How to Solve Three Main Problems Americans Face

The nation's leaders are grappling with at least three seemingly difficult issues: Immigration, health care and taxes. 

I would suggest the following.

On immigration illegal and legal.

I believe that we must stop all illegal immigration. 

We should not allow it but instead make it less necessary. People are dying to leave their beloved countries to come to America. They want to leave because of crime, poverty and/or corruption. Many are advised to claim asylum by their lawyers. Most want to come to America, the land of milk and honey whose streets are paved with gold. We also have a much lower crime rate. Mexico and Central American nations have some of the highest.

Who can blame them. Wouldn't we do the same?

My plan is to close the southern border and have those wanting to claim asylum go to the nearest American consulate in their country. Their issue can be checked there. Those approved for asylum will be transported for free to the U.S.

In order to reduce the massive crime rate, we should send our special forces down there. They can fight the many gang members responsible for the crimes. It would be a large version of the "Magnificent Seven."

We should also send Americans with business experience to help change the economic system so that the poor get paid more and get better education and training. 

Then there would little cause to come two thousand miles and pay thousands of dollars to gang members.

On legal immigration I agree that only spouses and their children would be able to come and the spouse who sponsored them must be responsible for accommodating their needs. I think that we should end the lottery in favor of the merit based policy.

On fixing the Affordable Care Act. 

We have to face the fact that the ACA is seriously flawed. Insurers have withdrawn from the market leaving one out of three applicants with only one company to choose from. Knowing that they had a captive audience, they have raised their rates to make a profit after insuring the disabled. It was forcing everyone to get coverage to offset the costs incurred by the disabled. 

The argument has been that everyone has to sign up to the full plan even though they don't need it to take care of the others. Also it was argued that if someone doesn't have coverage, we have to pay for it if he goes to the emergency. The average monthly ACA payment is a little more than $1,000 and there are some deductibles. So a healthy person must pay as much for an  emergency care with an average cost at a bit more than $1,000 ( before the usual discount.)  So a healthy person would have to go to the E.R about 15 times a year to get the average monthly amount to have $1,000 paid through insurance.

Which costs us more - a healthy young person who does everything to stay healthy and rarely needs medical attention, or the unhealthy person who abuses drugs and goes to the E.R. frequently while on Medicaid or Medicare? We all pay for that.

But don't we need the healthy to offset the cost incurred by the unhealthy?

Here's my idea is to continue to making enrollment voluntary as it was recently changed to. Let private insurers deny coverage to anyone with health problems. Those denied coverage would immediately be eligible to the "public option" which would be a federal program with a share of cost depending on income.

The insures would rush back in the market competing for the healthy applicants. They would lower rates and perhaps get ride of the deductible. They should also be able  to offer a policy that just covers the base medical needs. The reduced plan would only cover  medically necessary hospital costs; office and clinic visits; medicine and other medical supplies; and lab tests.This plan could be much less expensive making it more attractive for their voluntary applicants.     

We would end our annual $8 billion dollar subsidy to insurers. This amount could somewhat offset the additional cost of the "public option."

On fixing the Federal income tax code.

This administration made the tax code simpler and more affordable.  I think that it should have gone further. I think that there should no itemized deductions that mainly help the rich. Instead there should be a standard deduction of $20,000 for singles and $40,000 for families. All income sources would be equally taxable. So $40,000 from dividends, interest, social security benefits or earned income (minus the FICA deduction) would be considered equally taxable. There could be four brackets from 10% to 25% up to $500,000. Those making $500,000 to just under $1 million would pay a straight 30%. So someone earning $600,000 would pay $180,000. A family making over $1 million would pay a straight 35%. So a family making $2 million would pay $700,000 in federal tax alone. This would free the IRS to focus on the self employed and businesses.                                                                                                        

All and Everything

"All and Everything - Beelzebub's Tales To His Grandson" was the title of a metaphysical book by the famous Russian/Armenian philosopher,  George Gurdjieff. It was a tale about humans for his grandson who lived in a distant planet as did Beelzebub. He had studied humans and came to various conclusions. The book is long and complicated.

According to Occam's Razor, the simplest philosophic explanation is the right one, if it covers the issue.

Here is a metaphysical explanation that takes just a few minutes to read and should explain everything metaphysical.

 First some background

Some previous metaphysical columns in this blog include: "Why Do Bad Things Happen?" "Punctuation Marks in the Grammar of Life,"  "Religion Meets Science, Metaphysics and Physics," and "Third Millennium Metaphysics - G-d Even Atheists Can Believe In."

Most Western religious systems believe that G-d is omnipotent, omniscient and omni-present. 

Several Eastern religions believe that this life is a dream, an illusion. Who is the dreamer?

Greek, Roman, Hindu, Jewish and even Christian mystics tell us of infinite beings, gods, who come to earth as finite and mortal humans.  Some have children who are part human, part god. They can die but are eternally gods.

Jesus was the most recent example. He was called G-d, part the trinity of G-d's nature, and he was human. He suffered as a human and was crucified. He was still infinite and immortal.

Jewish mystics cite the first line of the Old Testament when G-d spoke and said let there be life. It meant that life exists only because G-d keeps making it happen. He produces the universe with his consciousness. When He spoke there was no one to hear Him except himself and He had no calendar to count the days. 

Some physicists today believe that everything is consciousness. The quantum mechanic physicists believe the universe is run by a giant infinite computer system, infinite consciousness.

Bishop Berkley, an Irish philosopher in the late 17th and early 18th century, believed that nothing can exist without awareness. He was challenged. "What if you start a fire in the fireplace and leave for an hour? Without your awareness how did it continue to burn during  your absence?" The Bishop answered that G-d was aware of it. 

The famous Zen koan is "if a tree falls in the forest and no one  hears does it make a sound?" might mean that nothing can be said to exist before or without consciousness.

Mindful of all these precedents, here is the  theory.

What some call G-d is infinite consciousness which makes the universe. Nothing can be said to exist before consciousness. Everyone is part infinite consciousness and part individual consciousness. So we are part of the infinite puzzle and we are separate from it. We are the objects of the infinite consciousness and we are subjects of our own. We are products of a dream and creators of our own when we sleep. We are the subjects and everything else is our object.We are and have consciousness. (Dreams are products of our creation, they are consciousness but they do not have consciousness.)

The soul is infinite while the body is finite. When we pray, we are addressing our infinite consciousness for help. That's how G-d hears our prayer, because we do.

Because we are infinite the motivating emotion is love, the unifying force. Love is the mother of all intrinsic motivation - doing things as ends in themselves. Since we are separate, mortal, the motivating emotion is fear; we fear death and of feeling inadequate - the source of all negative emotions like anger, envy, jealousy, greed, self pity and frustration, to name few. Fear is the mother of extrinsic motivation, we do what we do because we have to survive, a means to an end. 

Mindful of this duality, we are best advised to do everything as a means to an end and an end in itself. We have to eat to survive and we can love the food we're eating. We have a job because we need money to survive and we can love what we are doing.

Many Eastern religions believe as do Jewish mystics that the soul keeps coming back in different human forms. 

According to Edgar Casey, "the sleeping prophet," most of us were incarnated as male and female alternately. So if a man dies, he will come back as a woman. The person's destiny is determined by past lives, which Eastern religions call Karma. So the soul carries with it past actions and past talents. This explains child prodigies who read at three, play the piano at four or become great athletes. This is not their first life doing, or knowing that.

While most of us reincarnate in alternating genders, some of us come back as just one for several incarnations. This, I think, explains transgenders. If a soul comes back as male again and again and then is reborn as female, the soul may want to change back to its familiar gender. The soul identifies with past incarnations.  

We also have and don't have free will. On an infinite level, everything is predetermined because it is a part of the puzzle. On a finite level, we live as though we had free will. We try our best and plan for the future.

But why do bad things happen?  I believe there is one cause for all suffering be it wars, poverty, ending relationships, crimes, injuries, illness, making mistakes, shame,, guilt, embarrassment or dying to name a few- Entropy. 

Entropy is the natural disorganization/ disintegration of a product of consciousness. War is the disorganization of diplomacy, poverty the disorganization of economic systems. Entropy can be personified as the Devil, but is at the very core of existence. Without entropy, nothing would go wrong. No one would be ill, there would be no poverty or fear.  There would be no need for lawyers, police, firefighters, doctors, nurses, psychologists, social workers, dentists, soldiers, car mechanics or hospitals. Without life's changes we would have no memory and little motivation. Without fear there would be no courage. Without poverty there would be no need for compassion or kindness.

The prophets and the Messiah promised a golden age. It would have no entropy. Heaven is also without entropy because it has no time or space; but we can't live here without it. 

This, then, is a simple explanation of all and everything.