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The discussion on whether it is feasible to achieve any significant cost savings as long as middle class consumers are not cost conscious about their employer provided health insurance. This would be so as long as their health insurance benefits are not taxed as income. America suffers from a particularly strong case of not minding the price increases imposed by the health care industry as long as its not out of pocket cost. But Obama seems stuck on his insistence that the middle class not take on any burden, that there be no middle class tax in the form of this tax on health care benefits. Critics say even FDR did this by having the middle class pay with payroll contributions for Medicare and Social Security. And even if the 5% of Americans who make more than $280,000 are taxed it will not generate by itself the money to pay for the $1 trillion cost of the plan, as the prospects of cost reduction are uncertain- especially when the basic nature of America's health care system are not changed, like the lack of cost consciousness of consumers of health care when its perceived to be free and employer provided....

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The moderate positions of both parties in political life in Australia and New Zealand compared to the U.S.

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The Georgetwon University Center on Education and the Workforce 2015 report shows the different college majors, annual wages and lifetime earnings based on Census Bureau data. Engineering comes first, followed by computers. Advanced graduate degrees make a large difference in earnings in health sciences. A lot depends on the standing in the class with top 25% of the class in finance having much higher earnings. A lot also depends on the individual. Employment opportunities may be lacking even if annual wages are high, as in architecture.

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Th cost of cancer drugs Avastin and Erbitux and the need for putting life savings at risk for a few months of treatment create tension among families, doctors and treatment providers. A course of Avastin could run $56,000 and take 90 days for reimbursement by meicare or pricate insurance, and a 20% co-pay comes to $11,200.

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This article in Zeit Online tries to provide the facts behind Merkel's decision made in a period of 24-48 hours to let refugees marching towards Austria from Keleti station in Budapest, Hungary, September 5, 2015, to enter Germany. Other reports pointed out that too little time was given to make the decision and that it was purely done on humanitarian terms. And made during that short window of time, in which a decision had to be made to turn away the refugees going on foot for hundreds of miles or to turn them away. Given Germany's earlier history the choice was a difficult one but erred on the side of being humanitarian. Though Merkel's selfie with a refugee at a hostel on Sept 10, would seem to suggest otherwise, Merkel has said her decision was made with so little time and little opportunity to understand all the ramifications of this. It was not an open invitation to refugees to come to Germany. 

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How Phillips is changing itself to focus on new areas such as elderly health care. The acquisition of Lifeline which is a call service for elderly patients that helps them for independent living. products are being redesigned for consumer health care. One such product is a HeartStart Home Defibrillator which costs $1200 without prescription at drug stores. Ivo Lurvink heads the consumer healthcare division formed in 2004 with the goal of tapping opportunities outside of hospitals. As Phillips new CEO sees it hospitals care is expensive and more and more people are becoming savvy and smart about taking care of themselves with products available and more products need to be designed with them in mind. In targeting needs of elderly Phillips has identified independent living as an important market and has developed a "senior solutions sweet spot" as the kind of customers in this group it would like to target. to get an idea what Phillips is trying to dream up in redesigned or new products, Ivo Lurvink is looking at the broken bones that 350,000 Americans who fall and break bones have to struggle with. Could Philipps come up with a product that detects motion and balance? Philips CEO Gerard Kleisterlee sees the trend as being health care is being increasingly pushed out of hospitals which are expensive and into homes and clinics, and patients are behaving more like consumers and asking smart questions of what will be best for them. Philips has closed most of its electronics factories, its components division, and sold its seminconductor business to private equity firms for $7.4 billion. Its a big shift for a technology company but lower priced Asian imports have convinced Philips that it must make a shift, especially after losses in 2001 of over 2 billion euros and in 2002 of 3 billion euros. The professional medical products division was a bright spot in a recovery with earnings growth of 40%. It sells large equipment to hospitals. Gerard Kleisterlee who took over as CEO of Phillips in 2001 is making a change that is also being made at GE and Siemens as health care becomes increasingly important. Kleisterlee is himself an engineer an after the post tech bubble asked himself "what is the hand of cards that I have and how do I playthem?" Changing its orientation and moving into new products with better margins and less competition in high growth markets such as elderly care is the result of this reassessment. ...

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Senator Edward Kennedy turned a close election around with an ad in 1994 attacking Romney for job cuts. The result was a 58% to 41% defeat for Romney. In Iowa a Perry ad presses this issue saying "Mr Romney made millions buying companies and laying off workers."

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The work of innovation teams that help reduce lost production time and make production more efficient on Boeing's 737 production lines in Renton, Washington. There are 1300 improvement teams at Boeing for commerical jet production. Examples range from conventional improvements such as remapping production arrangements to unconventional ones like the use of hay loaders to put seats on passenger planes. The work requires highly motivated production engineers and Boeing has a long tradition of this. Boeing has increased 737 jet production to 35 a month from 31.5 with the help of such improvements. The goal is to make 42 planes a month by 2014, and 60 by 2017 when the 737 MAX goes into production. Boeing has a large backlog of orders- 3,700 jets of which 2,300 are 737s.

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A study done at the University of Wisconsin's Population Health Institute by health sciences professor, David Kindig and PhD candidate Erika Cheng, shows the impact of smoking, graduation rates, poor choices and availability of food, and incomes, in declining life spans of women in some parts of the U.S.

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The Bureau of Labor Statiistics puts out a statistic each month, called the JOLTS for Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, which shows how many job openings there are in the US. This statistic stood at 2.2% for February 2009, down from 3% in Feb 2008, and this is 2.2% of all the jobs in the USA, which comes to about 3 million. The Conference Board's report shows 3.2 million online advertised vacancies as of March 2009. The odd thing is that there are so many advertised vacancies when the unemployment rate has shot up in the same year from 4.8% to 8.1%. The implications are serious. First there is a mismatch in qualifications. As jobs are lost in construction and the financial industry and in retail, new jobs are appearing in health care, education, government and accounting. This structural shift is happening quicker than the market can respond, or faster than labor retraining has time to respond. And compounding this the severe housing market leaves people unable to sell their homes and move. This makes for a less mobile labor market than the US has had in the past. With the government stepping in to ease the burden of unemployment there may be even less incentive to move. And those that move will have to accept the lower pay in new careers , and employers will have to settle for imperfect fits in filling vacancies. To reduce the mismatch in qualifications governments will have to ramp up their job retraining programs. ...

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Whats the breakdown of costs for Detroit's Three Auto Companies. The following infomation is from documents submitted by Ford Motor Company to Congress. Detroit Auto Companies Foreign Makes like Toyota Hourly cost Hourly cost Hourly wage for workers $29 $26 (Toyota Kentucky plant) Holidays and Vacation pay & pay for Detroit laid off workers $14 $9 Cost of Health Care and Pensions for $16 Toyota has only 300 retired retired workers workers Overall cost $71 $49 The biggest difference is in the cost of paying laid off workers, jobs banks, and in the cost of paying the health care and retirement pensions of retired workers. And for GM there are about 1 million of them, (96,000 active workers, 497,000 retired workers and also the dependents of retired workers) costing GM $4.8 billion on health care. At $1500 per car for GM costs on health care vs. $200 per car for health care costs at Toyota. The difference is $1300. If this is factored in to the profitability of small cars then the field is skewed one way. On a $23,000 car that is a 5% margin right there for adiffernce of $1100 in health care costs. If this is the way profit is calculated on small cars with this health care differential factored in then there is always a muddleheaded tendency to product he bigger cars and trucks because they can absorb this differential better. But it doesn't make sense that this should dictate how the business is run. And it could lead to serious mistakes which appears to be the situation at the Detroit companies, the way they went into the downturn right into 2008 with a product mix that was going to be hit hardest by a change in customer preferences. ...

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Jac Welch gives Obama an A for leadership. Mind you he says he doesn't agree with all the President's policies. He is talking about leadership. He scores Obama in four areas, Vision and Team Building, Speed and Authenticity, and he finds him at an A in all areas and gets an A in authenticity with alittle help from Michelle with her warmth and personality. There are 2 more traits on which the test is still going on he says, that of resilience and the wherewithal to champion unpopular causes.

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William Daley, the head of Washington lobbying for JPMorgan Chase, is appointed Chief of Staff to President Obama. He also serves on the board of directors of Boeing and Abbott Labs, companies which a strong interest in Washington lobbying. William Daley is with Chase since 2004, and was hired primarily to strengthen Chase's Chicago connections. In the past he has served as the main liasion with the White House. In 2007 he joined the bank's senior leadership as head of its new Office of Corporate Social Responsibility, which oversees the company's global lobbying efforts.

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Judith Warner coins the phrase "dysregulation," for the cultural phenomena that may be behind the lack of restraint exercized in everthing that relates to personal lives like obesity, to the lack of regulation in the gulf and financial crisis. Citing Whybrow's book, "American Mania: When More Is Not Enough," she points to a disturbance in the national psyche, something that disturbs some inner clock or mechanism, that disturbs some inner balance that is built into us from the beginnings of man in the universe.

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"In the spring of 1971, I met a girl," with that beginning Bill Clinton gave one of the most memorable speeches at a Democratic Convention in history, to introduce the very human, Hillary- sometimes frail, but always looking for new mountains to climb, new barriers to break, new injustices to be righted. Of the long courtship at Yale and the years at Arkansas, buying that house in Little Rock Hillary liked before proposing marraige,  the time when they cried while leaving their daughter Chelsea at college dorm in Stanford; and all the private moments of a political couple one gregarious and outward looking, the other serious and inward looking. An introduction to someone you have heard too much about but you never knew. Never saw too close because of her intense longing for privacy- possibly coming from her own mother- Methodist upbringing that you were never the one to focus on, and family experience. Bill had seen this Methodist up close, and shared his experience with his countrymen who had not known her so well as he had.  ...

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11 Pacific Rim nations form the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2018. The Obama administration supported the trade pact alienating supporters in its union base particularly in the midwestern states. Mr. Trump opposed the TPP in his election campaign and made it a significant issue for swing voters in midwestern states after job losses in the auto industry. With the opposition of president Trump the U.S. decided to withdraw from TPP.  The 11 nations agreeing to join a revised agreement are Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. So far six countries have formally approved the deal, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Singapore, New Zealand and Japan, setting the stage for two rounds of tariff reductions starting December 30, 2018. Agricultural products duties will be duty free within 3 to 7 years including for Japan and Mexico. Australia, New Zealand, Canada are major agricultural exporters. Japan supported the deal as a way to counter China's influence in the region. In the U.S. the gains would be in intellectual property rights but losses for workers in the auto and manufacturing industries, a point Mr. Trump recognized in his election campaign as he campaigned in the midwestern states. Mr. Obama pursued TPP over objections of workers organizations and unions including auto workers union, with his advisors suggesting this as a way to counter China's influence in the region. By 2018 the Democratic party support base fractured on this as one of the major issues.   ...