Perry;

The attitude of “I’ve got mine” is important to the person who has it made. Who cares about the future? Well, there is no way we can predict the future. Having a protectionist society has its down side. In time you will fail.

Capitalism and free enterprise are a dynamic system of economics. With technology Silicon Valley went from being a valley of orchids to an electronics manufacturer, chip manufacturer and then software whorehouse. (Mustang ranch of IT)

It seems people like Greenspan and others like to think that since something happened before something will replace it in the future. Will that something bring the kind of jobs and salaries that we have seen in Los Angeles during the early to late 1960’s in electronic manufacturing? In 1967 85% of all electronics manufacturing in California was done in Los Angeles. By 1970 Silicon Valley was creating 85% of the electronics manufacturing in California. So we saw a flip flop during those years. Today there is little left of the electronics manufacturing world left within California. Labor, business taxes, power, wages and so many other factors contribute to this fact.

The big word in the San Francisco Bay Area is “Deflation”. Remember that $750,000 (asking price) 1200 foot, 50 year old fixer upper house in Silicon Valley that people were standing in line and out bidding each other (paying $1.2 million very often) just three years ago? Well they are going down in price in some neighborhoods. Amazing! About time?

I see nothing on the horizon that will provide the wealth through technology that the last 30 or so years have provided. I think it is time to sharpen your skills as a fruit picker as that should be the next wave of employment that we will enjoy in California.

As for the medical drugs business – there are so many elements to this. It is said that the biggest cost of the medical industry is drugs. Twenty years ago it was the greed of the doctors that caused our medical costs to skyrocket. Then the insurance companies took over and took the profits that the doctors were enjoying. The drug industry steps in and can do as it pleases. The stories are shocking and the laws that control it are unbelievable! We have our government, greed and a general lack of morality to blame for this.

We need to understand what laws control our medical care in this nation and do something positive about it! By positive I mean in favor of the patients and not the medical industry.

We have the finest medical care that money can buy – add to that we have the finest government (local, state and federal) that money can buy. Seattle, Washington according to a television report, has more MRI’s than the entire country of Canada, as just one small example.

The MRI's in Seattle do not get much usage. As is typical of every hospital and medical facility in the United States they have to have the most and latest whatever. The equipment is under utilized and causes the cost of procedures to be inflated. However, something like 40% of United States residents cannot afford insurance or medical care.

I really enjoyed the television program of a major San Diego hospital cutting costs. They had house keeping giving the patients medication as just one example.

Another source of problems with the medical industry is nurses. I will not go into that. By the way my wife worked for years in the medical industry as a patient advocate.


Tom