All Will Be Revealed in Vermont, Postscript on ACA Tea Party

I'm in a tempest in Vermont, very high stakes.  But information is coming out of Montpelier so slowly that it would be a mistake to come to conclusions too early.   Until 10 days ago I thought my company had been underbid... we waited though to see the contract.   Our bid was lower and our qualification score higher.

In court tomorrow.

But my mind is still idling, so let me say a couple of things about ACA, the Affordable Care Act, monikered "Obamacare".

"Half of the population spends little or nothing on health care, while 5 percent of the population spends almost half of the total amount.2 In 2002, the 5 percent of the U.S. community (civilian noninstitutionalized) population that spent the most on health care accounted for 49 percent of overall U.S. health care spending (Chart 1, 40 KB). Among this group, annual medical expenses (exclusive of health insurance premiums) equaled or exceeded $11,487 per person."  Mark W. Stanton, M.A. www.ahrq.gov

In other words, the USA already ate 90% of the public health care apple with Medicare and Medicaid.  The ACA will neither do much for the young (a small percentage of whom need care) nor for costs (we keep doing major intervention on elderly).  Public health care works in Europe because the average person there realizes something most Americans haven't come to grips with.  We are all gonna die some day.   I have had to watch 3 of my 4 grandparents basically be tortured to death with extended care.

Bad Statistics: The Jumping Off Point for E-Waste

Well, since EPA and Basel Secretariat won't defend themselves from the bully in Seattle, it seems to fall on me to defend sanity.   Should poor people be allowed to accept donations from, and do business, with well meaning rich people?   My answer is yes.   HR2284 says no, and makes that opinion law.

Using Halloway (post yesterday) as a jumping off point, let's look at all the assumptions for the case banning trade in used electronics between rich nations and poor.

They keep saying 80-90% of electronics exported are burned in horrific condtions.

" ..it has been widely reported that 90 percent of the USA's e-waste ends up in either China or Nigeria—a figure that appears to originate from an estimate made by Jim Puckett, Director of the Basel Action Network. "

It has been widely reported, indeed.   The figure "appears to originate" from Basel Action Network.  Basel Action Network credits the statistic from a 2002 interview they did with my buddy Mike at DMC.   My buddy Mike says, via this blog, that he was including ALL exports - clean baled steel, demanufactured copper, aluminum, plastic - everything that comes out of electronics.  And he meant exports to Europe (printed circuit boards) as well.

The actual studies with actual data show an imperfect but rational marketplace.  85% of used electronics imported into Africa are working or repaired.  The other statistic is that MOST Africans can only afford a used device - for now.  China has a plan to change that.


African business people can't afford to pay $10 to ship an item worth $3.52 in scrap.   BAN says that a good unit would pay for the transport of the bad units... but that's only if the African Geek is willing to donate his share of the profits to disposing YOUR junk.  Meaning he would have to charge you, or lose his money.  The more rational step is for the African to be very careful about picking and choosing items he can repair and reuse.


- The goods from the USA are mostly good.
- The bads at the dump are mostly generated over there (after decades of reuse).
- The mostly good were mostly purchased at thrift and second hand shops in the USA/EU
- China and other rapidly-ermerging nations are a new source of cheap and "gently used" goods


The question for China and USA is, how do we make money selling into this market?  Do we resell our used cars and electronics for their best value, giving us an incentive to take care of them?  Or do we just withdraw, to keep our consciences shiny and our Goodwills and Salvation Armies beyond the reproach of export markets?  Because THAT's where the Africans (and Haitians, and South Americans) buy from, the used goods marketplaces in USA and Europe.  And the number of "rich" people (used goods owners) doubles each year - and they are cropping up everywhere.


Salvation Army and Goodwill have competition.  Not just from for-profits like Savers and eBay.  The used goods market is growing as the world economy grows.   New consumers are created as wifi and electric cable wrangles its way into the slums, and as slumdogs become middle class, they generate their own used display devices, laptops, and cell phones.  The cup of used goods runneth over.  But the solution is not to ban the poorest from getting the leftovers.

The Competition for Used TV Supply

In the Peru blogs, I described how used TVs from China were found in the markets where I used to sell used USA CRT televisions.

The people who used to buy USA used repairable / working TVs now buy Chinese repairable / working TVs.

Is the solution a ban on exports of used TVs from China to South America?  Or does that just mean that South America will have neither USA nor Chinese used (affordable) TVS?

First we ban USA "e-waste" exports, then we convince China to be afraid of brown children who receive ewaste...?

thanks to Adam Minter at Shanghaiscrap.com  for the link to the photo above, from an article at Southern China Weekly.