Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Mainstream Politics and Economics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KyrosL who wrote (650)	9/3/2011 9:06:31 AM
From: longnshort	8 Recommendations Respond to of 85487

She must have been really good at her job! At the top right hand corner of page 17 of the New York Post, January 24, 2009, was a column entitled, "Replacing Michelle" in the National Review The Week. Here it is as it appeared:"Some employees are simply irreplaceable. Take Michelle Obama: The University of Chicago Medi-cal center hired her in 2002 to run programs for community relations, neighborhood outreach, volunteer recruitment, staff diversity and minority contracting. In 2005 the hospital raised her salary from $120,000 to $317,000 - nearly twice what her husband made as a Senator. Her husband, Barak Obama, had just become a U.S. Senator. He requested a $1 million "Earmark" for the UC Medical Center. Way to network, Michelle! Now that Mrs. Obama has resigned, the hospital says her position will remain unfilled. How can that be,if the work she did was vital enough to be worth $317,000? Let me add that Michelle's position was a part-time, 20-hours-a-week job. How did this bit of "quid pro quo" (scratch my back - I'll scratch yours) corruption escape the sharp reporters that dug through Sarah Palin's garbage and kindergarten files?

To: KyrosL who wrote (650)	9/3/2011 9:58:09 AM
From: Brumar89	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 85487

Let's take a look at life expectancies: MJ Perry shows adjusting OECD numbers for non-health-related fatal injuries turns the US into #1, even using life expectancy at birth (which understates US life expectancy): Is the U.S. system inferior to those in other developed countries based on life expectancy and cancer survival rates? Not according to economists Robert L. Ohsfeldt (Texas A&M) and John E. Schneider (University of Iowa), who argued in their 2006 book, The Business of Health: The Role of Competition, Markets and Regulation (AEI Press), that the U.S. system actually compares very favorably to the health-care systems of other nations. 1. The top chart above (data here) shows both: a) unadjusted life expectancies for the U.S. and other OECD countries, and b) standardized life expectancies which are adjusted for the effects of premature death resulting from non-health-related fatal injuries. For unadjusted life expectancy, the U.S. ranks #14 out of 16 countries, but for the adjusted standardized life expectancy the U.S. ranks #1. http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/08/us-vs-europe-life-expectancy-and-cancer.html Basically, the US is big country with a population spread out ... thus we'll have more traffic injuries than smaller countries we are often compared to. We also have more violence in our society and much more ethnic and racial diversity than most countries in the world. These things mean we have more accident and crime fatalities. In addition, to this, go back and consider the unadjusted numbers for Norway and SWEDEN and Iceland from MJ Perry's OECD table - 77.0, 77.7, and 78.0. Now compare those numbers to this: America 2 Average life expectancy: 79 years. Residents: 3.6 million low-income rural whites living in Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa, Montana, and Nebraska with income and education below the national average. http://www.webmd.com/news/20060913/top-states-for-life-expectancy The US region most comparable ethnically to the Scandinavian countries beats Scandinavia. Also consider Japan from the OECD table - 78.7. Compare to this from the same source: America 1 Average life expectancy: nearly 85 years. Residents: about 10 million Asians. That's not quite all the Asians in the U.S. Those in "America 1" live in counties where Pacific Islanders make up less than 40% of Asians. All other Asians living in the U.S. are in "America 3." Again the US group most comparable to Japan beats Japan in life expectancy. Now consider Germany and the UK, the two biggest ethnic contributers to white America, and CANADA, also similar ethnically to the white America - 75.4, 75.6, and 77.7. Compare to: America 3 Average life expectancy: nearly 78 years. Residents: 214 million people -- mainly whites, with small numbers of Asians and Native Americans -- with average income and education slightly above the national average. Again, Americans of similar demographic background come out ahead of the German, UK, and Canadian average. ----- So we see first, adjusting for fatal injuries puts the US in the #1 spot, even using life expectancies from birth which penalizes the US because of measurement differences. Second, when portions of the US population that are comparable to foreign nations, again the US comes out ahead. Thirdly, look at those survival rates for major cancers - the US beats the hell out of Europe: The bottom chart displays five-year age-adjusted cancer survival rates for the U.S. and selected European countries, showing that the U.S. has the best record for five-year survival rates for six different cancers. In some cases the differences are huge: 81.2% in the U.S. for prostate cancer vs. 41% in Denmark and 47.4% in Italy; 61.7% in the U.S. for colon cancer vs. 39.2% in Denmark; 12% in the U.S. for lung cancer vs. 5.6% in Denmark. Also interesting is the fact that there is often a significant difference between white and black cancer survival rates in the U.S., e.g. prostate cancer - 82.7% for whites vs. 69.2% for blacks (see red circled data in bottom chart). But even in that case, the five-year survival rate for blacks (69.2%) is still higher than for all European countries except Switzerland. http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/08/us-vs-europe-life-expectancy-and-cancer.html