Minimal Standards

     Most of us believe that the "market" pretty much keeps our world in order... as exampled, is my personal "skill set" marketable, does my supermarket offer fresh sockeye salmon, is there a local board certified orthopaedist, etc.  Raw capitalism holds that this "market" should mediate virtually every choice.  A more liberal sense is that "fragil persons" should be exempt from market competition. 

     I own an Assisted Living Facility (ALF).  I have owned many Skilled Nursing Homes (SNF's).  More than 1.5 million Americans live in SNF's and 900,00 live in ALF's.  SNF quarters and services are regulated by goverment agencies, but most ALF's are controlled only by the "market".  In general, how the 2.5 million divide, by facility type, is according to their status on the fraility hierarchy spectrum, i.e., "low frail" live ALF and "high frails" live SNF, albeit that "financially poor" is the dominant attribute of "high frail". Yes, it is not woke to point out that advanced seniors without financial resources to pay for ALF residence commonly have following generation children who also do not have resources to secure the well-being of their parents, and therefor default to the government funded SNF's.  We know it but don't say it. 

     Historically there has been a wide gap in the quality of life experienced by the 2.5 million communal living advanced age seniors.  Residents in SNF's, have always been heavily reliant on government supervision to insure there well-being.  Historically the success of the government supervision has been at best minimal, and sadly in many instances counterproductive. Both for-profit and non-profit SNF providers expend far to much resources patronizing government inspectors and far too little resources caring for residents who have no market options.  ALF residents, to the contrary, have historically had marketplace competition to provide assurance that they likely were receiving "well-being value" for their "private funds" payment.

     Regrettably, in recent years, "the market"  has lost much of it's potency in assuring that "low frail" seniors are properly cared for.  My sense is that today's ALF living seniors, albeit frail, are at the very high end of the age scale.  It is not uncommon to see ALF communities with active/mobile residents who at average are 90+ years of age.  Many are functional but not discriminating about their services received and their children are of sufficient advanced age that they too are unable to function as discriminating consumers for their parent's complicated "lifestyle services".

     And so, therefore....we have become a nation with a million seniors who toiled and saved for 60+ years yet spend their last years in a "private-pay" care facility with little market pressure to provide benefits commensurate with often exorbitant residence charges.  

     In my home state, Missouri, ALF single residence charges average $3800 per month.  Think about this realistic example:  Mary and Bob married in 1968, bought a $50,000 house in 1975, made payments for 30 years.  Bob died in 2016.  Mary sold the house that year and deposited the $150,000 proceeds into a saving account at 2%.  After six years here savings balance was down to $100,000 after she had supplemented her $1300 monthly SS benefit with $1500 monthly from her savings.  Mary can now utilize her remaining savings to fund the $2200 shortfall between her SS benefits and her ALF residence fee.  She's good for about 4.5 years, unless her health requires that she live in a "skilled care" facility, in which case she will only be good for just over 2 years.   

     The sad summary is that the Marys" of America statistically have closer to 10 year life expectancy when they commence communal living.  In that most of there residence time time will be spent in a "skilled facility" paid by MoHealthNet, the State Medicaid program, after they have exhausted their private funds, well.......

     Mary and Bob should have sold their house in the earlier years of their retirement and used the proceeds for upscale vacations or charities.  Yes, Mary would have been a Medicaid Beneficiary for an extra couple of years, but there would have been little difference in Mary's life style.

Symmetry

     At nearly eight decades in, watching, listening, and thinking as best I know how, I am, like everyone else, still perplexed.  WTF is this thing we call consciousness! Occasionally I encounter some string of words, or some extraordinary phenomena, or feel an eerie universal connectedness on hearing a musical expression, or.....

     See something, that at least for me, strongly hints of a fundamental truth that likely is way north of the Standard Model.  Like the following Twitter pic.

 

      For sure, I am not grounded mathematically but, this pattern "surely" infers something that I just don't get.  I have a long standing sense that numbers are better truth beacons than dreams, so again, WTF

Living in the "post truth" world

     Opening premise statement in a recent book by Steve Fuller, an arrogant, yet insightful, British sociologist:  

                  "Simply put, in the post-truth condition, what matters

                           is not whether something is true or false

                         but how the matter is decided"

     Nietzsche killed the Gods and Goggle killed the Experts. We're now all doomed to duke it out on Twitter via the various sense and nonsense offered up by "our side". Play Hard or Go Home!

Good Luck.....See you, but wouldn't wanna be you!

                                                       A Baby Boomer

Get your "Tokamaks" right here.

     In the South of France, a nation consortium is building a proof of concept "nuclear fusion reactor" that will turn an ounce of seawater into enough electricity to power the planet for a thousand years.  Ostensibly the proof is coming in 2025.  It's an engineering marvel, including among other things, an electro-magnet that could lift an aircraft carrier.

      We've been hearing about "fusion reactors" for decades, but preceding experiments seem to confirm that this , first of a kind thing called a Tokamak, may change the world like nothing before.  We seem to have plenty of water from oceans, air from atmosphere and light from sun....so

    if a Tokamak or two can give us unlimited electricity, then by definition it will be free, and our spoiled progeny can spend their entire lives just experiencing VR's made by AI's.     

So What If....Ukraine

     Yes, times are problematic here in America, the worlds oldest democracy.  About 20% of us know that "democracy is under attack".  However, for only about 10% of this subset is the threat of "authoritarian rule" more  alarming than a planet ending meteor strike.  Is this because American's have devolved into a nation of uneducated, self absorbed, avatar obsessed, psycho-droids.... or  

     Perhaps, now having a lot of experience watching ourselves live in this complicated "post truth" age, we Americans instinctively know that all of this "sovereign nation" crap is just a stale leftover from the 20th century. If I lived in Kiev, I would be hoping that the Ukrainian elites, (half of whom want the Russians and half whom don't), would see that flags and parliaments, and presidents are powerless to alter our daily lives. We are all running "auto-reality software", i.e. facebook/crypto/alexa/visa/etc.... and as such we are, in most aspects, insulated from "top down" authority control.  If your not on the grid, they can't turn of your lights! 

     So what if, the Russian flag flies next week in Kiev? No big deal. Life would be pretty much unchanged, except that perhaps Fox might get more air time and MSNBC might get less....who cares.  The 5% elites would still be there, half sucking up to Moscow and the other half trying to undermine Moscow via social media distortions....any the world would keep turning.

     Of course, all of the above, is moot if Ukraine gets drenched in "missle rain".  Probably they won't.  The weaker team will feign "going for it", run out the play clock, take a penalty,  and then punt. Think about it, missies aren't worth anything unless you have two sides.  If I were the comedian running Ukraine, I would send an email to Putin, announcing that as of tomorrow, all Ukrainians would be flying the Russian flag, that all currency would be converted to Rubles, that Putin would be acknowledged as the President. and that taxation revenues would be utilized pursuant to Moscow directives. I probably would also offer to Putin a willingness to endorse and promote any particular trans-rational deity platform that Putin might find attractive/useful.  Then I would, open a beer and watch a soccer match.