Living next to a Nuclear Plant – Dark spots on the skin

When I moved to Yorktwon Heights, Westchester in the eighties we found a lovely place to rent. A little house sitting right in the woods next to a New York City water reservoir. My kids at that time were 5 and 8 years old both with blond hair. After a couple of months living in the area we discovered small black points on the skin of the kids. They were easy to spot much easier on my skin. Then we started to look around e.g. we saw a lot of people with dark spots standing in line at the local McDonalds. Young people with small dots, older people with larger spots. By that time we discovered that we were living very close to the Indian Point nuclear power plant at the Hudson. Most of the time the wind came from West, directly from the plant in our backyard.

At that point we visited the local doctor who wondered that he had not diagnozed the problem earlier although most of his patients had the same problem. Immediately we thought that the nuclear fallout from Indian Point would cause the problem. However, after some research with professional help our doctor discovered that the spots on the skin were caused by natural Radon gases. The granite rocks our house was built on were the source of the gas which was accumulated in the basement of the house and could easily flow into our living area because there was no concrete floor as a barrier. Natural Radon gases are more dangerous for people’s health than the radiation of nuclear plants. Surprisingly enough this problem is not discussed a lot in the public and most people living in areas with high Radon radiation are not aware of the problem, which is a serious cancer risk. Areas with granit rocks e.g. the millionaire belt North-West of New York and New England are exposed to high Radon radiation.

Key problem of public health care systems – what’s enough?

All over the world countries with public health care systems are fighting the ever increasing cost of their systems. Whereas people have natural limitations for the number of free Coke they can drink or the number of cars they can drive simultaneously, there is obviously no natural limit for the consumption of health services. Everybody will agree that your health can always be improved. Especially doctors will always find a way how to sell additional services regardless whether they are good for their customers or not. There is obviously not a strong correlation how much people spend on health care and their actual health. France is spending about 40% less per capita for health care than Germany. The result:people in France live in average 1 year (men) or 3 years (women) longer than people  in Germany. In addition to life expectancy (around 80  years in the European Union) the number of healthy life years (around 60 years in the EU) is interesting.   USA spends more money on health care than any other country with rather poor results.  Certainly the country specific income of health care personnel results in different cost of health services. Therefore health expenditures are mostly measured in percent of the GDP – again with US leading.  It is well known that in Germany the cost of health care is directly related to the number of doctors in an area. This is probably also the case in US. Obviously the health care system (public and private) allows the doctors the cash in regardless what they achieve.

The problem is that denial of health services is considered amoral. Everybody has an example of a poor sick child which does nor get the treatment it deserves because the parents cannot pay the cost of treatment. However, these cases are statistically irrelevant and should be solved individually by welfare. The real problem is, that the majority of people with advice of their doctors eagerly consumes health services which are not really needed. A sustainable public health system must have a good strategy and a strong stand in saying NO.  By the way this is true not only for public health care systems but also for private health care systems based on health insurance.

There is an easy way to say NO at all needy people. This is certainly not a solution for a modern society. Now it is interesting to see how different systems limit the amount of health services by using following schemes:

1. No public health insurance. (Does not automatically reduce the cost of healthcare for individuals).
2. Cost sharing. Patient have to pay x % of their individual health cost up to a certain limit e.g. 10% of their income/year
3. Patient Base Barrier. The insurance pays for health cost only above a certain limit. This is combined with lower cost of health insurance using a bonus system.
4. Limiting the type of services e.g. only well established medical methods and (low cost) drugs)
5. Service limitations similiar to method 3 but the real restrictions are hidden in the terms of the insurance contract ( a system favored by American health insurers).
6. Limiting the number of hospitals and doctors (a system favored by the English public care system)
7. Low quality of public health care services (very often combined with method 5)
8. Low salaries for doctors and health care personnel making health care unattractive.

Most public health care system use a combination of above methods. There are also interesting special solutions e.g. I found a system in China where patients can collect bonus points if they pay for health services on their own. The bonus points could be used when they really got seriously ill to chose a superior hospital to be treated. This worked very well because Chines people are used to care for themselves in the future.

Organizations and politicians proposing public health care systems shy away from the “What’s enough?” question because saying NO is never popular. However, any public health care system (but also private insurance) must clearly define the limits where health care cost can be shared. It is an illusion that these barriers can be stretched and redefined arbitrarily without breaking the system. However the public must be made aware of this crucial question and should participate in the discussions. Sorry politicians – there is no easy way out.

Western versus arab way of thinking

People growing up in the western world are educated and trained according to the greek/roman philosophy, logic and science. We take it for granted that all people in the world are using this foundation in their thinking. However, this is certainly not true for the majority of the world population. It is already helpful if we accept the fact that not all people share our very basic beliefs and ways of thinking. This can be illustrated very nicely with an experience from the arab world.

I was traveling as young man in the Iran from Isfahan to Teheran in a bus. The bus was jammed with local people and a couple of friendly English speaking locals tried their English and were asking how I liked the country and gave tips what places I should visit. Then the bus slowed down at a place where one of the accidents typical for the desert road must have happened. A driver of a pretty old car had fallen to sleep and had hit a large rock. A small group of mourning people  stood next to the wrecked car. Suddenly these people started to throw stones toward the bus. The bus driver accelerated sharply and we escaped.

Now I asked my new friends what happened. They explained to me that the people had seen a stranger (me) in the bus and thought I would be responsible for the accident. Certainly I could not be responsible for the accident because I arrived at least one hour after the accident. That’s what I thought. But my new friends explained to me that they do not share our basic western belief of causality that the cause of an effect must be in the past and not in the future. If you think about it (and a little bit about Einstein) you may also consider that Aristotle is not always right.

I guess the first step to understand the people in the Eastern countries is to realize that they do not share our western “basic beliefs”. This does not solve all communication problems between West and East. However, I found this knowledge very helpful when meeting people in the East. By the way there are also a lot of people in the Western world which do not trust the Aristotele principles and have constructed their own  weird views of the world.

Education and communication drive the arabic revolution

Autocratic systems need low skilled people if they want to survive. A typical example of a very stable autocratic system is the catholic church which dominated the western world with their well educated priests and the  mass of people who could not read and were told by the priests what they should think. Then the protestants appeared on the scene which had the great idea that people should read the bible themselves and should not rely on the priests as only source of information. Certainly this was a revolution and the protestants had to fight many wars to get rid of the catholic dominance. Now protestant people could go to school and learn to read. Thus they acquired a capability which allowed them to learn and develop industry and trade. The result could be easily observed in Germany with many states staying catholic or adopting protestantism. The well educated protestant states developed their industry and people achieved a higher standard of living as the “dumb” people in catholic states. In Germany Bavaria is the only catholic state which could move after World War II from the minor to the major league of states. This was due to the large number of highly educated protestant people from the East of Germany immigrating to Bavaria after the war.

The industrial revolution in England and the rise of the United States were also based on the educated protestant people coming from the lower classes. Even today, typical catholic countries like Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy struggle with their catholic past. It’s interesting that the people in the highly productive North of Italy  learned reading not in the protestant church but in the communist party.

The situation in most arab countries is very similar to the situation in Europe in the 15th century. However, there is not such a strong, hierarchically organized  islam organization like the catholic church. Thus autocratic government systems can survive with strong or rather loose ties to the local islamic organizations, as long as the majority of people accepts their leadership and the control of information flowing in the mosque, radio, TV, school and universities.  As a result of this reduced flow of information, arab countries are not developing and cannotprovide their people with even low standards of living.

This was OK as long as the people didn’t know better. However, satellite TV and Internet  showed people that they are doing really poorly as compared with the western world. More and more young people went to school and had access to the Internet where they could discuss and chat with young people in other countries. They learned to exploit the Internet to build groups and organize little revolutions, which finally may change the arabic world. However, we should not expect that countries can easily jump from 15th century to the 21st century. A good example is the following experience from Egypt: On a conference I disscussed with a very bright student aspects of data encryption and complex mathematical theories. The student really surprised me with his excellent knowledge of the subject and usage of advanced mathematical methods. However, during lunch the same student explained to me, that the major reason for the poor standard of living in the arabic countries is caused by the fact that not every citizen is living according to the rules of islam. If all people would live according to the rules of Islam the country would easily do better than USA. There was no reasoning or evaluation of facts at all. Certainly you could not argue against this basic believe. Thus I learned, that  adopting some western standards must not result in the western way of thinking.

Why USA needs more social services

According to the theory of most US tea party conservatives countries like Germany, Denmark, Sweden or Finland  should be in deep trouble. Almost 50% of the government expenses go to all kinds of  social plans for elderly, jobless, children, free eduation for students etc. This is topped by the expenses for health insurance and pensions. The German banks earn a lot of money too but their percentage of the GNP is much smaller than in the USA.

Now comes the financial crisis. The poor people in the advanced “socialist” European countries still get their monthly paycheck, which stabilizes the local businesses and provides a basic protection against depression. The large expenses for social programs has forced the enterprises in  “socialized” European countries to increase their productivity. Frankly spoken it is financially more attractive for these countries to pay people for not being employed instead of supporting low quality workplaces in the industry. Certainly this is sad for people which are no longer needed by the industry. However, it is better to accept the facts and look for new ways of employment for these people. Denmark and Sweden are probably most advanced in this process and employ people not needed in the industrial world in community  jobs.

USA is on different track. The US society has decided to allow a small group of people in the banking and investment arena to rake in the money generated by pension funds and printed by government. Only a very small amount of this money is actually going into consumption and to pay people for community  services. This surplus money is moved around to worldwide virtual businesses providing no real value to the American people. Since it is so much easier to earn private money with virtual banking business, USA has neglected its industrial base especially the small and medium businesses.

However, there is a chance to turn this around. As soon as the financial crowd fears that all their virtual money is endangered they will try to acquire real assets e.g. they even buy the share of the new General Motors. Unfortunately they will find more good opportunities in the stable European countries and in emerging markets in the East than in the eroded industrial landscape in USA.

Creative Accounting – Unemployment Rate

The unemployment rate is considered one of the important indicators for the health of US economy. In September 2010 the US unemployment rate was at 9.6 % whereas Germany’s unemployment rate hit an all time low at 6.1 %. This is quite a surprise to US citizens who strongly believe that unions and government subsidies for people who are out of work will ruin the country. Certainly German employers, unions and govenment did an outstanding job in handling the recent crisis. Key element was a reduction of work time of all workers in critical industries to avoid layoffs. Now German industry can recover much faster because all knowledgeable people are still employed.

However, the German record on unemployment is not much better than US. In addition to the fully recovered job market politicians found a new way of accounting. Only people registered with the “Work Agency” are counted as unemployed. This does not include e.g. one million people being on government subsidized training for new jobs and people which do not register with the “Work Agency” – mostly because there is no value add. When the US method of unemployment rate measurement would be applied to Germany the unemployment rate would be higher than the US rate. A much better indicator for employment is the number of people on jobs. This number is declining in Germany even with unemployment rate going down mostly because lots of “Baby boomers” retire. However, keeping the munber of availabl jobs flat when fewer people enter the job market means much better opportunities for the jobless. Another important figure would be the percentage of people who are happy with their job. However, no politician is interested in your happyness!

Summary: Never trust a statistics you didn’t forge yourself!

Public Health Insurance – Who is switching off the intensive care equipment?

Americans are very much afraid of the idea that an insurance clerk would make the final decision, when intensive care for a patient is stopped. Imagine you would be the patient, you are in intesive care for more than a 500 days and every day costs 6000 $. Even if you are quite wealthy your heirs will probably approach the doctors and discuss how much pain this procedure is for you and how to come to your end. My son, a medical doctor in an intensive care unit and his colleagues are caring for such a patient there is still hope that the patient will recover. The bill is paid by public health insurance! I guess the patient and his relatives are thanking god every day for not being insured by a private profit oriented insurance company.

Fight the drug market in USA and solve a lot of problems

A lot of problems  could be solved if the USA would fight drug  traficking on its own territory instead of fighting talibans and illegal immigrants. The Taliban wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan would end pretty soon if the Taliban would run out of money, which the get thru drug dealing. With the drug money they can buy weapons, hire fighters and finance their local supporters.The official governments cannot collect enough taxes to build up infrastructure. Certainly the Taliban don’t pay tax! A very similar situation is building up in South America especially Mexico, where drug money is used to build criminal administrative infrastructure and forcing the poor people to emmigrate to the States.

Who understands why USA is not fighting the drug market to stop the Talibans and the drug mafia?

Housing – you did not lose real money!

With the housing prices coming down people are complaining about the amount of money they have lost. This is really not true – you only lost virtual money.  When you sell your home you will be able to buy a similiar home with the money you get. No reason to complain. However, if you planned to sell your home for the inflated prices of two years ago you will probably have a problem.

How to kill the virtual money – It’s easy and partly done

In my blog entry from January 29, 2009 I wondered, how the huge amount of virtual money e.g. generated by inflated prices of housing, could be killed.  This turned out to be rather easy. US citizens have lost billions of virtual money when the housing prices came down to their real value and there is not much hope that they will go up again. However, there is still a lot of virtual money mainly in all kinds of banking and insurance “products”. Their value is down or will get down soon too. However, it is not so obvious because people dont post signs in their front yard showing the real value of their investments. If you thought you could rely on this virtual money to finance your retirement you are probably up to  a simple quite life.