When people learn about my bout with COVID-19 I am often asked to describe my experience. I am always happy to do so, but I find that normally it involves me trying to type a long detailed story on my phone, and inevitably I leave out what I believe might be pertinent information for them. So I have decided to do my best to describe it in detail on this blog post so I can share it whenever, I am asked, and if someone wants a friend or family member to read it they can forward.
For me it began the day the nation was put on stay at home requests, March 16th. The week before my 90 year old uncle was ill with the flu, I took him to the ER to be seen, knowing that driving him in the car with me would put me at risk for the flu, but he needed to go. The following weekend my wife was at his apartment doing his laundry, he was still ill. She caught it a few days later, both of them had a stomach flu. On March 14th I was mentioning to her that I must have dodged a bullet because more than a week had gone by and I didn't get it. However, I spoke too soon. Over the weekend I noticed that my cough had gotten worse. I have had a chronic cough for the last three years, I have been tested and retested and it is caused by my body not liking a lot of possible allergens. When the cough increased I knew something was coming on, assuming it was my every spring sinus infection. So I cancelled all my meetings for Monday the 16th and worked from home. By that evening my fever started and from that time for two weeks I had a fever plus or minus of 102.
I had made an appointment with my doctor on my phone app for that coming Wednesday on Sunday evening, and also requested a prescription of the antibiotics I normally get for the sinus infection. I hadn't heard back so I wasn't aware that the prescription as ordered and waiting for me. I went to doctor on Wednesday and tested positive for the flu, influenza B. Not the stomach one that my uncle and wife seemed to have. So from there on it was next to impossible to get a COVID test because I was diagnosed with the flu.
That following Saturday, my wife was concerned because I kept getting worse, and my fever stayed about 102 all day and night even though I was taking Tylenol every three hours. She called the Nurse on Call number and after she spoke with me she wanted me to get to see a doctor within the next 24 hours. I went to St. Vincent's ER because it was close to my house. I explained it was unlike any flu I had ever had, how I couldn't eat because everything tasted absolutely awful, everything tasted like pure salt or a metallic chemical taste. The only thing I could bring myself to eat was a banana each day. I ended up losing 18 pounds in two weeks. Unfortunately have put about half of it back on. When I was with ER doctor she told me that it wasn't uncommon for the flu to last two or three weeks. I had never heard that before. I told her about how my wife and uncle had Influenza A but I somehow missed that one and got B, she told me she believed I had both, she told me to quit taking the antibiotics because it won't help the flu. She then sent me home.
That next week, I kept feeling worse. I simply couldn't think, my brain felt like it was mud. Every waking moment, which were the smallest part of the day, I was confused, trying to figure out if something I saw, heard, or believed I had experienced was real or some sort of fever dream or hallucination. By back was killing me, as an old wrestler who used to cut very unhealthy amounts of weight, I recognized the pain was kidneys. I was dizzy and found walking difficult to navigate without worrying about falling. When I stared coughing up blood, I called my doctor again and said that this is unlike any flu I have seen, and something isn't right. I waited on a return call. By that Wednesday night, I still hadn't heard back from them, but right before I was going to bed a major coughing fit happened, and I simply could not breathe. It felt like my ribcage was collapsing on itself and I couldn't get any air. It took me about an hour to calm down enough that, with effort, real determined effort, I was able to breathe at least shallowly. My wife was holding me up until she could get me into a chair.
The next day, the doctor office called back and told me to go to the ER for a chest x-ray. They asked me to take a deep breath and it wasn't something that was possible for me to do. The tech told me I would be hearing from my doctor because my lungs were a mess. This would have been day 10 of COVID-19, days 10-11 are the two worst because that is when your lungs fill completely. He sent me home to wait for my doctor's call. The doctor called the next afternoon, he wanted me to go to a respiratory clinic. I drove there, it was actually in my doctor's normal office, but the hospital system had moved them all around. He was now in a different facility doing video doctoring so he couldn't see me. I drove to the door where I normally go in, but there was a sign that no entry was allowed to that door, that I had to go around to door 7. I wasn't sure where that was so I tried walking around to it, I ended up having to lay down on the side walk when I got about 3/4 of the way there because I simply couldn't get a breathe. It was almost impossible to talk with the staff when I got in after my little walk. The doctor there was very concerned about my lungs and my very low blood oxygen levels. She wanted me admitted to the hospital right then, put on oxygen and an IV. So she sent me to the only door open at the hospital, the ER, she called ahead and told them she wanted them to admit me. When I got there they did another chest x-ray, blood tests, and a COVID-19 test. Three hours later they came back in where I was, I assumed they were going to take me to my room. However the ER doctor said, she was 100% sure I had COVID-19 even though the test hadn't come back yet. She then sent me home and said come back to the ER if I couldn't breath. I was thinking, I came here today and yesterday because I couldn't breathe and both times you sent me home. I didn't have the energy to argue.
The next day, I got two calls, one from hospital and one from my doctor both said I had COVID-19, my doctor said I was the only one he knew who had both the flu and COVID-19 at the same time. He ordered me a Z-pack antibiotic and told me to start taking the other one he had given me again. This would have been day 12, two more days and three days without a fever and I was off quarantine. However, that wasn't an issue, it was another week before I felt remotely human again. In fact, it was the Friday of the third week before my brain felt like it was actually functioning again. I recall asking my wife about a "device" I believe she had made that I was using every night to prop me up so I could breath, but I couldn't find it. There never was any such thing but in my mind, and it was something I believed I was using almost for three weeks.
I have a friend, who is a doctor and research scientist, who has been studying COVID-19, he has been a God-send to me, educating me and assuring me when needed. He taught me that the media has this all wrong, that it isn't a respiratory disease but a blood disease. That it attacks the red blood cells capacity to distribute oxygen to the body. This caused the organs to fail for lack of oxygen, the brain, kidneys, liver, etc. This explained a lot. That is also why they are seeing so many patients with blood clots from it.
For me I was down for three weeks, then it took almost three weeks to get strong enough to actually feel normal. I wouldn't wish this on anyone. However, as my doctor and my doctor friend have explained to me, I am now 100% immune and can now pay it forward by donating plasma. I am in the process of working through that system now. But today, really great news, my wife, who was with me every day and didn't get it, her antibodies test came back and she has had it. So we don't know if that was the three days she was sick that I thought I avoided, or if she was totally asymptomatic. But she too is now immune.
Tuesday, May 26, 2020
Sunday, February 16, 2020
Why Keynesian Economics Always Fails.
In 1965 Time Magazine cover was the title "The Economy: We Are All Keynesian Now." It really didn't matter if you were a Democrat or a Republican, they both ascribed to the Keynesian theories of economics. Our Universities have for decades nearly taught these exclusively, with some Marx thrown in, in later years more and more Marx thrown in. What is Keynesian economics we hear so much about?
In the 1930's, Lord John Maynard Keynes predicted that someday everyone would have a four-bedroom house, at which point, the American Dream having been fulfilled, people would lose their incentive to work. Keynes believed that peoples' affluence would eventually outstrip their appetites - that their demand for goods and services would reach a plateau, beyond which the amount of money they spent would represent a smaller and smaller percentage of their incomes. Therefore, he argued, the government would have to adopt fiscal policies designed to keep people from hoarding too much of their incomes. `This can be found in Keynes "The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money." This was why our government developed a progressive income tax, to keep you having to work harder.
It is hard to believe that was a theory anyone every believed, no less that even today, we are still finding the bulk of politicians, academia and the media that are pushing it. It seems so much of what we as a society do is more based on tradition than any thought through idea. Today, it is clear that nothing could be further from the truth of people stop wanting more after basic needs are satisfied. Indeed, we know it to be the exact opposite of what Keynes predicted. Just look at the spending habits of American consumers, they are insatiable. The more we earn, the more we spend; the more we spend, the more we get; the more we get, the more we want, and the more we want, the harder we seem to work to earn more money to get it. If any segment of society has lost the incentive to work, it is the poor, not the upwardly mobile and middle class.
What happened to confound Keynes's prediction that increasing affluence will lead to decreasing consumption? In part, Keynes got tripped up by a basic misunderstanding of human psychology. Improving prospects breed rising expectations, not complacency. Thus, as John Kenneth Galbraith noted in 1958 in his book "The Affluent Society," "In the affluent society, no sharp distinction can be made between luxuries and necessaries." Galbraith was talking mainly about consumer psychology as used by advertisers to play on consumers' insecurities, envy, and self-esteem to make them want things they don't really need: or as imposed by consumers upon themselves. Consider, for example, how buying a luxurious new suit makes a consumer feel he must have an equally luxurious silk tie, a fine linen shirt, and pair of Italian leather shoes to match. And once he has added this to his wardrobe, his less expensive suits, shirts, ties, and shoes look dreary and he wants to replace them with the better quality as well. If she was driving a Toyota then she wants his and hers, then they want to trade up to a Lexus, then two, and so on.
Add to that what technology advancements do by providing an ever expanding array of astonishing new products, the use of which changes our behavior to an extent that before long what was once a great luxury is now an everyday necessity. So the very economic system that our Establishment politicians, our academics and our business media keep pushing, the one they were all raised to believe is built on a false premise that has never ever worked. What has worked is a more Alchemic approach to economics, where the money is left in private hands, both in business and consumer hands to spend and invest as they like. That is the power that fires the engines of the economy. As John F. Kennedy said, "A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced Federal budget...as the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenues. Prosperity is the real way to balance our budget. By lowering tax rates, by increasing jobs and income, we can expand tax revenues and finally bring our budget into balance."
Throughout history, every time we reduce tax rates significantly we increase the economy and that increased economy actually creates record revenue into the national government in taxes. The reverse is also true, whenever we raise tax rates the economy slows, business people and individuals start spending more time and resources to shelter their existing income rather than try to grow more and the tax revenues to the government actually shrinks.
In the 1930's, Lord John Maynard Keynes predicted that someday everyone would have a four-bedroom house, at which point, the American Dream having been fulfilled, people would lose their incentive to work. Keynes believed that peoples' affluence would eventually outstrip their appetites - that their demand for goods and services would reach a plateau, beyond which the amount of money they spent would represent a smaller and smaller percentage of their incomes. Therefore, he argued, the government would have to adopt fiscal policies designed to keep people from hoarding too much of their incomes. `This can be found in Keynes "The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money." This was why our government developed a progressive income tax, to keep you having to work harder.
It is hard to believe that was a theory anyone every believed, no less that even today, we are still finding the bulk of politicians, academia and the media that are pushing it. It seems so much of what we as a society do is more based on tradition than any thought through idea. Today, it is clear that nothing could be further from the truth of people stop wanting more after basic needs are satisfied. Indeed, we know it to be the exact opposite of what Keynes predicted. Just look at the spending habits of American consumers, they are insatiable. The more we earn, the more we spend; the more we spend, the more we get; the more we get, the more we want, and the more we want, the harder we seem to work to earn more money to get it. If any segment of society has lost the incentive to work, it is the poor, not the upwardly mobile and middle class.
What happened to confound Keynes's prediction that increasing affluence will lead to decreasing consumption? In part, Keynes got tripped up by a basic misunderstanding of human psychology. Improving prospects breed rising expectations, not complacency. Thus, as John Kenneth Galbraith noted in 1958 in his book "The Affluent Society," "In the affluent society, no sharp distinction can be made between luxuries and necessaries." Galbraith was talking mainly about consumer psychology as used by advertisers to play on consumers' insecurities, envy, and self-esteem to make them want things they don't really need: or as imposed by consumers upon themselves. Consider, for example, how buying a luxurious new suit makes a consumer feel he must have an equally luxurious silk tie, a fine linen shirt, and pair of Italian leather shoes to match. And once he has added this to his wardrobe, his less expensive suits, shirts, ties, and shoes look dreary and he wants to replace them with the better quality as well. If she was driving a Toyota then she wants his and hers, then they want to trade up to a Lexus, then two, and so on.
Add to that what technology advancements do by providing an ever expanding array of astonishing new products, the use of which changes our behavior to an extent that before long what was once a great luxury is now an everyday necessity. So the very economic system that our Establishment politicians, our academics and our business media keep pushing, the one they were all raised to believe is built on a false premise that has never ever worked. What has worked is a more Alchemic approach to economics, where the money is left in private hands, both in business and consumer hands to spend and invest as they like. That is the power that fires the engines of the economy. As John F. Kennedy said, "A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced Federal budget...as the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenues. Prosperity is the real way to balance our budget. By lowering tax rates, by increasing jobs and income, we can expand tax revenues and finally bring our budget into balance."
Throughout history, every time we reduce tax rates significantly we increase the economy and that increased economy actually creates record revenue into the national government in taxes. The reverse is also true, whenever we raise tax rates the economy slows, business people and individuals start spending more time and resources to shelter their existing income rather than try to grow more and the tax revenues to the government actually shrinks.
Corporate Taxes Most Hurt Lower and Middle Earner Families.
We are bombarded by the arguments that those greedy corporations are not paying their fair share, that we must raise taxes on them. That this huge company paid no taxes and we need to do something about that. It is one of the most popular arguments by politicians playing their favorite card of class envy and jealousy of one group of people against another. They promise if you vote for them that they will stick it to these big rich companies who aren't paying their fair share. It plays to our most base and dark human emotions so it is very effective. Furthermore, very few people in this country have had more than a semester of economics or civics in their lives, if that much, so really have very little understanding of either. This makes it even easier for politicians and their friends in the media to play to our emotions not our minds.
What are the realities of Corporate Taxes? First of all, corporations don't actually pay taxes, small businesses do, but not the large corporations the politicians sell you they are going to get them to pay their fair share. Corporations only collect taxes for the government from their consumers through their price of the products and services. They must make a net profit to sustain their company, their stockholders, etc. They figure in the taxes they will pay into the pricing structure, so you actually pay it. This has a disparate impact on the lower and middle income earners in this country, because they spend a much higher percentage of their incomes on consumer goods and services than do the highest income or wealthy. Thus any Corporate tax has the biggest tax increase on the lower and middle income earners in America, conversely lowering it benefits them the most. Maybe not immediately, why would a company lower its pricing if people are willing to pay it, until forced to by their competition? However, that money becomes a larger profit for the company, is reinvested in future growth, lower pricing on products, and more labor. The more demand on labor the upward demand on wages. So the people who vote to tax companies are voting to tax themselves and to reduce their wages.
We are seeing those results right now, if we but look for them. Under President Trump, the reduction of corporate taxes from 35%, the highest in the developed world, to 21%, This has caused a tsunami of billions if not trillions that companies were storing off shore back to being repatriated into our economy at home. We are seeing companies moving manufacturing back like we haven't seen in any of our lifetimes. What we were told could never happen seems to be happening monthly as manufacturing is coming back, investment in America is coming back. We have the best economy for any and all demographic group in decades if not historically. And keep in mind it's VERY early in the process, it has only been in place not yet two years. Those factories, those expansions of existing facilities are yet under construction and haven't started hiring to fill them yet. This is the beginning of an economic juggernaut like we have never seen. However, we can look to the not too distant past to see the science behind such an expansion.
The Media, the political left, and frankly the Establishment Republicans all tout Keynesian economic models in their view of the world. Unfortunately, the Keynesian model has yet to actually work anywhere in the world. For centuries economists from Adam Smith, to Karl Marx to John Keynes, while their methodologies differed, shared some things in common. They all based their views on how society uses and distributes "scarce" resources. Ronald Reagan and his supply side economic model, showed us that those long standing theories were flawed by the long-term economic growth during the use of supply side until it was cast aside for the old models once again and the drying up of the economy. In 1981, pushed by newly elected President Reagan Congress passed ERTA, The Economic Recovery Tax Act, which dramatically lowered tax rates and provided incentives to businesses that purchased new equipment. The idea behind this was that the increased work incentive resulting from lower tax rates would lead to increased economic activity, which in turn would more than offset the reduction of federal revenue that tax cuts might normally be expected to produce. All the traditional economists predicted disaster and economic collapse. They were all wrong.
Late in 1982 the GNP began a meteoric rise that initially outstripped even the most optimistic projections by the supply-siders. Many began predicting that unless the spiraling budget deficit could somehow be checked, the nation would face severe inflation, escalating interest rates, and economic stagnation. The economy however, paid no attention to such warnings. From 1985 to 1988, the budget deficit continued to increase. Yet despite dire predictions to the contrary, GNP continued to grow unabated. By 1989 most economists, ignoring their earlier concerns, were expecting the economy to continue its climb well into the 1990's, although they were unable to support their projections with a specific explanation or theory. Clearly something was going on that no one was able to explain. It was, in fact Alchemy at work.
The expansion of the past decade had its genesis in 1946, when the first electronic computer, known as ENIAC, was developed at the University of Pennsylvania. Over the next thirty-five years, even though computers became smaller, faster, more powerful, and easier to use, their use remained generally restricted to the sterile carefully guarded data-processing centers of universities, government agencies and large corporations. By 1981, the computer had evolved to the point where it was ready to burst out into the wider world, onto the factory floor, inside the automobile, and onto the supermarket checkout counter. Serendipitously the Reagan Economic Recovery Tax Act came to be at that moment.
The tax incentives that ERTA gave businesses in 1981 - in effect, a government subsidy amounting to 58 percent of the cost of new equipment - virtually forced corporate America to retool. This greatly accelerated the integration of the computer throughout the economy, dramatically increasing productivity and growth in implemented technology, on a scale not seen since the dawn of the industrial revolution. The impact of these massive productivity increases were both immediate and profound. By significantly lowering the production cost of virtually all goods and services, they reduced inflation. In addition, by swelling corporate profits, they effectively expanded the supply of capital, which in turn kept interest rates down. As well as they gave the United States eight years of unprecedented economic growth. In fact, the effect of this technological change on inflation, interest rates, and GNP has been so significant that it has compensated for the continuing growth of the federal budget deficit.
The reason for this impressive growth had to do with the technology gap. When traditional economists talk about a technology gap, they are generally referring to the disparity of technological sophistication between one country and another, or the industrialized nations and the Third World. However an Alchemic view of the technology gap is not between countries, but between technology currently available and any less-advanced technology actually in use. The size of that technology gap, that amount between what is available and what is being used, is the greatest determinant of economic growth. Our current technology gap is as wide as ever in history, so the future is very bright the more we reduce that gap.
As we reduce the burden on American businesses, we increase their incentive to grow and increase their profits, not find ways to shelter those they already have. This causes them to reinvest in ways to continue to make them more and more competitive. So that money that would have been taken out of the private sector into the public where no growth of wealth every has or can happen, it lights a fire on the economy in the private sector. This is where capital comes from, where wealth is built, were jobs are created, where wages grow as companies trying to grow must compete for the labor force. This is how the wealth of a nation and all of its people come from.
What are the realities of Corporate Taxes? First of all, corporations don't actually pay taxes, small businesses do, but not the large corporations the politicians sell you they are going to get them to pay their fair share. Corporations only collect taxes for the government from their consumers through their price of the products and services. They must make a net profit to sustain their company, their stockholders, etc. They figure in the taxes they will pay into the pricing structure, so you actually pay it. This has a disparate impact on the lower and middle income earners in this country, because they spend a much higher percentage of their incomes on consumer goods and services than do the highest income or wealthy. Thus any Corporate tax has the biggest tax increase on the lower and middle income earners in America, conversely lowering it benefits them the most. Maybe not immediately, why would a company lower its pricing if people are willing to pay it, until forced to by their competition? However, that money becomes a larger profit for the company, is reinvested in future growth, lower pricing on products, and more labor. The more demand on labor the upward demand on wages. So the people who vote to tax companies are voting to tax themselves and to reduce their wages.
We are seeing those results right now, if we but look for them. Under President Trump, the reduction of corporate taxes from 35%, the highest in the developed world, to 21%, This has caused a tsunami of billions if not trillions that companies were storing off shore back to being repatriated into our economy at home. We are seeing companies moving manufacturing back like we haven't seen in any of our lifetimes. What we were told could never happen seems to be happening monthly as manufacturing is coming back, investment in America is coming back. We have the best economy for any and all demographic group in decades if not historically. And keep in mind it's VERY early in the process, it has only been in place not yet two years. Those factories, those expansions of existing facilities are yet under construction and haven't started hiring to fill them yet. This is the beginning of an economic juggernaut like we have never seen. However, we can look to the not too distant past to see the science behind such an expansion.
The Media, the political left, and frankly the Establishment Republicans all tout Keynesian economic models in their view of the world. Unfortunately, the Keynesian model has yet to actually work anywhere in the world. For centuries economists from Adam Smith, to Karl Marx to John Keynes, while their methodologies differed, shared some things in common. They all based their views on how society uses and distributes "scarce" resources. Ronald Reagan and his supply side economic model, showed us that those long standing theories were flawed by the long-term economic growth during the use of supply side until it was cast aside for the old models once again and the drying up of the economy. In 1981, pushed by newly elected President Reagan Congress passed ERTA, The Economic Recovery Tax Act, which dramatically lowered tax rates and provided incentives to businesses that purchased new equipment. The idea behind this was that the increased work incentive resulting from lower tax rates would lead to increased economic activity, which in turn would more than offset the reduction of federal revenue that tax cuts might normally be expected to produce. All the traditional economists predicted disaster and economic collapse. They were all wrong.
Late in 1982 the GNP began a meteoric rise that initially outstripped even the most optimistic projections by the supply-siders. Many began predicting that unless the spiraling budget deficit could somehow be checked, the nation would face severe inflation, escalating interest rates, and economic stagnation. The economy however, paid no attention to such warnings. From 1985 to 1988, the budget deficit continued to increase. Yet despite dire predictions to the contrary, GNP continued to grow unabated. By 1989 most economists, ignoring their earlier concerns, were expecting the economy to continue its climb well into the 1990's, although they were unable to support their projections with a specific explanation or theory. Clearly something was going on that no one was able to explain. It was, in fact Alchemy at work.
The expansion of the past decade had its genesis in 1946, when the first electronic computer, known as ENIAC, was developed at the University of Pennsylvania. Over the next thirty-five years, even though computers became smaller, faster, more powerful, and easier to use, their use remained generally restricted to the sterile carefully guarded data-processing centers of universities, government agencies and large corporations. By 1981, the computer had evolved to the point where it was ready to burst out into the wider world, onto the factory floor, inside the automobile, and onto the supermarket checkout counter. Serendipitously the Reagan Economic Recovery Tax Act came to be at that moment.
The tax incentives that ERTA gave businesses in 1981 - in effect, a government subsidy amounting to 58 percent of the cost of new equipment - virtually forced corporate America to retool. This greatly accelerated the integration of the computer throughout the economy, dramatically increasing productivity and growth in implemented technology, on a scale not seen since the dawn of the industrial revolution. The impact of these massive productivity increases were both immediate and profound. By significantly lowering the production cost of virtually all goods and services, they reduced inflation. In addition, by swelling corporate profits, they effectively expanded the supply of capital, which in turn kept interest rates down. As well as they gave the United States eight years of unprecedented economic growth. In fact, the effect of this technological change on inflation, interest rates, and GNP has been so significant that it has compensated for the continuing growth of the federal budget deficit.
The reason for this impressive growth had to do with the technology gap. When traditional economists talk about a technology gap, they are generally referring to the disparity of technological sophistication between one country and another, or the industrialized nations and the Third World. However an Alchemic view of the technology gap is not between countries, but between technology currently available and any less-advanced technology actually in use. The size of that technology gap, that amount between what is available and what is being used, is the greatest determinant of economic growth. Our current technology gap is as wide as ever in history, so the future is very bright the more we reduce that gap.
As we reduce the burden on American businesses, we increase their incentive to grow and increase their profits, not find ways to shelter those they already have. This causes them to reinvest in ways to continue to make them more and more competitive. So that money that would have been taken out of the private sector into the public where no growth of wealth every has or can happen, it lights a fire on the economy in the private sector. This is where capital comes from, where wealth is built, were jobs are created, where wages grow as companies trying to grow must compete for the labor force. This is how the wealth of a nation and all of its people come from.
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