If the United States simply had the per-person health-care costs of Switzerland, which has the second-most expensive health-care system in the world, we would spend $3,000 less per person and save about $900 billion a year. Assuming we need to reduce deficits by about $4 trillion over the next 10 years, those savings would do the heavy lifting with about $5 trillion to spare. – Ezra Klein Simon Owens...

Why Excessive Debt is the Real Problem – Part I by Steve Suranovic In the national conversation about the economy the continual refrain is that we need to create more jobs. However, one of the main reasons for the unemployment problem around the world is excessive debt. Only when we eliminate the underlying source of our problems will we be able to sustainably reduce the unemployment rate. A little bit of...

Here’s a truism that Americans need to better absorb: U.S. policy is global in impact and is the concern of a good portion of the world’s inhabitants. And here’s another truism: a lot of people out there are deeply frustrated because they can’t vote, so they intend to do everything in their power to liberate themselves from U.S. influence. But as this column by Maksim Blant of Russia’s...

The shocking statistics about Black family income released by the Pew Research center have not only caught the attention of Americans. For Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza, columnist Mariusz Zawadzki writes with surprise that all the gains of the civil rights movement seem to have been either lost or diminished in the span of the last few years. For the Gazeta Wyborcza, Mariusz Zawadzki writes in part: Lincoln,...

Petar Pismestrovic, Kleine Zeitung, Austria This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Our political Quote of the Day comes via the New York Daily News’ Joshua Greenman on last night’s debate of Republican Presidential nomination hopefuls in Iowa: Fried butter on a stick might make the Republican base salivate at the Iowa State Fair. But down the road, it’s not that good for them. The same could be said of the answers the GOP candidates gave to the public tonight. Brett Baier...

These reports that job openings are increasingly requiring applicants to be currently employed are depressing but at least somewhat rational. For some industries, hiring talent is a buyer’s market and employers are likely being bombarded with hundreds of applications from people applying to every job that opens. If the government steps in and says you can’t hire based on these qualifications, what’s...

Joe Gandelman commented yesterday on the first nine members of the so-called “Super Committee” —tasked with solving our nation’s financial woes—picked by Democrats and Republicans. The Washington Post has just announced the final three members of that committee. Actually, they were just announced by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), via her Twitter feed. They are “top members...

Wishful thinking perhaps, but the tide of madness that has washed over Washington may be ebbing. A new CNN poll shows even more Americans want tax increases for the wealthy (63 percent) than major cuts in domestic spending (57 percent), leaving Republicans with the highest unfavorable ratings since the Clinton impeachment 13 years ago and Democrats gaining slightly in approval. Such fallout from the debt-ceiling...

A new Gallup Poll finds that a big chunk of America wants the new debt supercommittee to compromise — and the one demographic that doesn’t is composed of tea party members. Six in 10 Americans say members of the new bipartisan “supercommittee” mandated to find new ways of reducing the federal budget deficit should compromise, even if the agreement reached is one they personally disagree...

The new special Congressional super committee could pose additional political risks for one of the political parties: the one that overreaches first. The reason: a new CNN poll shows that the majority of Americans want a mix of decisions — in effect a compromise: Most Americans want a special congressional committee tasked with drafting a long-term solution to the nation’s mounting federal deficits...

Mike Lester, The Rome News-Tribune This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

With the economic crisis/collapse and the incapacity of leaders to effectively resolve it, there is a profound and existential fear gripping the modern world. According to columnist Jean-marc Vittori of France’s Les Echos, Western-style democracy, which has long been considered the most advanced system of governance, may be irretrievably unraveling. For Les Echos, Jean-marc Vittori writes in part: Global...

… Obama has spent a lifetime creating his persona — superior, wise, above all parties and interests, all-seeing, calm, unflappable. But as Drew Westen, a liberal psychology professor at Emory University wrote in The Times on Sunday, puzzling about what has happened to his former hero’s passion, the president never identifies the villains who cause our epic problems. It’s unclear, Westen wrote,...

Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Our Quote of the Day is actually part of a must-read post in The Huffington Post by Lola Adesioye on the ongoing riots in England: In 2011, it’s shameful that any of England’s citizens feel that violence is the best way in which to express frustration. Watching live online footage of yesterday’s rioting in Tottenham from America, I was thrown back to yesteryear. This is what happened in Tottenham...

How much is that F-35 in the Window? Some will say, if you have to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford that puppy. But since that question is so frequently and persistently asked, let’s first take a good look at the puppy. It is a pedigree puppy that has been carefully “developed” following years of exhaustive and expensive research and selective breeding in order to make it an...

The odd set of circumstances that has led to a credit downgrade of U.S. debt, a weakened dollar and hence a stronger yen, is setting off alarm bells in Tokyo and around the world. This editorial from Japan’s Asahi Shimbun explains the phenomena to readers and comes close to begging Washington to do something to reverse the trend, which is damaging Japan’s post-quake recovery. The Asahi Shimbun...

Is it time for the United States to stop standing up for human rights and democratic reform in other nations and start taking its own advice at home? According to this article by the thought-to-be-fictitious Communist Party columnist Ding Gang, U.S. presidents should stop inflaming China by meeting the Dalai Lama and selling weapons to democratic Taiwan, and start figuring out how the U.S. fits into a 21st...

I haven’t invested in stocks since the dot com bubble burst in March 2000 and my 401(k) was pretty much wiped out even though my investments were toward the conservative side. When the dust had settled, I was out about $60,000, a not inconsiderable sum that would have come in handy when it came time to retire in 2009. Well, I’m still working. Nearly half of American households owned stocks in...

Forty two years ago, I was preparing to teach my first classes. I had spent the summer at the University of North Carolina, studying John Dewey, Jerome Bruner, Carl Rogers and American Literature. I was one of about fifty students who were about to enter the public schools as teacher interns. We taught during the day, went to school at night, and were visited frequently by the faculty in the School of Education....

The debt ceiling limit deal will be felt in many ways, and it’s already being felt in one area: social agencies such as the Jewish Federation are feeling the financial pinch more than ever — and it raises some other issues as well. Here’s a must-read article from the Jewish Daily Foward: The budget deal in Washington and the near certainty of steep declines in federal funding for social services...

Our political warriors today have an instinct for their own jugulars, bleeding America with self-inflicted wounds in a time of turmoil. A century ago, Theodore Roosevelt famously said: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is...

Our political Quotes of the Day indicate big trouble for President Barack Obama as the stock markets plunge in light of Standard & Poors sticking it to the United States — and the United States’ elections-obsessed political class — on its credit rating. He’s under renewed political fire. But not from expected quarters which engage in 24/7 fire, even over the most trivial things. But,...

Today in the wake of the second day of the Wall Street blood bath, House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor (R-VA) told his troops to stand firm: “Over the next several months, there will be tremendous pressure on Congress to prove that S&P’s analysis of the inability of the political parties to bridge our differences is wrong. In short, there will be pressure to compromise on tax increases. We will...