches on its mainland China search engine, google.cn. Instead, anyone going to google.cn is automatically redirected to Google's Hong Kong search engine, google.com.hk, which is uncensored. Official Google Blog. This seems to be a very artful way of ending censoring, since it will force Chinese authorities, rather than Google, to do the censoring.

A new poll show that Germans are fiercely opposed to helping Greece out of its financial crisis, and that the Germans are much more hostile to the concept than other Europeans. Financial Times, summarized by EuroIntelligence

The financial crisis is forcing a ruinous meltdown in state after state, all across the country. NY Times. And this doesn't even count the additional burden on the states from the new health care law.

The super-hot domain name sex.com won't be auctioned off on Thursday, after all. The owners had planned to auction it off to get money to pay off debts, but creditors stopped the auction in bankruptcy court. theage.com.au

One in four children has attempted hacking into Facebook accounts, according to a new study. Dark Reading.

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 23-Mar-10 News - Obama's health care reform passes thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.) (23-Mar-2010) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 23-Mar-2010 23-Mar-10 News - Obama's health care reform passes

President Obama's health care bill is passed

Obama / Netanyahu meeting expected to end in failure

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 23-Mar-2010
23-Mar-10 News - Obama's health care reform passes