The Money Is Not The Problem Economic Theory.

I'd apologize for going off topic, but people never seem to mind--in fact, seems like I get more "ugh, sex again?" mail then I get "hey, stick to the sex!" So if you want your underinformed economic opinions from your kinky sex blogs, read on. (I did take a semester of Econ, but only because I was already buddies with the professor and babysat her kids so I figured easy A... but in the end the "oh god, I can't embarrass myself by turning in junk to my friend!" shame made me work harder. I did get an A though.)

My personal macroeconomic theory is that Money Is Not The Problem. Money is a symbol. A symbol that can mean a lot microeconomically--how much of it you have, or how much your business has, sure feels like it matters--but on the scope of a nation or the world, money isn't the cause of most problems. Goods and services are.

For example, healthcare. The reason healthcare sucks in America is because we don't have enough doctors, nurses, hospital beds, or medications. In the hospital where I work, we often have people stay overnight in extra beds at the back of the ER when they should be admitted, because there isn't a single empty bed upstairs. We also suffer from frequent shortages of medications as basic as morphine. These aren't money problems, these are stuff problems. Declaring morphine free wouldn't make poppies grow any faster.

And I think this is the problem with attempting to address income inequality by redistributing money. If the things to be bought with that money don't change, then socioeconomic classes don't change. If everyone can afford a mansion, but your city has one neighborhood of mansions and ten of run-down high-density apartment blocks... run-down apartments get a whole lot more expensive. (In theory, who lives in the few available mansions could change, but history says good luck with that.)

The problem a society has to solve if it wants everyone to be wealthy, or at least everyone to be doing okay, is how to get everyone good stuff. Money is a small piece of that puzzle. Technology is a much bigger one, as are education and entrepreneurship.

There aren't any doctors sitting around idly in empty offices wishing someone could afford them. You want better healthcare in America? Train more doctors and nurses. Open more hospitals. Make more drugs. What they cost will be a whole lot easier to sort out--in fact, may work itself out--once there's actually enough of them. When you're trying to feed fifty people with one pie, don't waste your time thinking up wacky schemes to cut it just so; go bake a bigger pie.

And this is why I don't buy organic.