Dear dental implants (continued)

To begin with, implants are great, but not cheap. This was even more the case at their inception; a tiny market for an extra-small, precise part made of Titanium alloy, plus a delicate and staged procedure explain their high price back then and still today. Their growing popularity didn’t have a huge impact on their cost and having had these procedures over the last 4 decades, I would be the first to say they’ve climbed faster than inflation in spite of some economies of scale. 

Today, the worldwide market for that product and procedure is about $5 billion, with about 5 million units installed. In the United States, the cost for the implant alone is between $1,500 to $3,500 to which a crown must be added, pushing the price range for the set from a staggering $2,500 to $5,000 for a full set. This doesn’t include the bone graft that could run from $500 to $1,500. Still an awful lot of money!

Sure discounters of variable repute claim low-ball prices that aren’t real (see billboard). Western Europe is considerably cheaper, but still expensive. In France an implant and a crown runs between $1,500 to $2,500, but nearby Hungary and Turkey offer significantly better prices (at least on paper). The same is true in America with Mexico and Costa Rica, or Thailand and India if one lives in an expensive Asian location. 

This form of medical tourism isn’t a panacea, however. It takes 3 to 4 month for a graft to take hold, the same time for the implant to be ready to receive the crown, so one has to add multiple trips, costly airfares, hotel stays and living expenses while the process goes on, not to mention crossing one’s fingers while hoping everything will go as plan without a hitch. Sure, vacations can be weaved into that time frame, but it’s far from being as easy as it would seem. 

As always, patients get what they pay for!

What makes Marcel Hirscher want to race again?

I was surprised but not quite shocked when I heard that Hirscher, who retired in 2019 while still the world’s best male Alpine skier, plans to return to competition next season for the Netherlands. 

Like many other ski enthusiasts, I’m dubious that at 35 it will be easy for him, especially on the account that he’s ranked 300th in slalom and 777th in giant slalom, so my main question is why do it in the first place? He says it’s passion for the sport, something I can buy up to a point.

Would it be just money? At the end of his career, Marcel Hirscher was making 2 million euros per year, not small change for a skier. When one stops racing at the level he enjoyed, cash can flow out very fast, especially if you contemplate starting your own ski brand, buying a factory for it, and be faced with non-stop financial demands. I suppose that Red Bull is now picking up the tab, but his net worth might have been a bit drained, which is never a heartwarming feeling. 

There’s also the addictive nature of the show biz that sports have become. The constant surge of adrenaline, the adulation of fans, the celebrity status and all the goodies attached to it. Then there are family issues. He separated in 2021 from his wife after thirteen years of living together and two children, something that will cost him both emotionally and financially. 

Rejoining ski racing might be a good way to fill out that significant void that occurred on the heels of Covid. At any rate, my point is that there’s much more than just “passion” for the sport involved in the champion’s decision. I wish him well and hope he can reach the new pinnacle he’s after!

How to fund that extra trip?

A few nights ago we had the pleasure to have, let’s call him Art, for dinner. He was part of a tour going through the various national parks that are located all around Park City, and was making a stop with his fellow travelers in our town. 

Art lives in New Jersey, we had met on a vacation tour to Japan in 2018 and had stayed in touch with him since that time. Art is 82 but quite energetic and remains an avid globe-trotter. 

He had just returned from a tour in Iceland, and before he had time to unpack, he was solicited by his tour-operator to do one more tour starting and finishing in Denver and going through a bunch of National Parks including Arches, Tetons, Yellowstone and Mt. Rushmore to list a few. 

At first, he wasn’t interested as he had used up his vacation budget for 2023, but as he was told that this particular tour would be taken out of the company’s calendar in 2024, he felt the urge to do it, no matter what. 

Since he had no more cash on hand there was a problem and in what could be seen as a desperate move to some, he decided to tap into the money he had set aside for his funeral to finance the trip! 

Something I can only see as creative, action-oriented and life-loving. For all of us, staying on the sidelines, an example to follow!

Among its allies, who helps Ukraine the most?

My wife asked me the other day: "Besides the US, how much the allied countries pledged to Ukraine to support its fight against the Russian invader?"

I responded that I wasn’t sure about the other countries’ contribution. I did some research and found out that, as of February 2023 (some 3 month ago), a total 144 billion Euros ($150 billion) had been pledged by 16 countries with the United State sharing about half of the burden with a 73.2 ($75) billion Euros contribution. 

Not bad for a country straddled with more than $31 trillion dollar in public debt. 

Meanwhile, European institutions and countries have committed a combined 54.9 billion euros in aid to Ukraine, with Germany providing the highest amount. France didn’t break any record.

Both Germany and France are members of the European Union, and their individual reflect the commitments by using each country's contributions to the overall EU budget and shares in the European Investment Bank. 

To keep things into perspective, and based on each country’s gross domestic product, Ukraine’s neighbors are providing the most support. Estonia and Latvia have each sent aid totaling more than one percent of their gross domestic product, according to the tracker. Lithuania, Poland and Bulgaria also stand out among the highest by share of GDP. 

Wealthy Switzerland, on the other hand, has committed aid representing only 0.03% of its GDP, the lowest for European countries in this data, while the US has committed 0.37% of its GDP. Heidi’s countrymen still love Russians’ money and that of its oligarchs!

Mormon religion: cult or scam?

Back in 2019, David Nielsen, an investment portfolio manager for the Mormon Church somehow went public and filed a whistle-blower complaint with the IRA, claiming that under the cover of “charity” the organization violated the church tax exempt status by directing funds built from member donations to bail out business linked to the church. 

More recently, the news show 60 minutes interviewed Nielsen and I learned that each year, the Mormons collects around $7 billion in contributions from their 17 million members who are supposed to shell out 10% of their income. That money is used to pay the church's expenses, build temples and pay for other things. 

The remaining money, about $1 billion a year, is put into a reserve fund at Ensign Peak and has grown since to $130 billion. That’s a lot of money considering that unlike other nonprofits, religious organizations don’t have to fully disclose all financial information to the IRS. Even, if they could there would be plenty of ways to hide illicit fund distribution to religious leaders, but with that provision it’s up to one imagination’s to envision what goes on. 

As I have said before, any religion is irrational, but Mormonism doctrine goes a step farther and belong to the realm of absurdity. So while the paying faithfuls are brainwashed since childhood, it’s easy to imagine that the church leadership might be consumed by getting rewarded for their work… 

Mormonism could in fact be a huge money making machine for some of its cadre and that’s why it proselytes as much as it does. It is said that sunshine is the best disinfectant, but in the absence of transparency all bets are off... 

Falling birth-rate, AI, robots and economy

A lot of so-called economists are deploring the low birth-rate that has spread in developed countries and particularly, let’s admit it, into the white race. 

They claim that there won’t be enough hands to take care of the aging baby-boomers and to take care of the countries lowly and dirty work no one likes to do, but they fail to address the diminished need for people labor as we enter an unprecedented era for artificial intelligence and robotics that both will make humans less in demand.

It also ignores the fact that with widespread information about the life of famous people making fortunes, no one wants to works for peanuts anymore. 

So in order to keep going, society in these well-off countries will have to bite the bullet and offer some decent living wages to its lower strata of workers, or accept more non-white to work for low wages if it doesn’t want to shut down. 

What this means is that society will have to flatten its socioeconomic differences, rich and well-to-do will have to enjoy life a little bit less, quit extravagance, and offensive display of wealth, while raising the conditions of those who do the work no one else want to touch...

Is Tapie the French Trump?

During the 2016 Republican Primary, Trump made a splashy entry on the US political scene. At first, we found his little show quite entertaining, but soon our amusement turned into nightmare, as he got into the White House. 

Back in those days, I had told my wife: “Trump is the American version of France’s Bernard Tapie!” I think I was right, and between Trump, Tapie and Berlusconi, the three men shares a lot in terms of being swindlers, politicians, sport team owners and entertainers. 

Unlike Trump, Tapie wasn’t born into money and this is probably why he could end up becoming French president. Interestingly, Tapie built his fortune and reputation by preying on failing companies during the 1980s. 

Typically, in those days he would buy a company for one token franc (about 15 cents), purchase the debt, generally owned by a state-controlled bank for pennies on the dollar, then recast the original debt amount as receivable owned to him, rig the accounting and find a sucker to buy the company later for a huge amount of money. 

It worked like that: 

• La Vie Claire (organic food stores) bought in 1980 for 15 cents and resold for (only) $1.5 million to Distriborg in 1995.
• Terraillon (bathroom scales) bought in 1981 for 15 cents and sold for $19 million to Measurement Specialties in 1986. 
• Look (ski bindings) bought in 1983 for 15 cents and sold $40 million to Ebel watches in 1988.  
• Testut (scales) bought in 1983 for 15 cents and sold by the French government for an undisclosed amount to Mettler-Toledo in 1999. 
• Wonder (household batteries) bought in 1984 for 15 cents and sold for $72 million to Ralston in 1988. 
• Donnay (tennis rackets) bought in 1988 for 15 cents and sold $15 million to a Belgian government agency in 1991, etc. 

All along, Tapie was in cahoots with then French president, François Mitterand who used taxpayers money to forgive the discounted bank debt. 

This of course was just the beginning of Tapie’s checkered career that involved being a TV personality, a sport team owner, the heister of Adidas, a politician, a jail prisoner and even a stint as a comedian. 

To this day, Tapie’s populist flair still enjoys a fair amount of favorable opinions in France in spite of his highly questionable path to fame. 

As you can see, Trump has some way to go before he catches up with my (infamous) countryman!

America’s unsustainable upward spiral

Money is everything in America. You need a lot of it, if you’re committed to the American Dream.
This means you’ll work harder, longer hours and will try to become good at what to do, in order to make more money.

When you make more money, you’re able to buy more possessions, stretch your purchasing power a bit more, and of course will need to borrow even more, which adds pressure on working a bit harder in order to still make more money.

That way, you’ll better be able to keep up with Joneses or reach out for the lofty goals you’ve set for yourself and that have now become a moving target. This sets a never-ending pursuit and places you on an endless and unsustainable upward spiral.

The spiral gets all your attention, generates more stress than you can handle and life passes you by...