There is declining competitiveness in some large important markets and its driving up costs: healthcare (with pharma) is the most important, but not only, dysfunctional market. We need to: Reform the dysfunctional healthcare market (it will...

The American dream has become distant and unobtainable for many – the US is (by a long way) the most unequal of the major industrial countries – there are signs of tension. Recognize that the new...

In a ‘pay as you go’ plan, benefits paid (to retired Americans), are paid for by working Americans. Demographic shifts – the aging of the baby boom generation, and relatively ‘skinny’ generations since – mean that...

We Americans pay 50% more for our healthcare than the citizens of any other major country – about $3,600 per person per year too much. Its a black box market: the people who actually pay for...

President Trump, it must be deduced, is an isolationist. There is no big picture foreign policy of the United States (or none that Crunchicrant can discern), other than to reduce involvement in, and commitment to, foreign...

We spend a lot on defense: more than all the other countries on these charts, the next nine biggest defense spenders in the world, combined. Not only is the US spend massive, only Russia and China...

Pharma generates nearly half its global sales from the 5% of the world’s population who live in the US. Annual revenues to Pharma per resident: US $1,500 Europe $400 Why such a difference? It is because:...

Medicare costs per enrollee are creeping up and the trend is expected to accelerate. The cost of benefits for each retired Americans is increasing. Healthcare is advancing and becoming ever more expensive. The federal government pays...

There is a fallacy that Social Security and Medicare (Part A – that element of Medicare designed be funded from payroll taxes), are ring fenced benefit programs – that payroll taxes are placed into a pool...

The big issues will take time to fix, and while we are fixing them, the federal government will need to run a deficit. Is there a limit to how much deficit the government can run? Nobody...