Discovering the New Age, Part 4
Sorting out Mind from Emotion
The Law of Economy and Waste
Doris just received a very large credit card and decided to make the most of it. Unfortunately she was a captive of her own emotional desires and not only overspent, but spent wastefully. Instead of checking for sales and finding the best price she often spent more than double what she had to on various products. Then when a store brand would do the job she would buy the much more expensive name brand. In addition to this she would often buy overlapping products. For instance, she had many more shoes than she needed and three cell phones when all she needed was one.
Shirley also received the same card, but took a reasonable approach and just used it when it was logically necessary. She shopped around and made sure she got the best price on needed items and used store brand and generic items when there was negligible difference in the quality. She refused to buy overlapping products and just purchased what she could efficiently use.
By using her mind and common sense Shirley subjected herself to the Law of Economy.
And what is that? DK mentions it often in the Bailey writings. It is basically this.
The creative Intelligence of the Universe follows a path which produces the greatest efficiency while using the smallest possible expenditure of energy. Those who follow the Law of Economy produce very little if any waste.
The Law of Economy can be seen at play from the sub atomic level on up to atoms, molecules, cells and all living things. The efficiency of nature is spectacular indeed.
We human beings have made many advancements in technology by observing nature, but we seem to really lag behind in incorporating this law in our lives and politics. Too many of us are like Doris and not enough like Shirley.
Unfortunately, most governments throw efficiency and the Law of Economy out the window and spend like Doris, often with no means to pay the final bill.
Here is the really strange part. Many who are quite conscientious about their personal budget and see themselves as common sense Aquarians will support extremely wasteful government spending. If government borrows to spend on a product or service they approve of, they give it their support while not even making a smidgen of effort to calculate the waste involved or voice concern.
Supporting government programs involving extreme waste is like being married to Doris and just trusting that she is doing the best possible job in making effective use of her credit card.
Does such wrong-headed support belong to the emotional Piscean mind or the mental Aquarian?
The answer should be obvious.
There is tremendous waste and inefficiency in most levels of government “help” and spending. I’ll just pick one – healthcare.
Before government started allocating spending on its citizens in an attempt to lower healthcare costs health care was pretty reasonable. I know because I had an accident at the age of 13 in 1958 that caused me to undergo six operations and spend a total of three months in the hospital. Four of those operations were by a renown specialist, the equivalent of which would charge a huge amount today.
My first stay in the hospital lasted a month and my room cost was $8.00 a day. The most expensive room was $14.00, but being concerned about money and having no insurance we opted for the most economical available.
$8 in 1958 dollars equals just $66.50 in 2016 dollars. That was a bargain any way you look at it.
The accident happened at the worst possible time. My Mom just divorced my Dad and received no child support. Our only means of support was from both of us picking fruit in the summer and my mom worked for near minimum wage at a potato processing plant for the rest of the year.
Could a fruit picker with no insurance pay off major surgery and a month’s stay in the hospital today? Not hardly. Today’s bill could easily run a quarter of a million dollars.
Now here is the crazy part. We paid off all the medical bills using our own money with no help from the government or insurance companies. My mom did take out a loan, but paid it off.
For later corrective surgery we did receive some help from a private charity, but again government was not needed or involved.
Today a typical stay in the hospital is around $4,000 a day or more. That means if I had to stay in the hospital today, the cost would be about 500 times more than in 1958. Adjusting for inflation it would still be about sixty times as much.
The irony is that, today, gas prices are a primary sore point with the public, the media and politicians. Everyone wants to investigate “Big Oil” for gouging us. Many also want to penalize them by taxing more of their profits.
But, even though gas prices seem high we should be praising big oil for holding their prices as low as they are.
The price of gas in 1958 was 39 cents a gallon in the area where I lived, and no one was grumbling about Big Oil. If the price of gas had risen 500 times, it would now cost $199.50 a gallon!
Why is it that by 2016 the price of gas and many other items has risen less than ten times the 1958 price, whereas a hospital room has risen around 500 times? It is puzzling that no one is asking this question. Even more puzzling is why people are not grumbling more about big hospital than they are about big oil or other commodities.
This great inefficiency started to plague us about the time that government stepped in to help us with our medical bills in the form of Medicare and Medicaid.
When these programs started in 1965, they seemed like a good idea to many, especially in consideration of the cost projections at the time. The public was sold on the idea that Medicare’s $3 billion cost in 1966 would only reach an inflation-adjusted $12.0 billion by 1990. The actual cost in 1990 was a whopping $67 billion. The “experts” were off by 7.44 times. Total Medicare spending reached $440 billion for fiscal year 2007, or 16 percent of all federal spending. Since that time, spending has continued to rise.
The only larger categories of federal spending are Social Security and defense.
The question is whether the bill could have even passed if the public had been given an accurate representation of what the actual cost would be.
In addition to this, the annual cost to taxpayers of Medicare and Medicaid fraud (not counting waste) is estimated to be around $100 billion. One estimate of the fraud of the whole health care system is $272 billion a year.
The bottom line is that there is no way one can claim he is in harmony with the Aquarian energies of the mind when if he supports programs that create such extreme waste. Anyone not ruled by pure emotion would support the elimination of waste and applying the Law of Economy before spending money on new programs that will do more of the same.
When I tell someone today. who thinks the government is doing a great job with our medical dollars, about the time before such programs when even a fruit picker did not need insurance because he could pay his own way, his eyes just glaze over and mumbles something to the effect that, “things are different today.”
Yes, things are different today and not in a good way, Government is extremely inefficient with our money in most areas of endeavor and the common sense, mental, Aquarian, new age attitude should be to shout, “Stop! Let us fix this problem before we throw even more money at such a broken system.”
Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed;
For he saith, By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom; for I am prudent: and I have removed the bounds of the people, and have robbed their treasures, and I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man:
And my hand hath found as a nest the riches of the people: and as one gathereth eggs that are left, have I gathered all the earth; and there was none that moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or peeped.
Isaiah 10:1, 13-14
For Part 5 GO HERE
Copyright 2016 by J J Dewey
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