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What a Free Market Health Care System Might Look Like

By Dr. Larry Fedewa (August 10, 2019)

 

This week’s column is an edited reprint of a piece I wrote a couple of years ago when the backlash against “Obamacare” first inspired Republicans to talk about “repeal and replace”. Since they are still talking and since the Dems are now also talking about health care alternatives – especially a federal takeover of all health care – the topic remains open for new ideas. I have approached this subject from the perspective of a clean sheet of paper. Why try to build a system on the bones of a failed system, a system no one likes? Why not instead build a new system on a foundation of goals which everyone accepts and agrees with? This is  my answer to that question.

The starting point for a discussion of a national health care system should be setting our goals. I believe that American health care should be:

  1. High quality and state-of-the-art
  2. Available to all
  3. Affordable
  4. Abundant
  5. Well-funded

What are the principal obstacles to these goals? Keep Reading

A pie in the sky can hit you in the eye!

Let’s get practical! 

 

by Dr. Larry Fedewa (August 4, 2019)

If we thought that Hillary with all her baggage was about as sorry a candidate as the Democratic party could come up with, the current crop of aspirants is proving us wrong. This crop does not seem to have even a coherent message. They are angry, they fight each other, they see horror everywhere, they are advocating pie in the sky, and they hate Donald Trump. That’s about it.

Unless some superstar emerges from the shadows, or Mr. Trump flounders into a recession, it’s hard to see much of a contest in 2020. Not that the Republicans haven’t had their own streaks of weak candidates  — one winner in two out of six elections between 1992 and 2016. But so far it is difficult to take the people in the Democrat field seriously.

Eliminate fossil fuels in 10 years – when there is no comparable substitute? When the entire world depends on fossil fuels for survival? Even their statement of the problem is out of date. Nobody can look at the violent weather we have been experiencing and doubt that the climate is changing. But when has it ever not changed? As far back as records go there have been changes in the climate. What about the Ice Age? Keep Reading

The Age of Monochromatic Late-Night Humor [Reprinted from “PJ Media. March 25,2019”]

BY A.J. RICE MARCH 25, 2019

Comedian Jay Leno performs a standup routine at the RP Funding Center in Lakeland Fla. on Jan. 5, 2019. (AP Photo/Reinhold Matay

Late-night comedy has become the sound of left-hand clapping.

Steve Allen, Johnny Carson, and Jay Leno kept you awake by making you laugh. The tiresome political antics of today’s late-night dilettantes make you wish you’d gone to bed early.

It’s not a question so much of left or right as it is of having a bunch of one-track-minds. The punchline is always the same: Orange Man Bad, Orange Man Evil, Orange Man Crazy. Every night, all the time. As predictable as Pravda during the Brezhnev years — and just as amusing.

Jay Leno — who is funny — commented on badgering in the guise of “comedy” this month during an interview with Al Roker of NBC’s Today show.

“It’s different,” Leno said. “I don’t miss it. You know, everything now is, if people don’t like your politics, they — everyone has to know your politics.” Perhaps because today’s late-night hosts insist you know their politics.

Keep Reading

The Dems on Display

The Top 20 candidates speak up  

 

By Dr. Larry Fedewa (July 3, 2019)

Of all the news this past week, the most intriguing may be the two “debates” featuring the Top 20 Democratic candidates for president. It’s interesting to take a look at these politicians as a group.

Overview

The Top 20 candidates for the Democrat nomination for president showed their coalescence around a list of positions which favor a gargantuan increase in the power of the federal government. Generally, they advocate government takeover of health care, education, personal finances, seashore housing (in the name of climate control), and energy, in addition to increased government regulation of  big business. No matter what the problem, they propose that the federal government has the obligation to solve it. Even to “fixing” the economies of Central American countries, although it is hard to understand what they mean by that short of US invasion as in Panama – which no one seems to advocate.

This list of their political positions arises from their ability to see victims wherever they look. “75% of Americans live from paycheck to paycheck.” “The majority of Americans don’t make a living wage.” “22 million Americans have no access to health care.” “America is a racist society, which is also biased against women, gay people, immigrants, all minorities (except maybe Asians), poor people, and homeless people – to name a few.”

Justice for this country of victims can be found in the pristine wisdom of the federal government. All we have to do is authorize that government to raise taxes – for some that means up to 70% + of income for federal taxes – on top of state and local taxes, for a total of 80-90% of income. Then the blessed feds will design and enforce programs to bring justice to all the victims in America – plus everyone else in the world who succeeds in coming across our borders. We won’t be crowded; after all the federal government already owns more than a third of US landmass so they can just open the parks, deserts  and mountains to development. Keep Reading

Who needs fathers?

Are fathers obsolete?                                                         

By Dr. Larry Fedewa

After a generation of “free love”, unlimited abortions, increases in divorce, single mothers, unwed mothers, single sex parents, and fatherless children, it may be a good idea to re-visit the concept of fatherhood. For those who are unfamiliar with the term: a father is first of all a man, not a woman. A father is a man who is committed to his wife and who is willing to proclaim publicly and legally that commitment through a marriage ceremony. A father is a man who also has publicly and legally committed to support for any children who may be born of that union. Finally, a father is a man who has undertaken to maintain these commitments for life, through good times and hard times, “until death do us part.”   Keep Reading

Capitalism and Judeo-Christian values

Capitalism is funded on the Judeo-Christian value of equality

By Dr. Larry Fedewa (June 9, 2019)

I cannot leave the topic of the wealth gap in today’s America without commenting on the most fundamental factor in the origin and the evolution of Western capitalism. That factor is the existence of Judeo-Christian values.

It is not an accident that capitalism originated and owes its development as well as its endurance through the past millennium in a civilization dominated for much of that time by the Judeo-Christian religion. The most unique and the most fundamental standard of that ethic is the equality of all human beings in the sight of God. Thus we all have equal rights to salvation, to justice and to the fruits of the earth.

Capitalism is founded on this principle of equality. Without it there would be no reason for an economic system which provides a means of distributing the goods of the earth to as many people as earn possession. The foundation of capitalism is the concept of private property. As an economic system, capitalism provides the conditions for acquiring and keeping private property. These conditions are expressed in money, the language of capitalism, and they are protected by a legal system which is intended to treat all with respect. The use of money instead of goods or services, as in a system of bartering, has made practical the accumulation of value, which is called “capital” from which the name of the system is derived. Keep Reading

The moral case for profit-sharing (part II)

“To whom much is given, much is expected.” (Luke 12:48)

By Dr. Larry Fedewa (June 2, 2019)

Last week we discussed the antecedents of the current movement toward corporate social responsibility and the Conscious Capitalist movement and also the paradigm on which a moral claim can be made for a re-definition of “workers’ rights” with respect to workers’ share of the company’s profits. Keep Reading

Conscious Capitalism: The Moral Case

Updating workers’ rights 

By Dr. Larry Fedewa (May 25, 2019)

Until now, we have been exploring the case for Conscious Capitalism on the basis of economic necessity. It is clear that the strength (68%) of America’s economy is based on consumer demand. Most of the consumer purchases in America are bought by the families of the middle class, because there are more of them and because their needs tend to cover a wide spectrum of goods and services. It is therefore critical that a majority of Americans have enough money to buy an ever-increasing supply of consumer goods and services if our economic engine is to keep on growing. Keep Reading

Conscious Capitalism: Ready for prime time?

Breaking out of the pack!

 

By Dr. Larry Fedewa (May 18,2019)

I confess that I have caught the fervor of a convert to a new movement. As I write, speak and broadcast about Conscious Capitalism, I feel like Paul Revere as I keep hearing “Wow! I never heard of Conscious Capitalism but it sure sounds like the answer to a lot of our problems!” Among others, this is the reaction of my fellow talk show hosts who are generally very well informed.

On the other hand, however, the reform of Capitalism is much discussed and written about. Some examples from Amazon’s Books: Joel Solomon’s “Clean Money – reinventing power, purpose and capitalism”; Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations, and Everybody Matters by Bob Chapman with Raj Sisodia (love that title).  Keep Reading

Workers’ rights in the 21st century: Unions and Conscious Capitalism

Do unions still have a place at the table?     

 

by Dr. Larry Fedewa (May 12, 2019)

“Conscious Capitalism” promotes the most expansive view of workers’ rights ever to be advocated by corporate management  in the history of capitalism. At last, workers are accorded the respect due to major stakeholders in the organization, whether a corporate giant or an entrepreneurial start-up. Almost always this means sharing in the profits of the company if not outright  stock ownership.

This view of the business flows from an idealistic definition of the enterprise which includes, among other things, the function of profits as a necessary means to a greater good. The greater good is the mission of the firm as providing a community service through the sale of its goods or services. Conscious Capitalism challenges everyone in the organization to contribute to  the fulfillment of this mission and provides the resources to do so.

Conscious Capitalists also tend to be anti-union. Keep Reading