One huge benefit of temporarily living outside of the US is the chance to temporarily forget.  That is, the chance to forget, or at least minimize, complex and polarizing problems that exist today in the US.  While not necessarily wholly unique to the US, these are the issues I most dread being confronted with in the daily news upon our return.

(1) Mass shootings.  (2) The Affordable Care Act/Obamacare.  (3) Federal government spending.  (4) Miley Cyrus’ tongue.  Before someone tunes out thinking this is a political rant based on items 2 & 3 – It’s not, as on both those points it’s a leadership rant – and there is equal blame on both sides of the political aisle.

(1) US Mass shootings.  Unfortunately, these “isolated incidents” as mass shootings are called no longer seem that “isolated” but rather have become a part of the US DNA, as a society we are becoming desensitized to this horror and our elected officials have demonstrated no competency at reversing the mass-shooting trend.

With way too much regularity, there is news of another mass shooting.  Years ago, it was big news to report a murder on the evening news.  Today, unless the victim or assailant is personally known, most people don’t even bat an eye at the reporting of a murder.  With the frequency we now experience mass shootings, how long until we only give a passing glance to the latest reported incident when we are not directly personally affected.

We can’t even seem to agree on the number of mass shootings. CBS evening news recently reported 85 dead in 11 mass shootings so far in 2013.  According to a recent USA Today article, 121 people have died in 26 mass shootings this year.  Per Reddit/Gunsarecool there have been 316 mass shootings in the US so far this year (Reddit defines a mass shooting as > 4 people shot, not necessarily killed, hence the greater number of shootings).

Our government response too often rings hollow.  The repeating pattern seems to be (a) mass shooting occurs, (b) our leaders emotionally state “we have to fix this”, (c) nothing is fixed or changed, repeat pattern a, b, c, a, b, c …

(2) Affordable Care Act/Obamacare.  I doubt the real increased costs or potential savings will be known until it’s fully implemented, but it is clear that confusion reigns.  To help clear the confusion both political sides state their case with amazingly precise and often incorrectly applied statistics.  And at the end of the day, I am simply worried that thirty years from now both federal and state budgets will be choked with yet another government program whose impact was not correctly estimated or planned for when implemented.

I find it amusing that people on either side of the issue state with certainty the additional expense or savings per family as a result of this program.  I’ve seen personal friends post how much more expensive their new insurance will be based on their new cost estimate.  I’ve seen news reports of how much certain people will save.  Regardless, we are currently saddled with a system that cannot seem to correctly apply government credits in either direction, so it’s currently unclear who is really saving or spending more and to what extremes.  And like any forecast or estimate, it is wrong by default, the only question is how far off?

Both sides liberally misapply statistics in their arguments.  Republicans have called it the biggest entitlement ever and base their math off of a comparison to the initial projections (instead of the actual costs) of other programs like social security and Medicaid.  Democrats base their savings estimates against decreases from forecast spending (instead of against current spend levels).  Both methods of comparison play with the truth, rather than strive to achieve it.

Perhaps it’s the history of other large federal government programs (under Democrats and Republicans) that make me the most nervous about Obamacare.  For example, long-term program costs have been woefully underestimated on many other federal government programs.  The actual cost of Medicare and Medicaid since inception are staggering multiples higher than initial government forecasts.  Is there a bit of evidence to suggest this program will be any different?  Additionally, few ever point to the federal government as the model of efficiency.  Personally, I hate inefficiency in my work, in my personal life and also in tax-spent endeavors.  How many millions of your tax dollars were recently spent to design the exchanges that don’t work properly?  How many more millions are now being spent to fix the exchanges?  But should anyone really be surprised that a federal government program is inefficient?

(3) Federal government spending.  The train wreck is so easy to see in other aspects of life.  Imagine a family that makes $50K per year but spends $72K per year, already owes $347K and wants to borrow more.  Would you loan them more money?  Would you listen to the husband or wife who said they were being “responsible” by increasing the amount they borrow each year?  These are obviously rhetorical questions.  How about a company that operated this way? The CEO would eventually be fired and the company would be delisted.  Unfortunately, those example numbers are reflective of our 2012 government economics, but on a much larger level.

In 1993, our debt ceiling was ~$5 trillion.  In 2003 it was ~$8 trillion.  Today it is ~$17 trillion.  When the latest debt-ceiling raise was put into effect the government cheered and the stock market rallied.  My first thought was who would be dumb enough to loan our country more money.  I’ve heard the argument that as a percent of GDP, our debt level has actually stabilized, so even though it is rising in absolute terms there is no need for concern.  This reminds me of the person we’ve all seen recently on the evening news – someone understandably upset at having their home taken away because the bank put them in a loan they could have never rationally expected to pay.  I can see the same general dialogue with someone on the news in the future stating disbelief that our government has done “this” to us as we were told borrowing more was the “responsible” thing to do.

I am not smart enough to understand all the complexities of the national economy.  However, it is crystal clear that a family, a small company or a large company (many of which are larger than many countries) cannot operate this way long-term and to some degree, this must be true for our country.  One on one, I suspect most Democrat and Republican elected officials would at least partially share this concern but collectively they are unable to do anything about it, which is a shame.  And a huge failure of leadership.

(4) Miley Cyrus’ tongue.  The item itself defines the issue.  I have nothing else to offer.