I was just sharing with my closed one today that living to the age of 100 in 2050 may no longer be a luxury. We agree that at this point in time, we don’t see why we want to live beyond 70-80. Why add further to the country’s medical expenses, and also deprive the world of further resources beyond what is necessary?
What if, at some point in the future – The concept of assisted suicide is made possible. An option where people can choose not to wait till “that day comes”, but rather make a proactive approach to end your life in a hassle-free and convenient way?
It’s ironic that I just came across this article unintentionally about the concept of assisted suicide in Sweden. It looks a pretty attractive option, especially for countries with aging population. I believe that there is a limit to how much developed country should continue to increase their average life expectancy, except for a select few who wants to live as long as they possibly could given the technologies available. What I’m thinking however, is that there’s an increasing number of people who has opt out of longevity beyond retirement age.
You might want to read this article, and assess whether this is relevant for you.
If there’s anything I appreciated about Singapore – It’s the relentless efforts of the government to keep healthcare costs down and managable, without affecting the long term sustainability of the nation’s health care plans. Not many locals can appreciate how hard the government is working to keep healthcare costs from escalating. Be it through means testing or through shifting the medical burdens of a patient to their family. It is certainly not nice to have these burdens shifted to your own family (when you are one of the “victims”, but it is one way of ensuring the long term sustainability of our nations to cope with the increasing health-care costs.
If there’s anything worth mentioning in this article, it’s this one -
Employers can buy health insurance with pre-tax dollars. Individuals cannot. This creates an agency problem. When a typical patient goes to the doctor, he has no idea what anything costs. He pays only about 15% of the bill, so if the doctor recommends something he will probably say yes. The doctor gets paid for everything he does, so he has a powerful incentive to perform costly, unnecessary procedures. Besides, he may be socked for damages if he omits a test that a lawyer subsequently convinces a jury might have been useful. The costs are passed on to insurers, who pass them on to employers in the form of higher premiums, who then pass them on to workers in the form of lower pay.
My personal feel of the insurance coverage policies in Singapore – They are pretty sub-standard for the policy owners. I remembered my insurance coverage back in the States for a premium plan was based on an exclusion policy – ie the policies stated upfront which medical expenses they will not cover. The Singapore insurance industry policies only states which policies they will cover, leaving the policy owner to handle the whole universe of medical expenses. This is probably one way to contain the healthcare costs for the insurers. However, it led me to be really skeptical on the value of acquiring insurance in Singapore.
There are many reasons why American health care costs so much. Americans love fancy new medical technology. New drugs, for example, are prescribed a year or two earlier in America than in Europe, and do not come cheap. American doctors pay a fortune to insure themselves against frivolous lawsuits. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that even in cases where no medical error was found, plaintiffs received payments a quarter of the time. And half of medical malpractice payments were gobbled up by lawyers and overheads.
We always believed America to be on the fore-front of technology innovations, and these innovations are supposed to be driving down costs. But are they doing what they claim? There are times I’ve felt that the high level of entrepreneurial activities is actually caused by the number of internal problems that the country has. Lawsuits, insurance, and government regulations has raised the costs of doing business to an extent that the consumers are the ones who suffer. The lack of a proper public transport infrastructure makes it difficult for the lower class to continue on with their daily activities. The poor goes into a deep downward spiral of being poor always. Check these two articles out on the high costs of being poor in America.
It’s been sometime since I’ve last blogged. An update for my career – I’m still an account manager in IBM, but I have been transferred (in Jan 2009) to serve the mid-market segment in Singapore for the industrial sector (manufacturing, electronics, construction, property) firms. I think I prefer serving that industry better – There’s more areas for potential innovation within it.
Generally people have the perception that IBM is still a hardware/PC/laptop company, even till date. I believe it is part of my role to change that perception. I have not touched the IBM AS400 before, but feedback from my customers has led me to believe that it is one of the most stable/robust servers ever created. I want to own this machine one day.
Although hardware is an easy sell (in terms of sales cycle), it is no longer profitable with all the vendors being engaged in price wars. If I have the chance to meet you one day, I can probably share with you IBM’s acquisitions over the years. The company’s vision of building a smarter planet (http://www.asmarterplanet.com/) is pretty much in-line with my vision of “digitizing the world”, and working in ways where technology can help make the world a slightly better place.
As time moves on, I’m gradually begin to appreciate the company for what it is, and has built a love-hate relationship with this firm. It will take me months to share with you the journey and learning experience I’ve went through over here the past 5 months. Till date, I have been involved in a few global projects, and have customers calling me in from overseas to share with me their requirements after going through my repsite. .
More updates to come as we go along – There’s too much on my mind that I like to share with the world.
Amazing creativity shown in this video – However, I was expecting the PCs to gang up on the Mac, and not the Macs to gang up on the PCs since there are still more PCs than Macs.
It gets into this situation. I am skeptical of any good news regarding the current crisis the world is in, and is tired of hearing more Doomsday news and call-outs.
In the end, there’s so many directions the future can lead us to from this crisis. Nobody have the confidence to predict what will happen to the entire market. There might be wars, riots, jobless rates etc. But somehow or rather, people will survive it. That’s where our world starts all over again.
The advice I follow is – Be yourself and live life normally. Live within your means. You are not safe hoarding up on cash because inflation rates might shoot up. Your currency may devalue. There may be chaos and unrest.
You are not safe spending all your money either – I won’t need to elaborate more on that. You might think it’s a good time to buy stocks cheap, but this crisis is unlike any other crisis – The confidence in financial markets, and financial institutions are at an all-time low.
Some key quotes from the article. Probably I need to research on where MAS stands in our monetary policy. From what I see on the surface so far, they are doing a pretty decent job.
“Indian banks are not levered like American banks. Capital ratios are 12 and 13 percent, instead of 7 or 8 percent. All those exotic structures like C.D.O. and securitizations are a very tiny part of our banking system. So a lot of the temptations didn’t exist.”
“A lot of Indians, when you push them, will say that if you spend more than you earn you will get in trouble. Americans spent more than they earned.”
“Savings are important. Joint families exist. When one son moves out, the family helps them. So you don’t borrow so much from the bank.”
Seventy percent of the banking system in India is nationalized, so a strong regulator is critical, since any banking scandal amounts to a national political scandal as well.
Was reading through this article and it crystallized what I felt back in university. While reading my texts, I felt that there was too much “financial” and “money” magic in this industry. This article did a better job at describing what I should also have questioned during that time.
Probably I would have been attracted to the industry if there was not such a distinct differences on the prestige between the front-office, middle-office and back-office.
With the severity of this recession/depression, it will be weird for finance students to study and extrapolate the equity market trends and returns over the next few years. Chances are, finance students will have to study the market all over again.
That being said, I still believe in the fundamental value that the banking system provides to the economy – In terms of identifying the lemon companies, and also to provide a basis for valuing the company.
The fundamental flaw with equity market theories, or with any public companies, is the increasing pressure to deliver year-on-year profit growth. The underlying cause of this flaw can be attributed to capitalism, which states that the welfare of an economy can be measured by tangible and material consumption of the people in the economy.
The emphasis on consumerism to sustain a market based on capitalism is not feasible, and increasingly what I witness is a market trend towards a “buy more, buy more! Consume more, consume more!” mentality that is pretty retarded. People move away from their inner sense of peace and tried to seek comfort in the pursuit of material consumption.
The movie “Fight Club” summarized it well when it quoted that people have evolved to “work in jobs that they hate, to buy things that they don’t need, to impress people that they don’t like.”
I think one of the things that most people fail to consider when getting a new apartment is how they want to furnish the lightings on their homes. Very often, you think about the type and kind of furniture that you want, the colors of the walls, and the different accessories that you want to install in your home.
While surfing around, I found a site that sells light fixtures online. I didn’t realize the variety of home lighting fixtures that are online – such as pendants, chandeliers, and wall scounces etc.
Probably I can get a chandelier for my future home?
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