Free Riding Health Care

                A claim being made against the health care system that President Obama wishes to employ for the United States is that it is unconstitutional for everyone to be forced to get their own health care and pay for it. The issue with the health care market is the existence of free-riders, which are not as large of a problem in any other market. Some people will refuse to pay for any of their health care if it is offered to them for free, which will damage the market. Even if there is universal health care, where everyone gets coverage, the U.S. still wants people to pay for extra coverage that the U.S. government does not deem mandatory.

                In general, passing the current health care mandate could be a positive for the free market of the economy, because everyone will be involved, and it will hopefully be forced to thrive, and the only people who will be harmed are those who were not paying for their health insurance in the first place. If the mandate does not pass, the people who are harmed are the people who do pay for their insurance and do not free ride on the current state of the system, as well as the workers who lose compensation because of the free riders who are abusing the system.

Tragedy of Population Growth

                The Tragedy of the commons is when people act in their own interest and use up limited resources the world has in an inefficient manner. One overlooked example of the tragedy of the commons is the literal human population. The human population has been growing at an incredibly rapid pace, doubling in the last sixty years, and is expected to reach nearly ten billion in the next forty years. Little is being done by the governments of the world to recognize how important it is to think about this growth strategically. In the current state, we do very little to deal with population growth, and it is leading to a tragedy of the commons. Millions of people are unable to do anything for the world because of their economic circumstances, and this is wasteful of them as resources. Humans have something to contribute to the quality of the world, but many are unable to gain the opportunity to do anything.

                At upcoming political summits, scientists are requesting that world governments take a serious role in helping deal with population growth. This growth is being wasted, and is contributing to the rather negative state of the current world economy. The balance between people in different parts of the world is completely out of sync, and governments need to take a step back and start working on helping to share resources that are being wasted on people that do not need them, and should be shared with those that do need them, as this could lead to total economic expansion by solving the wasting of the human resource.

Gross Domestic Prodcut news

Gross Domestic Product reports for the first quarter of the year in the United States economy were released recently, and show a mixture of positive and negative news. The negative news is that the U.S. saving rate has decreased again, which it has been doing steadily in the last few months. This is either due to optimism about the future, or a lack of choice and the latter seems to be the more likely scenario. This decrease in saving comes hand in hand with the fact that U.S. consumption is increasing, without wages or income matching that rise.

                The fact that the Gross Domestic Product as a whole increased can be seen as a positive thing, as the U.S. economy is still growing, which does not have too many drawbacks. It is also being used as a tool by the current incumbent politicians as economic expansion is a positive thing to have going for you in an election year.

                One of the biggest positives that economists have been stating with the recent news is that there are no signs that point to another economic recession occurring. Growth may not be at what is expected, but the economy seems to be working its way out of the doldrums of the last few years.