Charlie Rose

vongleichent  04/06/2013 06:29 AM Report

I love the Economist.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  03/22/2013 03:03 AM Report

We are told, healthcare is not the 900 pound gorilla, it is the 9 million pound gorilla and it will truly dominate our budget problems and must be recognized.

Too bad the Republicans are still trying to repeal Obamacare instead of moving the healthcare ball down the field.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  03/22/2013 02:59 AM Report

We are told that healthcare is NOT organized around the needs of the patient but the supply of the services.

YES!!!

ZAKARIA: Dr. Atul Gawande is a surgeon, a staff writer for the "New Yorker," and the author of several best-selling books on medicine. He agrees with Goldhill that the market in health care isn't working, but he says there's an important fact to consider.

GAWANDE: The sick account for most of the costs, 5 percent of patients are 50 percent of the costs. And these are folks for whom the bills are $40,000 and $50,000. (FIVE EQUALS FIFTY? HELLO? HELLO? HELLO?)

ZAKARIA: Under Goldhill's solution, limiting insurance to catastrophic events and serious illnesses, insurance companies would still be paying for a lot of our health care costs. Figuring out how to treat the sickest of the sick, Gawande says, is the trillion-dollar question.

GAWANDE: The average patient who is elderly on Medicare has more than 10 specialists, physicians by their last year of their life. And if you've ever taken care of an elderly parent, you know how much you want to tear your hair out that they just won't talk to each other.

ZAKARIA: What the country needs, say Gawande, is a more coordinated approach to care. Some doctors tend to prescribe too much medicine, he says. That's less efficient, but it is more profitable.

(Yes, very supply side economics.)

NeilMacCallister  03/13/2013 04:32 AM Report

tabs? ..try to buck-up a little? ..okay???

The world of civilization is not yet over!!

Socialism ALWAYS fails, ..this won't last long.

Plant some carrots, ..lock your windows, ..pet your cat,..

Obama will be GONE in only 3 1/2 more years!!!!!! .. :)

tabs  03/12/2013 11:00 AM Report

The following was sent as an e-mail to Mr Rose on or about the date indicated and has been posted to this Board as well. One simply can not believe that Mr Rose has that short of a memory, and if he does he should retire. As far as listening to this interview, it certainly isn't something that one hasn't thought about before.

YA Can't Put Humpty Dumpty Back Together Again

Thu, 08/05/2010 - 11:14 — tabs

You don't have to tell me things are bad, worse than bad. But the sky isn't going to fall, the end isn't nye and we are not doomed. What is going to happen and we are well on the road to this end is that the USA is just not going to be as prosperous nor as powerful as it once was.

The Middle Class is going to shrink, there is going to be a relatively large underclass of working people and unemployed. Wages for the American worker are going to more closely parallel that of the worlds wage structure and the living standard is going to decline. The economy of the USA is going to more closely resemble 1910 than its post war heyday of 1960.

What truly amazes is the lack of vision on the part of ALL the economists, politicos and media. These people don't seem to understand the historic inevitability of this end. It does seem that they are stuck in the present and when trying to remedy problems are trying to formulate some grand plan that will "fix" America so that it can retain its supremacy in the world. What these people fail to realize is the fact that it took one step, one decision at a time over a number of decades to reach the situation America now faces. To "fix" the problem a grand plan of action or legislation is not going to work for any plan is based on present knowledge and conditions and can not foresee future conditions or problems. One gets themselves into trouble one step at a time and one gets one self out of trouble the same way. Anything else is simply not going to work. That is not to say that one can not have a direction or policy to move towards.

Further all the efforts to rectify America's problems is like the kings men trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again for these same economists etal also fall to understand the arc of history. Again they seem rooted in the moment or at best looking back a mere decade. To get a truly accurate assessment of Americas current status one has to look at its economic and political history going back 65 years.

After WW2 America entered into an unprecedented wealth building Post War Prosperity Boom that lasted roughly 20 years. This prosperity boom was fueled by 5 main ingredients

1. America was the only unscathed industrial power in the world and the world needed rebuilding.

2. The GI's returning from WW2 started families and needed everything refrigerators, washing machines, televisions, cars and houses.

3. After WW2 there was a dearth of consumer goods as very few were produced from 1930 to 1945 due to the Great Depression and the World War. Thus there was 15 years worth of pent up demand.

4. The rise of the large middle class, where a man without an education could attain middle class status was due to corporations thinking that they were making so much money that they could meet Union demands for higher wages. These corporations felt they would lose more money by going on strike than paying its workers higher wages and benefits.

5. The Cold War demanded that higher military budgets be kept in place. This one might say was a continual government stimulus program.

By 1965 this unprecedented status began to change first with competition from Europe and Japan and later Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, China, India and Brazil. If one remembers the first of the American industries to fall to foreign competition was the American ship building industry, followed by autos, steel and electronics..remember those American icons of American electronics Zenith,, RCA, and Westinghouse? This trend has continued on to this very day.

Also one has to mention the inflection point where the US government and society in general began to feel that as a "Rich" nation we could afford it all without consequence and that was the day LBJ put the SS Trust into the General Account in 1968. This act merely disguised the true national debt by using an accounting gimmick of placing that debt into accounts payable.

By examining the causative factors that led to the Great American Prosperity Boom of the post war period one has to realize those conditions that created it no longer exist, there is a new paradigm at work. America is saturated with consumer goods, debt and is faced with continually steeper competition in the world. The mere fact that American politicians are trying to resurrect the past is in of itself a causative agent for failure. America has to face this new reality and not try and delude itself into thinking Humpty Dumpty can be put back together again.

NeilMacCallister  03/12/2013 10:56 AM Report

There already is a system where "the price is low and quality gets better year after year", ..it is called "free market capitalism".

Free market capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other socio-economic design in the history of the world.

"If Obama had the wit to match his luck" he would have supported free-market capitalism's proven ability to lift people from poverty.

But he chose socialism, and the quality of life has declined in America for four years straight.

Gelles  03/12/2013 07:22 AM Report

Jeremy Grantham and Michael Porter discuss the big picture that shows all the people on the planet doing what comes naturally to earn a living where monetary systems of production struggle to make sense in nature's cruel jungle that never heard of money and loves a good fight.

Charlie Rose has done a good job trying to present answers to the questions of the day.

It is not as though there are no answers. The planned economy provided answers. It came to naught because people at the top were enraged by ideas contrary to their own. Secret police, mafia socialism and capitalism, fought it out. Planning ended with the Gulag.

The "consumer will decide" free market did not have to pick winners: instead, with advertising to make the whole thing a lie, and corruption to make it a criminal enterprise, looking for all out war to settle matters with high explosives first and snipers too (for the personal touch,) was its result.

That is where we find ourselves. Planning, alone, is not the answer; freedom to fail, alone, is no better. Galbraith wanted a happy medium, where tall men with a broader field of vision, might champion pluralism and open minds. He created the thoughts we needed, but they never jelled as doctrine. They were meant to shine a light but not to force compliance. And so we have Grantham and Porter and all the questions but none of the answers.

Grantham wants no more than 4 billion of us to share the space and resources at hand. He wants solar power and science but sees fossil fuel and force of habit holding solar and science back to protect the status quo. Bet on that, at least for now. In due course it's bound to fail. That will be our signal to put our brains in gear.

Porter prizes competition. It comes naturally to all living things and species. You can't go wrong and may go right -- if only it is competition with observable rules and lots of umpires on the field with police you can trust at their beck and call.

Let me just agree with Grantham: there is the real thing and there is the paper made for finance. Use the paper but make sure the real thing is what you eat and what governs how you use the paper.

If Obama had the wit to match his luck he would concentrate on energy from the sun and hydrogen from the sea. The two together will create jobs for everyone and end products like food, water, homes, sanitation, education, health, safety, recreation and retirement, in quantities so large the price is low and quality gets better year after year.

Too Utopian, U Think. Think again. The alternative dead ends not far from where we are.

NeilMacCallister  03/11/2013 07:43 PM Report

I like how Mr. Porter starts off his dialogue with "Many of us are doing quite well, ..and by the way, our committees all agreed on the several things that could be done to provide an improved national and world economy, ..but you know, nobody has actually decided to DO anything!"

And why should these too-big-to-fail "successfuls" actually DO anything?? ..When all of their paychecks are assured by Democrat money-printing? ..Who needs to actually PRODUCE a dollar anymore??? ..Like Leona Helmsly said, "That's for the little people!"

***

I've just come back from my county's "Employment Development" buildings -- Three 3-story buildings, ..hundreds of offices! -- But there was not even one job board there with a job-posting!

But outside one of their bullet-proof glass, electronic key doors, ..there was a memo posted which announced that the salary of the "County Administrator" was going to be raised to $300,000 dollars a year, and his paid vacation increased from 6 to 7 weeks per year.

This administrator happens to lead something called a 'Commission on Workforce Development'.

But like I said, ..among all those hundreds of offices, ..there was not even one single office where someone sat to answer the question "Excuse me, do you know of any jobs?"

***

What is it exactly that all these 'too-big-to-fail' public employees actually do???

Max83  03/10/2013 01:23 AM Report

A Must Watch!

A fantastic analysis of the current state of affairs, both foreign and domestic. Lecture was held at Cornell University.

''Political economist Lord Robert Skidelsky warns about free markets''

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sle53C96ZU

'' Published on Apr 27, 2012

Lord Robert Skidelsky of the University of Warwick delivered his first lecture as an A.D. White Professor-at-Large on April 18, 2012. The talk, 'The Impact of the Global Economic Crisis on the Future of International Relations,' was given as part of the Einaudi Center's Foreign Policy Distinguished Speaker Series.''

Gelles  03/09/2013 03:55 AM Report

Alanc writes below AmyinNH and Gelles, below, as follows:

..... "Soon, no amount of happy talk, or fear mongering, or other manipulations from business tycoons, government leaders, or celebrity personalities, will succeed in keeping the people complacent in the face of what has happened, and what is likely to happen to them at the hands of the arrogant, self-consumed, bad-faithed elite.

..... "Soon, in fact, this demagoguery will incite exactly the opposite of the desired response.

..... "Porter, Rose, and about 85% of the guests on this show need to start hanging out with poor, smart, honest people, keep their mouths shut, and listen hard. ..."

===============

Is Alanc right? Is the goal and strategy of Michael Porter at odds with the virtue, contentment and legitimate interests of the American people? Does Porter speak for a bad-faithed elite? Or does he speak for the best and brightest in academia, government and business who want to lead the human race toward the end of scarcity, ignorance, poverty, pollution, war and earlier extinction than nature would allow if our species had never evolved?

Porter's bottom line is that competition to produce is good. Alanc's bottom line is that avoidable human suffering is bad.

My bottom line is the same as Alanc's.

So, what does Porter want that we, A. and G., do not?

He wants leadership that is silent on the fate of the poor and the victims of nature's fury? We want leadership determined to correct nature's neutrality in the struggle between predator and prey. Or, at least, I want that and Alanc may, as well.

Because Charlie Rose's people no longer give us transcripts and never gave us a post-send editor, and I am too lazy to overcome their stinginess, I'm having trouble fully appreciating Porter's total strategy. Has he come to grips with the uncooperative nature and results of competition without mercy and without an enforcer of the Golden Rule?

I think not. I think cut-throat competition is what we get when the elites meet and greet each other, and the victims have no voice and strategy of their own.

I say their strategy ought to be to tenure the rich and enrich the poor.

For as long as there is no certainty or security for any sentient unit, like you and me and lower forms of animal, there will be no improvement over nature that goes by the name of Good, God, Virtue or Perfection.

We will all be rats on a sinking ship--but the sinking may take ages. And all the while losers will be losers, winners will be losers, but among us all and from time to time there will be sublime achievements by some among us. Taken all together, these are the reason for our pursuit of happiness. For many it is not a pursuit in vain or solely for vanity. It is It is the true God. And he has a partner, the Devil in hell, who is at least his equal in bending nature to his will.

AmyInNH  03/08/2013 02:29 PM Report

Excusably incorrect information from academia - there is a shortage of qualified skilled labor in the US. Academia opinion is tainted by their own high profit benefit from it, the propensity of foreign students hoping to get a free green card via their US university degree.

As any techie can tell you, the MBA in job ad requirements now stands for Must Be Asian, preferable H1-B, rampant race discrimination against citizens.

Gelles  03/08/2013 05:39 AM Report

What is Michael Porter about? Is he cheer-leader in chief to arouse the American body politic to COMPETE harder for prizes that would be awarded by expert juries if they (and not shoppers) controlled market outcomes?

Or he is he the opposite: the guru who wants shoppers to be KING and experts to be first ignored and then damned, in the greatest minds we find in print?

I believe Porter does not solve the issues dividing Friedman and Galbraith. Nor does he solve the issues dividing Keynes and Hayek. He approaches the issues dividing free-traders from planners; but Porter does not solve these issues--Gelles does--and does it here and now.

To be concrete, as was the CR Show under discussion, let us start with health care as the issue: how to maximize the good health for all the people presently alive?

The nine-hundred million dollar gorilla in the room on the issue of delivering health care to cure the patient first (and incentivise the teams that do it also), was described by Michael Porter. The gorilla was finding how to pay for all the science behind the therapy, pay for all the care demanded by the therapy, and pay to know the answers to these questions by installing effective feedback reporting of inputs to the total set of systems and results achieved along the way in sufficient detail to maximize progress and minimize the mysteries that remain our opposition.

Well, according to Gelles, "how to pay" is not the issue. "How to cure" and "how to prevent" are the issues.

Payments are first made in the logistical sense by physical labor and intellectual labor. Financial reward is and can be very arbitrary. Curiosity drives the mind.

Money and what it buys must be sufficient to support the physical and intellectual workers who team up to deliver whatever good results are achievable over time.

The time requirements are getting shorter as knowledge data bases grow larger and means to mine these bases grow more effective every hour-- in the middle of the information revolution currently running at fever pitch in may places on planet earth.

The real gorilla, according to Gelles, is not any specific need and its supply, like for health, water, food, energy, housing, education or infrastructure, etc., the real gorilla is the approach: must it be COMPETITIVE or COOPERATIVE, in essence?

Here, we know that order must be maintained, or anarchy and confusion will destroy the possibility of purpose behind all effort.

Order is fundamentally the result of cooperation not an unbridled will to win by means fair or foul.

In these archives we compete for attention and for progress. These two goals are not the same. The noise of attention is easy to measure. The nature of progress remains subjective and hardest of all to measure. So I may not have escaped the traps I may have spotted. I better wait to see if cooperating with you will do any good.

[Perhaps to e continued. Perhaps one more dead end?]

alanc  03/08/2013 04:05 AM Report

While Mr. Porter is keen to point to macro-economic systems as the be all, end all to this country's future prospects, he completely and utterly fails to acknowledge that it was the unchecked, low-taxed, under-regulated free markets that has used technology, and a lack of concern for the welfare of the citizens that has effectively rendered a huge number of people valueless or of greatly diminished value under these macro-economic systems, which have monetized nearly everything at this point, while adding costs (both monetary and non) that did not exist decades ago.

That Porter makes absolutely no mention of the fiscal and social responsibility that the few who wound up with the middle classes wealth (and future wealth), and simultaenously calls for lower taxes is beyond appaling.

I would caution everyone here that technology has, for all intents, jumped the shark with the vast majority of humans, and this will manifest itself very soon as long as the wealthy remain sociopathically convinced that the wealth they have manipulated into their hold is actually theirs, that they can continue to extract wealth, and that they have need to guard this ill-gotten, suspiciously created wealth jealously.

There are a small number of absolutely no-brainer pieces of legislative action that every honest citizen agree should be done (ie Glass Steagall, transactional tax on stock trades, returning standard bankruptcy protections to student loans, corporate personhood, and perhaps a couple others) AND DONE NOW. Charlie was touching around the edges of this the other day, but missed it.

Soon, no amount of happy talk, or fear mongering, or other manipulations from business tycoons, government leaders, or celebrity personalities will succeed in keeping the people complacent in the face of what has happened, and what is likely to happen to them at the hands of the arrogant, self-consumed, bad-faithed elite. Soon, in fact, this demagoguery will incite exactly the opposite of the desired response.

Porter, Rose, and about 85% of the guests on this show need to start hanging out with poor, smart, honest people, keep their mouths shut, and listen hard. That's the best advice I can think of at this point.

sengssk  03/07/2013 08:28 PM Report

Prof. Porter should also ask his colleagues at Harvard's Medical school why a medical student needs a six-figure loan to pay for tuition. Maybe we should outsource the job to Singapore, Thailand and India, as Harvard Business school seems to be so good at.

sengssk  03/07/2013 08:25 PM Report

Here's another reason why healthcare costs are out of control and only "shock doctrine" de-licensing will open the market to competition and bring prices down:

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=2012&cid=N00000781&type=I

sengssk  03/07/2013 08:24 PM Report

Here's one solution to healthcare costs. I hope to break the the American Medical Association and the Association of American Medical Colleges. They have brought this on themselves:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSNsnKLUCdg

charliesheep  03/07/2013 07:47 PM Report

THE COSTA CONCORDIA ; HAD LOTSA MONEY INVESTED IN A BIG SHIP-SANS A REAL CAPTAIN; ONE WITH ZERO BRAINS-VIOLA! -SEE JACK, SEE JACK FALL, SEE JACK FALL ON HIS A ! THE WORLD EXHALES A FOOLS DREAM THAT; IF ONLY SOMEONE [WHO HAD A BRAIN] WOULD SPEND TIME ON A LOSING DEAL THE WORLD'S BENEFITS WOULD FALL LIKE MANA! REALLY? AND NEXT UP; THE BUS TO FUNNY FARM! CORPORATE BUS GOES OVER THE CLIFF EVERY HOUR ON THE HOUR; ALL ABOARD!

Max83  03/07/2013 04:11 PM Report

REMant, the ''Keynesians'' you are describing in your comment below do not sound like or look like what I personally consider authentic Keynesians.

I do not consider Michael Porter a Keynesian. Actually far from it. Actually he is the bi-polar opposite to an authentic Keynesian in my opinion. In my personal definition he is a ''Corporate Internationalist'' who is in favor of economic and financial globalization based on laissez-faire capitalism and therefore Michael Porter is a disciple of Milton Friedman in my opinion and not of John Maynard Keynes.

Mr. Porter promotes Corporate Social Responsibility but all under the motivation of how it can be a source of opportunity, innovation, and competitive advantage for corporations. In a way Mr. Porter's vision of a benevolent and feel good corporatism is misleading and problematic because it is highly likely to be abused for marketing and public relations purposes only to achieve more corporate profit and not more public profit. In a way I feel that the economic model that Michael Porter suggests is actually a Trojan Horse for a global corporate take over which would be global fascism, a wolf in sheep's clothing. Author Chris Hedges refers to this development as ''Inverted Totalitarianism'' more info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism

I am not sure Michael Porter is realizing this himself. I think he is a very nice person. I just think his ideas are not thought through to the end and the eventual very likely negative consequences they will have for humanity and planet Earth.

What is Laissez-faire capitalism:

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laissez-faire :

''Laissez-faire is an economic environment in which transactions between private parties are free from tariffs, government subsidies, and enforced monopolies, with only enough government regulations sufficient to protect property rights against theft and aggression.

In Britain, in 1843, the newspaper The Economist was founded and became an influential voice for laissez-faire capitalism.[17] Laissez-faire advocates opposed food aid for famines occurring within the British empire; in 1847, referring to the famine then underway in Ireland, The Economist's founder James Wilson wrote that "It is no man's business to provide for another".''

John Maynard Keynes was actually a protectionist, so you claiming REMant that ''Keynesians'' are ''imperialists and social darwinists'' is misrepresenting the authentic teachings and writings of John Maynard Keynes.

Here are two of the many quotes Keynes wrote on his opposition to economic globalization:

''Ideas, knowledge, art, hospitality, travel - these are things which should in their nature be international. But let goods be homespun whenever it is reasonably and conveniently possible and above all let finance be primarily national''

and

''We each have our own fancy. Not believing we are saved already, we each would like to have a try at working out our own salvation. We do not wish, therefore, to be at the mercy of world forces working out...some uniform equilibrium according to the ideal principles of laissez-faire.''

Both quotes can be found in the the book ''Keynes: Return of the Master'' by Robert Skidelsky.

I highly recommend REMant that you get a hold of this book and read it and reconsider your definition of Keynesism and hopefully change your description of Keynesians because currently it does not do justice to what true and authentic Keynesians are about.

I can also recommend the following video on the dynamics discussed in this conversation and what John Maynard Keynes' philosophy and thinking was/is really about. The aim of Keynes in my opinion is to achieve global Abundance, but not through economic, financial and military globalization as I think you falsely stated in your comment below REMant. I actually think that the authentic philosophy of John Maynard Keynes, if properly implemented, will stop and prevent Imperialism and Social Darwinism:

''Prof Lord Robert Skidelsky - How Much is Enough? The Economics of the Good Life''

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeWz5Cg_BD4

'' Uploaded on Nov 23, 2011

Prof Lord Robert Skidelsky's lecture, entitled 'How Much is Enough? The Economics of the Good Life', contributed to the growing debate on the value of wealth prompted by the economic downturn. Lord Skidelsky argued that wealth is not an end in itself but a means to the achievement and maintenance of a 'good life' and that our economy should be organised to reflect this fact.''

REMant  03/07/2013 01:04 PM Report

I'm not sure being a Harvard University Professor is much of a distinction or not, a large number of them being notorious dingbats, but the man's a DOLT if he thinks the world should depend on American preeminence in a financial equivalent to sharks as top predators.

Adam Smith put paid to this idea more than two centuries ago. And this is the reason why Keynesians are wrong, we have one depression after another, and most of the world gets poorer and poorer while a few get richer and richer (at least on paper - their ability to realize that wealth diminishes as well).

And, of course, the assertion that healthcare is our biggest problem, similarly neglects that it is unaffordable simply because more ppl are increasingly unable to pay for it due to this exploitation.

The major problem with B-school teaching is that they still believe money is stable, even assume Say's law obtains, the banking professors, too, because Keynesians encourage the idea, but nothing could, unfortunately, be further from the truth.

And when Keynesians talk about competitiveness, they are not really talking about free trade, but imperialism, conducted through monetary manipulation, (ie, currency wars). There is no way ultimately to improve productivity in this manner. Keynesians are Social Darwinists, or, more accurately, Antisocial Darwinists.

Ordinary folk, perceiving the result, but not understanding the cause, blame free trade and markets and enjoin the govt to give them more of a break, or even welfare, which it can only do by soaking the wealthier, or printing even more money, which soaks everyone with any money at all, widens the wealth gap further, and is a prescription for ending up like the Soviet bloc.

The problem is that, having embarked on this course in earnest a century ago, the world has accumulated so much debt, public and private, that it may never be able to pay it all back, and no one even dares risk trying or the entire pyramid scheme might unravel, and whenever there are signs of it, the central banks rush in to create more, but it can only be a temporary, and ever less efficacious fix.

The tax reforms mentioned are clearly motivated by this vicious cycle. But if business wants to put a stop to it, and labor get a bigger share of the pie, they are both going to have to give up this game of beggar thy neighbor. (I mentioned this in a labor relations class years ago and ended up being forced to drop the course. There isn't much else to labor relations anyway.)

Foreigners want to come here only because world productivity is declining, and its wealth shifted here because of this cupidity. The whole idea is mercantilist "market-making" writ large, and it's the reason for urban migration, and the growth of slums, as well, as Charles I and Louis XVI found. But it's not like anyone in power wants to fix the problem, even if they dared, and I don't expect his current Highness to either, but I wouldn't reduce the size of his motorcade.

The United States is expected to unseat Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer by 2017, but only become a net oil exporter in 2030 according to the IEA, so we have a ways to go with respect to energy independence.

Business tho does need to become involved in education more than it has, and by that I don't meafunding the sorting machine.