Is It Still Hip And Cool…..

…When Grandma joins Facebook? An interesting little article from CNN says that the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is women 55 years old and greater – a stunning 550% growth rate in just six months.

There are now about 1.5 million female users older than 55 on the site, the group says — roughly a 550 percent increase over six months ago. By comparison, membership among people younger than 25 grew by less than 20 percent over the same period, Inside Facebook says.

Facebook now says it has 200 million users, making its user base larger than the populations of all the world’s countries except China, India, the United States and Indonesia. Such a vast presence, coupled with news media buzz about all social media, has pushed online social networking to a “tipping point,” said Amanda Lenhart, a senior research specialist at the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Fogg, the Stanford instructor, said the trend has spread outward from college towns, where Facebook was first adopted, and inward from the American coasts. Facebook today has a global presence, with 70 percent of users living outside the U.S., the site says.

“We’ve reached critical mass where there’s been enough talk about Facebook and people have gotten so many invitations from their friends, they’re going, ‘OK, what is this Facebook thing? I’ve got to get onboard or I’m going to be left in the dust,’ ” Fogg said.

Interesting trend. There are quotes in the article from grandmothers who have joined specifically to stay in touch with their grandkids.

A note from a different time:

When my grandmother was still alive, right up until she was about 98, I think (she lived to 103), all of us grandchildren could expect a phone call  at about 5am on our birthdays. I remember picking up the phone, grumbling about who would call at that hour, only to be greeted with a thin voice with a heavy Norwegian accent that she never lost, singing Happy Birthday.

Then we’d catch up with what had been happening in both our lives since we last talked.

All of us miss that call now.

(I’ve written about her before.)

A Crooked Dealer And A Rigged Game

Sally C. Pipes, of the Pacific Research Institute, writes a piece today for the Examiner about the Obama health care plan. Let’s just say it’s not at all complimentary.

But private plans would face significant disadvantages from the start. Legislators will impose a host of burdensome regulations on policies sold through the Exchange. This will drive up costs for companies that participate.

For example, Democrats have indicated that insurers will have to comply with “community rating” and “guaranteed issue” regulations in order to sell their policies through the Exchange.

Community rating prohibits insurers from setting premiums according to an applicant’s health status; instead, insurers must charge the same price to all members of a particular demographic group.

Guaranteed issue, meanwhile, forces insurers to accept all applicants, regardless of family history or pre-existing conditions. It’s easy to see how regulations like these drive up the price of insurance.

If there were a “guaranteed issue” law for fire insurance, no one would buy coverage unless his or her home was actually on fire. With health insurance, negative selection would be just as bad. Most patients would simply avoid purchasing insurance until they got sick. After all, if you can’t be turned down when you are sick, why should you bother wasting money on insurance when you don’t need it?

Sick patients cost more, of course. Insurance premiums would gradually become more and more expensive, because the only people in the insurance pool would be ill.

It’s a longish piece and the excerpt does not do it justice. Please head over and read the whole thing. I came away with one important fact from it: the game is heavily rigged. It looks fair, but it is not. Here’s a suggestion that will never be taken: make it level. Require the Obama plan to turn a profit or at least break even. Do not allow it to become a gaping hole into which taxpayer dollars are poured endlessly until all the money is gone.

Like I said, that one will  never be taken.

Mirages

Robert Samuelson points out that Obama’s promises are mirages.

Since the dawn of the Industrial Age, this has been simple: produce more with less. (”Productivity,” in economic jargon.) Mass markets developed for clothes, cars, computers and much more because declining costs expanded production. Living standards rose. By contrast, the logic of the “post-material economy” is just the opposite: spend more and get less.

Consider global warming. The centerpiece of Obama’s agenda is a “cap-and-trade” program. This would be, in effect, a tax on fossil fuels (oil, coal, natural gas). The idea is to raise their prices so that households and businesses use less or switch to costlier “alternative” energy sources such as solar. In general, we would spend more on energy and get less of it.

Basing public policy on “Then a miracle happens” is not a good idea. Trading real rewards and economic growth for paying more for less is more than just bad policy. It is economic suicide. At some point, not far in the future, the real bill for all this feel-good policy will come due. When it does astronomical taxes will become a crushing reality.

This is going to be a rough ride, folks.