Top 10 Healthcare Reform Myths

WalletPop has a great post refuting some of the most insidious myths about healthcare reform. There are so many overblown fears surrounding this legislation! I wish the media would stop promoting uninformed, extremist opinion, and focus instead on disseminating objective facts.

Is this Really Middle Class Status?

This slideshow, How to Gauge Your Middle-Class Status, claims to offer a quantitative look at what makes someone Middle Class. Some of these statistics seem a little off to me. They strike me as more representative of what I would consider Upper Middle Class. What do you think?

False Expectations from the Middle Class?

In a recent article over at US News & World Report, Rick Newman has an article outlining 7 Stressors Sapping the Middle Class. I found his last point to be the most thought provoking:

For the past 40 or 50 years, Americans have lived by a series of unofficial tenets: A good education guarantees a good job, hard work will bring prosperity, and 40 years of 40-hour-a-week work earns a comfortable retirement. Then, maybe; now, not so much. Workers who believe that somebody owes them a comfortable life just because they try hard are risking bitter disappointment in a Darwinian economy, where there are likely to be more losers and fewer winners than we're used to. The winners will be those who learn how to adapt, expect nobody to give them anything, and are prepared to work harder in the future than they did in the past. That's how it was in America before anybody ever heard of the middle class, and it may be that way for a while again. The real middle class—the true bedrock of the nation—will be able to handle it.

Is the future that bleak and desperate? Or is it just a return to reality after a 50 year detour on Easy Street? What do you think?

Alternative Voting

Here at Eloquent American, we often discuss the growing partisan divide in this country and the negativity and gridlock caused by the two-party system. A recent Thomas Friedman column in the NY Times, A Tea Party Without Nuts, discusses an interesting solution: Alternative Voting.

One reason independent, third-party, centrist candidates can’t get elected is because if, in a three-person race, a Democrat votes for an independent, and the independent loses, the Democrat fears his vote will have actually helped the Republican win, or vice versa. Alternative voting allows you to rank the independent candidate your No. 1 choice, and the Democrat or Republican No. 2. Therefore, if the independent does not win, your vote is immediately transferred to your second choice, say, the Democrat. Therefore, you have no fear that in voting for an independent you might help elect your real nightmare — the Republican. Nothing has held back the growth of independent, centrist candidates more, said Diamond, “than the fear that if you vote for one of them you will be wasting your vote. Alternative voting, which Australia has, can overcome that.”

I think this is a very viable option, and I wish the idea would get more attention in the media. I don't see any drawbacks. What do you think?

Elizabeth Warren: Defending the Middle Class

The NY Times has a great profile of Elizabeth Warren, head of oversight for the Troubled Asset Relief Program ("TARP"). She strongly advocates for Middle Class families in her work to promote consumer protections and financial regulatory reform. She also has a great American life story of pulling herself up by her bootstraps.

College Rejection Breeds Future Success

The Wall Street Journal has a wonderful story, Before They Were Titans, Moguls and Newsmakers, These People Were...Rejected, profiling successful Americans who overcame early failures. It has a very positive, inspirational message. I really like this quote from Lee Bollinger, President of Columbia University, who was rejected from Harvard:

To "allow other people's assessment of you to determine your own self-assessment is a very big mistake," says Mr. Bollinger, a First Amendment author and scholar. "The question really is, who at the end of the day is going to make the determination about what your talents are, and what your interests are? That has to be you."

Anything is possible in America!

More Doomsday Commentary...

Yet another prognosticator is predicting decline for America. Over on cnbc.com, Antonia Oprita has an article, Health Care Law Signals US Empire Decline?, in which she discusses the ideas of David Murrin, the co-founder of Emergent Asset Management hedge fund. He thinks China will soon surpass America due to demographic shifts and increasing risk aversion in the United States.

Is the situation really this dire and inevitable? While I agree that there are many challenges facing America today, and we will have to work hard to overcome them, some of these fears seem overblown. What do you think?

Quote of the Day

All the public uproar over the passage of the new healthcare bill brings to mind a quote by Horace Mann:

“Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge”

Certain Collapse of the American Empire?

Over at MarketWatch Paul B. Farrell has a column, The rise and certain fall of the American Empire, predicting the inevitable demise of American society. He bases his argument on historical precedent set by earlier societies. Farrell outlines a five stage cycle identified by a financial historian from Harvard, Niall Ferguson, that is based on a series of paintings by Thomas Cole called "The Course of Empire":

1. 'The Savage State' before the Empire rises
2. 'The Arcadian or Pastoral State' as the American Empire flourishes
3. 'The Consummation of Empire'
4. 'The Destruction of Empire'
5. 'Desolation' ... after the Empire disappears

Farrell and Ferguson posit that we are between the fourth and fifth stage, and that the coming destruction may be a sudden systemic shock, rather than a slow, protracted demise.

This fatalistic prognostication strikes me as overly pessimistic. What do you think? Is it really too late?

Failed Revolutions from Both the Left and the Right

In a recent column, The Broken Society, NY Times columnist David Brooks discussed twin revolutions that have occurred over the past few decades.

First, there was the cultural revolution from the Left, which liberated people from society's traditional morality, and elevated the importance of an individual's rights over that of one's responsibilities.

Second, there was the market revolution from the Right, which promoted globalization and deregulation and negatively impacted local, small business.

Brooks argues that, together, these revolutions created unintended consequences like greater bureaucratic centralization, weakened community ties, and increased social isolation and disenfranchisement.

Brooks referenced the ideas of British writer Phillip Blond as a possible solution. Blond proposes a three-pronged response: remoralize the market, relocalize the economy, and recapitalize the poor. He outlines the following specifics:

This would mean passing zoning legislation to give small shopkeepers a shot against the retail giants, reducing barriers to entry for new businesses, revitalizing local banks, encouraging employee share ownership, setting up local capital funds so community associations could invest in local enterprises, rewarding savings, cutting regulations that socialize risk and privatize profit, and reducing the subsidies that flow from big government and big business.

These are the types of ideas and proposals that we need to focus on in the struggle to overcome the challenges facing America today.

Eloquent Americans

In honor of the name of this blog, here are ten outstanding quotes by Eloquent Americans:
1. "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." - Thomas Jefferson
2. "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country." - John F. Kennedy
3. "There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism." - Alexander Hamilton
4. "No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders." - Samuel Adams
5. "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
6. "Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose." - Helen Keller
7. "It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives." - John Adams
8. "History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster." - General Douglas MacArthur
9. "Remember no one can make you feel inferior without your consent." - Eleanor Roosevelt
10. "If an American is to amount to anything he must rely upon himself, and not upon the State; he must take pride in his own work, instead of sitting idle to envy the luck of others. He must face life with resolute courage, win victory if he can, and accept defeat if he must, without seeking to place on his fellow man a responsibility which is not theirs." - Theodore Roosevelt

Googlers Support Entrepreneurism

BusinessWeek has a great article, And Google Begat..., that discusses the positive impact that former Google executives are having as investors in new tech start-ups. To me, this exemplifies the best of the American entrepreneurial spirit. These young execs became millionaires as a result of their innovative ideas and willingness to work hard and take calculated risks. Now, instead of resting on their laurels, they are extending a hand to other innovators as "Angel Investors". America needs more successful people to adopt this of this type of enterprising agenda.

A Movement We Can Support: The Coffee Party

This week, the NYTimes featured a profile of a new movement that has formed in response to the Tea Party: The Coffee Party. This group was founded by Annabel Park to “support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them.” The Coffee Party promotes governmental cooperation, civility, political engagement, and a moderate, middle-of-the-road approach. Their slogan is “Wake Up and Stand Up.”

This is exactly what we need in this country! A grassroots group that encourages everyone to get involved, treat each other with respect, and work together to put an end to the constant, petty bickering and gridlock we see in the public sphere today. Bring it on!

Political Problems

Over at Yahoo! Finance, The Naked Economist, Charles Wheelan, Ph.D., has an interesting column that touches on some of the themes we cover here at Eloquent American. His recent article The Real Problem in Politics? It's Us identifies three types of dysfunctional behavior that negatively impact the American political process. He also places blame on citizens who are civically disengaged and do not participate in the political process in order to effect change. I think this is an important point. We all need to work together in a productive and focused manner if we are going to make America a better place for future generations.