ON HOW MUCH IS SPENT ON ENTERTAINMENT

I have become impressed by how much we Americans spend on entertainment.  Entertainment in most countries is provided by amateurs, i.e. people who have other employment or survive on tips.  In a wealthy society like the United States, however, some entertainers can attain fortunes.  Think of all the major league professional football players, basketball players, baseball players, soccer players, golfers, and even some professional boxers, maybe even some wrestlers.

Then there are some playwrights, the whole movie industry and TV and some radio personalities, but I'm thinking mainly of actors, granted some TV and radio is educational.  And what about novelists, musicians, and composures, some of whom become wealthy?  Of course, novelists would say much of their writing is educational and not just entertainment  Estimates of how much is spent on entertainment vary widely.

At the lower end, the average American "consumer unit" (120,770,000)  is  estimated to spend $454/yr on entertainment supplies, equipment, and services;  $606 on fees and admissions; $707 on pets, toys, hobbies, hobbies and playground equipment; and $1060 on audiovisual equipment and services for a total on 2008 of $2,827 or 5.6% out of an average income of $63,563 (The median income is less, of course, and closer to $50,000).*  If I have done my math correctly, this is $341 billion.  At the high end, an article by Marketwatch gives even larger figures with the total of $709.2 billion or 8.5% of personal consumption, the fourth largest expenditure after housing, food and health care (Unity Marketing Group).**  And to what degree are travel and vacations entertainment?  Of course, there are business trips (that may include some entertainment) and unintended trips (to such as out-of-town weddings).

The largest individual category of entertainment income is from TV subscriptions.  For those entertainers making fortunes, much of their income comes from endorsements, i.e. advertising ($170 billion total in 2010).  Indeed advertising and fees constitute the bulk of "free" TV ($75 billion for TV subscriptions for 2010 in a 2011 report by USA Today) and radio; however even with "free" TV most people actually pay a monthly fee for digital content (cable, satellite, and/or computer) rather than over the air.***  In contrast to TV, filmed entertainment is given as $35.2 billion in 2010 by the USA Today report.  And even advertisements are more and more trying to entertain along with their pitch to get consumers to watch the whole advertisement; however, most of these advertisements grow old after multiple exposures.  Some advertisements show short stories that have little or nothing to do with the product.


*  (http://visualeconomics.creditloan.com/average-american-spends-on-entertainment/)
** http://www.marketwatch.com/story/americans-value-entertainment-studies-show
*** http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/2011-06-14-entertainment-spending-rises_n.htm

COLD WAR ON OUR SOUTHERN BORDER

An amendment to the Illegal Immigration bill* has passed the Senate which is supposed to vote on the entire bill today.  Among the items in the amendment was the increase of border troops (agents?) from 21,000 (!) to 40,000.  Another item is to complete the 700 mi. of fencing, a complex issue as to what constitutes a fence (Currently there is only 36.3 mi. of double layer fencing with 649 mi. comprised of vehicle barriors and single layer pedestrian fencing.).**  It is interesting that we cannot find money to do so many things in the government but we can find money to fight the border cold war.  But wait, there is an aspect to this that hasn't been mentioned, to the best of my knowledge.  The Federal government is about to hire (or contract for) an additional 19,000 more troops and more hires to complete the double layer fencing.  Say, that is a decent jobs bill isn't it.

President Obama has been deporting record numbers of illegals, lately around 400,000/yr.  Before his second term is over,  President Obama can easily have deported 2 million illegal immigrants.  In some cases, these deportations cause severe family problems with American born children (and therefore American citizens) left behind in this country.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_United_States
** http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/may/16/barack-obama/obama-says-border-fence-now-basically-complete/

SUMMARY HEALTH COSTS AND MEDICAL BANKRUPTCIES

CEOs of hospital complexes and specialists in medicine tend to earn exorbitant salaries (http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2013/06/hospital-ceo-compensation.html), but as high as hospital CEO and physicians salaries are, they constitute only about 7% of health care spending!*  Is it any wonder that health costs are so high?

And then there are organ transplants.  This whole thing was stimulated by the 10 yr old girl whose parents through a law suit pushed her to the head of the class to get an adult lung transplant.  A child doesn't get a whole lung.  The lungs come in lobes (five total for both lungs to be exact), and she is listed as getting a double lung transplant (i.e. two lobes) in a six hour operation.  The average cost of a double lung transplant is estimated to be $797,300   I doubt that most of the people that get a lung transplant or their families can pay this, and it is not clear how many are covered to some extent by health insurance either.  And a lung transplant is by no means the highest cost organ transplant which is one you don't hear much about - an intestine transplant that goes over a million dollars, but including all the costs, a heart-double lung transplant is right up there, over a million dollars also (http://www.transplantliving.org/before-the-transplant/financing-a-transplant/the-costs/).  Is it any wonder that health costs are so high?

The average cost of a premature baby is given as $40,000.  An important matter here is that deliveries of  premature babies are increasing because cesarean-section births are becoming more common.  Of course, the  cost of a premature baby can vary wildly depending on the complications.  A case mentioned a cost over $2 million of which the parents share was $450,000, and they had to declare bankruptcy. (http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2013/06/costs-and-problems-of-premature-babies.html)  Is it any wonder that health costs are so high?

All these things are very expensive but WebMD states that the biggest cost in medicine is heart disease at $107.2 billion, followed by injuries, cancer, mental disorders, COPD and asthma, joint disorders, diabetes, high blood pressure, back problems, and high cholesterol at $37.2 billion. (http://www.webmd.com/healthy-aging/disability-cost-13/slideshow-medical-expenses)  The total of these 11 conditions total $652.2 billion.

Overall, The U.S. paid about 17.9% of its GDP on health care in 2011, the most of any high income country, beating out Switzerland, France, Germany and Belgium (the top five in 2006).  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:International_Comparison_-_Healthcare_spending_as_%25_GDP.png)

Indeed, it has been multiply cited that nearly half of personal bankruptcies (46.2%) in the U.S. are caused by a major medical reason (http://www.factcheck.org/2008/12/health-care-bill-bankruptcies/) A category that includes "any medical bankruptcy" (addiction, uncontrolled gambling, child birth, or death in the family) raises the figure to 54.5%.  When a hospital gets "stiffed," who makes up the difference?   Is it any wonder that health costs are so high?

* http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/physician-fees-and-salaries-in-the-us-and-other-countries/

HOSPITAL CEO COMPENSATION

If you want to advise someone on what might be a rewarding career, you might mention being a CEO of a hospital complex.  Kaiser Health News has published a number of these positions for 32 hospital complexes.*  The "poorest" paid on their list received "only" $615,000 in total compensation for 2011 at the Grady Health System in Georgia, and this figure may not include benefits.  Ten other CEOs received less than a million dollars.

The best paid is Kaiser Permanenty in California at $7,936,510.  He didn't even have to a physician, and I counted 16 others at the hospital complex earning over a million dollars in a year.  Number two on the CEO list is the Providence Health and Services in Washington at $6,379,455  with 19 others earning more than a million dollars a year, including one over $4 million and 3 over $3 million.  Number three on the list  was UPMC Pittsburgh whose CEO earned $5,975,462 (again not a physician) but with 19 others earning over a million dollars a year.  There are three people listed that seemed to have earned two salaries in 2011, one of which is brought up over a million dollars in combined compensation and another was over a million dollars to begin with.  So you can do pretty well, even if you are not a physician or a CEO.  Some places declined to to disclose CEO compensation such as Univ. Colorado Health and University of Alabama, Biringham.

I live in North Carolina so how did the Carolinas HealthCare system line up?  Not bad, Mr. Michael Tarwater earned $4,760,026 in 2011.

Is it no wonder that that medical bills are so high?

Of the most famous  hospital complexes, the Cleveland (OH) Clinic's Dr. Delos Cosgrove earned $2,564,214 without a bonus offered, and the Mayo (MN) Clinic's Dr. John Noseworthy got $2,002,896, also without a bonus offered.

* http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2013/June/06/hospital-ceo-compensation-chart.aspx?wpisrc=nl_wonk_b

IMMIGRANT APPREHENSIONS BY YEAR AND STATE

The illegal immigrant issue still rages large.  You could get the idea that nothing is being done from all that is said.  But by 2012, there were 651 mi. of vehicle fencing (at a cost of $2.3 billion) including 352 mi. of pedestrian fencing and 299 vehicle barriers plus 300 towers and 9 drones, along the nearly 2,000 mi. of the border (with 35 mi. double tiered fence).*  The cost so far on immigrant apprehension is estimated to be $9 billion in the first 10 years.  One proposal is that nothing be done until 90% of the illegal immigrants are caught at the border of Mexico and the U.S.  How you know the total number of immigrant attempts to determine what 90% would be is beyond me.

The border wall is having considerable effect on the environment, but the wall trumps various Federal acts like the Wilderness Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act.  Also violated are the Farmland Protection Policy Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the Native American Graves and  Repatriation Act.*   For more acts violated by the fence and an expanded discussion, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico–United_States_barrier.

Because of the combined effects of all the barriers currently installed plus state laws and a poor economy, illegal immigrations has been falling off sharply from 1.64 million apprehensions in fiscal year 2000 to 325,577 in 2011.**   Apprehensions have been divided into sectors that don't quite follow state lines, but the number of apprehensions in the Tucson (nearly all of the Arizona border) and Yuma (include a tiny bit of the California border) total more than New Mexico (includes the El Paso, TX area) and all the Texas Sectors combined, as seen in the bigger part of the figure.

                                   (To enlarge the figure, click on it)

* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2013/01/mexican-border-security-how-much.html: http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2011/0227/Costly-fence-on-US-Mexico-border-is-effective-only-in-hurting-nature
** http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/world/patrolling-the-us-mexico-border/?wpisrc=nl_wonk_b

COSTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF PREMATURE BABIES

The combined cost of mother and premature baby is $64,713 compared to $15,047 for an uncomplicated birth according to the March of Dimes.  The number of premature births have increased about 36% compared to the early 1980s due in part to an increase in elective premature deliveries. (http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/03/17/premature.babies/).  But the cost of prematurity varies widely and a case is reported of costs of $2 million with lifelong consequences to the children with the parents billed $450,000 (They had to declare bankruptcy.).*  The total cost of premature births in the U.S. is estimated to cost $26.2 billion.*

Teen mothers are more likely to have a premature baby than older mothers.*  Babies born through C-section are more likely to have respiratory distress syndrome though in a number of cases a C-section is necessary.**    Some other problems with premature birth may include cerebral palsy, developmental delay, vision problems and hearing problems.**  Delaying the birth from 37 to 39 weeks halves the mortality rate according to a study reported in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology.***  Babies born prematurely have a greater risk of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), with the probability increasing with the degree of prematurity.  A study of a million babies in Sweden showed that premature babies at 23-28 weeks were twice as likely to have ADHD as those born at normal gestation of 39-41 weeks.****  Cognitive abilities, however, do not seem to be much affected in premature births.

* http://healthland.time.com/2012/05/02/the-cost-of-premature-birth-for-one-u-s-family-it-was-more-than-2-million/; http://abcnews.go.com/Health/w_ParentingResource/preterm-birth-public-health-crisis/story?id=16519630#.Ub4kGNuF9rw
** http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/09/c-sections-can-increase-premature-babies-risk-of-breathing-problems/; http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/MaternalInfantHealth/PretermBirth.htm
*** http://healthland.time.com/2011/05/26/is-patience-the-key-to-lowered-infant-mortality-rates/
**** http://healthland.time.com/2011/04/20/study-preterm-birth-raises-the-risk-of-childhood-adhd/

TED CRUZ FOR PRESIDENT?

Though he is an American citizen, Ted Cruz was born in Canada to an American mother so is he a "natural born citizen" as article II, Section I of the constitution requires?  I seem to recall claims (fraudulent) by so-called "birthers" that President Obama was born in Kenya  so was not eligible to run for president (though he was born to an American mother)?  Well, that was then, this is now.

It may turn out that it doesn't matter after all as "Legal scholars generally agree that Cruz meets that requirement, and Cruz's office agrees.  But it also remains somewhat untested in the courts." http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/03/20/supporters-push-for-ted-cruz-for-president/  I don't recall this being brought up at the time of the arguments over President Obama.

It had been suggested that George Romney was not eligible to be president because he was born in Mexico, but he did not win the Republican nomination for president.

John McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone to American parents, but the Panama Canal Zone was made an exception (a ruling with which I agree).  In an attempt to make sure, a non-binding resolution declared John McCain was eligible to be president, but that resolution had no legal basis.  Since McCain was born on a U.S. military reservation he possibly should be considered to be born in America.  At any rate, Democrats never contested the issue.

My own thought is that if the issue arises, the conservative Supreme Court would side with the conservative Cruse being a "natural born citizen of the U.S."  And I have no doubt that conservative Republicans can shift gears to accepting Cruse should he choose to run for president even though they verbally contested Obama.  Being consistent is not a requirement of politicians.  Since we have a conservative Supreme Court, I would like to see this settled with a conservative Republican nominee who was not born in America.  After all, it would be a strain if the situation should arise for a Democratic candidate born outside America (but not on an American military station), to one American parent to face a conservative Supreme Court.  In view of what happened to Obama, I would like to see the issue solved once and for all and Cruz would be a good test.

MICHELLE CHAMUEL

Twice by accident while surfing the cable programs I have heard an impressive, athletic, 26-yr-old female singer who wears black rimmed glasses on the TV program The Voice. I've found out her name is Michelle Chamuel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Chamuel). You can hear her sing a number of songs at (scroll down): http://youzeek.com/?Artist=michelle+chamuel&lng=EN.  May I suggest the song "Granade" or "I Knew You Were Trouble?"  Unfortunately on a couple of pieces, like Titanium, there is no live clip.  If you like something more sedate, try her own composition that she plays on the piano called "When The World Was Young" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egBdtLeq7ho)  Other places are: http://www.buddytv.com/articles/the-voice/the-voice-recap-team-blake-vs-50272.aspx, and here is another: https://www.buddytv.com/articles/the-voice/the-voice-recap-the-knockout-r-49987.aspx (a duet is at: http://www.buddytv.com/articles/michelle-chamuel/the-voice-results-the-final-5-50284.aspx)

Although I am an old fogey, she looks like a comer to me.

CHILD LUNG REPLACEMENTS

Adult lung transplants have been reserved to children and adults of age 12 or over.  In 2007, the cost of a single lung transplant was nearly $400,000, a double lung transplant was about $550,000.*  Because of the threat of law suits, judges have permitted two children of 10 and 11 with cystic fibrosis to be added to the list of adults awaiting lung transplants.  There is a 20% chance of a lung recipient dying within 1 yr, and a 50% chance of the lung recipient dying within 5 yrs.  Seventeen percent of  lung transplant patients live 10 yrs or longer.  Because there are vastly more applicants for lung replacements than the supply, it means that if one of these children get a replacement, someone else (who normally would have gotten one) will not. (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-204_162-57588287/children-added-to-adult-lung-transplant-list-amid-outcry-a-dilemma-for-doctors/; http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090501150337AAZxwrD).

Apparently there is no problem cutting an adult lung down to child size, but the cystic fibrosis gene is throughout the body and getting a lung free of the disease fixes only part of the problem.  Then there are the drugs needed to prevent rejection of the lung - immunosuppressive drugs (up to $30,000/yr) that can cause other problems [such as kidney failure].*  Then there is the cost of annual follow-up care.  Most health insurance policies do not cover lung replacements for patients with pre-existing conditions, but I am not sure what the effect of ObamaCare will be on this.

Even without lung transplants, there are cystic fibrosis patients that can live on average into their mid-30s and even have careers by taking pancreatic enzyme supplements and use of bronchodilators, anti-inflammatories, antibiotics, and mucus thinners. http://www.cff.org/aboutcf/faqs/#How_does_CF_affect_the_lungs?

Note added July 2nd:  The 10 yr old girl actually had the lung transplant surgery twice and then a diaphragm operation because her diaphragm was partially paralyzed. (http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/07/02/10-year-old-girl-who-got-new-lungs-in-pa-has-more-surgery/)

* http://www.ehow.com/about_4673807_much-does-lung-transplant-cost.html?ref=Track2&utm_source=ask  The cost of a double lung replacement coupled with a heart replacement is said to cost around $850,000.

TOO MANY AMERICANS?

A number of years ago, I read an article that said that countries like India and China could probably have economies that would provide 200 million people each with a decent living.  I don't recall what was behind this.  Though a total of 400 million people is an impressive number, it is a small fraction of the population of these two countries.  Well, now America has a population of 314 million and counting.  Have we arrived at a state where a large part of the population will continuously be a poor underclass?

Of course, America has had its poor all along its history.  Among other things, capitalism all but demands a stratified society.  You cannot have all employees of a company have salaries of a million dollars a year, for example.  If you did, products would be prohibitively expensive.  But does there come a point where the population has grown to a point where it exceeds the ability of the private corporative system to employ the bulk of the adult working force?

We may have arrived at this point in that corporate America is doing very well by way of profits, but the employed work force is growing slower than the work force supply.  After all, it is not the job of corporate America to grow jobs; it is the job of corporate America to make increasing profits.  Jobs are incidental to the system.  In fact, corporate America will do everything to minimize the the cost of the work force needed by them through things like automation or "off shoring" jobs to places with a cheaper work force.

At the same time, the government budgets are declining although we have been consuming our "seed corn" through inattention to our infrastructure that is slowly decaying.  To devote, say, $50 billion/yr to improving our infrastructure would not be excessive, but might employ as many as a million employees; yet the politics of our time opposes infrastructure programs though they are not useless endeavors such as having one shift dig holes and the next shift fill them in.  The country gets something valuable for their efforts in a more efficient and convenient nation, and even in an improved national defense.