Category Archives: economics
Follow-up
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 13th May 2009Recently I posted an article I wrote in 1997 – We Lose Money on Every Car We Sell But Make It Up In Volume or The Accountant Ascendant. In it I mentioned that a study (published in 1996) concluded that the CPI was underestimating the true degree of inflation by 1.1%. Now another report concludes…
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We Lose Money on Every Car We Sell But Make It Up In Volume or The Accountant Ascendant
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 30th April 2009I was flabbergasted when I reread the following piece originally published in 1997. It outlines our current economic plan. I had no idea that our future president read Lubbock Magazine 12 years ago. But don’t impute any bitterness to my remarks. I’m perfectly willing to let him take all the credit for the plan I…
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Musings on the Extraordinary
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 18th April 2009I’ve been reading a biography of the transcendental Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920) and thinking about the current economic crisis. What does the one have to do with the other? They are both extraordinary and we are helpless when confronted by the unique. Many commentators in the wake of our immediate economic duress fault…
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Medical Tourism
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 6th April 2009The NY Times recently published a story about medical tourism. You can read it for yourself. What’s most interesting about the phenomenon and what’s not mentioned specifically is that it is an attempt to establish market economics in medical care. Note again that health care is a terrible misnomer that distracts attention from the real…
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Off With Their Thumbs
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 31st March 2009I propose that the top 2% of earners in the US have their left thumbs amputated under the direction of the Department of Health and Human Services. Of course, this would be done under the proper medical supervision and with all necessary anesthesia and post-operative analgesia. We are a humane country. Left handers would have…
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Adam Smith and the Current Economic Crisis
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 30th March 2009The following two quotations from Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776) speak to our current economic malaise with magisterial prescience. They could be summarized as (1) nobody hates capitalism more than capitalists and (2) think carefully before you make a law to benefit a private enterprise. Asking the legislature to think under any condition is probably…
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Cost of Medical Care in 2007
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 25th March 2009The aggregate cost of medical care in the US in 2007 was $2.26 trillion. That used to be a lot of money before the federal government started spending trillions like they were millions. The pie chart below shows how this cost was distributed. It also is rising faster than GDP and has been doing so…
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Everybody Dies
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 5th March 2009The current economic crisis has elicited numerous responses declaring that we’ve been through worse and that we’ll get through this. Warren Buffet’s version of this combined caution and succor is this: Amid this bad news, however, never forget that our country has faced far worse travails in the past. In the 20th Century alone, we…
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