medical – Reality Me

I want to be building forts, playing games, and laughing with the children today. My brain isn’t working at full capacity today. But I remain focused on my work because before I can play with my children, I must provide for them.

Parents are obliged to provide food, shelter, clothing, medical care, education, and spiritual development for their children. Theoretically, each of those should have equal importance. In reality, they have to be prioritized based on the situation at the time. Single parents amaze me. I do not know I would manage a family without Cathy! That is not entirely true. If I were a single parent, I would build a support system around myself of friends, family and services. As a matter of fact, we have such a support system already. I imagine that as a single parent I would have to use that support system a little heavier.

It is difficult to meet any of those obligations without money. Unfortunately, the amount of money you make/have is rather proportional to the quality of care you can provide your children. That is not to imply that a poor person is a bad parent or cannot give their child a quality education; however, a greater amount of money makes it easier to provide quality services. For instance, food choices are often governed by making ends meet. The quality of services you receive at the doctor’s office can be determined by your insurance carrier. I have observed people on TennCare having longer waits than people on private insurance. Those on TennCare may get interns while those with private insurance get the nurses and doctors. Money definitely impacts the quality of shelter which can be provided. Quality clothing can be had from consignment stores, hand me downs, and sales; however, money may determine how often clothing is purchased. Even spiritual development can be impaired by money problems since time to give spiritual guidance has to be allocated to earning money.

Whoops. This post was supposed to be about how much I love my children. Didn’t mean to slip into "I want to see poverty abolished" (even if I do).

How do you pay for an expensive overseas war and bring value back to a falling dollar? Simple. You reduce your countries infrastructures costs, add workers to the populace to increase gross national product, create a livable wage for those same workers for taxable income, and create a high demand product to encourage the citizenry to purchase taxable goods. Personally I would add impeach a president to the list.

These things are coming! (well…maybe not the impeachment) And your politicians have already begun the game of wag the dog to get you to accept the reduced infrastructure costs, new workers, different tax structure, and focus on purchasing a highly taxable product. The spin war is on because it is going to be a vicious one and a very hard sell because the government has been selling you a different bill of goods for almost 50 years. See, the reduced infrastructures cost will come by releasing roughly 800,000 inmates from prison.

…would save taxpayers an estimated $20 billion per year…[Source, Unlocking America: Why and How to Reduce America’s Prison Population, page 7]

It is these same 800,000 inmates who will be the new workers adding to the GNP which means these 800,000 people would be producing taxable income.

What of the product? The product must be inexpensive to produce otherwise the savings from releasing the prisoners is negated. Ideally the product should already exist and be high demand with the general populace. The United States has just such a product. It is a product that no one uses yet you cannot swing a stick in a crowd without hitting someone who does use it. The product is marijuana. No one admits to using it yet it seems like everyone around you uses it socially or medicinally from time to time. Even our presidents use it! They just don’t inhale.

My prediction is that in the next decade we will see significant pressure by politicians to encourage legalization of marijuana for all the reasons stated above plus more. By encouraging the use of hemp for cloth, paper, ropes, and so many other uses, we will make better use of the land with higgher quality products (see 200 year old hemp nightgown looks like new). Watch the news. California will lead followed by Colorado and Nevada. Tennessee will follow closely since TN produces quite a lot of crops. Mark my word. As soon as the government can deprogram society from the believe that marijuana is bad (remember, marijuana was lobbied into illegality by the paper companies – apparently it is supposed to do less harm to the body than drinking alcohol), you will see marijuana sold either over the drug store counters or beside the cigarettes in the grocery stores.

Tag: medical

Just want to play with the children today

I predict a major social change because of the war

djuggler