Our Humpty Dumpty President Has Become An Executive Used Car Salesman! The Education Morass!

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Pays to be sick in Bangkok! (See 1 below.)
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GO beats GDP! (See 2 below.)
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Obama has returned to his campaign mode to sell Obamacare.  In doing so he sounds more like a used car salesman than a president. But then politicians do desperate things when they are desperate.

Obama can sell all he wants but he has several hurdles which seem impossible to overcome.

They are:

a) His plan is complex, costly and should prove beyond the ability of far too many to pay when they realize they have higher deductibles and premium costs and doctors, who are not of their choosing,  are located far from what they have been accustomed to all in order to meet Obama's fairness goal for the uninsured.

b)  The site is not protected and thus personal information is at risk of being stolen and, at the very least ,  arriving incomplete and the sender may not know this  until it is too late.

Obama has repeated that Obamacare is the law and will remain so as long as he is in office.  His disdain for the will of the people is becoming increasingly evident as is his disdain for Congress and our Constitution.

Even some liberal Harvard lawyers are beginning to point out Obama has engaged in several unconstitutional actions and have raised the specter of impeachment but that is a toxic matter and no Congress is going to touch that issue and Obama knows it so he will continue to get away with murder at the expense of our nation, its rule of law and tolerance for misdeeds.

c) Finally, Obama's credibility has sunk so low that his campaign style no loner sells.

He has become a humpty dumpty president but he still can blame GW  for Iran's centrifuges so all is not lost.
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 If you want more of something spend money on it and since we have a bad education system and the government is mostly to blame the hue and cry is spend more money.  Well based on recent statistics we spend more than most on a per pupil basis and our ratings are lower than nations that spend half as much.

Education is the only way out for the social and economic dilemma our nation faces and until we get government and the PC apologists out of the education morass they have helped to create we are doomed.  (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)

Rushed to the Hospital in Bangkok By Dr. Steve Sjuggerud

Less than 24 hours after landing in Bangkok, I was rushed to the hospital… I was having trouble breathing. The problem came out of nowhere. And it was getting worse. I had no idea what a hospital in Bangkok would be like… but I was about to find out. I'm sure the average American thinks a hospital in Bangkok would be an incredibly risky place to go… But when I was having trouble breathing, what were my alternatives? The mental picture most Americans probably have of a Bangkok hospital is an old, overcrowded, extremely unsanitary place… In short, a place where you could easily die from some sort of mistake or poor care. The reality is completely different…  Consider the case of the Bumrungrad International Hospital in Bangkok. It's more like a five-star hotel with world-class medical facilities… My friend Peter Churchouse – who lives in Hong Kong – says that many of his friends travel to Bumrungrad for their yearly checkups and medical procedures. They make a vacation out of it… "Go to Thailand for a few days, get the medical stuff out of the way, and hit the beach. Adding it all up, including the flights and everything, the price still comes out at less than half of doing that at home." For Americans, the deal is much better… Heart bypass surgery in the U.S. costs $113,000… while the same surgery in Thailand costs just $13,000. A knee replacement in the U.S. costs $48,000. In Thailand, it's nearly $40,000 less – at just $8,500. (These numbers come from a 2011 report from the OECD. You can find more cost comparisons on page 12 of the report here.) But what about the quality of care? Who are the people taking care of you? Bumrungrad is run by a top-notch team of hospital administrators from the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Singapore, and Thailand. It serves a half-million international patients from 200 countries a year. The friend that took me to the hospital in Thailand is from Norway. His father has cancer. And he actually flies from Norway – one of the world's wealthiest countries – to Thailand for his cancer treatment. Why do half a million people go to Thailand for medical care? It's simple… Service is excellent, fast, and inexpensive. And English is widely spoken. I don't have time to go into all the details of the hospital… But here's a great overview of what happens at Bumrungrad. It really is an impressive place. My experience was darn impressive… Within 30 seconds of entering the hospital, I was on a table. Blood pressure was taken on one arm, while the other arm was being prepped for a shot. The whole time, the doctors were asking me questions, making their diagnosis. Simultaneously, a staffer was checking me in, filling out information from my passport. (It turns out, I have a somewhat rare allergy to lemongrass. Who knew? Not me!) After a shot, I was feeling better in no time. My entire experience in the hospital – from walking in the door to paying and leaving – lasted about 20 minutes. I've never had an experience like that in the U.S… My typical U.S. experience is multiple rounds of 20-minute waits – if you're lucky – even when you have an appointment. First, it takes 20 minutes to check in and fill out the paperwork. Then you spend at least 20 minutes in the waiting room. Next, you get taken to the back, where you sit in a room. After 20 minutes, someone comes to ask what your symptoms are again, and takes your blood pressure. Then you wait another 20 minutes for a doctor to see you. The doctor spends less than five minutes with you. Then you check out, spending more time figuring out payment. A five-minute doctor visit turns into half a day of burning time. Before this trip to Asia, I never would have considered going to a hospital in Bangkok. Now, I have no problem with it. And it's not just me. Thailand, it turns out, is the planet's top destination for what's known as "medical tourism." And Bumrungrad is the top medical tourism hospital on the planet. Thailand had 1.2 million "medical tourists" in 2012. Mexico was in second place, with about 1 million. The U.S. was in third, with foreigners coming here to have medical procedures done and spend some time here. The bigger lesson from this experience (and my trip to Asia) was learning just how far Asia has come… Ten years ago, Asian countries looked up to the U.S. – they aspired to have our technology, our infrastructure, and our efficiency. Now, many places in Asia – in particular Hong Kong and Singapore – have passed us by. China's big cities are not that far behind – and in some cases, are already more advanced. You might not want to hear it – as an American I hate to admit it – but it's true. Meanwhile, stocks in many Asian countries are cheaper than U.S. stocks… with better growth prospects. I suggest allocating some of your investment dollars outside of U.S. stocks and into Asia. Good investing, Steve ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) Skousen: Finally We Get GO — and a Better Economic Picture By Dan Weil For more than 20 years, economist Mark Skousen has been calling for the use of gross output (GO) data in addition to gross domestic product (GDP) data to gain a complete view of the economy. And now he's getting his wish. Starting in April, the government will release GO statistics along with GDP statistics. "The biggest reason why GDP is incomplete — not wrong — as a measurement of the economy is that it just measures the final value of goods and services," Skousen, editor of Forecasts & Strategies and a presidential fellow at Chapman University in 2014, told Moneynews. "GDP is a good reflection of people's standard of living. You can use per-capita GDP to compare it around the world." But GDP leaves out much of the economy, Skousen said. GO measures sales at all levels of production, not just the end, allowing it to encompass the entire economy. GO measures the "make" economy, while GDP measures the "use" economy, he said. GDP "leaves out all the production process," he said. "Goods and services go through a production stage, and gross output measures all the sales and spending that businesses engage in" to produce the product and get it to consumers. He breaks it into a four-step process: resources, production, distribution, and final output. Add all four stages, and you have GO. It's no wonder then that annual GO totals $29 trillion-$30 trillion, compared to around $16 trillion or so for GDP. "GO gives a better sense of total economic activity, because instead of just focusing on final production and consumption, it focuses on all the money businesses have to put up to create products," Skousen said. "They have to hire workers, buy supplies, etc." Looking at GDP gives the erroneous impression that consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of the economy, government spending for 20 percent and business spending for the rest, Skousen said. As a result, the media incorrectly reports that consumer or government spending reductions are automatically bad for the economy, he added. But GO data shows that business spending actually accounts for more than 50 percent of the economy and the consumer for only 40 percent, Skousen said. "It almost flips things over. That's a really important concept. The consumer is the effect, not the cause, of prosperity." It makes sense that the business sector is bigger when you think that 80 percent of people are employed in the intermediate stages of production — manufacturing, wholesaling, etc. — while only 20 percent of people work in retail, Skousen said. He sees GO and GDP working together to form a complete picture of the economy. "GO is total spending, GDP is final spending. I'm not suggesting we stop using GDP." Interestingly enough, GO grows faster than GDP during economic recoveries and falls faster than GDP during recessions. "GO is more sensitive to the business cycle than GDP," Skousen said. The way it works during a recession is that businesses just draw down from their inventories to get products to market rather than creating new productive processes, Skousen said. GO is growing much faster than GDP now, he said. But looking forward, "if GO starts to drop faster than GDP, we know we're in for a recession." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3)The Human Wealth of Nations The latest Program for International Student Assessment global education scores are a warning to both parties. Are the schools that serve the world's leading economy really only as good as those in Hungary, Lithuania, Vietnam and Russia? That's the conundrum posed by Tuesday's news of one more mediocre U.S. showing on international educational progress. If the findings land amid exaggerated angst about national decline, they still suggest that both Washington and the 50 states ought to be less complacent about prosperity and human capital. Related Video Political Diary editor Jason Riley on the announcement that American students are falling in international rankings. Photos: Getty Images Since 1998, the Program for International Student Assessment, or Pisa, has ranked 15-year-old kids around the world on common reading, math and science tests. The U.S. brings up the middle—again—among 65 education systems that make up fourth-fifths of the global economy. The triennial Pisa report also shows—again—that East Asian countries like Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea produce the best outcomes. U.S. performance hasn't budged in a decade. For 2012, U.S. students placed 26th in mathematics, a bit below the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development average, and 17th in reading and 21st in science, close to the average. The U.S. slipped in all categories compared to international competitors, plunging from 11th in reading as recently as 2009. American teenagers seem especially weak in core academic subjects with high cognitive demands, such as translating concepts into solutions for real-world problems. A quarter never become proficient in math. In Shanghai and Korea, the comparable figure is 10% or fewer. Some 7% of U.S. students reached the top two scientific performance levels, compared with 17% in Finland and an amazing 27% in Shanghai. Is it tiger moms or tiger schools, or maybe both? The U.S. is way out front in one measure: per-student spending. Only Austria, Luxembourg, Norway and Switzerland spend more. Despite laying out $115,000 per head, the U.S. did no better than the Slovak Republic, which spends $53,000. Perhaps most depressingly, the data show no statistically significant U.S. achievement improvement over time. None. In an era when it pays to be thankful for small mercies, at least we're not getting worse, but America's relative standing is falling as other countries improve. No one test is definitive. Pisa has large margins of error—that 21th place in science could be 17th or 25th—and a change of even a few points in average scores can cause a country's relative status to sink or soar. America is a larger and more heterogeneous country than most, with many different socio-economic backgrounds and schools that vary widely in quality. Enlarge Image Getty Images Then again, Massachusetts has been running public schools since 1635 and today is home to some of the best performers in the nation. The state entered Pisa as if it was its own country—but students of the same age in Shanghai performed as if they had two more years of math instruction than those in the Bay State. Such results should trouble anyone concerned about America's economic future and the human capital produced by the K-12 system. Economies grow by exploiting scarce resources, people most of all. The ultimate source of wealth is ourselves, and the Pisa findings suggest that U.S. schools are failing tomorrow's labor force. Too few students are being prepared with the skills they'll need to compete in a world-wide market and sustain American economic dominance. The spread of technology and information gives talent an ever-wider field abroad on which to play, from the factory floor to the C-suite to the garages where entrepreneurs are starting the companies and industries no one can predict. The wealth of nations is not guaranteed, but earned. Republicans might ponder how little sense it makes to educate the world's smartest young people in U.S. universities only to send them home after they graduate. The U.S. still enjoys a strong comparative advantage in higher education, especially for advanced degrees in science, math, engineering and technology, but the GOP's immigration panic ensures that the U.S. loses too much of the benefit. Pisa also adds another count to the bill of indictment for the Democrats who block reform to serve their teachers union patrons. Education Secretary Arne Duncan called the report "a picture of educational stagnation," but liberals are major impediments to more accountability, merit-based compensation and school-choice competition. The Justice Department has even gone so far as to sue Louisiana to block its modest voucher program, which is a moral crime against the students consigned to failing schools. Both parties might also reflect on the sources of U.S. economic strength. These include America's entrepreneurial energies, its openness to innovation and creative destruction, the rule of law and the free movement of labor and capital. No one would trade the broader U.S. economy for China's merely to get Shanghai schools. But as the late Vermont Royster once wrote in these columns, America is "one of the great underdeveloped countries of the world." What he meant was that this country had yet to achieve its full potential—and his observation may be truer today than it was in 1961, given a President who governs as if 2% growth and 7% unemployment is the best we can do. Faster growth and rising standards of living aren't inevitable, and the Pisa warning is that the U.S. needs to do better at educating and attracting its future citizens or it will face a diminished future. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------