The Brian Gongol Show on WHO Radio
Brian Gongol


If we don't fix the entitlement crisis -- specifically, the Medicare crisis -- soon, it's not going to matter one little bit what the Presidential candidates promise us. What's especially disappointing is that when you look at the platforms of the 2008 Presidential candidates, only a couple of them have even brought up the subject of Medicare reform. At least six of them appear to think that there's no problem at all...and that's a problem all of its own.

As some of the candidates get behind proposals for "national health care," it brings up two serious concerns: There may be a housing bubble in parts of the US -- and it's hard to look at housing prices in San Francisco without thinking parts of the country are certainly in the middle of a bubble -- whatever's going wrong here isn't anywhere close to the scale of the problem in Britain, where they think that the average home price will soon rise to ten times the average annual income. What an incredible crisis.

We are, however, paying too much attention to house prices: New-car sales are being squeezed by falling house prices. If you were a farmer a hundred years ago, you didn't buy a horse based upon what you thought your farm was worth. You bought the horse based upon what that horse could do. A car is a tool, just like a horse used to be. It's crazy to decide how much to spend on it based on how much you think your home would sell for...especially if you aren't even planning to sell that house in the first place.

It turns out communism isn't quite as dead as we thought: Russian officials are imposing price controls on food. I don't believe in psychic powers, but I can already tell you that this is going to result in food shortages. It's also terrible news that Western speculators are keeping the Russian stock market afloat.

Even with candidates dropping out of the Presidential race, the economic platforms of the 2008 candidates for the White House just aren't meeting the minimum expectations. More of them think we ought to do nothing about Medicare than think we ought to act, and only four of them have really worked in the private sector for any length of time.

20% of Canadians apparently think $100 is too much to pay for a cancer vaccine. Is that a pathetic commentary on socialized medicine, scienfic illiteracy, or consumerism?

Peer into the future with the updated Future Scale. And get a good read in with "Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist". It's well worth the read.

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