Archive for April, 2007

Health Care Strained in Canada

Sunday, April 8th, 2007

I lived in Canada for 2 years and was torn between the social promise of free healthcare and the quality of service and the long wait when anyone anytime can get medical care.

This week the Heart Institute in Montreal started turning away patients according to their press release. It was already bad enough having to wait months for surgeries and years for some specialists. Now please keep away from the emergency rooms?

MONTREAL, April 5 /CNW Telbec/ - Due to a very high volume of patients, the Montreal Heart Institute (MHI) is asking people to avoid its emergency department as much as possible for the next 24 hours. The MHI would like to reassure the public that it will continue to provide emergency care.

Despite rising health care costs in the US at least we have immediate access. Which is what heart patients want in an emergency situation. Waiting 24 hours? Some may not have 24 hours left…

Th21911

Technorati Tags: , ,

Posted in business models | No Comments »

Weak Dollar Poorer Nation

Saturday, April 7th, 2007

Something unnatural happened in the Wealth of Nations. As an economist in school I learned that weak dollar helps exports, employment and growth. All in all if the dollar falls imported goods may be more expensive but everything else is supposed to be positive.

Some good old rules are getting broken…

  • Despite 12% drop in the dollar in the last 2 years and 46% drop in the last 5 against the Euro the US growth is behind that of Germany and even the EuroZone. They were supposed to be shrinking under the pressure of the cheap US exports… It turns out we are increasingly competing globally with companies that source products from the same place we do: China. And the Chinese currency is pegged to the dollar. The cheaper US exports get, the cheaper Chinese exports get…

Picture 2-6

  • If we take two graduating buddies (Class of 2002) from the same midwest College split up and one lives in Germany the other one in Chicago the real cost of currency becomes real for them. If the two make the same money for the last 5 years what they made when they graduated… the German fellow would have over twice as much in dollars as his Chicago buddy by 2007 assuming they save at the same rate…
  • The Chicago house one of them bought that appreciated 50% in those 5 years would have been flat counted in Euros. The same house in Frankfurt appreciating 50% would have doubled in price if measured in dollars..

Maybe all in all it is a good thing considering someone has to buy up all the savings and assets we accumulate over the years as I wrote in my prior article… We expected Chinese investors but we may have to take some Euros as well…

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , ,

Posted in Business, Productivity, Wealth | No Comments »

Anticipating 2088

Friday, April 6th, 2007

As Futurologists go few of us have the lifespan to see whether their predictions come true or not.

There are popular visionaries like Karl Fisch, a Colorado teacher of the Shift Happens fame and there are the commercial dreamers of the Future is Wild project that produce yet another insight 100-million year in the future.

(My Karl Fisch favorite is that “by 2049 a $1000 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the human race“.)

An interesting and more pragmatic approach is what the University of Washington professors do when each faculty publishes their predictions for just around the corner, say the year 2088.

Some highlights from the UW Professors:

- Technology will make prisons obsolete
- Lifespan will increase to several hundred years with preventive medicine starting in the womb
- Human implant for Internet communication interface
- Nanoscale storage devices
- Professional sports will have its own higher education farm system (college alternative)
- No more phonelines
- Walk-in clinics will conduct regular full-body scans and monitor disease development to prevent all chronic disease
- Biological agents will prevent tooth decay. No more dental drills
- Alternative medicine will still be eclipsed with drugs and biological agents

Thblog3214

Technorati Tags: , ,

Posted in innovation | No Comments »

5 Things I Wish I Learned Earlier

Wednesday, April 4th, 2007

Brian Kim’s marketing-heavy website has a ton of great insights and content. One article in particular made me think about all the subjects we study in the quarter of a lifetime in our school systems and how they relate to what I do for a successful living.

In his article on the Top 5 Things That Should Be Taught In Every School there are great reminders of the basics:

  • Personal Finance
  • Effective Communication
  • Social Skills
  • Sales
  • Time Management

Looking back on an average day in the office those are really the key skills I use….

In my case the ultimate teachers became Tom Dorsey in Finance, Mahan Khalsa in Sales and David Allen and Tony Robbins in Time Management, Barbara Minto on Communication and Keith Farazzi on Social Skills.

And I barely remember the calculus, geography, physics and philosophy I took. Let alone early European literature.

Thblog21341

Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

Posted in Communication, Success, Wealth | No Comments »