As for the expectation of a linear sales concept, maybe you should go to MBA school first. Sales are always non-linear. Sales build upon the concept that everyone else wants it too. You can make a killing that way. And it applies to surgical concepts much more clearly. You can easily sell a surgery on the concept that everyone else is doing it. That's how you make the big bucks. That's how we fund the real work.

The sad thing here is that you still look at economies with your Adan Smith knowledge. They are much more complex than Adan Smith could have ever dreamed of. Adam Smith only looked at a few fundamental influences, but the modern world is such that if you can't do a twenty dimensional analysis of financial derivatives, you ain't shit. This world is way beyond any normal person, and I only know it because I know physics. How economies work is far more complex than anyone like Adam Smith could ever understand. It's something that only John Nash could understand. But he was crazy, but that says something about economies, doesn't it? But until you are willing to accept that Adam's Smith's antiquated theories don't work anymore, there' really no use talking. Enter the Twenty First Century.

The truth of the C4C deal is that it's going to hurt poorer people (because it destroys cars they could drive, or the resources they could afford to fix up their cars), increase emissions and gas usage in the short term (did you know that the clunkers have to be towed away from the lot? Any idea what kind of gas mileage a loaded tow truck gets?), and will put more people in debt (as they take on payments on a car over a car that's usually paid off).

What Congress didn't expect was the rush on the deal. We'll do another $1 Billion extension, and that will probably be everyone who wants the deal. People acted so quickly because they knew the deal was limited. I don't want the deal. Hell, I have a car and don't drive. But I'm trying to offload that rare antique Mercedes. That ain't so easy these days. The rich guys got burned, and they don't have the cash.

And do we really have no idea on earthly meddling? Come on, we've done quite a lot of it. We're pretty good at it, actually. How's your grandma or mom doing with Social Security? Yeah it's not enough, but maybe you're savings might pitch in. But your savings probably didn't do much better than Social Security did. Mine have done better than Social Security. Mine have always been in Exxon-Mobile (obviously under different names). And my government has fought many wars to secure the financial interests of this company. And they always will. Exxon-Mobile stock is like buying government bonds, except they have a better return. We stockholders can always rest assured that our government will always protect our interests. As for the people that might reside within United States borders, you are on your own. You are not a shareholder, so you are only worth you weight in cow feed.

The problem here is that the Democrats have no earthly idea how people will react to government meddling, yet they want to take control of our health care decisions, instead of finding ways of put control back in our hands. That's not merely dumb; it's dangerous.

How this relates to health care is beyond me. Incentives don't work very well in medicine. If your doctor offers you a two for one deal on colonoscopies, will you get two instead of the one you need? How about appendix surgery? Oops, you can only get one of those. But are you going to have your appendix removed if it's half-priced? No, you'll have your appendix removed when you need it removed no matter what the cost is. Now with a decent health care plan, there should be about 30 million extra customers in theory. But the theory doesn't hold up so well. Hospitals that accept Medicare (most hospitals) already have to treat emergencies regardless of whether the patient can pay. Hospitals deal with this by charging everyone else a little more. Except for those of us uninsured who can pay, of course. We get charged three times as much. Regardless of the accounting, the uninsured still get needed treatment and someone is paying for it. If insurance companies are the compassionate free market wonders conservatives think they are, then your insurance premium should go down about 5% because they no longer have to pay for the uninsured. Of course, that won't happen, their revenues will just increase by 5%. And all of that new revenue is just gravy. It will increase their profit margins by about 50%. You'd think such an increase would be enough to compete against a government run program, but it's not. Insurance companies are so wildly inefficient that there is no way they could ever compete against a government program. The most efficient insurance companies operate with about a 30% overhead cost. They would be laughed out of any other industry with that kind of waste. Hell, Medicare can do it with 5% overhead. When a government program is kicking your ass that hard, you don't deserve to be in business.