Economics and Health

Economics as if 🌏 mattered!

What? Economics affects our health?

Yes in many ways.

Let’s begin with a definition of “economics” and some basic concepts.

From Greek:

  • “eco” = house in the global sense “Earth” as in the “Global ecosystem”
  • “-nomos“ = management/law.

Thus ”economics” is:

  • the practice and study of how we manage our home/societies’ processes required for life on Earth.
    • as in “Home Ec” class, but now on a global scale.
  • humans extract raw materials from Earth and transform them through various methods (industry) into the goods and energy needed to provide services for a functioning society.
  • Finance (management of currency or money) is the monetary subset of economics.
  • FYI the term “resources” is a capitalistic commodification/monetization of Earth’s raw materials.

The real cost of producing material goods and providing the services needed and desired for us to create functional cultures are measured via:

  • energy to continuously mine/extract raw materials and fossil fuels
  • ecosystem damage from construction & all operations of society
  • pollution of land, water, air, and how it affects all life

Ecosystem destruction & pollution are “externalities” that do not figure into capitalist profit equations thus there is no incentive to prevent or mediate the damage!.

The socialist business model does consider “externalities” in profit equations because reducing and repairing this damage is integral to the health of all life on Earth.

When crude oil was first discovered & extracted in the 19th century:

  • it took ONE (1) barrel’s (bbls) worth of petroleum based energy to extract TWO HUNDRED (200) TO TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY (250) bbls of crude,
    • a ratio of 1:200 to 1:250 !
  • today that ratio is 1:6 !   a cost of 1 bbl to extract only 6 bbls of raw crude

Sources at bottom of page.

Since the “Pandemic” prices have risen over 30%, mostly due to the “Fed” printing & creating twelve (12) Trillion US dollars in the Spring of 2020. This is more $ than the US has had in its entire existence! This severely dilutes the cash pool thus the dollar becomes worth less meaning prices jump rather than inflate gradually…

… a reporter once asked Gandhi what he thought of Western civilization, he replied: 

“I think it would be a good idea.” 🤣

The physical costs remain basically the same however the cost of energy will continue to rise until petroleum is no longer financially and economically viable to extract, due to more difficult extraction & greedy capitalist business owners causing inflation.

This increases the financial costs of doing business, so, extraction & primary service companies increase their prices forcing everyone else to increase their prices.

Inflation is intentionally caused by people increasing prices because they want more profits! Some increases are due to Federal Reserve actions: i.e. huge printing of cash in 2020 which is unprecedented, but most increases are due to owners of material extraction & primary service companies increasing their prices when they want more profits for them & their shareholders.

Capitalists generally over inflate their price so the administrator/owner class maintains their high salaries despite their lack of doing any of the actual work that brings in profits. At some point in the next forty years petroleum, crude oil, will cost more to extract than it is worth in both energy input to extract and finances needed to fund operations. This will become negative in about 40 years and the petrol party will end.

A huge detrimental health issue in the United States, other than a bad (S.A.D.) diet, is the constant stress of financing one’s “healthcare” insurance and children’s education which BTW does not occur in every other industrialized country on Earth due to socialized medical coverage and education.

This stress is due to the facts around whether you will be able to maintain your mortgage/rent and “premium”healthcare” insurance payments or not; as you know, if you lose your job you will likely lose your job related benefits or at minimum may not be able to pay premiums and thus lose your ability to obtain care and pay rent.

This stress can lead to a multitude of other different and potentially concurrent health issues:

including illnesses caused by the absorption of toxic chemicals created by capitalist companies without any regulations in the USA, due to their intentional lobbying efforts.

In contrast the EU requires chemical companies to prove no harm before releasing any new chemicals into the biosphere!

Note: the symptoms of detoxification from these chemicals and withdrawals, “DTs”, from controlled substances, i.e. alcohol, heroine…, are similar to, if not the same as, symptoms of “viral infections”.

In many US counties, typically in the west, you can go to a county hospital where you can receive subsidized care if you can prove poverty. However, many counties like Sumter, South Carolina, do not offer any care outside of paying for it not even for poverty level citizens. i learned this from a friend who lives there and has no “healthcare” access because of this issue, but she did in Las Vegas.

The reason for this problem is that the “healthcare” insurance industry is a profit motivated capitalist industry that only cares about you as their source of income.

Your agent, as a “normal” human being, may care about you personally, but the corporation/board of directors/stockholders only care(s) about maximizing profits.

The USA is the only industrialized country on Earth that does not offer at least some basic socialized health care to all its citizens. Every other industrialized country does and many, if not most, will even take care of non-citizens. Cuba for example will give complete care as needed for free to any human being in the country – Mexico also which i have experienced first hand.

The reasons for this lack of socialized “healthcare” in the USA are complex but not difficult to understand.

Capitalist business is a dictatorship whose primary focus is maximizing profits with all other policies being secondary.

Capitalist business owners (individuals or boards & stockholders) “dictate” ALL the policies/rules of the business they own. Employees have to follow these policies/rules or they will get fired/“laid-off” or have to quit:

– btw and More importantly, the rest of us have to abide by these private business decisions as well because private decisions that business owners make in their offices and boardrooms behind closed doors, are imposed on our culture as a whole and the world in general because like employees we have no say in these decisions and if we “choose” to buy their products/services we have to abide by their rules!

i wrote “choose” this way above because the way our culture works these are generally not our personal choices to make; either we use their product or service or we go without as there are typically no alternatives other than living independently via home gardening like a homestead of old and only supporting local, family run businesses.

This is how the US economy is centrally controlled in all the boardrooms across the country. This amounts to only a few thousand people across the USA, and now the world, who make decisions that affect us all and we have no say in any of it, aside from BDS actions – Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions.

As such large money-hoarders (people & the corporations they control, banks & other huge companies) use their large financial investment abilities to incessantly lobby for laws that reduce their taxes and protect their profits.

Capitalism thrives on the boom and bust economy and requires the majority to be poorer than the owners of capital. Notice how much more cash the money-hoarders now control since the bust of ”COVID-19”. Every time there is a recession, depression, “downturn”, the money-hoarders acquire more cash and thus control.

This causes uncontrolled ”economic growth”! In biology uncontrolled growth is cancer!

Locally controlled regionally socialized economies tend to be stable with little to no inflation thus not requiring unlimited growth and thus allowing average people to live in stable, comfortable communities via reasonable small family, worker self-directed enterprises – WSDE. Stability creates diversity which creates unity and much more innovation since people are not worried about loosing their homes if they get sick or injured nor worried about pollution and ecosystem destruction.

”Democratize the Enterprise”.

… the socialist business model is a WSDE – no employees, only owners!

Workers then control the means of production and distribution through democratic processes of voting and/or consensus creating their own policies and working environment. When people work in a democratic organization on a daily basis over the course of a lifetime career, they become experienced in how a functioning democracy actually works.

When people spend their lives as employees of some corporation or family business, being told what to do and never having any binding decision powers, they do not experience a functioning democracy on a daily basis so they have no idea how a democratic government should operate.

The extreme control the large corporations maintain on Earth’s ”resources” affects Earth’s health in huge detrimental ways. How to we change this?

Be the change that YOU desire!

It is up to each of us to wrest this control from their claws by creating your own WSDE or joining one, eating organic, growing your own, supporting small local farms and small local businesses, credit unions, public banks, socialized medicine & education until we stabilize the economy ourselves. Small local businesses tend to support each other thus money stays local and the economy stabilizes and inflation ends! Learn more from Professor Richard Wolff.

for an introductory education on Eco-nomics, as if a healthy Life on Earth mattered, with a bias on creating a new, more socialized culture check out the group Economics for Emancipation.

Yours for a Healthier & more Humane Culture

Sources:

Advertisement
%d bloggers like this: