The Conservation of Grief or Cost- or Both

A friend of mine once said grief is conserved. If someone has a good day, then someone else has a bad day. It’s also been described as a balloon- a fixed amount of volume can be squeezed into various shapes and directions depending on where and how much pressure is applied.

Wealth is much the same. We have a fixed amount of wealth and it moves around like a balloon as well. If we squeeze the available wealth in one direction or another we get different outcomes. The net result is somebody gets less when somebody less gets more.

Debt introduces artificial wealth. If we introduce more money than actually exists, then people have the appearance of a bigger balloon, and the people (or countries) that go into debt, spend the money loaned to them as if it were new wealth. The recipients of this money can’t tell the difference, so they take on the appearance of increased wealth, but the balloon doesn’t really get any larger. When the debtors were unable to repay their loans, the lenders lose the money they expected to get back with profit, and they go under. Bailing them out with more debt just perpetuates the illusion of more wealth.

With health care, both grief and cost are conserved. The health industry claims better health leads to lower cost, but lower for whom? Not us- them. If healthier people cost less, and we’re increasingly a healthier nation as evidenced by higher mortality rates, then why does the cost continue to skyrocket? We don’t seem to be getting any return for our investment in a healthier lifestyle. Private health insurance companies make their money on healthy people- more money comes in and less goes out. So naturally they want us to live a healthy lifestyle, and they want us to pre-pay for our sick care we don’t use, so they can reap obscene profits. The balloon thing here is the health cartel gets richer and we get poorer. They’re healthy and we’re sick. Someday we may get real health reform and the health cartel will get sick and poor, and people will be healthy and financially secure. Someday...