ECONOMY

AMERICA SPENDS MORE ON HEALHCARE, GETS LESS
http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/04/15/opinion/edkrug.html

PAUL KRUGMAN, NY TIMES - In 2002, the latest year for which comparable data are available, the United States spent $5,267 on health care for each man, woman and child. Of this, $2,364, or 45 percent, was government spending, mainly on Medicare and Medicaid. Canada spent $2,931 per person, of which $2,048 came from the government. France spent $2,736 per person, of which $2,080 was government spending. . .
U.S. health care is so expensive that our government spends more than the governments of other advanced countries, even though the private sector pays a far higher share of the bills than anywhere else. . .
Most Americans probably do not know that we have substantially lower life-expectancy and higher infant-mortality figures than other advanced countries. . . Social factors, notably America's high poverty rate, surely play a role. Still, it seems puzzling that we spend so much, with so little return.
A 2003 study published in Health Affairs [found] that the United States scores high on high-tech services - we have lots of MRIs - but on more prosaic measures, like the number of doctors' visits and number of days spent in hospitals, America is only average, or even below average. . .
Above all, a large part of America's health care spending goes into paperwork. A 2003 study in The New England Journal of Medicine estimated that administrative costs took 31 cents out of every dollar the United States spent on health care, compared with only 17 cents in Canada.
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WHY IT'S BETTER TO BE POOR IN NORWAY OR CANADA THAN IN THE U.S.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0414/p17s02-cogn.html

DAVID R. FRANCIS, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR - Except for the citizens of a few tiny oil kingdoms and Luxembourg, Americans on average live better than anybody else. Germans? Forget it. Americans' standard of living is 30 percent higher. The British? The gap's even wider.
But if the United States is so rich, critics ask, how come its poor are poorer than almost anywhere else in the developed world?Consider Canada. Its median per capita gross domestic product is 19 percent below the median in the US. Nevertheless, the poorest 18 percent of Canadians remain better off, on average, than the poorest 18 percent of Americans.
The contrast is even starker in oil-rich Norway, where the poorest 38 percent of the people fare better, on average, than the poorest 38 percent of Americans, despite a lower median per capita GDP. The reason? America's woefully unequal distribution of income. . .
In a list of 30 prosperous nations, including smaller economies such as Taiwan and Israel, only Russia and Mexico have a greater maldistribution of income than the US.
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U.S. ALREADY MOVING TO FLAT TAX
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0414/p03s01-usgn.html

DAVID R. FRANCIS, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR - Billionaires are paying not much more taxes, proportionately, than those Americans who are merely prosperous. It's a sign that, even without the formal adoption of a so-called "flat tax," America's tax system is getting flatter. . . Chalk up President Bush as not just a tax cutter but also a tax flattener. Under Mr. Bush and a Republican Congress, big tax cuts since 2001 have given major tax reductions to those wealthy individuals presumed, up to now, to be able to afford paying a bigger chunk of their income in taxes. By one measure of the federal, state, and local tax burden, just 3.4 percentage points separate the effective tax rate paid by the top 1 percent of earners from the other 99 percent of American households.
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HOW MOONSHINING CAN HELP YOU WITH THE FUEL CRISIS
http://www.flashnews.com/news/wfn1050414J12180.html

WIRELESS FLASH - Americans who want to fight back against high gas prices are taking a tip from moonshiners. That’s according to an unemployed Michigan ditch-digger who is using his time off to build personal home distilleries that let folks turn corn, potatoes or other starchy materials into ethanol – an alcohol that can be used to power cars. It’s basically the same process used to make moonshine, except you mix a little bit of gasoline in the final product so it will burn properly in an auto engine.
Inventor Paul Cavalloro’s Micro Fuel Plant can produce four gallons of fuel per day from 20 gallons of liquified apples, corn or other raw materials. . . Cavalloro says he’s had 36 orders for the stills since he started selling them for $250 a pop a few days ago, mostly to people in high gas price hubs like California.
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THE AMERICAN PAY CUT:

According to the Los Angeles Times, "For the first time in 14 years, the American workforce has in effect gotten an across-the-board pay cut." Corporate profits are high – the economy last year grew 4 percent, more than the 3 percent historical average. Companies didn't feel the need to pass along those profits with increased salaries, however. As a result, in the first two months of 2004, the growth in American wages fell behind the growth in inflation. Compounding the problem, while salaries remain flat, high housing costs, rising health insurance premiums and skyrocketing energy prices have all taken their toll on the finances of American workers, especially the working poor. "The squeeze is especially intense on the 47% of the workforce whose employers don't directly provide their health insurance. For lower-income workers, who are more likely to be uninsured, the falling value of their wages is even more serious because they're more likely to live paycheck to paycheck. And rising food and energy prices take a proportionately higher toll on the poor than on the rich."