An absolutely irrelevant note about foreign policy

Last night, a cab driver assaulted me.

No, it wasn't the usual, "You nice lady. You married, Miss?"

It was about healthcare. I spent about 15 minutes (the entire ride) trying to explain to a man to whom I just explained the word "breathing," why our country didn't have national healthcare already.

"Germany, England, France, you pay nothing. Obama say in 2014 we pay a little bit. This good plan, Miss?"

He was a leaden pipe full of hot water, and if his long beard weren't black, I'd've thought it was steam. Here we were, Jew and Muslim driving toward the neighborhood we both live in (Bensonhurst/Dyker Heights), and we weren't talking about "loneliness" or Israel.

In the past, drivers, and in fact, people in cafes, my left-wing psychiatrist -- a fair number of people have engaged me on foreign policy early in conversations. I learned about Israel's latest controversy while sitting in the waiting room of my psychiatrist's office --reading TIME magazine. Yet, we didn't get into it at all in session. We were both more concerned about our pets and about the obvious necessity to increase my anti-anxiety medication. The latter has become a staple of how I "deal with" the state of our economy and my job. In fact, economics has ruled most of my social and medical life since Bloomberg took office.

Yesterday afternoon, at a cafe, no one even bothered to put the closed captioning on when our Secretary of State Hlilary Clinton was on CNN. Perhaps she is aware of her own place as a kind of throwback to another time. I was shocked to find she has now grown her hair long and set it in the "Upsweet" popular in the 1960's. Will the Jackie-O make-up follow?

I still have no idea what announcement the former-First Lady/Presidential Candidate and powerfully staunch hawk was making. At a time when world economies continue to be in need of serious vision, hardly anyone cares about what we hope to be our foreign policy. Excepting of course those unfortunate people whom we might be bombing, boycotting or bungling attempts to provide humanitarian aid. Sadly, most of those people are really facing the results of our economic policy which has remained stagnant since we voted in resounding force for change back in 2008. Take those receiving the humanitarian aid known as unemployment. --I know they're not the same, but de facto, they are. In a WORLD which lives on credit and in which money is no longer measured by the gold standard, the question of what we pay and what we afford has to do with psychology and not finance. If that weren't true, everyone would've pulled their money out of the stock market years ago as very few sectors of any economy are truly flourishing. Unregulated capitalism leads to a lot of cheap goods, bankruptcies and reorganizations as well as monopolies. None of this provides much entry-way for the average citizen to benefit. No Milton Friedman fan can defend/explain or fix what happened in Russia if you want proof on a smaller scale than our worldwide dilemmas.--

What I did know this week was that President Obama said it was important for Congress to "do the right thing" and extend unemployment. That's about as strong and open-hearted a phrase he has used in some time on a liberal cause and it made me hopeful. Our President doesn't want to see people suffering. That's important.

It did not give me an answer for what to tell my driver. In the end, we haggled about his tip, which I had mistakenly not added using the new touchscreens mandated by our lovely Mayor. This is perhaps because I pushed the button to turn the screen OFF very hard possibly damaging it., so that I would not have to watch the especially bad and tourist-driven television it will proffer it I did not. In the end, I reviewed the receipt multiple times and handed the driver much less than the percentage I would've tapped in had the machine been working properly. I resented the argument, though I knew it was his right to make it. I wasn't about to NOT tip him, but there were more polite ways to raise the issue that the tip did not seem to be calculated. For someone who had been fervent, but open to my opinions in an overall discussion of economics, the push and shove on dollars was a little unsettling. If I hadn't been so tired and were generally a more confident person, I might've used it as what we is called a "teachable moment." The same tension with which he fought over three versus five dollars is what drives the argument against healthcare. It is also what some people call, "bad business" as it's not the kind of behavior that makes someone want to step into your cab again. Since it is truly random whether or not a driver sees a passenger again, I guess it doesn't matter. It is an industry, then, which can be used as a microcosm for examining our economy. Essentially, it is driven by an exchange between two people and the value of the service fluctuates depending on individual moods and the weather. Like a magnate, a cab company survives by having so many cabs that they can cover their losses. There is very little ability to control quality beyond a minimum. (I get out of cars that don't have air conditioning or heat and I suspect that's where most people draw a line if they have made the decision that they need to pay the fare.) It is a mobile marketplace complete with haggling salespeople.

If he was asked, I am sure the driver would prefer not to have to raise the issue of a tip. I'd certainly prefer that the agreed upon price somehow provided him with adequate sustenance. But, that would require a decision by producer and consumer on what the set value of the entire service IS. What does the driver deserve to make? What does a human being require for healthcare?

Of course, most of the time, I take the subway or bus, but I was trying to avoid the death-claw of the humidity on the platform last night. I was able to do so, in no small part, owing to the long history of labor bargaining for a fair wage and benefits. But, someone who isn't so lucky, who might take the train and find breathing suddenly difficult might then be rushed to the ER. There, he or she would receive services which, if he/she is uninsured, for which he/she won't be able to pay. Because we are not as cold-hearted a people in New York as people think, our hospitals don't push people toward their deaths and refuse them treatment. Yet, we don't just agree to provide all members of our city with insurance because we would rather engage in daily bargaining than commit our wallets. (What is a healthcare plan which will be implemented in 2014 but conjecture -- at most, a gauntlet on a bargaining table.) I wonder at how much this would really cost us if we sat down and considered:
1) What REALLY is a fair amount of profit? Yes, there is unfair profit. Maybe we should call it unreasonable profit -- a profit margin which will ultimately make it impossible for any consumer to afford the product. That requires a certain honesty on everyone's part. For example: No one needs a 150 dollars sneaker which is not orthopedic and no one should be making 140 times what it cost to make the sneaker, assuming that it took some Indonesian woman at Nike one whole day to make that pair for her wage of one dollar.
2) What is the REAL COST of our treatment? The price of the 15 minute glance-over and routine blood tests most people get, at best? Is that the treatment which our doctors really think is enough if they were being paid adequately? Not being as liquid as my mother was, I go see doctors who take my insurance. Even when they are good, they are still overworked and behind schedule.
3) Do you find it unpleasant to step over homeless and sick people on your way to work, or do you just consider this some reaffirmation of Calvinism, Fascism -- or do you just enjoy the feeling of being inside a painting by Francis Bacon?

If we thought about all of this, we might then turn up the volume on Mrs. Clinton, as, I am sure something she was talking about had to do with paying for bombs or humanitarian aid. For the value of the former, see question 3 again