Reading twitter, I clicked over to Chris Mooney post. Chris often writes things that just make me say “huh”. In particular, I have to wonder whether Chris has ever spoken or listened to anyone whose views differ from his. Let me highlight ‘huh’ inducing statement du jour:
Granted, the new study has its weaknesses. For instance, we probably shouldn’t assume based on this paper that running out and singing the praises of clean energy and green tech, framed as a free-market solution would actually work to depolarize the climate issue. .
Does the “framed as a free-market” solution strike you as ‘interesting’? Give you pause? It did me. My reaction was Well.. duh.
Of course one shouldn’t assume that attempts to frame solutions as “free-market” makes will work to depolarize climate science. It’s one thing to present randomly chosen people with a brief article characterizing these solutions as “free market” and then see how those people respond to questions about climate change.
It’s another thing to expect people in the real world to continue to believe these solutions are free market. That fact is that “framing” a solution as “free-market” does not make it a “free market” solution. Also, in the real world, “framing” solutions as ‘free market’ often does not trick tax-payers, consumers or investors into believing those solutions are “free market”– at least not in the long term where these people might do things like read newspapers, blogs, forums and so on.
In reality: many people are aware these ‘solutions’ are heavily subsidized: heavily subsidized enterprises are not “free market”.
So, no, Chris, one should not assume “framing” solutions that are not “free-market” as “free market” will depolarize the climate issue. In fact, the inevitable segue from attempts to “frame” these solutions as “free market” to attempts to promote tax subsidizes for these “free market” solution are likely to result in some listeners concluding a “marketing type” or “professional communicator” just tried to “pull the wool over their eyes”. The listeners will get angry. Result? More polarization.
Yup. Being B.S.’d by various and sundry Cascade Kitchen Climate Counselor Communicators or whatever the heck they are never ceases to irritate me anyways.
Case in point. We are told that Obama and Xi have struck an historic climate deal in the news. Nonsense. A brief examination of the matter reveals that China has agreed to do exactly what it has been planning to do (peak emissions 2030ish) and to permit Obama to declare victory with the press. Net result? Euphoria for thousands of mindless green voters, slightly elevated blood pressure for me and other like minded folk.
Re: Mark+Bofill (Nov 12 12:50),
Business as usual for this administration. What’s really sad is that a liberal I know is still upset about Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” thing after the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq while not comprehending that Obama has done exactly the same thing over and over with far less justification. Major world leaders like Putin and Xi are playing him like a violin and most of the press still hasn’t caught on.
Say. I hadn’t really thought that through yet.
If everybody accepts that China is going to peak 2030ish and that this is a good thing, jolly good hip ho and away we go, adhering to this historic climate agreement, then does that mean the greens should all quit fantasizing about keeping CO2 under 450 ppm or 500 ppm or whatever the dream target is these days? What do you guys think?
It sounds like I’m just being a smart ass (or trying to be one) as usual, but I’m actually quite serious. Will the ‘keep ppms below level X’ mantra die out & become an incorrect / unpopular idea? Or does Obama no longer have that sort of clout / will people instead conclude that his historic deal is crap that doesn’t accomplish anything? (EDIT: my answer, I’m not sure, but I suspect that the answer is NO, this won’t die out. ‘Hardcore’ alarmists will disapprove of this ‘historic agreement’ as much as skeptics, I think)
The one single act of government which could stimulate the free market in America to work its magic in creating alternatives to carbon fuels would be to adopt a stiff non-neutral carbon tax, one which artificially imposes severe economic pressures against the continued use of all carbon fuels.
Regardless of which party controls Congress, a stiff tax on carbon will never be enacted.
However, it is my opinion that President Obama has not gone nearly as far as the 2009 Endangerment Finding would allow him to go in decarbonizing the American economy, if he really wanted to push his existing authority under the Clean Air Act to its limits.
If he wanted to, and without needing further enabling legislation from Congress, the President could even go as far as legally imposing a system of EPA-administered monetary penalties against carbon emitters which was the functional equivalent of a legislated carbon tax.
Assuming the President’s anti-carbon regulatory framework were to be appropriately designed and were to be properly rolled out according to well-tested rules for promulgating government environmental regulations, the framework would be perfectly legal and constitutional, and also highly resistant to potential legal challenges.
Would it be controversial? Absolutely! And it would also be ‘going rogue’ against the Congress in a way that has never before been seen in the history of American government.
But I do believe President Obama could make it stick if he were willing to defend it until the last Blue Dog Democrat dies.
Nothing short of repealing the Clean Air Act could stop him if he really wanted to go through with it, and even that might not work if he were successful in vetoing the repealing legislation.
Beta,
I’ve often heard this said. Can you give me an example where the U.S. government imposed such a tax and ‘stimulated the free market to work it’s magic’ in any other area? I’m sort of skeptical that this actually works, but I’m open to being corrected. 🙂
Mark Bofill, how about road construction?
As I’ve said elsewhere, there haven’t been many examples of a thriving economy that doesn’t have some participation from the government sector.
(The Laffer curve comes to mind here. Almost certainly the optimal economical performance is somewhere inside the range 0% to 100% participation.)
Re: Beta Blocker (Nov 12 16:46),
And precisely what will the government do with the extra revenue from a stiff carbon tax if it isn’t revenue neutral? That tax will be economically equivalent to a sales tax and thus will be regressive and hit the poor and middle class a lot harder than it does the well off. The middle class is already suffering with wages at best stagnant for over a decade. Combine that with near zero interest rates, which effectively tax savings, and you get a recipe for what Japan has suffered for the last twenty years or so, continued stagnation.
Increasing carbon energy costs might be effective if there were, in fact, alternatives that were only a little more expensive. There aren’t. Saying that we only need to do more research on alternatives isn’t going to magically conjure them from nothing. It takes decades to roll out new energy technology. And that assumes that the technology has actually been demonstrated. How long have we been working on thermonuclear fusion power, how many billions have been spent and where are we? We’re still at least 50 years away like we have been for about the last 50 years. ITER won’t even be ready to run experiments until 2020 at the earliest. Given the problems and cost overruns (10x original estimates ~$50E9 and counting) even that date seems optimistic.
The US could achieve some reduction in CO2 emissions in the near term by converting coal fired power plants to natural gas. But that would require lots of hydraulic fracturing and pipeline building, both of which seem to be anathemas to the greens. And it would only be a stopgap as it won’t be enough to actually stop the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
If we ever start building massive wind farms and solar arrays with the transmission lines to connect them to the grid, don’t be surprised if those are protested and litigated.
A goal without a practical plan to achieve it is just a wish. In business, it would be called a vision statement. But there is little but hand waving about actual implementation of projects to achieve the vision.
China might actually reduce their rate of emissions growth, but only if their economy, which is currently skating on very thin ice with the government throwing more and more money at less and less productive enterprises, collapses.
Carrick,
Sure, there are lots of things the government does that are beneficial. The government enforces laws and contracts via legal penalties, they print money, etc. They supply a framework without which many civilized transactions could never take place. This wasn’t what I meant to ask.
What I wanted to get at was the idea that (and an example of where this has happened successfully) we can impose a tax to make a certain solution to a problem less desirable — and drive innovation due to the artificial pressure imposed by the tax. The last part is the real trick.
Again, I’m not saying this hasn’t happened. I’m asking, I can’t think of an instance where it has.
Thanks in advance to anybody who can set me straight on this one. 🙂
DeWitt,
You said many interesting things there, some of which I agree with and some I’m not sure about. To ask about just one,
You’re not buying that Lockheed Martin’s Skunkworks has this cracked then I take it. I’m not sure myself. Where’s the evidence, right, what sort of skeptic am I anyway? Can I interest me in some beachfront property in Arizona at a very attractive price? But this is the Skunkworks after all. It’d almost be more amazing to me if they made the claim and it turned out to be false.
Re: Mark+Bofill (Nov 12 19:24),
There is also the Bussard reactor, which may or may not be the same as the Skunkworks system. It’s still not clear that this concept can be scaled to a useful size and power. Every time they scaled up the Tokomak concept, for example, they ran into new problems which took several years to overcome.
Deuterium-tritium fusion requires a source of tritium and produces lots of neutrons. In principle, the neutrons can be used to produce the tritium from lithium flowing over the inner wall of the reactor. The Bussard reactor is supposed to get around this by fusing a proton with 11B. The practicality of that hasn’t been demonstrated either.
I also saw a calculation once that every atom in the first wall of a Tokomak type reactor would be struck by a neutron about 10 times over the life of the reactor. That’s going to produce radioactive waste, although not as long lived some of the isotopes in uranium fuel rods that haven’t been re-processed.
IOW, I’m not holding my breath.
Re: Mark+Bofill (Nov 12 19:14),
The possible counter example for the effect of high taxes is cigarette smoking. There are very high taxes on cigarettes, and yet lots of people still smoke. I really think it was mainly social pressure rather than high taxes that reduced the amount of public smoking in the US. And now we have an explosion of electric nicotine delivery systems. I refuse to call them electronic cigarettes.
Also, the increase in the price of gasoline from ~$1/gallon to a peak of over $4/gallon didn’t reduce consumption of gasoline in the US by very much. Again, without an economical alternative, demand isn’t going to be very elastic.
Outstanding, thanks DeWitt! I’ll accept that as a practical example.
A problem with raising the cost of things whose demand is mostly inelastic is the effect transfers to other, more elastic products. A person may buy the same amount of gasoline despite a tax hike, but it’s likely he’ll then spend less money on other products. That makes it difficult to track the effect of taxes.
That said, raising the costs on a product can lead to increased innovation to adapt. The problem is it can also just cause economic damage. Which will happen depends on how well such adaptation can match the demand for it. There are plenty of historical examples where governments raising the price of products ended badly.
‘tax..carbon…making a difference’.
A ton of coal at mine mouth in Wyoming goes for about $10. That same ton of coal delivered to a seaport in China costs about $80.
It is politically impossible to impose a $70/ton carbon tax in the US.
The Chinese are already paying such a tax in the manner of ‘shipping and handling fees’ on imported coal
Anyone paying close attention to ‘nuclear energy innovation’ or ‘solar panel manufacturing’ innovation would note that the Chinese have put their money where their mouths are.
It hurts my nationalistic pride but by the year 2030 the world will be looking to China to provide it’s electric power solutions.
Carbon trading scheme:
“It’s a so-called market in the non-delivery of an invisible substance to no-oneâ€
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-15/abbott-dismisses-ets-as-market-in-an-invisible-substance/4820564
@ Mark Bofill —
Sharply raised tobacco taxes were also what came to mind to me upon reading your query. ISTM that vapor delivery systems could be considered to be a non-smoking innovation that was partly driven by this government-mandated rise in costs.
Granted, many anti-tobacco activists also loathe “vaping”, but that doesn’t disqualify it as an example. Perhaps the opposite. It’s a huge stretch for Mooney to imagine that the Law of Unintended Consequences might apply to the better sort of people (i.e. those who believe as he does). But, still…
I certainly don’t want to shock Mr. Mooney, who seems like such a terribly sincere and well-meaning fellow. And the linked post shows him at his open-minded best, IMO. In addition to slamming his conservative non-readers, he gently chides his liberal readers. For a Progressive, that’s progress.
It’s hard to avoid advocacy pieces written by the science-believing cognoscenti that promote the scientifically-proven solutions to
AGWclimate change, such as windmill farms, solar panels, and “We Are The World” concerts. Because I’m a bad person, they somehow bring to mind a Steve Sailer quip:In the immediate runup to the historic Obama-Xi
AGWclimate-change agreement, an NPR reporter was discussing the recent U.S. election with an academic political scientist (sorry, no link). This Obama supporter said something interesting: that the President had been on the verge of presenting a climate change platform that included a large build-out of nuclear power plants to replace coal. But then Fukushima, which, alas, of course, made it entirely impossible to contemplate even mentioning such a notion.Some day, an acceptably left-wing politician as courageous as President Obama might resurrect this stillborn proposal. After all, it does have the modest virtue of being feasible with today’s technology. On the other hand, the blossoming of solar-panel farms in cloudy Germany teaches that practicality isn’t a priority, when it comes to spending other people’s money to solve this pressing problem.
AMac,
What you see as ‘gently chiding’ I see as “giving them a pass”. Note this bit
The problem here is that the post he links– which discusses the “study” — is making a conclusion about whether gun protection is rational based on the number of home invasions or burglaries that turn out deadly. That’s rare for a number of reasons– one of which is a burglar usually merely wants to steal stuff, not kill people. Occasionally, he wants to rape someone. He’s got a gun “just in case”.
But the person in the home wants the gun to fend off the burglar period. They may want to prevent him from stealing stuff.
Or raping them.
The first link here has a pdf, which tells me
Yet, the post Mooney links describes these numbers
And later
So, Mooney links to something that suggests the “correct” number of events to consider when contemplating buying a gun to protect during a home invasion/burglary etc. is one (because only one of the burglaries lead to an actual murder in Chicago) or possibly 100, while the number of burglaries a year is greater than 3 million.
Moreover, if we click the link associated with this text
reports about 100 homicides per year across America that happen in the course of household burglaries
in the article Mooney cites and then read the pdf, we learn
So, while only 100 were murdered, 266,560 became victims of violent crimes (like assault, or rape.)
And note: This is information could have been read by Mooney whose article later seems to suggest that somehow, it’s not “denial” for “his” liberal friends to conclude that owning a gun is irrational because “only” 100 people were murdered during burglaries– while omitting the fact that 266,560 were assaulted, raped and so on.
Now, I don’t own a gun. My thought is that if I were to need one I would try to find a different neighborhood. Failing that, if I needed one, I would need to take classes on shooting etc. And I”m not sure that the gun would be useful during a burglary because it might be tucked away in a locked cabinet.
That said: it seems to me Mooney is clearly giving “his” liberals a pass on this. Mind you: lots of people do this sort of thing on all sides of the political polyhedran that exists. But. Still.
Lucia,
Interesting data. I think the liberal/conservative moral disconnect is that liberals don’t think a burglar who enters a home (and possibly assaults/rapes/robs etc.) deserves to be shot by the homeowner, while conservatives think the burglar most certainly should to be shot by the homeowner.
People who live in insulated worlds like government or academia or journalism do not understand people who make things, transport things, or invest their own money in things. The only way ANY green energy project makes money is with massive subsidies. If your business plan includes an assumption that the government will never change its mind, I’m not investing with you or buying your stocks. Just look at Europe–multiple rugs pulled out from under green energy producers recently in Spain, Germany and even UK. Ethanol and wind tax credits have been almost repealed here in US multiple times.
SteveF, I disagree. I consider myself a conservative. Just because you have a gun doesn’t mean you will shoot an intruder. I would give an intruder a warning. Either the intruder would flee or be held at bay until the police can be summoned. I would only shoot if he became aggressive. I doubt many burglars would try to enter a home knowing the owners were armed.
SteveF,
I don’t think a burglar “should” be shot.
I also don’t consider it irrational for a person to want to have a gun with them while they are hiding in the closet fearing discovery. The fact that the homeowner might not be discovered or that the rate at which homeowners are actually killed is low doesn’t strike me as the correct statistic to consider when one is contemplating protecting oneself. Avoiding assault or rape are perfectly good reasons to want to protect oneself those happen often enough to make gun ownership potentially protective.
Beyond that, it’s not irrational to want to protect property. I don’t have much in the way of extremely to moderately portable valuables in the house. But some people do. It’s not clear to me that someone “shouldn’t” see gun ownership as a way to help thwart burglars who enter and try to swipe the flatscreen tv or jewels in a jewelry box. Sure, you can call 911 while hiding under the bed. But… the cops might not get there quickly.
That said: I’m not sure the net effect of owning a gun is protective. Since I don’t use them for any sport, I’m not interested in getting one myself.
DCA,
I agree with you. If I could avoid shooting an intruder I certainly would. Mostly I’d prefer that the intruder/s stand still and quiet until the police arrived. I’d certainly settle for the intruder/s leaving immediately and not coming back. I’ve got no property valuable enough to justify a dangerous gunfight. Really the only case I’d shoot would be if that was the only option I saw to protect myself or my family from physical harm.
(Edit: … oversimplifying, right. Situations differ. Actual mileage may vary. Might need to shoot to keep control of situation, to prevent harm. I wouldn’t let an intruder leave with one of my kids for example. etc.)
Eric Idle was on Craig Ferguson recently so this discussion reminded me of the classic Python sketch with Idle playing the ‘burglar’ and John Cleese as the suspicious housewife.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9n11xtjZ3Y
And yet more proof that irony increases, the clip they used to introduce Eric Idle on The Late Late Show was of Michael Palin doing the lumberjack song from the Monty Python Live (Mostly) disk.
Well, naturally I shoot encyclopedia salespeople as they approach the door, thought that’d go without saying…
Re: lucia (Nov 13 09:17),
What you never see in the press are statistics on how many crimes are prevented by, say, shopkeepers who have guns. According to John R. Lott in his book More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws, it’s a lot. Of course, the gun control advocates question his data.
However, in a situation close to where I live where someone at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, VA started shooting people, he was stopped by a student who retrieved a gun from his car. Of over 200 accounts of the event in the press, only two mentioned that the student was armed. Many accounts stated that other students tackled the shooter.
If, for example, an average citizen did pull a gun on a potential burglar, who then fled, would the police be called? My guess is not in most cases.
Also:
‘Gun free zones’ aren’t, unless there are metal detectors at all entrances with armed guards present. In fact, they’re potential shooting galleries for anyone who wants to commit mayhem.
There are always the statistics for Kennesaw Georgia.
On scanning this thread I am reminded of the version of the rationale for taxes that we get from the good government propaganda taught in Civics 101 and the actual rationale and motivation that used by politicians for imposing new and/or higher taxes. Cigarette and other sin taxes give the government the rationale – with the appearance of enforcing a morality on its citizens who know no better – to impose taxes disproportionately on middle and lower income citizens. It really has nothing to do with morality or health but rather is a source of government revenue that voters tolerate because it taxes what some them see as sinful activities and participants. On the other end of the spectrum the government taxes the wealthy because those people have far fewer votes. The government uses the apparent rationale of the wealthy paying their fair share and giving the lower income people a deserved break when in fact these taxes are imposed with some upper limit because once again it is a source of income to support bigger government and it is the path of lesser resistance just as sin taxes are.
Carbon taxes being neutral is a standout example of Civics 101 thinking on an imposed tax. It is another source of revenue that the government politicians can use to purchase votes by how they arbitrarily determine what is neutral and who will benefit from the governments distribution of these revenues. The politicians need to sway the voting public that the carbon tax somehow fits either a moral issue like sin taxes or a redistribution of wealth tax or even better a means of avoiding some conjured up urgent and impending catastrophic event much like is required to obtain at least indirect approval to go to war.
Under a truly free market capitalistic system the equitable means to resolution of the effects of AGW would be to first prove that harm is or will be done to certain individuals and to prove that certain entities are responsible for the damage – much as is required in a tort adjudication. In fact the harm from pollution in the past was handle somewhat in this manner. In modern times we have used regulation, taxes and tax incentives in these matters which in effect is one size fits all and results in all the problems that arise from that method.
A number of conservatives and even some that claim to be libertarian are fixated on the carbon tax with the rationale that the true cost of carbon products is not manifested without including the real or potential harm that use entails compared to other forms of energy. In other words it somehow adjusts its “free” market price to account for these factors even though as practical matter we do not have an accounting of the harm nor would the politicians for very long use an accounting calculation. The carbon tax falls under the economic principles espoused by the Chicago School of economics whereby Civics 101 versions of government actions are imposed to fix what they consider failures in the free market.
After reading an article in the Chicago Tribune this morning I have to suppose that at least one journalist knows these answers on AGW that have alluded many others. He does a column by posing questions and then answering those questions without reference to anybody and I thus assume that he is talking to himself. In the last question he asks himself whether the Obama China deal on global warming will avoid the worst consequences and answers himself by saying, no, because that would require avoiding a 2 degree C rise in global temperatures from 150 years ago. Who knew.
I vaguely recall the Energy Independence and Security and Act of 2007 required non-cornstarch ethanol to be an increasing component of motor fuel. At the time it was touted by the ruling class that it would unleash the private sector to fuel our cars with switch grass. So now ships with cornstarch ethanol going to Brazil backhaul sugar derived ethanol bound for the US.
Here’s the story of a guy whose home was invaded, pointed a gun at the burglars who then fled. I suppose one could conclude that he had successfully defended himself, but he shot one of them dead while they were fleeing anyway to ‘teach the guy a lesson’.
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Long-Beach-Homeowner-Shoots-Kills-Intruder–268364152.html
RB,
Do the scare quotes mean you disapprove?
The notion of pure free markets is largely a myth dispelled by trust buster TR in 1906. And ‘regulation’ is the only way to deal with externalities and ‘the problemmof the commons’, water and air pollution being US examples. The question is the degree of distortion and inefficiency introduced by whatever ‘regulation’ for whichever purpose. It is sophisticated cost benefit. A carbon tax makes little sense for two reasons. First, there isn’t a carbon problem (large societal costs) like there is with, say, cigarette smoking. TCR is about 1.3, ECS about 1.7. Second, unless the tax is global, it just a self imposed economic handicap (a disguised commons problem). No way that will happen. See China.
What does make sense is slowly raising taxes on gasoline and diesel to European levels ($6-7/gallon), and using the proceeds for infrastructure improvement (highways, bridges, city suburban mass transit) and deficit reduction. Regressive? Sure, because has to be to be effective in reducing consumption and changing behavior. Since there are more poorer people using liquid fuels than rich ones. Inelastic demand? Only in the short run. People have choices over time on length of commute, size of vehicle, truck versus intermodal. That is why a phase in ramp. Why only those fuels? Because they represent 2/3 of all oil consumption in the US. And despite fracking shale and the present OPEC production kerfuffle, oil is going to be scarce well before 2030 including in the US. And the structural rearrangements to avoid real pain take on the order of a decade to 15 years to implement–so about time to get seriously started. Wrote up details in Gaia’s Limits, and covered oil (and all other energy options) in context of climate change in Blowing Smoke.
The above incident was apparently not an isolated one .
Assuming ABC’s 20/20 special and Daily Kos are representative of liberal viewpoints, the argument may then perhaps be summarized as follows.
In the US, of course, the trial is by your peers rather than by judges.
It does seem like many modern liberals in the US value the opinions of the technocracy more than they do the common folk.
I was not earlier familiar with John Lott, or Tim Lambert’s role in the controversy. But he does not seem to be the ideal source for gun rights advocates. Even Michelle Malkin doesn’t seem to be on board.
Re: RB (Nov 13 14:09),
Did you bother to read Lott’s response to Malkin’s article? There’s a link in the article itself. There appears, for example, to be a lot of supporting evidence for the supposedly convenient computer crash.
I wouldn’t take anything from the Daily Kos seriously. News programs like 20/20 and 60 Minutes don’t have much credibility with me either.
Anecdotal data like your example proves nothing. In fact, it’s precisely the sort of thing that would get column inches in the MSM while nobody would print a story where a crime was prevented with no body count.
Re: Rud+Istvan (Nov 13 12:55),
TR is not exactly a conservative or libertarian icon. See for example, this article. Herbert Hoover didn’t like free markets either. Remember where that got us.
TR’s legacy of making the railroads common carriers, unable to set their own rates, which was then applied to the telephone network with less than elegant results is still with us in the form of the net neutrality movement. It’s a great idea if you want to hamstring the further development of the internet.
DeWitt Payne,
Anecdotal data does indeed prove nothing, like this one .
Re: RB (Nov 13 14:42),
True, it’s not probative. But at least it’s not a stinking red herring like yours.
RB, you can’t deny that pistols at ten (10) paces would clear this little squabble up in a jiffy.
Mark+Bofill #132680
An example of government forcing innovation might be the MPG and emissions regulations for automobiles. We now have much more efficient engines that are also powerful.
There are probably arguable holes in this example, but it isn’t that it can never work, it is whether it will in a specific case. MPG standards are worked out with the auto industry’s input, not oppressed upon them blindly to force magic to happen.
If $1000/ton carbon tax was implemented, consumer behavior would definitely change, we’d set our thermostats to 62, and sell the SUV and get a Prius. This without any technical innovation. High mileage cars and highly efficient refrigerators would sell well.
I oppose a carbon tax, not because it won’t work, but because I see it as artificially manipulating the market for an unjustified reason. If I was convinced that AGW was the end of the world, I would probably support it.
The productive world beckons .
I really don’t get this obsession with some liberals to psycho-analyze conservatives. It seems to be all about figuring out the source of the brain damage and then using the “right” propaganda to trick people to support their position. Many of them seem to truly believe that when a policy proposal fails, it is because of a communications problem, not a policy problem.
And what is equally humorous is that instead of actually talking to conservative to gather input, they instead go ask liberal social scientists how conservatives think. An example would be this post, the answer would be: “just call it a free market solution”. Certainly a conservative buzzword is all that is necessary to win them over.
Re: Tom+Scharf (Nov 13 16:04),
You mean the proposed CAFE standard of 54.5 mpg by 2025? You actually think there was significant industry input on that which wasn’t completely ignored? The only cars on the road today that can meet that standard are electric. sarc Electric cars are selling like hotcakes, aren’t they. /sarc
One could make a very good case that the decline of the US auto industry relative to the rest of the world was caused in large part by CAFE standards requiring that small cars be sold at a loss to meet the standard. Meanwhile, government restrictions on the number of cars imported meant that Nissan and Toyota went up scale, further cutting in to US car manufacturer profits.
On emission regulations, the early CARB regulations decided to limit CO as well as hydrocarbon emissions. That made smog in LA worse because to lower CO, combustion temperature had to be raised, increasing emission of NOx, a primary reactant in the formation of photochemical smog. There was no reason to limit CO other than it is toxic. So now it’s more difficult to commit suicide by idling your car in a closed garage. Whoopee!
“And ‘regulation’ is the only way to deal with externalities and ‘the problemmof the commons’, water and air pollution being US examples.”
The problem of the commons is that nobody owns the resource being used, i.e. it is public property. It is not a problem of capitalism but rather government ownership.
I suppose if one can argue that regulation is the only way then we never have to talk about regulations not being flexible, costing lots of money, having unintended consequences and having to be revised constantly because we find they do not work as promised. I have heard this argument used to support much government interference into the market, but in my mind it is only a ploy to avoid the issue I raised above about getting beyond Civics 101 and into the real world and looking at government failures regardless of whether you think there is another way.
“It is not a problem of capitalism but rather government ownership.”
Who would own the atmosphere in a purely capitalistic system?
“I suppose if one can argue that regulation is the only way”
What are some other ways to reduce emissions?
Murray Rothbard has charted a path in this link dealing with pollution and individual property rights.
http://mises.org/daily/2120
I should have added above that the no other way approach is what scares many people into today’s political environment from favoring immediate government action on AGW because they see no other way except by government involvement and know from experience that such involvement can actually makes thing worse.
The no other way approach to self defense is what I think causes the modern day liberal to want to more fully depend on the government for that purpose and sees no need for the individual to have the means to defend themselves through the use (and yes misuse by some as is the case in any real world situation such as driving a car or even abuse by government agencies) of gun ownership.
lucia (and others),
I was trying to be provocative. The reality is that burglars don’t usually throw on the lights. Yes, they would almost always prefer that there is nobody home. But seeing as any burglar is at least plausibly ‘carrying’, and clearly is not someone who you would rationally consider unlikely to shoot first, the gun owning resident has every motivation to err on the side of not trusting the intruder won’t get off the first shot….. and shoot if there is a shred of doubt about his/her own safety.
If burglars thought every resident is going to have a gun, the rate of burglaries would surely decline.
DeWitt, Carrick, Brandon, harrywr2, Girma, AMac, Craig, Kenneth, Tom –
Just wanted to say before I lost track, thanks for the discussion. While I don’t always / often / whatever have a specific response, I read and valued all responses.
In particular Kenneth thanks for the link – muy interesting, going to take some chewing.
Okay, I’m familiar with Rothbard. In terms of damage, there are so many plaintiff and defendants that individual action would be a non-starter. Collective action (class action type suits) would probably have the same effect as a lot of regulation schemes. And then there’s the question of how a tort system will deal with future damages.
DeWitt, for the record I am neither a Conservative nor a Libertarian. Admit to being a former (since reformed) Republican. Independant. Am socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Favor less government except where Government must step in (externality examples provided above). The world is complex. Simple categorizations won’t do. THINK for yourself.
Re: Mark+Bofill (Nov 12 14:46),
I forgot to answer this. IMO, there is little chance that atmospheric CO2 won’t exceed 500 ppmv before 2050. 350.org is living in a dream world absent a drastic population reduction a la 12 Monkeys.
Even the fairly optimistic IPCC B1 scenario has CO2 reaching 588 ppmv in 2100. The next twenty years are unlikely to be different from an extrapolation of the current data which includes a small acceleration in the annual growth rate with time. So 2020 will be about 413 ppmv and 2030 about 439 ppmv. If 450 ppmv actually represents a tipping point, which I doubt, that level will be exceeded in 2034.
In spite of all the hoopla about decarbonization, total CO2 emissions in the developed world are declining at a very low rate (see for example R.Pielke, Jr.’s article on the UK carbon goals here) while emissions from the developing world, China, India and Brazil, are accelerating more than fast enough to make up the difference.
Speaking of Pielke, Jr., it’s too bad his climate blog is currently on hiatus. I’d love to read his take on the China deal.
Chris Mooney long since stopped being a serious thinker on the issues he is concerned with. He is a good agitator. He is a good propagandist. He is a good rewriter of history. He is good at dehumanizing those who dare to disagree with him. He is a good cynic. However he is not a serious thinker. He is just another obsessive who thinks he can fool people into agreeing with him by “framing” issues, a la Prof. Gruber.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G790p0LcgbI
DeWitt,
What do you mean, you doubt it? Tipping points and apocalypses and so on almost always occur on nice round numbers like 450 and 2000. Except when based on ancient calendars.
Thanks for your answer. I’ve been surprised actually by the comments I read in various places. People are irony impaired or something, mostly they don’t seem to understand that there’s any issue there. I guess they simultaneously think that while the agreement says China can burn all they want to for the next 15 years, it really means that China is going to try really really really hard to not to. Or something. That China’s behavior is going to drive up atmospheric CO2 seems to be hard for most people to grasp somehow (seriously). I have been pretty surprised by this. I get that people don’t pay attention to this issue, but you’d think this wouldn’t be that hard to get your head around…
(edit:golly, forgot the sarc tag on the round numbers thing. I didn’t really need one, did I?)
Nice post. These people are clueless. They seem to think that merely by spinning their political agenda in a particular way, they can manipulate the other side to agree with them. As you say, they have no understanding at all of the way of thinking of the other side – because they only ever seem to talk to others in their groupthink-circle, who of course agree with them. The worst offenders are the ivory-tower academics in psychology and social science. These people will happily cite Mooney’s books as if he’s a serious academic researcher.
Hey Lucia+Liljegren, why has the blog software started putting ‘+’ in peoples names?
Re: Mark+Bofill (Nov 14 08:35),
Considering that my fundamental principle of human behavior is that irony always increases, I’m not sure being irony impaired is a survival trait.
Go back and look at how the Kyoto Treaty was received. It was obvious that it would accomplish very little even if the signatory nations actually met their targets. The US Senate had made it abundantly clear that it would not ratify the treaty. Yet “It’s a good start” was, as I remember, the opinion of the greens. Having the appearance of good intentions is more important to them than having a feasible plan.
Look at the headlines in the newspapers if you want to know why people think the agreement is going work. That’s what they’re being told. Dissenting voices, like the editorial page of the WSJ, are few and far between.
Getting back to the “tax it and they will innovate” argument. vaping was mentioned as an example. But this is a trivial technology and might have resulted from so many people trying to quit (I don’t know).
CAFE standards were mentioned. I think much of the increase in gas mileage was natural improvement in the technology. Part of it was forced and the result added to the price of cars which hurt the poor (the technology has a cost). The idea that the average car is going to get from 24mpg to 54mpg is simply insane. The only possible way for that to work is to go to tiny tiny cars like the Indian tata (or whatever it is called) or electric. Car mpg has leveled off the last 10 years because it isn’t possible. Other legal requirements for safety, pollution control, etc have made cars heavier which takes more gas.
Better examples would be wind and solar. Yes billions of research dollars have made the price of solar panels come down, but they still don’t produce electricity at night and still destabilize the grid–and nothing is going to fix that, no matter how high a carbon tax is.
If you examine the trend on average MPG, great strides have been made.
http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2008/3/9/mpg.jpg
Separating out what was natural evolution of technology and how much was accelerated by guvment regulation is of course impossible. The price of gas was probably a huge factor in this trend.
http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Annual-gas-prices-1919-2011.jpg?00cfb7
Would more efficient cars have evolved by market forces? No doubt. As fast? Who knows?
Emissions are another story. Market forces would not have put catalytic converters into cars, it is pretty much all downsides to the consumer (ignoring externalities). I remember in the 70’s the first thing people did after buying a car was to insert a “test pipe” in place of the catalytic converter. Catalytic converters were required since 1975. You can see what happened, but technology ultimately overcame the limitations.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-39CWP2DjY60/U0qzbpQE_oI/AAAAAAAABDY/5KPwe-6c70U/s1600/TrendsGraph.png
Craig+Loehle: “billions of research dollars have made the price of solar panels come down”
Was it research? Or has the price come down because demand has risen (primarily due to subsidies) and allowed manufacturers to achieve economies of scale? Or due to simple maturation of the process? [It might be hard to separate the last two. There’s more incentive to create efficiency when the volume is higher.]
I’m hoping that someone with more knowledge of the industry can answer.
I get far more protection of my home from the fact that I might legally have a gun in my home than I do from the gun itself. People who choose not to own guns have that right, but they need to understand that their home security is greater because of those who do. Look at all the “hot” home invasions in England, for goodness sakes. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
“Emissions are another story. Market forces would not have put catalytic converters into cars, it is pretty much all downsides to the consumer (ignoring externalities). I remember in the 70’s the first thing people did after buying a car was to insert a “test pipe†in place of the catalytic converter.”
An essential part of a truly free market system is the acknowledgment and protection of individual property rights. Consideration of those rights as being free of impositions of proven harm from polluters and consequential protection of those rights does not present an externality. Ironic that the control economies in the Communist past where governments had full opportunity to handle so called externalities did not in the case of (extreme) pollution. In a democratic regime without individual property rights spelled out or recognized, the externalities will be handled as the voting public decides and not necessarily in line with proven harm.
Re: Craig+Loehle (Nov 14 10:37),
The CAFE standards turn out to be incredibly complicated. There is no single number. It depends on the footprint of the car, for example, and is different for trucks. Which means that different manufacturers have different targets depending on the mix of cars and trucks they sell.
Also, the MPG for the CAFE standard is not the MPG you see on the new car window label at the dealer. It’s significantly higher because it uses the old measurement standard that doesn’t reflect actual MPG in normal use very well. The window label is more realistic.
But you are correct that meeting the 2025 standard will make the average car more expensive. A diesel/electric plug-in hybrid with carbon fiber and aluminum body parts isn’t going to be cheap. Collision insurance will likely go up as well by more than the increase in price because carbon fiber parts don’t dent. They shatter. And when they’re a large fraction of the fleet, it’s not going to be possible to subsidize them or sell them at a loss.
It’s even possible that the vehicle cost will be enough higher that the fuel savings over the life of the car won’t make up the difference in purchase price. The net present value of the fuel savings at the time of purchase could be significantly less than the nominal value, depending on interest rates. Borrowing money to buy the car will, of course, make things worse as not only will the fuel savings be discounted, you’ll be paying interest on the cost increase for several years.
Further anecdotal evidence that the MSM doesn’t report things that don’t fit their narrative.
Mentions so far of Gruber’s statement that voters are stupid on the major networks’ news programs:
CBS 2
NBC 0
ABC 0
Compare that with the firestorm in the MSM that erupted over Romney’s 47% comment in 2012.
Romney was running for president and no one knows who this Gruber guy is. I’m not sure how somebody no one has heard of saying something dumb a couple years ago could possible qualify as “news.”
Re: Boris (Nov 14 14:49),
QED
Re: Boris (Nov 14 14:49),
The Washington
PestPost thinks it’s newsworthy.I guess the GOP outrage over the video is sorta klinda “news.” But grumbling that the press isn’t covering your outrage enough is not a serious complaint.
🙂 Boris, I’ve never seen anyone with quite your touch. Now I’m being honest, not insulting. But the way you mix trivia with annoyance is pure poetry. Not quite irritating enough (edit: or maybe, important enough is the word) to rouse an effort to squash, but just irritating enough to notice. Like a refreshing but mildly disturbing sour beverage or candy or something.
What would I do without you sir. Lose all perspective, most like.
Apparently Gruber’s remarks don’t merit MSM attention to Boris even though the MSM ran articles he wrote about Obamacare when it was being pushed.
Of course, back then, people didn’t realize he was involved in getting Obamacare created. I guess the realization he was makes him less important.
I find it fascinating that the very people Gruber bragged about fooling, the Obama supporters, are the last ones to be outraged by his deceit and arrogance. Afterall, Republicans saw through the Obamacare scams. None supported Obamacare. One notable Congressman called Mr. Obama out for lying. Turns out he was wrong on the specific lie, and should not have heckled the President in public- leave that to the democrats- but Mr. Obama did lie. And according to the Obamacare architiect, Prof. Gruber, deliberately and knowingly did so. Team Obama knew they had to fool not Republicans- none were on board. That only leaves fellow democrats and undecideds for Prof. Gruber and his boss to mislead. IOW, they knew Obamacare was unacceptable and unworkable, but they needed democrats to stay on board. It is *their own people* whose stupidity Prof. Gruber and Mr. Obama relied on.
The Gruber thing is irrelevant to the ACA. Republicans want it covered because it’s a good talking point for them (and it’s a really good one). It’s not “news” in the sense of providing any new or relevant information or insight.
As for Mooney’s deceptions and misleading argument on guns, lucia has already pointed out quite well how misanthropic and callous Mooney is when it ocmes to how he values human life.
A young wannabe thief was trying to break into my house the Tuesday before Halloween. We were at the movies watching Birdman (really excellent movie), and our alarm was on but not our front porch light. When the wife went in the back yard taking out the trash the noise spooked them while they were kicking on the side door, but had not broken it open. They ran off. This was at ~9pm. Would a gun have helped in that situation? Not directly, but the next door neighbor husband was also watching on them his security camera. He was well armed and felt comfortable coming outside to make certain the thieves saw he was armed as they fled in their vehicle. No shootouts, no ambushing, no gun waving. Just a message of what the potential cost might be if the bad guys decided to escalate things. Mrs hunter and I were very appreciative of this appropopriate act of neighborliness.
Boris,
As Obamacare continues to flounder and injure Americans, and as the new round of enrolment hits, and the clever deceptions of Gruber are dissected in the Courts, I think a lot more Americans than simply “republicans” will be interested in how a principal player saw his job. The transpareent fibbing about how no one in power knew who Gruber was which Mr. Obama and others are choosing to invoke is also entertaining. Watching you ratinoalize how you like being screwed and lied to, however, is the most entertaining of all.
Paul
I don’t know!! And it moderates them the first time it puts a + in there. It started in August (I think.)
I have no idea what you are talking about, hunter–“clever deceptions of Gruber are dissected in the Courts”?
Anyway, back in reality, most adults–including outraged Republicans–know that laws are drafted to be popular and to withstand opposition scrutiny. It would be nice if we had reasoned, honest debate on laws and governance. Arguing that Republicans are any more interested in open, truthful discussion than Democrats is going to be a really hard sell given the lies they’ve told on this very issue (“Death Panels,” anyone?).
And while the ACA isn’t even close to perfect, it has led to around 10 million Americans (so far) gaining health coverage. A good start.
Gruber: I think a lot of people look at these statement and just shrug, yes we know, it’s no big deal. But that is exactly the problem the party of government should be worried about. It reinforces the perception of the cynicism, deception, and incompetence of today’s politics. The worst reaction progressives could possibly give is the “nothing to see here” argument. If this is business as usual, I don’t want more of this business. If they want to build trust in government, this guy should be shown the door ASAP. As far as I am concerned, the only thing Gruber is guilty of is telling the truth, and if progressives feel the same way, well then I guess we agree on it.
Re: lucia (Nov 14 17:44),
As I remember, it happened to me first, not long after I started the sea ice data thread. The date was September 17 and it was this comment: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2014/arctic-sea-ice-data/#comment-131852
Even if you edit out the plus sign, in the Name: field, the next time you refresh or switch threads, it comes back
Boris,
So for you, the ends justify the means. Knowingly lying about being able to keep your doctor and current health insurance to serve the end of getting the law passed gets a pass with you. Nice to know. It says a lot about your integrity too.
You do realize, as hunter pointed out above, Gruber was lying to people like you, not to people like me. But you don’t care because you like the result. Others don’t. A lot of people had their health insurance dropped and their only alternative was Medicaid. Others are paying a lot more for insurance with features they don’t want or need. Then there’s the issue of what seem to be prima facia illegal subsidies through the Federal insurance exchanges. But rewriting the law without the aid of Congress is probably OK with you as well because you like the results.
“Anyway, back in reality, most adults–including outraged Republicans–know that laws are drafted to be popular and to withstand opposition scrutiny. It would be nice if we had reasoned, honest debate on laws and governance. Arguing that Republicans are any more interested in open, truthful discussion than Democrats is going to be a really hard sell given the lies they’ve told on this very issue (“Death Panels,†anyone?).
And while the ACA isn’t even close to perfect, it has led to around 10 million Americans (so far) gaining health coverage. A good start.”
Boris makes a good case for being very skeptical of large government programs, like AGW mitigation would be. That they all do it is even more of a condemnation of the process. Sorry, Virginia, but there is no Civics 101 fairy tale to make any of this look good.
I believe most of the increased coverage that reduced the non insured rate from around 18% to 13% of the US population came from 7 million new participants in Medicaid and 7 million in the ACA market plan with 85% of these participants obtaining subsidies – which includes a family of four with an annual income of $97,000. The portion in the market place for those under 35 years of age is around 28% . We do not hear any good estimates on how much this type of participation is going to cost the taxpayer. Like all big government fairy tales we won’t think or talk about the cost – that is for future generations to worry about – as Keynes once indicated when answering these predicaments with “we are all dead in long run”.
Interesting also that many of those politicians and their supporters who rant about potential future harm of AGW to future generations never seem to want to discuss what the overwhelming government debt and unfunded liabilities mean for future generations.
“So for you, the ends justify the means.”
As usual, you have a real reading comprehension problem. I don’t like lying and dishonesty, but we’re getting that no matter who is in power. I’ll take the 10 million Americans (so far) who now have health coverage.
Re: lucia (Nov 14 17:44),
.
I suspect something in the Message form’s Javascript automatically adds the + symbol when the Name field on the Message form is being retrieved locally from the browser’s forms data cache.
Most times I remove the + symbol before I post; i.e., I see “Beta+Blocker” in the Name field and I then remove the + symbol leaving just “Beta Blocker”, at which point I submit the message.
But when I go back later in the day to post a new message on a blank form, “Beta+Blocker” will appear in the Name field that very next time the Message form comes up, even though I had removed the + sign from the Name field of the immediately preceding message before submitting it.
So I remove it yet again and submit the message.
Anyway, this is what leads me to suspect the Message form Javascript is the culprit. And I have to say that this undocumented feature is not really much of a plus for maintaining a user-friendly forms interface.
I haven’t looked into it at all, but I’m pretty sure the problem is just you’re somehow telling people’s computers to save their cookies with + signs instead of spaces. I know my computer’s cookie for this site has a plus sign in the name field.
If I had to guess, I’d say a PHP function is the culprit. I know some, like urlencode(), can cause spaces to be encoded as plus signs. You might be able to fix the problem by using setrawcookie() and rawurlencode() instead of setcookie() and urlencode().
But I don’t really know since I can’t see the site’s PHP code. It’s where I’d start looking though.
Boris,
” I don’t like lying and dishonesty, but we’re getting that no matter who is in power.”
.
Wow! And I thought I was jaded.
Sure politicians stretch the truth. Some are just worse than others; Mr Obama seems to me pretty bad with the truth, even when compared to other politicians.
I will note that what is lied about matters as well. Nixon’s lies were criminal. Bill Clinton’s lies were to save his sorry a$$ from public ridicule. Mr. Obama’s lies are made to force his policy agenda on an unwilling public. To me, Mr. Obama’s lies poison and corrupt democracy, while Bill Clinton’s were mostly tragi-comical. Mr Obama’s are far worse.
Boris.
Australia brought in universal health cover in 1974, All my working medical life.The good side was that people did not have to lose their houses and jobs to pay for sudden unexpected illnesses. The downside was 2 generations of people expecting medical handouts for free and massive expectations of free services.
I am torn on this issue. As a society we should help all those in need who want help, but we should also expect an obligation on the part of those helped to repay some of the expense when they are able to do so including some co payment or access fee.
As a lurking occcasional reader from cloudy Germany, may I just add my take on guns and burglars, alhough that’s not really at issue here (and I accept Lucia’s argument that Mooney was disingenuous in his treatment of the facts, which sadly is true for most political argument on any side of the spectrum). Germans regardless of political affiliation tend to be against widespread gun ownership. I live in an apartment house and it would spook me out to know that others in the house have guns; I’d see that as an accident waiting to happen. For losses from burglary there is insurance. I once met a burglar, probably a drug addict, entering my apartment at noon on a weekday (I had heard suspicious noises from the door and entered the corridor to look). I said, I think you have the wrong door, he said “Sorry” and left. Violent burglaries unfortunately do occur here, often by gangs from Eastern Europe. A gun wouldn’t necessarily help, though, as these people tend to come in groups of five or so and are armed, too. If you brandish a gun, they are likely to kill you, so a gun puts you at risk rather than protecting you. Certainly there are some situations where a gun would be beneficial. But on the bottom line of the balance sheet, those cases probably don’t outweigh he cases where guns do more harm than good (at least that is most poeple’s guess over here in Germany, and I see Lucia has her doubts too). Of course these things are difficult to prove, as controlled experiments are well-nigh impossible and there must be a plethora of moderating and mediating effects difficult to disentangle. The US track record in violent crime and gun accidents is hardly convincing pro-gun evidence, though.
ruth,
That said, while we do have gun violence, and we do have ganges, we don’t see groups of 5 collecting together to burgle. I’m not going to say the guns are what dissuade gangs from taking up team burglary, but, who knows? Maybe knowing that some owners have guns does tend to affect gang decisions.
I’m curious about these 5-man (or so) burglaries in Germany. Do Germans keep enough stuff in their houses to make that worth any burglars while? I would have thought there just wasn’t enough stuff in most houses to make a multi-person burglary worth anyone’s while.
SteveF,
I notice you left out the Bush/Cheney regime on your list. 🙂 As for the debate on the ACA, as I pointed out, there were plenty of lies from the other side. So, do we just blame the side that got what it wanted? Or just blame the president and let opposition leaders lie with impunity?
In any case, I don’t support political parties. I support policy goals. The ACA significantly improved the lives of millions of Americans. I can certainly understand why opponents of the bill would rather talk about year-old youtubes than the tangible benefits of the law.
“A gun wouldn’t necessarily help, though”
Ruth,
Yes, you would have to use it. It wouldn’t do any good just sitting in a drawer.
Andrew
Boris
That claim is pretty debatable.
It seems to degrade the lives of many by forcing them to buy and pay for more insurance than they need at high prices. It seems to have resulted in companies increasing the percentage of part time workers and setting their hours < 30 hours.
Some people have benefited too. Is it millions? More importantly, is the number of those benefited greater than harmed? Seems to me the answer to the latter may very well be a resounding no.
Boris,
In the real world people know the difference between mistakes and lies.
In the real world people know that deliberately tricking your supporters into supporting you is a bad thing.
In the real world people that nowhere near ten million new people got insured under Obamacare and that millions were victims of the deliberate lies about keeping the plans they liked and the doctors they wanted.
In the real world people see how transparently cynical and shallow you are.
Brandon–
Hmm… but if so, the problem may have happened either when (a) wordpress updated code or (b) dreamhost did some change.
If the latter, it may be for security purposes, so I wouldn’t over-ride that. If the former…. can be futile to change other than by “plugin” which could strip the “+” out on display. I could do the latter– just haven’t.
“I don’t support political parties. I support policy goals.”
This doesn’t make any sense, Boris. Polices don’t happen without political parties. It’s like saying I don’t support the police, I support enforcing laws.
Andrew
ang,
I pretty much agree with you. I think small co pays are a good idea to try. The pre-ACA system was untenable as more and more people were being priced out of health care each year.
“In the real world people know that deliberately tricking your supporters into supporting you is a bad thing.”
But it’s only a bad thing when Obama does it, right? All those “death panel” lies were righteous?
“In the real world people that nowhere near ten million new people got insured”
Come on, man.
“It seems to degrade the lives of many by forcing them to buy and pay for more insurance than they need at high prices.”
To an extent.
“It seems to have resulted in companies increasing the percentage of part time workers and setting their hours < 30 hours."
There's no evidence that this has happened yet, though it could happen.
"Some people have benefited too. Is it millions? More importantly, is the number of those benefited greater than harmed? Seems to me the answer to the latter may very well be a resounding no."
That may be true, but we also have to consider the amount of harm and the amount of gain. The people helped have gained vital help–help that will undoubtedly save lives. Others have gained subsidies that have improved their financial lives immensely. There's no doubt that a lot of people are worse off in more minor (but still important to them) ways. But those people are also improved by having a system that they can use if they need it. Some of them definitely will need it.
Now that the ACA is law, opponents could try to make the argument that 10 million people (and more in the future, of course) should have their health insurance taken away so that some number of part timers can regain full time employment and others can save money on health insurance. I don't see that argument winning in an honest debate, but I could be wrong.
Boris has been quite proficient in these discussions in revealing the fallacies behind current political thinking in the US – and the world for that matter. His statement, that I excerpted below, is an example of what is known as the broken window fallacy and spelled out years ago by Frederic Bastiat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
The fallacy here, of course, comes from continuing to make reference to what has been purchased by a government program and never mentioning the cost or where the resources used for the purchase might have been better used. In furtherance of this fallacy one can even avoid talking about the people who are worse off by being forced to accept unneeded insurance costs and about the net contribution the program will have to the national debt. Neither mentioned is that younger and presumably healthier people are forced to subsidize the program. As an aside when Gruber talks about the uninformed US voter he may well have had in mind the US youth who showed great support for Obama even though they are subsidizing not only ACA but SS and Medicare and with nary a word from the current administration on this matter.
We have a journalist who writes for the Chicago Tribune who does his best to put the positive spin on ACA and in doing so he mentions the monthly payments for the market place premium and, of course, the government subsidies available but never mentions the amount of the deductible or that those insured are required to opt to pay for benefits they can never realize. I have always thought that the key element to health insurance was to go back to former years before the government got involved with Medicare and Medicaid and giving employers tax deductions for paying for employees health insurance and use catastrophic insurance with high deductibles that keep people from going bankrupt in the case of large medical expenses. That would work much better under flexible private plans than the heavy handed government approach of ACA.
In addition, Boris, by this excerpted statement, has perhaps unknowingly given a perfect example of the principle of the ends (supported policy) evidently justifying the means (lying). The little twist of saying that he does not support political parties does not alter the adherence to the principle and in a passive-aggressive context makes it a worse case.
I should add here my link to an above post concerning the rates for the uninsured and not that that rate was around 14% before the great recession and peaked to 18% and is currently around 13%. Some might well be more correct in comparing 13% to 14% and not 18%.
http://kff.org/uninsured/fact-sheet/key-facts-about-the-uninsured-population/
“I support policy goals. The ACA significantly improved the lives of millions of Americans. I can certainly understand why opponents of the bill would rather talk about year-old youtubes than the tangible benefits of the law.”
Since we have stumbled onto the subject of ACA anyway, I have an impression that I admit is founded on nothing but anecdotal speculation. But to try to build my anecdote into something stronger:
1) Did anyone else here notice that what you paid for medical services one way or another (increased expenses because of degraded coverage of an equally expensive plan, or increased expenses meeting deductibles, or whatever etc) has been higher over the last two years than it used to be?
2) Did this influence your recent vote (assuming you voted) ?
I’ve come to strongly suspect that this was the essential foundation that has cost progressives Congress and stripped the President of much of his popular support, although I can’t support it with evidence. The simple fact that a large number of people noticed a relatively small but direct negative financial impact.
“Now that the ACA is law, opponents could try to make the argument that 10 million people (and more in the future, of course) should have their health insurance taken away so that some number of part timers can regain full time employment and others can save money on health insurance. I don’t see that argument winning in an honest debate, but I could be wrong.”
Actually a number of people were forced to buy insurance and thus taking it away might not be the proper phrase to use. Also the very high deductibles even when considered in light of the government subsidies might not appear more attractive than what those individuals could have purchased in the market before ACA.
The very existence of the mandate says that the program is not very attractive on a voluntary basis or at least to the administration and their supporters.
Kenneth,
You are of course welcome to argue for the repeal of Medicaid and Medicare. It doesn’t look like those programs are going anywhere.
Mark,
I agree that it’s a huge disadvantage for Obamacare that medical costs have increased, as any increase in medical cost can be blamed on Obamacare regardless of the actual cause.
The repeated lie by implication is that 10 million formerly uninsured people now have insurance due to Obamacare.
That is not true.
Most of those people already had insurance and were forced to buy through Obamacare when their policies were non-renewed.
Instead of helping those who were without insurance, Obama used liars like Gruber to build an unworkable edifice to entrap everyone.
And Obama specifically lied to Americans to sell it.
Period.
Blaming Bush, blaming wicked politicians in general as camouflage for Mr. Obama’s choice, is just ducking and running.
And yes, this election was a referendum on this President.
People are energized to oppose this President whose deceptions and unilateral imperialism is increasingly perceived as less than acceptable.
“You are of course welcome to argue for the repeal of Medicaid and Medicare. It doesn’t look like those programs are going anywhere.”
Boris, I am sure you have heard of the term sustainability, as it is used by environmentalist in talking about whether one thinks a system or process is sustainable into the future. Neither Medicaid, Medicare or Social Security is currently on a sustainable path. Perhaps that is what you meant by “(not) going anywhere”.
Re: hunter (Nov 15 10:55),
The argument that everyone else does it is a from of the logical fallacy known as tu quoque or the appeal to hypocrisy. It often takes a form like:
A: Obama is a bad President
B: So was Bush
Then there’s the false dichotomy or dilemma fallacy:
Too many people don’t have health insurance, therefore we must completely revamp the entire US health care system by passing the Affordable Care Act.
The ACA was not the only possible choice here. There were less drastic alternatives that were dismissed out of hand by the party in power.
Or this:
Repeal is not the only option here. The system could be reformed before automatic benefit cuts kick in when the SSA Trust Fund is depleted.
“Most of those people already had insurance”
Sorry, hunter, you are just wrong on this one. The 10 million estimate is supported by the uninsured rate dropping and does not include people who previously had insurance but then purchased insurance on the exchanges.
“The ACA was not the only possible choice here.”
We’ve been waiting the better part of a decade for the Republicans (or anyone else) to propose an alternative.
Boris,
Well, a couple / few things:
1) I wasn’t saying this. I may well agree that it’s a huge disadvantage for Obamacare that medical costs have increased, but lest we lose sight of who said what to whom, that wasn’t me saying that.
2) That’s true. Any increase in medical cost could be blamed on Obamacare regardless of the actual cause. It’s also may be true as you stated earlier in response to Lucia’s remark “It seems to have resulted in companies increasing the percentage of part time workers and setting their hours < 30 hours." that There’s no evidence that this has happened yet, though it could happen. Although I won’t agree with this at this time as I haven’t gone looking for such evidence.
All this is true. It’s not particularly interesting or persuasive to me.
I don’t need evidence that policies that punish business for having a certain number of full time employees will discourage businesses from having that certain number of full time employees to believe it, any more than I need evidence to know that one of my two kids is leaving the light on in the bathroom at night as opposed to some hypothetical burglar or bathroom light ninja. Similarly, I don’t need a formal proof that it was Obamacare that drove up my premiums and deductibles. It’s obvious to anybody who’s being even a little bit honest with themselves about it, as far as I’m concerned. Subsidies are getting paid (and not to me!), obviously the money needs to come from somewhere. It’s perfectly reasonable to think that those who aren’t receiving the subsidies are paying for them, without taking the trouble to trace the details. I know this isn’t likely to persuade you, but that’s perfectly OK with me.
Yeah, to get back to what I was saying, I was speculating that increase medical costs, by implication blamed on Obamacare, was possibly why the people have voted in a Republican Senate and partially why Obama’s popularity is down the tubes.
Hey regarding the 10 million enrollees issue, how do we count the Obamacare medicaid people might be a pertinent question. I think there were a bunch of those.
~shrug~ then again, maybe it’s not. I’m not sure I was following the point being made on this issue either way anyway.
Craig, DeWitt,
I was thinking along these lines. When I hear people talk about the free market as if it’s some sort of magical genie that can do anything, I cringe a little. Mostly my opinion is that it seems to be people who aren’t advocates of the free market in the first place who make the most outrageous statements, to digress a little.
Free markets don’t magically make impossible things possible. I don’t believe it works that way. IF there is a way for something to be produced more efficiently, made better, more appealing, more accessable, durable, given more utility, etc. — if there is a way to provide more value per dollar in some area than is currently being done, then people are profit motivated to find it. But that’s all. There’s no guarantee any specific problem has a better or more optimal solution, particularly within artificial / government constraints.
I have other lines of reasoning that make me doubt the idea that we can pass laws to “harness the free market”, but I’m less confident of them.
Re: Mark+Bofill (Nov 15 14:26),
What a free market is supposed to excel at is allocating scarce resources to their most efficient use. It doesn’t invent resources out of whole cloth.
Government regulation results in rent seeking by businesses trying to keep competition out of their market.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
Boris,
You are echoing numbers produced by people who admitted they lied to you. Perhaps some critical thinking skills would be called for instead.
“Buried in a largely overlooked government audit of the Obama-Care exchanges is a finding that casts still more doubt on the reliability of the 8 million enrollment number commonly cited by the administration and the press.
In a section titled “Other Issues,” an inspector general report released last week found that the HealthCare.gov marketplace couldn’t show it had been reconciling its monthly enrollment numbers with insurance companies.
That’s despite the fact that the law specifically calls for this reconciliation, and the fact that, as the IG report notes, “the federal marketplace obtained the services of a contractor to reconcile enrollment information.”
Obama administration officials “stated that the system to support reconciliations had yet to be developed.”
But as the IG makes clear, without this monthly reconciliation, the government “cannot effectively monitor the current enrollment status of applicants, such as … termination of plans.”
Perhaps Far Fewer Enrollees
In other words, there could be far fewer enrollees than advertised if these numbers were reconciled as required by law. The administration told the IG that it had “an interim process” in place until its automated reporting system was up and running.
The report didn’t say whether this same reconciliation problem exists at the 14 state-run exchanges.
That finding comes on top of other known problems with the ObamaCare enrollment numbers, not the least of which is that they include anyone who selected a plan, not only those who have actually paid their premiums.
The administration hasn’t released updated enrollment numbers since May, which covered the entire open enrollment period at the federal exchange. An update would shed light on how many are keeping up with premium payments.
But 15 states have separately reported paid enrollment numbers, and according to data compiled by ACASignups.net, paid enrollment is 322,000 fewer than the last official White House count — which means nearly 13% of those counted haven’t paid their premiums.
That website estimates that if the payment rate in the remaining states averaged 90%, actual enrollment would be less than 7.2 million, not the 8 million touted by the administration.
Aetna says that out of 720,000 sign-ups, only about 580,000 were paid up by May 20, a payment rate of only 80.6%.
Read More At Investor’s Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/politics-obamacare/070814-707833-obamacare-enrollment-numbers-unreliable-government-audit-finds.htm#ixzz3JB2xGhlO
Follow us: @IBDinvestors on Twitter | InvestorsBusinessDaily on Facebook
Read More At Investor’s Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/politics-obamacare/070814-707833-obamacare-enrollment-numbers-unreliable-government-audit-finds.htm#ixzz3JB2bZe8i
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What makes you special is that you not only were used to sell this plan, you enthusiastically support it and don’t mind being lied to. Which sheds a lot of light why you also support climate obsessed claims and plans, frankly.
Of course if it really were a crisis it should be legislated. If we really were killing the planet and ruining the future for later generations it would merit legislation. If we believed that then they wouldn’t need to lie and frame it as a free market solution.
How about just finding some data we can believe is legitimate, shows significant warming, and unlikely to be natural variability?
There’s been a lot of discussion of ACA here, but not much from the side of health care providers (I am one). ACA is very likely to result in lots of people with new insurance being unable to get doctors, or hospitals. Some people with old insurance may find that their doctors won’t take it any more, as they move to concierge care, or that their hospital has closed. Medical equipment has a 25% tax now, which may result in people not being able to afford it – or more simply, that some medical equipment that could have helped people will never be developed because the manufacturers don’t think it will make a profit. The same is true of new pharmaceuticals.
I work in one of the largest research hospitals in America, and I can already see how we are being forced to do things that aren’t best for our patients. And we’re huge; we can absorb it. Smaller hospitals are liable to get killed.
Many of these effects are hard to quantify, of course, or to prove causation. But a nationwide health care is very complicated, and this new law impacts it in numerous ways. Just pointing to the number of people who have new insurance misses the point that ACA may kill far more people than it saves for dozens of other reasons.
Hunter, Sec Burwell is calling for covering illegal immigrants in ObamaCare. So Joe Wilson was prescient.
The new CAFE standards have plenty of exemptions and credits. For example, if your car can use E85, it doesn’t have to meet the higher mileage requirements.
Time to reframe ‘framing ‘ by calling it by its original name: propaganda.
Somewhat late to the party, hope this has not been mentioned before but wrt the murders at the Appalachain school of law, both students who retrieved their guns were sworn officers, e.g. trained.
As to the ACA, last year, Eli and Ms. Eli had some aging problems that generated significant (not ruinous) visits to waiting rooms and operations. The net of it was that the major benefit of good health insurance was the 60% reduction in costs that the health insurer negotiated with the docs and hospitals. When all the copays and insurance costs were added up and subtracted from the real charges it was pretty much a wash. At the bottom, this is why single payer is cheaper.
Thanks Eli. Did your experience influence your vote this past November?
(EDIT: except that it’s still November. You know what I mean 🙂 )
lucia:
I am relatively certain the change was not introduced by Dreamhost as there’s no reason Dreamhost ought to have been involved in this.
As for (a), if I’m right, it should be a pretty easy fix. All you’d have to change is maybe two function calls in a single PHP file. The problem would be verifying I’m right (and making sure nothing got screwed up).
Eli:
Wash? Single Payer? Eli, could you elaborate a little on this? Did you mean that your insurance costs plus out of pocket equaled the charges? Assuming that, surely this event wasn’t the only one covered by your insurance. I think you are right on single payer for other reasons, but why does it flow from your recent experience?
No evidence? When the ACA kicked in, I overheard the workers at the JoAnn fabrics near me say that all part-time work hours were now being carefully monitored to stay below 30 hours.
Admittedly, what I heard was (a) people who were already part time (which is likely most) and (b) told by one co-worker to another. So, the situation seemed to be that with respect to people who ordinarily were expected to work about 20 hours previously sometimes worked more (due to things like Christmas, sick co worker etc.) But after the ACA, the employer made darn sure they never got a week where they worked more than 30 hours– lest the requirement for insurance coverage kicked in.
I suspect there is “evidence”. It may be anecdotal— and someone needs to do a study to check the effect over all. But no evidence is generally a pretty darn strong statement. There is some– but not enough to make any strong conclusion.
That’s why I said “seems”. We are hearing anectdotal evidence.
Boris
They often are.This one was not. It was passed in a hurry during a period that would generally still have been ‘in negotiation’ after Dem’s lost seats. Look at the history.
Eli
Yep. wrt to me getting a gun, my thoughts are I’d also have to under go extensive training. Which I would not enjoy. So… not going to get one.
On the other hand, I dated a nice guy in college who liked to hunt and fish. He liked training, had guns, he and his whole family liked to hunt and fish and so on. Things were stored safely.
Going back to the top:
I suppose we can agree that greenhouse gases help warm the surface to some extent. I also suppose we can agree that EVENTUALLY fossil fuel supplies will not meet market demand, prices will rise, and therefore we do need to find a replacement.
I have estimated that by the time CO2 atmospheric concentration hits about 620 ppm the fossil fuel supplies will be nearly exhausted, and worldwide production will have begun to drop. I also estimated that, given current pulation and GDP trends, fossil fuel prices will be much higher by 2035.
Consider the above and then tell me what you think we can do about it. For those who want to advocate nuclear power as a solution I suggest consideration of safety issues in Congo, Myanmar and Venezuela.
“We are hearing anectdotal evidence.”
Yes, my “no evidence” statement was not technically correct. However, the evidence doesn’t show any uptick in part-time jobs, which have been falling since the end of the recession. Maybe they would have fallen faster without the ACA, or maybe they will rise in the future, but there’s no detectable difference in the data so far.
If you go back to before the recession there were 14% of the US population without medical insurance and that rate rose to a peak of 18% due to the recession. That rate has been reduced to something near 13% in the current period due to recovery from the recession and the mandate i.e. forced insurance from ACA.
Notice we now talk about percentages and not the millions of uninsured when the politicians were pushing the need to do something about the 40 plus million or so uninsured. Using a baseline for the US population of 319,000,000 that rate of 13% means that 41.5 million remain uninsured.
There have been a number of reasonable attempts to “fix” the health care system in the US through tort reform – that failed because plaintiff lawyers in tort cases overwhelmingly support Democrats and contribute to their campaigns. Allowing insurance beyond state lines has been another attempt that ACA does not address and further includes ignoring the state law restrictions on insurance that makes the system much less flexible than it could be.
The main problem with the current system is , however, the third party payer in the delivery of insurance that resulted from the employers many years ago attempting to get around direct pay limitations imposed by the government by increasing fringe benefits like medical insurance and the government providing tax deductions.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114045132
“Thus employer-based insurance, which started with Blue Cross selling coverage to Texas teachers and spread because of government price controls and tax breaks, became our system. By the mid-1960s, Thomasson says, Americans started to see that system — in which people with good jobs get health care through work and almost everyone else looks to government — as if it were the natural order of things.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance_in_the_United_States
“Employer-sponsored health insurance plans dramatically expanded as a direct result of wage controls imposed by the federal government during World War II. The labor market was tight because of the increased demand for goods and decreased supply of workers during the war. Federally imposed wage and price controls prohibited manufacturers and other employers from raising wages enough to attract workers. When the War Labor Board declared that fringe benefits, such as sick leave and health insurance, did not count as wages for the purpose of wage controls, employers responded with significantly increased offers of fringe benefits, especially health care coverage, to attract workers.”
What the modern day liberals and big government advocates will never understand is that government action can make problems worse and often those programs do just that. When the liberal asks so where is your alternative (government) program, a legitimate answer and alternative in a rational world would be to do nothing or better remove government actions that have caused or contributed to the current problem.
Does anyone think the ‘Employer Mandate’ will be further delayed? It’s supposed to kick in next year I think. Personally I don’t think it will be delayed. Now that the voters can no longer touch the President, he seems to be emptying his pockets of all the remaining unpopular agenda he can accomplish without Congress.
Boris,
I will be pleased and probably astonished next year if we see that the Employer Mandate starts and after the first quarter no impact is evident on full time jobs. I hope we can both revisit that here sometime next year.
Re: Kenneth+Fritsch (Nov 16 09:41),
Yet another example of the false dilemma fallacy. As is “We have to do something” where the something is a new government policy.
Thomas Sowell wrote a couple of books about this sort of thing. The most entertaining is: The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy (1995)
Amazon summary:
Boris,
I know you are kind of outnumbered here, but if you are going to give the left a pass on how the ACA was made law, then you should never complain about why conservatives are cynical about government. This is exactly why trust in government is so low. It is irrelevant whether both sides do it. These very same people are going to oversee this program, should I all of sudden trust them to do this competently and transparently? The distrust is justified.
When the left was explaining about how the ACA was going to be financed (don’t even get me started on doc fix…), I was wondering who on earth was buying this story anyway. Hows the financing through eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse going?
People don’t like higher taxes. People like being tricked into higher taxes even less.
Re: Tom+Scharf (Nov 16 12:42),
Remember when we were told that reducing marginal income tax rates for high incomes was trickle down economics and was not going to work. You can see it even now here. Well guess what. Quantitative Easing is trickle down economics on steroids. Between the Fed and the Treasury, trillions of dollars have been pumped into the economy since 2008 and all it’s done is to increase wealth disparity by inflating asset prices and increasing the profitability of the largest banks.
Now Paul Krugman and others will tell you that the benefits of QE exceed the costs, but those same people also told you that the ACA was a good idea.
j ferguson,
Do remember: One of the ‘features’ of the ACA is that it does transfer money from young healthy people to older, ill people. Under an ordinary market, the younger healthier people would pay less for insurance– an amount commesurate with their likely health. The older would pay more.
So: yes. Under ACA, retirees even those who have accumulated wealth can benefit at the expense of younger, healthy people, just beginning their careers, who may currently be making relatively small incomes and who have not accumulated wealth. The consequence of the latter paying more for insurance than justified by their own likely needs means they might not buy houses, have children, start businesses etc.
But yes: Old ELI and his OLD wife may very well be benefiting from the ACA.
It’s been a while since I read many of Krugman’s posts, but people on the side of quantitative easing have been economists more closely allied with the conservative side, such as Scott Sumner. Traditionally, economists associated with the right such as Mankiw favor Fed action more as opposed to govt involvement. Krugman was skeptical of QE, but more in favor of fiscal stimulus, although he was OK with trying something.
Re: RB (Nov 16 14:49),
An injection of liquidity was required during the initial crisis in 2008. Few disagree with that. But we’re long past the crisis. Now the risk is that we’ve created another bubble that will cause another crisis in the not too distant future. In the meanwhile, the recovery from the recession has been much slower than normal. One might actually posit the hypothesis that the multiple tranches of QE since 2008 have had a negative effect on the economy.
DeWitt,
I will confess to not really understanding how what the Fed does fits into the US economy. I will say that I believe that the US economy is neither materially controlled by the Illuminati nor the policies of a particular administration by much. They have the power to do bad things, but limited power to fix things that are at the mercy of global economic forces. I want a generally competent administration that isn’t married to any ideological mantras.
Everybody “approves” of feeding the poor and taking care of the ill. Wealthy societies can do more of each, at a certain cost to their future wealth. Where we draw this line is an appropriate debate to have.
Lucia,
“One of the ‘features’ of the ACA is that it does transfer money from young healthy people to older, ill people.”
.
Yes, and more than that, it continues the long term trend of disconnecting who pays for health care from who consumes health care. The more complete that disconnect (and now it is really pretty much 100% disconnected for most people), the less motivation there is for people to make economically sensible choices in health care by weighing costs and benefits. I mean, when someone else is paying, only the very best care will do, no matter the cost. Which is why US health care is (by far) the most expensive in the world. If you want to control health care cost, consumers of health care must have some skin in the game… make people financially impacted, positively or negatively, by their health care expenditures. There are lots of potential ways to do this, especially by changing medicare. Politically difficult, but I think needed.
This post got me thinking about comparisons between ACA and the sales of corporate securities.
There are a number of lies directly connected to the passage of the ACA. First, Obama claimed during the debate over its merits that no one would lose their current coverage which was untrue. (Additionally, during his campaign, he lied about what he claimed was his mother’s lack of medical insurance coverage.) Second, Jonathan Gruber documented several other lies that contributed to the passage of the Act.
If the Act was a private offering, the promoters would have been liable for securities fraud. Second, under general civil tort law principles, if this was a civil transaction, the liars would be liable under general tort law principles. (Of course, not saying that a court would hold Obama, Gruber or Pelosi liable for the fraudulent passage of an Act.)
However, the dishonesty associated with the passage of the Act should give liberals pause when they whine about the supposedly terrible things that the Koch brothers or big business are supposed to have done. Undoubtedly, it will have little effect on liberals because they live in their own uninformed and self-righteous echo chamber. (See for instance, the recent, horribly misinformed columns in the NYT on the ACA by Linda Greenhouse and Paul Krugman.)
JD
Re: JD+Ohio (Nov 16 16:46),
The Koch brothers thing is a red herring to distract attention from the far larger contributions of liberal fat cats like Tom Steyer and George Soros. It’s a classic move to accuse your opponent of doing something that you are already doing or planning to do. Sociopaths, for example, do it all the time.
And yes, I’m intentionally using an example of mental aberration, much like liberals have been accusing conservatives of being mentally disturbed since at least the Goldwater campaign in 1964.
Re: JD+Ohio (Nov 16 16:46), Hmm, my last comment disappeared on submission. Perhaps I shouldn’t have used s 0 c i 0 p @ t h in the text. Or maybe it was the link.
Anyway, the Koch brothers thing is a classic red herring.
Re: DeWitt Payne
That is true if you compare to conventional post-war recessions in the United States, but not true compared to financial crisis-driven recessions .
“That is true if you compare to conventional post-war recessions in the United States, but not true compared to financial crisis-driven recessions .”
Perhaps that link has ignored Janet Yellen reasoning that the employment rate continues to be down because people have stop looking for employment. Liberals and some conservation like to point to people deciding to retire earlier as a natural demographic event in attempts to defend the Federal Reserve’s efficacy, while, ironically, Yellen, in effect, has been yelling the opposite.
A couple other points need to be made here also. The artificially low interest rates that the fed has maintained for a very long time have been a major problem for older people living on a fixed income and not wanting to risk investing in stocks. It has in turn artificially boosted the stock market (for which I thank Janet and Ben every night) and increased the wealth disparity in the US. Nary a word about this from the defenders of the fed from liberals or conservatives and certainly not the MSM.
Another point is that when we hear that conservatives and liberals have agreed on the same action we are supposed to back off our criticisms of government policy when in truth in makes our concerns more troubling as any alternatives are no longer or less likely to be used. Paul Krugman will, like any good liberal and partisan Democrat, defend any large government action or program.. He simply likes some better than others. He had columns a few years back where he was stating a wish for an invasion from outer space so that the government had an excuse to spend/borrow/print lots of money on this wasteful enterprise – Krugman’s fiscal policy emphasis. He well could have said start a war or get into a war but to a modern liberal a space invasion is more politically correct – I would suppose.
We should also remember that it was conservative Supreme Court Chief Justice, Roberts, who reasoned in “making” the ACA constitutional that (1) an administration and Congress can mislead or lie in calling a tax a fee or a penalty in selling a program like ACA and (2) the court will and should go to great pains in getting that law enacted as constitutional by calling it tax and thus pass constitutional muster. In other words, Congress now has a precedent whereby they can legislate what its citizens purchases and force those purchases and call the enforcement whatever is required to get the law passed and the Supreme Court will make it all constitutional by calling it a tax. Recall also that there are no constitutional limits on federal tax rates. Evidently the administration can then make changes to those laws to work to their political advantage as no court has said otherwise to this point. Nor do you see accounts in the MSM of infringements of individual freedoms these actions impose.
RB,
I’m not sure what to make of the claim that our recovery is faster than ‘some’ recovery in Norway or that we recovered faster than in 1929 (called “the great depression”). The figure in the post you link seems to leave out numerous other recessions in the US– there was one in the 70s and so on. I get that there are “several” recessions shown– but why not all of the US recession relative to the current US recession? Why were those particular non-US recessions selected as points of comparison? The post doesn’t really say.
Here is the job participation rate that so bothers Yellen.
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000
Also in the link from RB it should be noted that the job loss in the latest recession was 6% from peak while for 1929 the loss was 18% and the time for recovery appears from the graph about a year or so longer for 1929. In fact almost all the recessions in the link had a much larger job loss than the recent US recession. When the US starts to compare itself with the stagnation of the controlled economies of the world you know we are in real trouble.
Lucia,
The comparison is with other big financial crisis-driven recessions. More here and here .
Re: Kenneth Fritsch
I can’t tell if you are arguing whether policy measures undertaken in the wake of the crash were a success or not..
RB,
You’ve now named people and linked to blog posts that don’t tell me why those recessions were picked– other than by naming people who did ‘great’ research.
Any chance you can tell me in your own words why those crises are relevant and not others? That is: in some other way than something as vague as
“with other big financial crisis-driven recessions. More here and here .”
with links to here and here?
What are the criteria etc? (Assuming you have read, and understood what is at ‘here’ and ‘here’, you can tell give your own summary in your own words— possibly giving links to underlying studies instead of other rather uninformative blog posts. )
RB–
For example: with respect to ‘criteria’ for “big financial crisis”, why doesn’t iceland’s count? http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/financial-recovery-of-iceland-a-case-worth-studying-a-942387.html
Or Irelands
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-2008_Irish_economic_downturn
Or Greece’s?
Or any other number of “financial crises”. The posts you link don’t tell us the criteria for deeming it “big” enough to merit putting on the graph.
Lucia,
The post-war recessions were Fed-induced to bring inflation under control. This is in contrast with banking crises driven recessions which historically on average have long recovery periods. Sorry you don’t find those informative. Perhaps you can read Reinhart/Rogoff’s paper out on ssrn which actually came out before the big crash. It is referred to in one of the above links. There is even a book out there I believe.
RB
Ok… so are you saying the crises included are banking crises? Or are you saying the crises included are Fed ones?
So… if they are banking crises, why aren’t iceland and ireland (and other well known banking crises) included. If they are “fed induced” why aren’t other fed induced crises on there? I’m mystified by what you are trying to tell us.
And what about Greece? Or Portugal?
As far as I can tell, the post you linked didn’t provide this ‘information’. I can’t tell from those why some recessions were picked and others not– but perhaps you can find the text and quote the words that tell me?
Perhaps. But why don’t you just give an actual summary? So we know what you think they claim? Maybe include some quotes.
Because right now: As far as I can see, you are either telling me the crises on the chart are banking crises– in which case, some well known crises are missing– or you are saying they are other types of crises– in which case a different set are missing. And…well… what are you saying?
Can you quote the actual criteria? So we don’t have to guess what you are claiming?
I looked a little more. Clearly, by you must not mean the graph includes ‘banking crises” because the Spanish crisis in 1977 is there. Wikipedia says
That’s a crisis due to sudden increase in cost of resources. This crisis (which does not seem to be a “banking” crisis) is on there. Was the energy crisis in Spain due to their governement doing something to fight inflation? If so, why isn’t our 70s recession on the graph?
If you could explain the criteria a little more precisely, that might help?
Lucia,
“The consequence of the latter paying more for insurance than justified by their own likely needs means they might not buy houses, have children, start businesses etc.”
True. They also save money when they do use medical services since they get the insurance-negotiated rates, and they are protected against bankruptcies. Not to say that they are better off as a whole, but they gain some benefits too.
“I know you are kind of outnumbered here, but if you are going to give the left a pass on how the ACA was made law, then you should never complain about why conservatives are cynical about government. This is exactly why trust in government is so low. It is irrelevant whether both sides do it. These very same people are going to oversee this program, should I all of sudden trust them to do this competently and transparently? The distrust is justified.”
Conservatives seem to have a lot of trust in the government being able to enforce strict immigration laws fairly and efficiently, so I think the cynicism is closely connected to policy preference.
People are right to be skeptical of government, but attempts to determine the value of a policy or a law based on the way it was passed are going to be wrong a lot of the time.
Boris
Most won’t get sick at all– making ‘insurance negotiated rates’ moot. If they had insurance at rates comensurate with their risk pool, they would get ‘insurance negotiated rates’ at lower cost– that is without paying extra for the elderly.
There are also other ways laws could have been written to deal with these odd ‘insurance negotiated costs’.
Beyond that: If you own no house, and have no savings (because all your money goes to insurance) protection against bankruptcy is pointless. The whole point of bankruptcy is to let people clear the slate and start over! So if that’s the purpose of the ACA, it’s insurance for hospitals and doctors that over charge those who would have been forced to pay excess amounts (i.e. way more than insurance companies) by making sure those people do pay rather than going bankrupt (which leaves the hospital and doctor with the bill!)
Anyway: not benefiting ‘as a whole’ is not benefiting. Being forced to pay for things someone else tells you are ‘benefits’ but which you don’t value (like bankruptcy protection when you are broke) is not a “benefit”!
Boris,
We have zero faith government will enforce immigration laws properly. That is based on the evidence. We would very much like the government to start doing so. Instead we have a small group of elected leaders who put illegal aliens first and American citizens a distant second. Ending a failed law like the ACA because among many things it was deceptively written to fool people into supporting it is as good a reason to end it that I can think of.
Boris
Does the government enforce “immigration [law] fairly and efficiently”? If it doesn’t not trusting it to do so would just mean that a person is informed and realistic.
For what it’s worth: I think the government doesn’t enforce the laws we have fairly or efficiently. I’m for creating methods to make legal immigration fairly easy. Instead we have a system that is just odd. I’m not sure if what you implied by “the cynicism is .. ” is that my view enforcement is not fair or efficient is ‘cynicism’. If so, maybe you can explain how it’s ‘cynical’ to think enforcement is not fair or efficient.
I’m also not sure what you mean by “closely connected to policy preference”. Are you suggesting that those– like me– who want to make legal immigration simpler don’t think the government is enforcing laws fairly or efficiently? I really don’t see much of a connection here. I know people who want to limit immigration who think the government enforcement of immigration is neither fair nor efficient; I know people who want to ease immigration who think the government enforcement is neither fair nor efficient. Lots of people think the enforcement is not fair or efficient– but their preference for what the law should be is all over the map!
Boris,
As an example: I don’t think anyone thinks this is “fair and efficient”
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_25987581/immigrant-children-held-crowded-concrete-cells
The idea that this is not ‘fair or efficient’ is shared by the people who think we should let the kids in and those who think we should keep the kids out. I don’t think it’s “cynical” to believe this is not “fair or efficient”!
“Anyway: not benefiting ‘as a whole’ is not benefiting.”
Sounds like a semantics game to me. The point it is that their money isn’t just being thrown away and there are benefits. Of course, one main benefit is that they can be covered when they are older.
“For what it’s worth: I think the government doesn’t enforce the laws we have fairly or efficiently.”
Let me put it this way: noting that the government doesn’t enforce immigration laws fairly and efficiently doesn’t seem to keep conservatives from wanting those laws enforced more strictly. Nor do they want to dismantle or repeal the laws that are enforced unfairly and inefficiently.
The argument that the government will not enforce laws fairly might sometimes make sense for libertarians, but conservatives want strict government enforcement in some areas.
Boris: “The point it is that their money isn’t just being thrown away and there are benefits.”
So, may I summarize this as saying that you believe that if it isn’t *entirely* useless, it’s legitimate to force it on people? It doesn’t matter what people want; the state gets to decide what they spend their money on.
Boris,
“They also save money when they do use medical services since they get the insurance-negotiated rates”
Don’t confuse the concepts of group buying power and wealth transfers between government selected groups by subsidized insurance.
“Conservatives seem to have a lot of trust in the government being able to enforce strict immigration laws fairly and efficiently”
Don’t confuse the belief that the government will likely run the ACA poorly and incompetently with a straw man belief that the government should never run anything. National defense, social security, public infrastructure, etc. In the ACA’s case it is a transfer of a large functional private sector industry in to the hands of government control. Time will tell if this was wise, so far the early returns are trending negative.
RB (Comment #132853)
Financial crises (that by the way more than the Austrian school of economists judge were the results of Federal Reserve actions in causing bubbles like that that precipitated the housing market crisis) usually cause employment to fall off precipitously at the beginning and thus the recovery is from that time.
Federal Reserve actions with monetary policy and the Congress’ and administrations’ with fiscal policy in the Austrian School of economics view of business cycles merely delays the recovery time by preventing the adjustments required to rid the system of mal investments made during the Fed caused bubble. Given that the Fed will cause recessions the best recovery antidote is to allow a quicker and perhaps deeper recession by the Fed allowing interest rates to adjust and by not pumping money created out of thin air into the system.
That this recovery is historically long (and not complete according to Yellen) by looking at the job participation rate is no surprise to those of us who prescribe to the thesis I noted above. That the defenders of the current system of government intervention into the economy would search for and spin economic indexes to favor their point of view is not surprising either.
A couple of other points of interest here are that investment and hiring were limited by those private enterprises that were hurt and made wary by the results of the recession and because of that prevailing attitude the Fed’s attempt to pump money into the system to encourage investment and hiring failed. The recovery was probably shortened by this failure because, in effect, it allowed a more natural process to occur. That the Fed is given credit for this by its defenders does not hold up under closer scrutiny. The recovery was in spite of the Fed. I like the expression that fits this situation and that says: you cannot push on a rope and expect anything to happen.
I think we all heard the comments coming out of politicians and MSM about the trillions of dollars that businesses had sitting on the sidelines and what shame that was. It was that situation that I judge motivated Paul Krugman’s remark of wishing for an invasion from outer space in order to force private enterprises to spend – and no matter how wasteful the spending.
“Boris: “The point it is that their money isn’t just being thrown away and there are benefits.—
Boris, how many ways can you give examples of the broken window fallacy? I certainly appreciate your efforts in this matter.
That’s the Broken Window Fallacy in a nutshell. The question is whether that money could have been used more effectively, not whether it’s being totally wasted.
Then there are the unintended consequences of the funding mechanisms like the excise tax on medical device companies. The ‘logic’ of that tax is that manufacturers of medical devices will sell more and have higher profits because more people will have health insurance. So they should pay increased taxes on their ‘excess’ profits. But it isn’t working out all that well so far. Revenues are not what was expected. Big surprise. You tax something you get less of it.
Harold:
“It doesn’t matter what people want; the state gets to decide what they spend their money on.”
This is how taxes work.
Tom:
“In the ACA’s case it is a transfer of a large functional private sector industry in to the hands of government control.”
This is not what the ACA does at all.
Also, the government seems to be fairly good at running Medicare–or at least good enough that no one is calling for Medicare repeal.
Re: Kenneth+Fritsch (Nov 17 09:40),
There’s lots of money sitting overseas in the coffers of multinational companies. But it won’t be repatriated until the corporate income tax rate in the US is lowered and double taxation, i.e. paying tax on profits that have already been taxed by a foreign government, is ended.
The recent government action to prevent corporate tax inversions won’t collect a dime in new revenue. The money will stay overseas. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot! But the left isn’t interested in efficiency of tax collection, only ‘fairness’, which they get to define. Punishing success would probably be more accurate than fairness.
Boris “The ACA significantly improved the lives of millions of Americans.”
Well -it has made my life hell for the past 11 months.
“Death Panels” – Still don’t believe they will occur? Then you should be reading a blog dedicated to statistics and paying more attention when you do.
Boris: “This is how taxes work.”
It seems then that you don’t put any limit on taxation. For example, you’d think it proper for government to impose a program in which everyone has to purchase a television, whether they wish to watch TV or not. After all, having a TV can be of use to a person. Technically they wouldn’t have to buy; they could pay a “tax” for not purchasing. And we would impose a real tax on those making over $X/year to subsidize those who would otherwise not be able to afford a TV. The government would provide a limited set of standard TVs, which would provide a discounted price because of the purchasing power (buying in bulk). Sounds good to you? [Real question, not rhetorical.]
Some citizens believe that taxes are properly for state functions such as police, national defense, courts, etc. The fact that one can pay for a good via taxation doesn’t legitimize it in our minds.
“broken window fallacy”
You guys keep throwing this around, but I have no idea why. Of course there are trade-offs. The trade-offs in the ACA are small compared to the benefits for everyone. If you don’t accept the fact that sick people who can’t afford health care is a bad thing for society, then I don’t know what else to say.
Eli said “The net of it was that the major benefit of good health insurance was the 60% reduction in costs that the health insurer negotiated with the docs and hospitals.”
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The fact that you ignorant of how insurance companies worked before the advent of the ACA cannot be used as an example of how the ACA is good.
“Sounds good to you?”
Of course not. Health care has a lot more in common with police, national defense and courts than TVs.
SteveF said “I mean, when someone else is paying, only the very best care will do, no matter the cost.”
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The other solution to this problem is to start deciding who gets what medical treatment based on non-monetary factors – such as quality of life expectations, efficacy for age, etc.
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Obamcare created the Independent Payment Advisory Board to perform this task.
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The shorthand name is death panel.
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Something to think about- the cost of Ebola treatment is not small. How will the IPAB score this given a moderate outbreak?
“Something to think about- the cost of Ebola treatment is not small. How will the IPAB score this given a moderate outbreak?”
Or how would, say, Blue Cross/Blue Shield score it?
Boris is demonstrating that Prof. Gruber was right on target about how to sell Obamacare: Rely on the stupidity of the supporters. Boris is a self executing meme defending an acknowledged scam. Highly reissitant to counter data.
Re: Boris (Nov 17 10:07),
The fallacy applies because the ACA broke things that didn’t need fixing. Many people were not able to keep their insurance or their physicians. That isn’t a trade-off. Worse, it was a lie. It’s also accelerating the trend of what’s called concierge medicine. Physicians practicing concierge medicine don’t accept health insurance patients at all. It’s strictly cash. But I’m sure if it gets popular enough, the left will want to ban it entirely. After all, it’s not fair that some people are wealthier than others and can afford to purchase better health care. /sarc
Boris is practicing a wee bit of sleight of hand with
“noting that the government doesn’t enforce immigration laws fairly and efficiently doesn’t seem to keep conservatives from wanting those laws enforced more strictly. Nor do they want to dismantle or repeal the laws that are enforced unfairly and inefficiently.”
Government’s job is to protect our borders and enforce immigration. There is no proper private sector alternative. America had a working private sector health delivery system that served all but about 13% of the people. It could have been reformed. Team Obama relied on the stupidity of the American people to toss out the wohole edifice and and replace it with an unworkable hugely expensive structure that has already failed.
Immigration laws, if they had been enforced, would prevent the problem we now face. Having a President decide to do a faux rewrite of those laws to please his political goals is not reforming the law. Americans in general, not just conservatives, want our borders secure but the President refuses to do that. Most Americans want an end to massive illegal immigration by keeping them out. This President encourages illegal immigration.
Your use of the immigration issue does not help your defense of Obamacare…not that it was working anyway.
“Boris is a self executing meme”
A place of honor in Not Supportive of Political Parties (Democrat) circles.
Andrew
Boris (#132878),
OK, so we’ve established that you draw some sort of line between health care and TV. From a philosophical perspective, what criterion do you use to draw that line? Elsewhere, you say that “sick people who can’t afford health care is a bad thing for society”, so I suspect that’s part of the equation. Some would say that “people who don’t eat healthfully is a bad thing for society” — perhaps I should have used fresh vegetables rather than TV as an example.
Boris
Huh? You’re the one who introduced the concept that one might ‘benefit’ if they didn’t benefit “as a whole”. But if the net effect is “harm” then one did not “benefit”. This isn’t “semantics”, it is “the state of things”.
Similar things happen with cost: If option A costs me $5 but covers $5 in costs, it’s a wash.
If B costs me $7 and covers $3 in costs it did not not “save” me $3, it cost me $4. That’s what happens “as a whole”: it costs me: i.e. “harmed” me. I did not “benefit” by $3. I was “harmed” by $4.
If you think this is “sematics”… well… okey, dokey. I don’t think it’s “semantics”.
And it doesn’t matter if we increase the ‘benefit’ this way
Option C costs me $7 but saves me $6. I am still out $1 if I chose option C. And if the governement forces me to chose option C over option A, the government did not create a “benefit” of $6 for me. They ‘harmed” me by $1!
That’s how “As a whole” or “net” works. You don’t get to say: But look! You got $6 of value for your $7!! Before you only got $5 for your $5. So what if you then got to spend the $2 as you saw fit– including possibly– paying $1 of those $2 to cover the $1 in cost and buying a your baby some new shoes with the other $1.
Option “C” costs me $7 but I save
Boris
Uhhh… Why should it they want that? Yes: they think the cure to laws being enforced unfairly and inefficiently is to enforce them fairly and efficiently.
Sure. Some conservatives want strict government enforcement in some areas. Note also:
(a) Not all conservatives are libertarians. That libertarians and conservatives disagree on some things is not any sort of “contradiction”.
(b) Most libertarians are not ‘anarchists’. Many are for government enforcing individual property rights and so on. Many also support limited government with the limitation being acting in certain spheres. Often those spheres include border policing and military action. That these libertarians might support more border policing is not a ‘contradiction’ of ‘limited government’. It merely means they think that function falls withing the purview while some other function you deem acceptable for a government does not fall in the government purview.
(c) The fact that many libertarians think military action and border patrol is under the purview of the government does not contradict their view that the government is generally inefficient. Many merely think that certain things can’t be done in otherways and so government action should be limited to those things. Other actions– and they consider those to be most activities, they think better done by individuals. This is not a “contradiction” of any sort.
(d) Even if some anarchists exist– and possibly call themselves by the same noun chosen by some libertarians who are not anarchists, that fact the two different people (or groups) disagree does not create any sort of “contradiction” in the argument set forth by any indiviudal person. (It might confuse you or those not paying attention– but there is no contradiction.)
You may not agree with someone else’s view on limited government. But when a person believes government action should be “limited to A”, there is no contradiction when they say the actually want government to do A and they would like the government to do that as efficiently as possible. That you would prefer government to do “B” and are upset they don’t want it to do “B” doesn’t create any contradiction when they want it to do A.
Boris
Yep. That’s why many people favor lower taxes, especially when the state directs individuals to spend money on things individuals don’t value or need. It’s quote rational to favor lower taxes in these instances.
Boris,
“If you don’t accept the fact that sick people who can’t afford health care is a bad thing for society, then I don’t know what else to say.”
It’s bad for society. We all voted and agreed Boris should pay every last dollar necessary to fix the problem. If you have a problem with that, I don’t know what else to say. Spending other people’s money sure is easy, isn’t it? Send your check to the US Treasury ASAP please.
Agreeing that things are a problem doesn’t automatically make people believe your answer is the best solution, and because they don’t support your solution, doesn’t mean they don’t think a problem exists. I hope you understand this and spread the word, it seems to be a particularly virulent disease of logic.
Boris – “Or how would, say, Blue Cross/Blue Shield score it?”
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Based on existing, well understood contract law. The IPAB does not have such governance or accountability.
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Or did you fail to read the PPACA to discover this?
Re: hunter (Nov 17 11:00),
Cite please.
I understand that you want to keep immigrants out. I’m not at all convinced that by a large majority, i.e. most, Americans want to keep immigrants out.
Probably most Americans do want an end to massive illegal immigration, but keeping them out is not the only alternative, and I doubt it’s the most popular. Increasing visa quotas, particularly for H-1B applicants and allowing guest workers, for example, would likely decrease the flow of illegals.
Trying to close the borders is like Prohibition, it only provides a business opportunity for criminals, particularly criminal gangs like the 18th Street Gang.
The death panel expression entering the ACA debates is a good example of using inflammatory language that can be easily shrugged off and the whole discussion and points upon which it is based upon are never made – at least in a reasonable manner.
The points on which it is based are present in all government health programs worldwide and is: What actions will governments take when the government judges that the system is too expensive to be sustained. Other countries that have single payer system like Canada and Great Britain do not have death panels but rather use tactics like long wait times for medical procedures and attention for rationing medical care. Like what ACA attempts to do, single payer systems attempt to lower the costs by reducing pay rates to doctors, hospitals and for medicines which in effect is another form of rationing. These systems can also put priorities on types of procedures and care available in efforts to control costs.
In the US, I think, from past government responses in these matters and to a certain extent what I have seen recently in Europe, that the future problems and especially in the US which is not used to rationing will evolve around the system becoming more and more expensive and with concurrent larger and larger deficits to finance the program. In other words, the problem will be the opposite of that envisioned with death panels. With ACA I have already seen that occurring by delaying actions that were politically unappetizing from a cost reimbursement standpoint and especially in front of a national election. Once the act was legislated there is little motivation to keep the costs under control in attempts to meet past promises to keep the system operations from adding to the national debt. Before ACA there has been a law on the books for many years concerning cost controls on Medicare that has never been enforced and even though it gets a pass each year from Congress, the Office of Management and Budget uses it in (under)estimating future costs of Medicare.
http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/ReportsTrustFunds/Downloads/2012TRAlternativeScenario.pdf
It is also worthy of note that in recent years when governments in Europe have attempted to put even minor cost controls on their national health care systems the voters have risen up and the politicians have backed down. I suspect that this scenario will continue in the US and worldwide until an immediate and unsustainable debt and/or tax level is met. With these reactions as evidence, it will not be the modern-liberal-wished-for scenario of some minor tweaking of the system to make it all better.
“Uhhh… Why should it they want that? Yes: they think the cure to laws being enforced unfairly and inefficiently is to enforce them fairly and efficiently.”
All I am saying is that if the only objection to a law is that it won’t be enforced fairly, then the problem is probably with the law–because one can always claim that laws won’t be enforced fairly.
Re: Kenneth+Fritsch (Nov 17 13:52),
Yep. The Congressional Budget Office also has to score the law as written. ACA was written in a manner to get a good score from the CBO. We have as an authority on this, one Jonathon Gruber. The CBO also used the never actually enforced Medicare physician reimbursement reduction when scoring the ACA. The phrase ‘smoke and mirrors’ comes to mind.
Boris,
” Health care has a lot more in common with police, national defense and courts than TVs.”
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And there you have it. In your rather twisted view of reality, police, courts, and national defense are equal to health care. I wounder, Boris, if you can begin to appreciate how far from the US Constitution that is? Health care has nothing to do with national defense, courts, and police functions.
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Health care is a horrible public service proposition, with costs and benefits utterly disconnected. People grow old, become very unwell, and consume, what, ~75% of total lifetime heath care costs in the last 6 months of life? For the public to bankroll this expenditure is sheer madness, and clinging to this madness will bankrupt most any society. The other option is European ‘single payer’ systems, where your health care options are dictated by bureaucrats. It is a cheaper option. But you know what? You die anyway. Do you think people in the US want bureaucrats controlling access to health care?
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Health care has, sadly, become a means by which a handsomely rewarded group, with tremendous political influence, provides medical treatment for the very unwell elderly, and in the process, takes a vast quantity of money from the public. Ever wonder how it is medical doctors are so very rich? (Look at the membership roll of most any exclusive country club if you doubt this.) The answer is public funding of health care.
Boris
None-sense. A perfectly fair, just good law could be enforced unfairly, inefficiently. That would be a problem because it would mean a good law that would achieve splendid outcome failed to do so because the enforcement was unfair, inefficient or non-existent. .
I suspect you could see this if a law you thought just was enforced unfairly, inefficiently, or not at all.
If this occurred, the perfect remedy to the problem would be to fix the enforcement problem not the law.
Is it possible that good laws can be spoiled by poor, inefficient enforcement? Of course. And one can also claim they are inefficiently enforced. (And one can make such claims irrespecrive of truth.)
But none of that means that laws that are otherwise good but inefficiently enforced shouldn’t be enforced. Nor does it mean the good law needs to be changed to a bad law merely because someone who doesn’t like the law decides to not enforce it. (or even just someone incompetent doesn’t enforce it!)
@DeWitt+Payne (Comment #132891)
At least quote me correctly:
“Most Americans want an end to massive illegal immigration by keeping them out.”
The “them” is obviously “illegal immigration”.
Of course it would be better to keep illegals out. If we decide to change how people can come in, and make it easier for certain people to be legal immigrants, that would be ok.
But it should be done by law, not by imperial fiat from a spoiled brat sitting in a fancy office.
hunter
Yep. I would like it to be easier for quite a few to be legal immigrants and make that the way for entering the country. My threshold for who to let in is pretty low– those who want to work, can and do get employment fairly quickly, I think should be allowed to do so. I don’t even see a big need for “special skills”. If people want to lay bricks, work for a garden service– that’s a job.
But I think we need to block the illegal path.
Re: lucia (Nov 18 06:50),
My problem is with the argument that we can’t reform immigration laws until our borders are sealed. My reply to this argument is by analogy to the 55mph speed limit. Most people were driving faster than 55mph on Interstate highways. Applying similar logic to sealing the borders, one would argue that the 55mph speed limit couldn’t be changed until we had better enforcement so no one was speeding. Obviously, this makes no sense. IMO, the seal the border first argument is equally nonsensical.
The best way, IMO, to reduce illegal immigration is to reduce the demand by allowing more legal immigration and guest worker permits. At the same time, however, we should stop worshiping at the altar of multiculturalism and make English the only official language. That would stop the current foolishness of having to print ballots in multiple languages that is currently required by federal law.
SteveF:
“And there you have it. In your rather twisted view of reality, police, courts, and national defense are equal to health care. I wounder, Boris, if you can begin to appreciate how far from the US Constitution that is? Health care has nothing to do with national defense, courts, and police functions.”
“Twisted view”? If you think governments should just let their citizens die in the streets if they don’t have access to health care, then you are the one with the twisted view. I’m pretty sure the general welfare clause covers health care, btw.
“Do you think people in the US want bureaucrats controlling access to health care?”
They seem to like Medicare, so, yes?
“Ever wonder how it is medical doctors are so very rich? (Look at the membership roll of most any exclusive country club if you doubt this.) The answer is public funding of health care.”
You have this exactly backwards. Doctors and hospitals make more money treating people with private insurance.
I understand that you are a radical libertarian, but Medicare isn’t going anywhere. We tried having no Medicare once in this country and it wasn’t working. It would be even worse now given the increased relative costs of health care.
Illegal immigration could be greatly reduced quickly if employing an undocumented alien were considered a more serious crime. Employment is the main attraction; make getting a job much more difficult for undocumented people and the flux would decline. There is no reason not to increase guest worker programs in regions were needed.
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I think a reasoned argument can be made for setting limits on immigration, and for very carefully evaluating people asking for residency. Otherwise the flow of immigrants would be huge, and undesirables (like criminals) would enter with the rest. The quality of life and economic opportunities in the State are great attractions, and the poorer the country immigrant comes from, the stronger the attraction.
SteveF–
Yep.
Also yep.
Right now, many illegals are perfectly respectable people who just want jobs. And I don’t blame them for wanting jobs–and in many senses even admire the for gumption. But, we need our system to deal with this properly and create a path for them to enter legally while inhibitting the illegal path.
Re: Kenneth Fritsch Comment #132869
I understand you favor Austrian economics, but we’ve had this conversation before. There was no Fed before a need to have one was felt. As well, the pre-Fed era had four depressions. Chances are that history will view the Bernanke/Yellen Fed kindly for not repeating the mistakes of the 1930s, but possibly making some new mistakes of their own, and having done a reasonable job under the circumstances.
If you want to bend the healthcare cost curve, death panels (or a more pleasant euphemism) will be necessary in public provided health care. A lot of healthcare spending occurs in the last year of life. The default healthcare position is to provide near heroic efforts to maintain life, and there is a great deal of inertia in this position. This costs a tremendous amount of money. Initiatives such as Hospice home care can reduce these costs. I can vouch that when your loved one has become borderline mentally incompetent, it is very difficult to say no to an all out effort to save life, even when little hope exists, using reasoning of public healthcare costs as a decision driver. The reality of what some of these life extending (my mother called it death extending) procedures provide is quite dubious when it comes to quality of life, and few layman are prepared to make a knowledgeable decision here. This topic is so toxic as to be beyond debate, but is where a lot of cost savings can be had.
Boris,
“radical libertarian”. Never been called that before. I am very concerned about the role and scope of government, and especially government regulations, which seem to me ever increasing during my lifetime. If that makes me a libertarian, even a radical one, so be it.
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Yes, medical care providers make more money from “private” insurance plans, but seems to me you are missing the big picture: private plans are subsidised via favorable tax treatment. Make that income fully taxable, and people would look more closely at the cost of health insurance.
Tom Scharf,
“death panels” are only needed to bend the cost curve because very unwell (and mostly very old) people and their families have zero downside from heroic efforts to extend life…. aside from the extended human suffering those heroic efforts often bring.
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Costs and benefits need to be connected for the patient and their families, or you get the insanely expensive health care system we have today.
RB (Comment #132904)
“There was no Fed before a need to have one was felt. As well, the pre-Fed era had four depressions. Chances are that history will view the Bernanke/Yellen Fed kindly for not repeating the mistakes of the 1930s, but possibly making some new mistakes of their own, and having done a reasonable job under the circumstances.”
I understand that you are defending the Fed, but I judge a closer look at the prolonged recession will show a failure of the Feds actions and further would show the Fed can cause bubbles and financial crisis as happened in the Great Depression and recessions since that time. In order for the Fed’s actions to be truly analyzed and judged in wider circles and the MSM will require more attention paid to the Austrian School analyses. I do not believe that the argument that it would have been (much) worse (and even in the longer run) if the Fed had acted differently is not a very good argument since we will now never know how that would have turned out. By not over defending the Fed and ignoring its failures I think we could have a reasonable discussion and analysis. Wall Street investment people will, of course, defend the Feds action because once again it has profited hugely from their actions and at the expense of those who are attempting to survive on a fixed income and the less risky portfolios that involve interest and dividend income that the Feds have artificially suppressed. I am encouraged that I see more criticism of the Feds actions in recent years and a lot of it taken from the Austrian School.
I would think that the book is not yet closed on the recent recession because (1) the Feds continue to keep and promise into the future to keep short term interest rates near zero and (2) the stock market continues to rise due to the poor alternatives for investments because of the Fed action on interest rates.
Depressions occurring before the Fed have been analyzed and depending on who has done the analyses have been linked to government actions both national and state. Murray Rothbard has a good exposition on the history of banking in the US in his book, “The Mystery of Banking” where he details how banks before the Federal Reserve was created had fractional reserves that governments promoted in order to borrow from banks and repay in inflated dollars. And, of course, the Federal Treasury could simply inflate by printing money as it did in creating greenbacks to finance in part the Civil war. Even before the Civil War there were also suspensions of specie payments by banks that were allowed by governments during financial crises that would have otherwise went bankrupt in a non interventionist environment. States could also intervene in banking with heavy handed regulations and base the lending power of a bank on the value of state bonds it owned.
Even a quick look at the Wikipedia link below shows connections of pre Fed depression and government action precipitating the problem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_United_States
Kenneth+Fritsch (Comment #132908)
Actually, time will tell but criticism could go both ways. For instance, for a long time, Scott Sumner (themoneyillusion blog) was critical of the Fed for not being looser earlier given the prevailing inflation and employment conditions.
“If you want to bend the healthcare cost curve, death panels (or a more pleasant euphemism) will be necessary in public provided health care. A lot of healthcare spending occurs in the last year of life.”
I think most reasonable people agree that extending life in hopeless situations and where the person involved is no longer able to make decisions for themselves can be costly and probably unnecessary. The point, even in situations where individual freedoms are marginally protected by governments, is that individuals want to make that decision and not have the government make it directly or indirectly for them.
My wife and I have made stipulations for just that situation and a son and daughter-in-law have been given the power to make decisions if we are no longer capable – that’s the son and daughter-in-law to whom we are particularly nice.
I must add here that I think we should cut Boris some slack in these discussions because I judge his beliefs about these matters to be honestly held ones and ones that I hear from many other people. I do think he provides a sounding board for those of us who have an inclination to expound on these matters, but I certainly do not think I will change his mind, or, for that matter, engage him in a very in depth discussion about these matters.
“Actually, time will tell but criticism could go both ways. For instance, for a long time, Scott Sumner (themoneyillusion blog) was critical of the Fed for not being looser earlier given the prevailing inflation and employment conditions.”
Well, of course, when the government gives power to an agency like the Fed or brings forth a major program like ACA there will always be those who in defense will and do propose that any failings of those programs are not printing enough money, not lowering interest rates enough and for long enough and not spending enough on a failed program, i.e. the programs never go far enough which I suppose means if that going further fails we can always defend it by saying we should have gone even further.
Fortunately for these defenders who take this tact, the political stage is favorable for these remarks to be taken seriously. In other times and hopefully in future some of these remarks made in making a point will be considered the looney tunes they now appear to some of us. I can think of Ben Bernanke’s remarks on inflation solving all recession and his great fear of deflation when suggesting the efficacy of a helicopter dropping money out of the sky – which I suppose is a (small) step beyond printing it out of thin air. Also in that category would be Paul Krugman’s remarks on a space invasion and implications that recoveries are aided by government spending (and debt) even if that money is used on a wasteful enterprise.
A lot of the heroic efforts to preserve vegetables seem to make the news, but I wonder how frequently this actually occurs.
Our family appears to be able to live well into their nineties with one member who will hit a hundred in March (and get a letter from Obama, too). In recent years all have equipped the likely survivors with health directives which generally say that the continuation of a life not worth living is not desired. We faced this problem with an aunt two years ago who declined in her late 80s via a series of strokes to the point where she often said that she wished she wasn’t here anymore.
She then was hit by a stronger stroke and was paralyzed. She required plumbing for food and water. The discussion commenced about what to do. There was some dicing around with the medical staff who seemed interested in what they might be able to achieve. There was a cap on co-pay plus deductible of $10k +/-. Medicare Advantage plan, which I recommend.
We asked if the result of any of the proposed procedures would bring her back to a state any better than the one she was in prior to the last stroke.
“Oh, no, very unlikely. She will be better than she is right now, but not that good.”
Since the prior state was not up to her standards for living, we let her go. The essence of the process is that the departure is by starvation over a period of about a week softened by all manner of painkillers. She appeared never to come out of her comatose state. We never assume that anyone who seems comatose cannot understand what is being said in their presence and so the decision making was all done in her presence.
We may have some more of these episodes in the next few years and have had extensive discussions with all involved about what is actually wanted. So far, no-one wants a drawn out departure in state of advance plumbing.
I do agree that 75% of lifetime medical expense is probably in the last 6 months, but I wonder how extensive this actually is.
I had supposed that a lot of the cost of hospital events could be tied to all of the uninsured who show up and cannot be turned away, or who use the ER for ordinary care.
I have a friend who is on the board of a Florida Hospital. He said a lot of the financial waste can be controlled, but not all. He hates fee-for-service and has devised a managed system (Sorry, not sufficiently familiar with the details to describe it) which he thinks protects the hospital from a lot of the more egregious practices of the industry.
Actually, the 75% number in the last six months of life comes from looking just at Medicare expenses, not from total healthcare costs. And even then the estimates vary greatly between study.
Carrick,
That makes more sense. It seems a tricky number. Suppose you died after a year on medicare?
6 months can be a significant part of a medicare career.
De Witt Payne,
We are largely in agreemnt on much of the immigration issue. I just want to avoid a tedious detour into illegal immigraiton being hidden inside of the idea of legal immigration and the term misused to deliberately Gruber the situation.
As to borders, come to Texas or Arizona and chit chat about what an open border means. Close to me personally, we had a major shootout with multiple gunshot victims at a rent house about one block away from where I live. It involved one gang of “coyotes” raiding a safe house (not so safe afterall) to grab the illegals being held there for family ransom by another gang of coyotes.
And our neighborhood is pretty nice and quiet.
Or go visit the Remberance Project for a roll call of victims of crime committed by ilegal aliens.
It is run, byt he way, by a Hispanic woman.
http://www.theremembranceproject.org/
Their memorial quilt is apparently getting quite large.
Another indicator of how bad the border problem is seen in how poorly reported the incarceration numbers are when it comes to immigration status. If it was minor, it would be trumpeted loudly.
it is a dog not barking indicator.
The idea that employers should be punished substantially for hiring illegal entrants is a non-starter. It puts employers in the position of having to check on the status of all employees and alternatively, being accused of ethnic discrimination if they look too hard. For instance, if you lived in San Diego and 20 Mexicans speaking only Spanish applied for a job, it would be reasonable to assume that they were illegal entrants. However, it would be possible that 1 or 2 were here legally. The legal entrants would have an employment discrimination case against an employer who screened on the basis I have suggested. Also, if you hired your neighbor of 20 years and didn’t do a background check, you could be accused of acting in a discriminatory manner.
I agree that something needs to be done. For instance, my deceased [Chinese] wife commented one time that the U.S. was an empty country and that 300,000,000 Chinese would like to live here. I think there have to be substantial penalties imposed on illegal entrants short of deportation in some cases (higher taxes maybe — or ineligibility for benefits). Possibly increase tariffs on the products of countries [Mexico] that benefit from illegal entry into the U.S.
JD
hunter,
As I said above: Make something that people want to do illegal and you’ve created a business opportunity for criminals. Criminals being what they are, collateral damage isn’t something they worry about much when warring over turf. There was very little organized crime in the US until Prohibition.
j ferguson:
Yep.
That’s exactly why the number isn’t very robust or, in practice, very useful for policy makers.
Re: JD+Ohio (Nov 18 18:39),
Indeed. The only way you don’t have the potential for discrimination charges is if you do what a lot of stores and restaurants are starting to do with alcohol sales: card everybody. That’s what the E-Verify program is supposed to do. How well it works is a separate question.
Wow hunter, The silent dog indicator. that’s pretty good.
De Witt Payne,
Illegal immigration is, I believe, substantially different from prohibition.
I agree with carding everyone. That a straight forward reasonable e-verification system is not in place says nearly as much as the government’s refusal to build a fence where physically practical on our border.
I absolutely do not agree with the proposition that businesses should be held responsible for insuring they do not hire illegal immigrates. That is simply just another ploy by government to shift that responsibility and cost to a private group.
The irony of that is the government, on one hand, would be saying how wrong it is to deport illegal immigrates who have been here for years and in some cases separating their families and, on the other, telling businesses if they hire these people they will be penalized. In other words, we want you to stay but not work. It seems a common occurrence that the liberal oriented MSM relishes providing evidence of conservatives or non liberals hiring illegal immigrates.
I admit to being in quandary when it comes to the immigration issue and not in any small part because of what I see as government incompetence in handling these issues. It would appear that the current laws on immigration can be arbitrarily enforced which, of course, means it is almost the same as no law. If we remove our Civics 101 blinders I would suppose we would acknowledge that arbitrary enforcement if not subject to judicial review means that any future laws on the matter will have the same outcome. Along these same lines a realistic view of the current situation from a two party political situation is that Democrats favor their approach because it means more Democrat voters and the Republicans theirs for the same reason. I really doubt that there are any heartfelt reasons for these positions outside of political advantages for not appearing mean.
Given the current state of politics in this matter I would agree in essence with what DeWitt has stated. I would definitely favor amnesty for most of the current illegal immigrates as a matter of some kind of homesteading issue and then have some kind of personal or organizational sponsorship for future immigrates. I do not want the government to impose quotas but rather have that decision in the hands of private individuals and organizations. I am vaguely aware of their being some forms of sponsorship in the current immigration laws but I do not know the extent of the responsibilities of the sponsoring party or how well these responsibilities would be enforced.
Kenneth,
One of the assumptoins I find truly interesting is the one that assumes Hispanic immigratns = democrat voters.
As Mr. Obama’s imperial edict looms closer, democrats are losing, not gaining Hispanic votes. At the end of the day Hispanic voters are American voters. Mr. Obama’s alleged reform is bad for Americans as a whole. The party of Gruber does not seem to realize the implication of this- that Americans of all persuasions may actually vote for the national interest. Significant numbers may look past the balkanized politics of community organizers and MIT economists and reject the pandering and arrogance that represents the current Administration.
The end of life process is pretty difficult. I remember sitting with my Mom and the Hospice nurse and my now half-looney Mom asking her “why is this (dying) taking so long?”. The Hospice proceeded to give a fairly long technical explanation. I translated for her: “Mom she is saying if you want to die sooner, stop eating and drinking, the Popsicles are extending your life”. She then started refusing food and water. It took about another 10 days. This is still a crappy and inappropriate way to die in my opinion, but her religious beliefs prevented her from taking an assisted fast lane exit, and this is illegal in most states. I get the feeling there is a lot of looking the other way by the medical community when the family decides this is appropriate though. I ponder what I would have done if she would have asked me to do it, I likely would have.
Tom Scharf
I dread finding myself in this situation. For those who can remember Billie Graham, I fell out of my chair when he was asked about being ready for death. He said yes, but he’d just as soon not be there that day.
Failing a hear attack, or embolism, this is what most of us can look froward to. I must say that the recent discussions of induced departures exposed a medical point of view which I thought self-serving. The idea was that if you didn’t want to live through the normal death process it must be that you were unaware of all of the pain reducing techniques available to modern medicine.
Nuts. Triple Nuts.
Father of friend had been comatose in a nursing facility for about 6 months. The decision was reached to disconnect him. During a visit a few days after the disconnect, he suddenly sat up and said something like “What do you have to do to get fed around here?” He lived another year while the rels all tried to recall what they might have said in his comatose presence. He refused to enlighten anyone on this subject.
Yah, I know it seems improbable, but I can name names if I can get permission.
JD Ohio, DeWitt, Kenneth,
There are not many people entering the USA using forged passports. They have embedded tranponder chips, anti-forgery technology (much like used on currency), and they are scanned and compared to a database when you enter the country.
.
There is no reason that similar technoogy could not be used for social security cards, which should make it quite simple for an employer to verify who is and who is not an undocumented resident. The fact is lots of businesses hire undocumented aliens with full knowledge of what they are doing…. which amounts to little more than tax fraud; neither the undocumented worker nor the employer pay the legally required taxes. Complaints that the government is shifting responsibility for enforcing boarder security to business are wholly unconvincing. With any reasonble design for social security cards, the effort required to avoid hiring undocumented aliens would be minimal. There are a LOT of low wage jobs that need filling, and guest worker programs and some increases in total legal immigration probably make sense. But condoning willfull fraud does not.
JD Ohio, DeWitt, Kenneth, and others
There are not many people entering the USA using forged passports. They have embedded tranponder chips, anti-forgery technology (much like used on currency), and they are scanned and compared to a database when you enter the country.
.
There is no reason that similar technoogy could not be used for social security cards, which should make it quite simple for an employer to verify who is and who is not an undocumented resident. The fact is lots of businesses hire undocumented aliens with full knowledge of what they are doing…. which amounts to little more than tax fraud; neither the undocumented worker nor the employer pay the legally required taxes. Complaints that the government is shifting responsibility for enforcing boarder security to business are wholly unconvincing. With any reasonble design for social security cards, the effort required to avoid hiring undocumented aliens would be minimal. There are a LOT of low wage jobs that need filling, and guest worker programs and some increases in total legal immigration probably make sense. But condoning willfull fraud does not.
JD Ohio, DeWitt, Kenneth, and others….
There are not many people entering the USA using forged passports. They have embedded tranponder chips, anti-forgery technology (much like used on currency), and they are scanned and compared to a database when you enter the country.
.
There is no reason that similar technoogy could not be used for social security cards, which should make it quite simple for an employer to verify who is and who is not an undocumented resident. The fact is lots of businesses hire undocumented aliens with full knowledge of what they are doing…. which amounts to little more than tax fraud; neither the undocumented worker nor the employer pay the legally required taxes. Complaints that the government is shifting responsibility for enforcing boarder security to business are wholly unconvincing. With any reasonble design for social security cards, the effort required to avoid hiring undocumented aliens would be minimal. There are a LOT of low wage jobs that need filling, and guest worker programs and some increases in total legal immigration probably make sense. But condoning willfull fraud does not.
The liberal plantation politics have worked rather well for the Democrats in maintaining large voting blocks in groups of voters. A party getting groups thinking they depend on big government and then pointing to their party’s politics as big government and convincing those groups that they depend on that party has been a successful tactic and the more dependent these groups are (and remain) the better it works. That strategy would apply to many of the illegal immigrates – or so the Democrats hope and Republicans think.
The link below gives a glimpse of what the unauthorized immigrates are economically. I found the following statement in the linked report particularly disconcerting but probably makes them appealing as a voting block.
“In contrast to other immigrants, undocumented immigrants do not attain markedly higher incomes the longer they live in the United States.”
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2009/04/14/a-portrait-of-unauthorized-immigrants-in-the-united-states/
“With any reasonble design for social security cards, the effort required to avoid hiring undocumented aliens would be minimal. There are a LOT of low wage jobs that need filling, and guest worker programs and some increases in total legal immigration probably make sense. But condoning willfull fraud does not.”
SteveF if it is so reasonable why has not the government used this technique or even suggested it as far as I know. Undocumented immigrates and avoiding taxes – including cases wholly not related to undocumented immigrates – are facts of life and have existed for a long, long time. Under Communist governments the gray markets have been credited for any viability those regimes had.
SteveF “There is no reason that similar technoogy (transponder chips) could not be used for social security cards, which should make it quite simple for an employer to verify who is and who is not an undocumented resident.”
Yes there is. The government makes mistakes all of the time and peoples identities are stolen. Someone whose identity is stolen or who is the victim of government incompetence would be unemployable under your scheme. However, the main problem with government ID cards is that they would be difficult for small business to handle, and small businesses are undoubtedly major employers of illegal entrants.
JD
JD Ohio,
I run a small business. We don’t employ undocumented ailens. Are you really suggesting that business owners can’t look at a document (say something similar to a passport) read the name and social security number, and have these verified as matching? Come on, this is a tiny burden compared to what small business owners currently face with FICA and witholding tax requirements. As I said before, the real issue with employing undocumented aliens is tax fraud.
.
Identity theft is a non-sense argument. Sure, thieves can very briefly steal someone’s identity… but once the victum is aware, it ends pretty fast. It’s not like John Jones, born and raised in Shelby Ohio, is going to have a problem proving he is who he says he is, and will be out of his job for 6 months while proving who he is.
.
I understand that there is a widespread visceral (and to me, incomprehensible) objection to ‘identity cards”, but you are never going to enforce immigration laws without something similar. And your Social Security number is already a defacto identity. It is just so poorly implemented that it doesn’t help with controlling undocumented aliens.
Kenneth,
” if it is so reasonable why has not the government used this technique or even suggested it as far as I know.”
.
Probably because it is politically toxic in some places. But do people object to having to show a valid passpprt upon re-entry into the States? I sure haven’t heard any complaints. I don’t have any problem with showing a valid ID to vote, to get on an airplane, check into a hotel, rent a car, or to travel internationally. I am hard pressed to understand why employment should require less documentation than these common activites.
.
Avoiding taxes is something that has gone on for about as long as there have been taxes. That doesn’t mean society should turn a blind eye because the tax fraud happens to involve hiring undocumented aliens. Unlawful acts, whether by Mr Obama or a guy that runs a landscaping service in Houston, ought not be condoned, IMHO.
Steve F “I run a small business. We don’t employ undocumented ailens. Are you really suggesting that business owners can’t look at a document (say something similar to a passport) read the name and social security number, and have these verified as matching?”
The simple answer is yes. Additionally, as a lawyer, I know of very many laws that small businesses unknowingly and innocently violate. This would be just one more way to spear small businesses.
To give you an example. A reasonably intelligent rehabber who has done, good, intelligent construction work for me, asked me for help in buying a house yesterday. I told him one thing — to make his real estate purchase contract subject to his lawyer’s approval. He didn’t write it in the contract.
There is so much junk attached to being an employer that I consciously structure all of my affairs to make sure that I never have an employee. Don’t care if it costs me money. I refuse to be an unpaid clerk for the government.
Also, in all likelihood, if substantial penalties were imposed against businesses for hiring illegal entrants, eventually the government would extend the civil forfeiture provisions to that type of enforcement, and they have been an absolute disaster.
JD
JD Ohio,
” I know of very many laws that small businesses unknowingly and innocently violate. This would be just one more way to spear small businesses.”
.
I am not talking about innocent and unknowing violations of obscure employer requirements; I do not doubt that these may be common, especially in places with lots of local and state regulations. I am talking about willful and knowing efforts to not pay taxes that are due. Perhaps you do not see a distinction, but I do. Either we want to take away the incentives for illegal immigration or we do not. I do. Do you?
Steve F ” I do. Either we want to take away the incentives for illegal immigration or we do not. I do. Do you?”
I favor putting the burden on the illegal entrants more so than on small business. You have the idea that because some violations of the law are clear that ambiguities and injustices to small business can be avoided. Based on my experience (including workers’ compensation “independent contractor” issues), I don’t think so.
JD
JD Ohio,
Do you think that willfull failure to pay taxes is OK for small businesses? Because that is what it sounds like.
Steve F “Do you think that willfull failure to pay taxes is OK for small businesses?”
Taxes is not even a consideration for me with respect to the issue of how to reduce illegal entry into the U.S. I am talking about finding a way to reduce illegal entry. You want to talk taxes, which to me is simply a distraction from the issue at hand. Even if illegal entrants and their employers pay taxes, and some do, I don’t think the illegal entry should be minimized.
JD
JD Ohio,
Hard to see how all those millions of undocumented aliens got social security numbers set up, since that is the only way their employer can make FICA and withholding payments for them.
.
The vast majority of undocumented workers do not pay taxes, and are paid “under the table” in cash.
.
Political reality is that sealing the boarders is not going to happen. Deporting the accumulated millions is not going to happen. Declaring an “amnesty” to legalize those already here will only encourage the next millions to come…. and wait for the next amnesty. Any real solution has to remove the primary incentive for illegal entry…. and that means reducing available jobs. We could instead go with severe public flogging just before deportation of illegal aliens, word of which would spread quickly. But this isn’t Saudi Arabia.
Steve F,
You make excellent points about practical ways to have robust ID.
But we do have a President who is dead set against ID for things most other civil countries take for granted anyway.
The ID theft/fraud and tax fraud angle of illegal immigrant culture in the US is certainly one that can be revisited in the future if we elect a rational President willing to enforce the law of the land.
JD Ohio:
Doing something yourself that would otherwise have been done by an employee doesn’t make you an unpaid clerk?
Maybe. But if we are going to discuss civil forfeiture that’s a bit independent of ‘illegal alien’. We need to fix the problems with civil forfeiture. Full. Stop. I mean, it’s ridiculous right now and it needs to be fixed.
J Ferguson “Doing something yourself that would otherwise have been done by an employee doesn’t make you an unpaid clerk?”
No, I structure my work so that I don’t need employees. The “unpaid clerk” language refers to the numerous, Federal, State and local mandates that apply to you once you become an employer. Such as Family Leave, Anti Discrimination Laws, Wage Laws, Workers Compensation, Unemployment Laws, Tax Laws and Escheat Laws. These all require management time and filling out forms. The government doesn’t care if you have to spend 10 hours filling out a worthless form. It doesn’t care if your violation is innocent. The only way that small businesses survive is through government incompetence in enforcing the laws. However, if you step into the wrong situation, Good Luck.
Here is one example of what Ohio employers have to do:
“Ohio’s Minimum Wage Amendment specifically states that, “an employer shall maintain a record of the name, address, occupation, pay rate, hours worked for each day worked, and each amount paid an employee for a period of not less than three years following the last date the employee was employed.â€1 As used within this context, “employee†is broadly defined to include all employees. As such, an employer is required to maintain records for all of its employees, but as stated above, the recordkeeping requirements will likely not be the same for all employees.
As written in the Bills, recordkeeping requirements for a specific employee will be determined by whether such employee is defined as “exempt†or “non-exempt†under the overtime requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The Fair Labor Standards Act, at 29 U.S.C.S. § 213, provides an extensive list of exempt employees.2 Exempt employees of note include any employee employed in a “bona fide executive, administrative, or professional capacity,†in the capacity of “outside salesperson,†or as a “computer systems analyst, computer programmer, software engineer, or other similarly skilled worker.â€3 Furthermore, to qualify for exemption, employees generally must meet certain tests regarding their job duties, as laid out in the Department of Labor’s regulations, and be paid on a salary basis at not less than $455 per week (certain exceptions regarding pay rate apply to computer employees). Non-exempt employees include all employees not defined as exempt employees.”
Why would I want to put up with this cr*p? Undoubtedly, there are different regulations to comply with on the Federal side. Haven’t bothered to check it out, but I know the penalties for failing to keep the records (even if you can prove you paid the minimum wage) are onerous — a substantial sum per day.
Also, because I have several LLCs, I got a threatening letter from the State of Ohio about 5 years ago, telling me of the very onerous penalties applicable to me if I held other people’s money for a certain period of time(the escheat law) and didn’t send it to them. (I don’t hold other people’s money) This is only half-related to having employees, but it shows the attitude of the state and the onerous level of regulation on people who do business.
So, to conclude. I would rather do things that are productive rather than spend a substantial amount of my time attempting to navigate through a very large amount of regulatory law.
JD
Lucia: “We need to fix the problems with civil forfeiture. Full. Stop. I mean, it’s ridiculous right now and it needs to be fixed.”
I agree 100%. Also, I realize that it is somewhat independent of immigration issue. On the other hand, it could easily be applied to employers, if prosecutors wished to find a justification.
JD
JD Ohio,
I agree it’s likely ‘civil forfeiture’ could be applied to employers if prosecutors wished to find justification– and prosecutors can easily “wish” to find justification. Worse, the standard of evidence for seizing is too low. Also if I’m not mistaken (though I may be) the state doesn’t have to cover legal costs of a property owner in the event the state loses the case. So, this means ‘civil forfeiture’ is structured very badly from the POV of individual citizens.
This needs to be changed
At a minimum it needs to be changed so the state can only resort to civil forfeiture in cases where at least one actual owner of a property is formally charged with a crime and the case is either tried before a jury or a judge and there is no plea deal and the crime must be related to ownership of the specific property seized. (Some list could be made which would include things like: They bought the property with proceeds. They carried out the crime in the premises etc. One might be able to justify an apartment owner having the apartment seized if someone can somehow create a crime of “renting a property knowing a crime was being committed on the property.” We can debate the just how much proof one needs to show they are “knowing”– but at least if one needs to present that proof in criminal court, the standard of evidence for proving “knowing” is ok ).
Then, in addition to charging and trying the accussed for the crime then prosecutor needs to take a second step and file the civil forfeiture case with a burden of proving that the property was connected with that specific crime. This could conceivably have the lower ‘civil’ burden– the protection comes from someone having been convicted of the crime.
Oh– and the prosecutor should only be allowed to file the civil forfeiture after the accused is convicted. (Yes. I know this means the accused can sell the house and use the proceeds to pay their lawyer. But.. well… that’s a good feature. The accussed– who is presumed innoncent– has a right to a defense. )
In my book: If the prosecutor makes a plea deal to reduce charges or get the accused to plead guilty to the crime as charged and so on civil forfeiture should be blocked.
This takes away the incentive to get people to cop a plea so they can keep their houses, businesses and so on. Basically: I think only those who plead innocent and then present a case for their innocence in court, and are then convicted should have any risk of ‘civil forfeiture’.
Otherwise: you plead guilty: You get to keep your stuff. You are found not guilty? You keep your stuff.
Also: I think if the prosecutor who files for civil forfeiture loses that part of the case, the state should reimburse the property owner for reasonable court costs. Yes. Even if the property owner is a convicted drug dealer who — it turns out– inherited the splendid palace the prosecutor wants to seize from his non-drug dealing aunt Jane and never used the item in association with his drug dealing activities.)
Mind you: I’m not a lawyer– I don’t know precisely how this works. But I don’t think people who are not even charged, charged and found not guilty or copped a plea as a result of fear their house would be forfeit should be subject to civil forfeiture.
It is good that JDOhio points to the cost of regulation by governments and it is relevant to the issue of having businesses responsible for enforcement of government rules on immigration or other activities.
The first link below discussions the issues of governments and their supporters attempts to minimize that cost with less than complete analysis and then the governments own SBA estimate of $1.75 trillion per year in the second link. These regulations and shifting enforcement to private concerns keeps the cost of these regulations hidden as the cost of doing business and in that form there is little or no restraint on governments imposing more expensive and more onerous regulations on private enterprises.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/waynecrews/2011/07/06/the-cost-of-government-regulation-the-barack-obama-cass-sunstein-urban-legend/
https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/The%20Impact%20of%20Regulatory%20Costs%20on%20Small%20Firms%20(Full).pdf
Although I disagree with the motivations of many liberals on getting illegal immigrants into the system (more votes for their causes), there are some who correctly point to a number of industries that have come to depend on this group of people for delivering less costly goods to the consumer. The link below from Wikipedia gives some pluses and minuses on the amnesty issue. Unfortunately when you hear the political arguments you normally only hear one side of the issue, i.e all pluses or all minuses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impact_of_illegal_immigrants_in_the_United_States
As a practical matter we are not going to send millions of illegal immigrants packing and hopefully we are not going to impose Gestapo tactics to root out illegal immigrants nor spend billions on enforcement. I have little to no faith in the government coming up with a rational fix for the problem and primarily because their motivations are all wrong. I think given the current political environment I would still favor guest workers and private sponsorship – with responsibilities – for permanent and non permanent immigrants.
Civil forfeiture, whereby the government can seize and sell your property without you ever being convicted of a crime is an anathema for individual property rights. Since the cases are technically civil actions the stricter protections of a criminal defendant do not prevail. Also the law enforcement agency can keep the proceeds from the sale of the property – which certainly must have some motivational effect on that agency.
The abuse of civil forfeiture is widespread. there are documented cases where it has been used to further political, personal or just plain greed issues.
Airplanes have been taken from owners because the airplane owner agree to fly someone who turned out to be an accused criminal. But was not convicted. Homes have been taken because a minor living in the home was alleged to have dealt small amounts of drugs…..to the child of a politically connected family.
Landlords have lost property because of drug dealing from their property by tenants that the police declined to prosecute.
That and abuse of eminent domain have become loopholes to permit real abuse of citizens by government authorities.
Civil forfeiture is a scandal. Pretending this can only happen to “bad” people is exactly what the law is designed to avoid having to do.
The Washington Post did a few articles on this recently.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/stop-and-seize/
hunter,
This is so obviously ridiculous. I get that someone could have a “theory” that a landlord will turn a blind eye to activity — and some do. And he might thereby ‘profit’ by getting tenants where he otherwise might not have.
But if the police don’t, won’t arrest the tenants or the prosecutor won’t or can’t prosecute the tenants for the activity which results in seizure of the landlords property, it’s a bit much to suggest the landlord should have, must have, or did know and profit.
I know I didn’t have a close relationship with the landlord of apartments I rented in college– they were, I am sure, all fine. And I didn’t run illegal businesses in the apartment. But it’s quite likely some college students did– and the landlords would have practically had to violate the law or at least the students privacy to detect the business.
If those students aren’t even charged and convicted? Well… the police either don’t really have evidence or they don’t care about the crime itself. If they don’t care about the underying crime committed by people who don’t even own the building, they should certainly not be suizing the landlord’s building.
“If those students aren’t even charged and convicted? Well… the police either don’t really have evidence or they don’t care about the crime itself. If they don’t care about the underying crime committed by people who don’t even own the building, they should certainly not be suizing the landlord’s building.”
Kind of like trial lawyers going after the deep pockets in tort cases.
Kenneth,
Sort of. But with trial lawyers we know their motive is not “law enforcement”. There are ‘issues’ with class action suits, and some result in lawyers profiting with the ‘official victims’ benefiting little or not at all. That needs to be fixed too– but it’s a different problem from civil forfeitures.
Seems to me a clear violation of the 5th amendment. I can’t see such seizures not being challenged on constitutional grounds.
Someone up there asked if Eli was aware of the role negotiated rates play in health care before the ACA. Me oui. It was the major reason the Bunny thought the thing could work, especially since it would rescue any number of rural and urban hospitals from bankruptcy.
Plus which community rating would really hold down medical bill bankruptcy for the seriously ill.
As to the actual cost last year to Eli and Ms. Bunny, it was within a thousand or so of what was paid by the Rabetts and their employers.
This, of course, is why naked Health Savings Accounts without a health insurance plan are nonsense. Unless you get the insurance co. rates, they are next to useless. As to those who think you can negotiate on the gurney, one of the features of the web is about a woman who had a heart attack and was taken to an out of network hospital. A couple o 100K$ later. . .
Like the Rabett’s hero, he speaks with forked tongue.
Here is the alleged final number on Obamacare’s first year once as many of the Grubers team Obama relied on were backed out:
“The accurate number with full health-care plans is 6.7 million as of Oct. 15, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services confirmed today, saying the U.S. won’t include dental plans in future reports. ”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-20/obamacare-s-subscriber-rolls-include-unpublicized-dental-plans.html
So not the 8 million the Obama/Gruber team claimed. Nowhere near the numbers needed for their estimates to work. All fibs, deceit, deception.
As for HealthSavings Plans, which democrats fought like rabid rabbits, no one who was proposing them (Republicans) wanted them to be naked. They were always intended to be used in conjunction with insurance. If Regan’s original idea of Healtcare Savings Plans had been implemented, this nation’s healthcare would never have been vulnerable to the con-artist in chief’s “hope and change” nightmare.
Obamacare was a complex law which extended accessibility to heath care in many ways. Let us consider a few, shall we.
1. Medicaid/Children’s Health Care Programs were extended, not as much as they should have been thanks to John Roberts and several obdurate state governments, but there have been about 7 million additional people covered
2. Then, of course, we have the few million people under 26 who were able to be covered under their parents health care plan.
3. And of course, our friends and parents with pre-existing condition who now benefit from community rating. One not much commented on part of this is that such people often blocked their employers from providing health insurance because the cost of covering them would raise the premiums for everyone to unacceptable amounts. In some cases that Eli is aware of this included employees in child bearing/raising years (having kids is expensive and if something goes wrong pre or post natally, very expensive) Now, in addition to getting community rated health insurance on the exchanges, their employers are in a much less tough position about providing health care.
4. Oh yes, the ACA, is the Libertarian Freedom Act. Everyone in the States knows folk who stay in their jobs because of health insurance coverage rather than Galting it with their bright idea.
5. Obamacare IS bending the cost curve. Health care inflation is significantly down this year and this looks very likely to continue into the future
6. And last here, but not finally, the roughly 7 million additional covered people from the initial exchange signups.
Remember it was Alice’s unthinking decision to follow the White Rabbit.
airhealthconsumer.org/reimbursementseries.php?id=40
“Waiting to get care in an emergency can be life-threatening, so most plans cover emergency care no matter where you are – even if the hospital does not participate in your network. Once your condition is stable, you will generally be moved to an in-network facility for follow-up care.”
Eli,
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc, otherwise known as correlation does not prove causation, a classic logical fallacy.
See for example this from the Washington Post:
ACA looks very different if you can avoid talking about costs be they direct or indirect. We also have discussed how regulations involved with an act such as ACA can be hidden – at least for awhile. Prices often decrease in the rate of increase when we are recovering from a recession, but those price rates of increase cannot fairly be projected to hold into the future.
“Put simply, with Obamacare we’ve changed the rules related to who pays for what, but we haven’t done much to change the prices we pay.†Steven Brill ”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/danmunro/2014/02/02/annual-u-s-healthcare-spending-hits-3-8-trillion/
Cheshire Cat: If I were looking for a white rabbit, I’d ask the Mad Hatter.
Alice: The Mad Hatter? Oh, no no no…
Cheshire Cat: Or, you could ask the March Hare, in that direction.
Alice: Oh, thank you. I think I’ll see him…
Cheshire Cat: Of course, he’s mad, too.
Alice: But I don’t want to go among mad people.
Cheshire Cat: Oh, you can’t help that. Most everyone’s mad here.
[laughs maniacally; starts to disappear]
Cheshire Cat: You may have noticed that I’m not all there myself.
Ugh Eli.
I get your point and it may be a valid point, but there’s something obscene about your phraseology, associating the name ‘John Galt’ with ACA. Put a warning or something up in the text of your post that you’re about to say something outrageous next time, would you?
The author from the link to the Washington Post provided by DeWitt seems to give short shrift to some impressive numbers for the portion in the decease of the rate of increase in healthcare spending that can be attributed to the recession even when quoting the studies below.
“The Kaiser Family Foundation and the Center for Sustainable Health Spending at the Altarum Institute credit the bad economy for three-quarters of the slowdown in health spending. Cutler and Sahni say it explains only 37 percent. Today, most everyone agrees that there’s more to the slowdown then just a bad economy.”
The author later states that the slowdown in the rate of healthcare cost increases started in 2005 which would certainly limit the effect that can be attributed to ACA but not necessarily the recession.
Eli
We all agree it is a complex law. It’s not clear that it “extended accessibility”.
First: That people are covered under this plan isn’t precisely the same as “extending accessiblity to health care”. People got access to health coverage in different ways in the past. You might not like the ways they got access (or could get access if they so chose), but that’s not the same as “didn’t see any doctor at all”. To count the number of people who gained health care, you have to find people who actually absolutely positively could not get health care before to those who now can get it.
Second: It is not John Roberts (or SCOTUS’s) fault that the US constitution trumps legislation. Nor is it their fault that congress passed laws that were incompatible with one (religious restoration) being written to “trump” the other. It is also not his or their fault that Congress passed a law with provisions that violated the US constitution or another law. That’s Congresses fault. Also: If you are complaining about Hobby Lobby: No one lost any coverage due to the SCOTUS ruling. The costs just have to be carried differently — that is by different parties.
Third: With respect to obdurate state governments. What is your precise complaint so we can figure out if coverage was “not extended”.
First: it was not previously impossible for people under 26 to get coverage before Obama care. As far back as the 80s, I got coverage through student health plans at school; that was possible before Obamacare. Other people under 26 got coverage. Even quite recently, employers could give coverage to people under 26.
My older sister paid for her older than 21 yo kids health care pre-obama care. So even that wasn’t impossible.
Also: although parents can pay for their under 26 yo kids health care under Obamacare, they are not required to do so.
It might not be coverage you like. It might have been stingy coverage (especially for graduate students who did not get employee coverage even though many then, and still do, perform essential functions for Universities– like teaching classes.) But it was coverage for catastrophes.
Yes. The elderly are major beneficiaries of health care with the costs being shouldered by the young-healthy (who may have low paying jobs or be unemployed.) And now, premiums of the healthy are raised to cover the costs of the unhealthy. I get that you like this– but, that’s hardly an unmitgated benefit for the young (and doesn’t become so even if childbirth is expensive.)
Sure. And when I was in grad school, student health insurance covered childbirth. And now for those whose parents do chose to pay for their health insurance, the obamacare provisions facilitates their parents generosity. But it was possible for parents to be generous in the past. As I noted: Pre-obamacare, my sister paid for her son’s insurance past the age of 21. I’m sure other parents did also.
It’s not at all clear that employers are in a much less tough position providing health care– unless you mean that now some can just drop it and let their employees shift to the exchanges. I guess that is “less tough” in some sense.
Sure. Some people make choices. Those were affected by government policies pre-obamancare and still are post-obama care. Not sure why you want to make this sound like something that means something about libertarians or John Galt.
Oh? You can predict the future? Sorry, but I don’t believe you are any better at that than anyone else.
As for inflation being down, I presume you mean something like the graph at this post:
http://qz.com/259066/americas-great-healthcare-hyperinflation-is-over/
It’s a bit much to attribute the drop from the peak in the late 80 to the ACA. As for the meandering since 96? Probably also not the ACA.
You are counting people who were previously covered in different ways in your 7 million.
6. And last here, but not finally, the roughly 7 million additional covered people from the initial exchange signups.
The bottomline is the ACA was a complex pile sold by deceit and sustained by spin and false reporting.
In every way possible, from even a friggin’ website it has been rolled out incompetently, over priced, under performing, arbitrarily and significantly changed. And more importantly the enrollment numbers show it is a failure. And it is a failure where none of the decision makers who squandered billions in special ‘grants’ exemptions, web engineering failures, etc. are help to account. We deserve better. We deserve honesty. Reading the apologist’s rationalizations of this only shows that Gruber was right: Team Obama really can rely on the stupidity of their supporters.
From the basic architecture of the plan it was designed to deceive and fool just enough people to see that it was passed.
Why is anyone surprised that it continues to be a boondoggle of historic proportions?
It will never work right. It has already failed to work as written.
And Eli seems to believe we are as stupid as Gruber thinks he is. The enrollment number, after the dental plan padding was removed for enrollment is about 6.7 million. That number includes millions who already had insurance before Obamacare. The actual number of people who are now insured who had no insurance prior to Obamacare is trivial compared to the cost and destruction team Obama has inflicted on us.
lucia,
Eli’s ‘obdurate state governments’ refers to the 23 states that have not yet opted to expand Medicaid coverage. Three of those states are considering expanding. Under the ACA, the federal government pays 100% of the increased cost for three years, but after that, the states will have to bear more and more of the cost.
Tennessee experimented with expanded Medicaid coverage, Tenncare, a few years back, but it’s been scaled back a lot from the original concept, which included managed care, because it wasn’t financially viable.
Wikipedia
DeWitt,
Yes. But part of my point is not being ‘covered’ by a program (like medicaid or other) is not the same as “not having access”. While visits to emergency rooms is sub-optimal, some people did get access in that way. It cost hospitals money and has lots of medical effects– but it was still “access”.
Also: some people did pay out of pocket for clinic visits and so on. It might be very expensive– but it was still “access”.
Bend the curve:
1. Pay less for services, or
2. Provide less services
I suppose there is a third where you obfuscate things so immensely that any claim can be made and nobody knows what is going on.
They could have forced pharmaceutical companies to negotiate on national level for prices, but did not.
They could have imposed Medicare service pricing on all ACA health plans. They did not.
They could have imposed restrictions on expensive treatments, especially near end of life. They did not.
They did a deal with the insurance and drug industries up front to buy their non-objections.
One can question whether doing these would be wise, but these are the type of things that I would look to see if they were serious about healthcare cost reductions. Because it was pretty clear this was not a serious attempt to control costs and indeed added more costs for the uninsured and guaranteed coverage, it was always a deception to pretend it was. The phased implementation was always purposeful to delay the pain. Very cynical legislation.
On top of this we get quotes such as 87% of plans are subsidized! Are you telling me 13% of plans subsidize the other 87%? Doesn’t add up.
On a less inflammatory topic, civil forfeiture/confiscation reform is being discussed in a serious way in Texas on December 8th in a “policy primer” sponsored by the Texas Public Policy Forum.
http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=22911291867a63d6ad241e545&id=58d6cab52d&e=b65c6af28f
Tom,
When the Gruberized people review public policy, they treat deducting expenses as a subsidy. They treat buying health insurance with pre-tax dollars as a subsidy. They treat writing off depleted reserves and assets as a subsidy.
In other words Gruber approach is to redefine the issue to create confusion to support the needs of the particular lie being sold.
hunter,
And a tax deduction is really a tax expenditure in newspeak. All your income and property actually belong to the government. You didn’t earn it. It just lets you keep some for the time being.
Who’s money is it, ours or the community’s.
Or a bit of both?
Sick people deserve extra help.
Some cannot afford it.
The community chips in.they are part of us. Even smokers for instance, or people who eat too much, or people from other countries who are visiting.
After this basic human courtesy, which is what defines a community or government the rest is laissez faire.
Anyone who pays more tax than they need to has rocks in their head to paraphrase a famous Aussie.
I have a lot of rocks in my head as I have never got ahead of the curve.
angech,
If you can even ask that question seriously, you aren’t paying attention. I help sick people. I donate blood regularly. But it’s my blood, not the community’s, and nobody is holding a gun to my head and making me donate. I don’t see why money and property should be any different.
There are functions like law enforcement, national defense and building and maintaining highways and bridges that require the existence of a government that must be funded by general taxes. I don’t agree that health care is one of those functions. One can even make the case that the health care expense curve was first bent upward when Medicare became law and the government was able to force doctors and hospitals to treat patients for less than cost and drastically ramped up record keeping requirements.
“The community chips in.they are part of us”
Not through coercion. That is not how a community is properly formed.
Andrew
Angech said “Even smokers for instance, or people who eat too much,….”
When I have to pay for the outcome of those behaviors, I will get a say in those behaviors.
Kan,
What could be more reasonable? Yet it seems to me that this sort of thinking quickly leads us into the swamp.
Take children born to parents who cannot support them. What’s the solution? Should society or government have a say in who has kids? Of course not! But nobody wants to let the kids alone to starve if the parents run out on them.
I don’t have the solution, but perhaps someone here will offer the insight I lack.
Well, I should have said, I don’t have an ideal solution.
People are free. They are free to smoke. Free to overeat. Free to have kids they (possibly) can’t take care of.
I’m free too. I’m free to help with the medical bills when they go to the hospital with cancer or diabetes or not, free to help deal with the kids or ignore them I guess.
Least, absent a better theory that’s the way I think it ought to work.
~shrug~
Well it is easy to pick on smokers but it is pretty clear that smokers save society money, and that’s without counting the ridiculous taxes we pay to the nannystaters…..
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-04-08-fda-tobacco-costs_N.htm
And you know that there were USA Today editors that hated putting this story out…
Well you can say a lot of things about smokers but you can’t say we cost society money, and that’s not even counting the taxes we have to pay the nannystaters…..
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-04-08-fda-tobacco-costs_N.htm
“When I have to pay for the outcome of those behaviors, I will get a say in those behaviors.”
The answer is for you to not have to pay for these behaviors by properly allocating costs, not for you to start controlling other people’s behaviors.
If there is one thing I cannot stand is this impulse many have that once health insurance becomes a public commodity, the nanny state must step in to “prevent” public costs by regulating peoples lives. It’s the end of ice cream. If you want to understand why some people have a visceral reaction to the ACA, this is a major clue.
Eli: 5. Obamacare IS bending the cost curve. Health care inflation is significantly down this year and this looks very likely to continue into the future
DeWitt: Post hoc, ergo propter hoc, otherwise known as correlation does not prove causation, a classic logical fallacy.
Except that the proponents of the law in 2009 and 2010 said exactly that DeWitt, you just did not believe them. Pre hoc ergo propter hoc.a
Mark, wrt John Galt and the ACA, look up hostages to fortune.
Nothing better than Francis Bacon: “He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.”
Dewitt: And a tax deduction is really a tax expenditure in newspeak. All your income and property actually belong to the government. You didn’t earn it. It just lets you keep some for the time being.
Take a look at what it says on the top of the bills in your pocket. Seems to work for most.
lol, the Rabett claims one year of healthcare costs is a trend, but 18 years of climate data is not.
The facts, sadly for Rabetts, is that healthcare cost increases started to moderate before Obamacare. And since the plan is not being implemented as written it is not possible to say what it might have done so far.
But a deeper question: Since we know that from Obama on down the failed plan was created, promoted, measured, and reported on deceptively, why should we believe any claim team Obama makes about this complex pos?
Thing have been happening since 2010, for example the ability to keep children on parents health care until they are 26, the changes in the rules for pre-existing conditions and more.
Who’s money is it, ours or the community’s?
Sadly money is a community thing, we all have to agree on it whether it is paper, cards or shells.
A community sets it’s rules and disregards individual rights for the greater good of the community ( hopefully).
Thus some of our individual freedoms have to be given up for the ” greater good”.
Healthcare is a lower priority than roads and defence, granted, but a truly sick individual needs help until better. The American practice was standard in Australia until 40 years ago. I saw people lose houses and jobs due to an inability to pay for medical care in extremis.
This was the only good aspect to come out of Medicare in Australia.
I believe other people can smoke til they drop, it us their right, I just do not want them doing it around me at meals and sporting events. They pay their taxes, are part of our community, many of us are them or have them in our families.
Treat the illness, don’t subsidise the small stuff.
Eli,
A Federal Reserve Note is the property of whomever lawfully has it in their possession. It is not the property of the Federal Reserve or the Federal Government. It is, effectively, a legal contract, a non-interest paying bearer bond. As such, it is under law legal tender for debts and financial obligations. The takings clause in the Fifth Amendment isn’t as dead as the as the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, in spite of the the Kelo v. City of New London decision.
An assertion of cost curve bending by the proponents of the ACA prior to passage is still just that, an assertion. It isn’t completely baseless, but it is far from proven. Actual cost curve bending down is a necessary but not sufficient condition for proof that it was the ACA that caused it. Without better evidence, Post hoc, ergo propter hoc still applies. The fact that the rate of increase of health care costs started decreasing long before the passage of the ACA is evidence that its significance may be over rated.
The tiny actual benefits of Obamacare, like keeping adults on parental health insurance plans until age 26, is miniscule compared to the costs imposed on the tax payer. A reform bill to allow that could have been written and gladly supported on a bipartisan basis. But when one is depending on the stupidity of one’s supporters to back a deceptive plan, it makes sense to put a shiny distraction in up front.
“Sadly money is a community thing”
Angech,
First, I don’t think “sadly” has anything to do with a discussion of what money is,
and second, money is only a “community thing” when it’s your philosophical position to make it that way. It doesn’t have to be. What you are doing is giving an attribute to money that’s beyond what is suited for it’s purpose. You are politicizing it.
Andrew
Eli,
More on banknotes.
Again, US paper money says at the top: Federal Reserve Note. The Federal Reserve is the issuing bank, not the owner.
DeWitt, perhaps some hazy thinkers here might be confusing the ownership of paper currency with the ability of the government to make that currency of less value through intentional inflation of the supply of that money by printing more and consequently making the debt that that government holds easier to manage and, of course, at the expense of those holding that money or assets that that money could purchase in the past versus present and future times.
If ACA were to provide a cost savings and make medical cost less expensive it would go against everything we know from experience about US government programs of this type. When Medicare came onto the scene it marked the beginning of a great price increase of healthcare.
Once we reach the point of no return in appealing ACA there will be no concerns or motivations by most politicians to make the program viable. Adding costs for political gain will be handled as they currently are in programs of this type – by increasing the national debt and passing that onto future generations. I suspect the younger people on this issue have been either Grubberized or they in turn plan to keep the financing going by passing it onto their future generations. Keynes answer to these problems that in long run we are all dead probably works for while but in the world outside the Wonderland the price will eventually have to be paid. And it could happen sooner than some down the rabbit hole might anticipate.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703746604574461610985243066
Eli,
Yeah, I got the concept. I wasn’t objecting for that reason. I actually can imagine some enterprising bookie in Galt’s Gulch starting a health insurance company, but ACA doesn’t appear to be compatible with the ideas that established that fictional valley. I expect that you already got this too, but as they say online just sayin.
Kenneth,
I see that your WSJ link agrees with what I said above, that the break point in the health care cost curve was related to Medicare. Of course, that could be correlation without causation too, but the budget cost numbers make that unlikely.
DeWitt. The interesting thing about banknotes is that they can be called (never happened in the US, but that don’t mean it never can).
Andrew KY
sorry , money is a community thing. Hermits and individuals who do not live in a community can do without a method of exchange for goods (AKA money) but it is not a philosophical position, it is a very practical one.
Sadly is a word often used with money, as in sadly I do not have enough of it.
What I was trying to politicise, I prefer humanise, was more the contrast between the American way of individual responsibility and the need to look after (very ill only) individuals in our community.
I have no solution.
angec
OK. But some sick people can afford healthcare and have enough money to pay their own bills.
The ACA is structured to make poor young people who can’t afford things subsidize for the health care of sick old people who often do have money.
Angech,
When describing your view you say:
“not a philosophical position”
and
“I prefer humanize”
Both of these can’t be true at the same time.
Andrew
“sorry , money is a community thing. Hermits and individuals who do not live in a community can do without a method of exchange for goods (AKA money) but it is not a philosophical position, it is a very practical one.”
Before money people had to barter and that meant the inconvenience of having something that could be exchanged that was of value to both of the parties that were bartering. I have not a clue what is meant by a community thing, but money in the form of something that was readily exchanged, stored and of reasonably constant value came into existence as a medium of exchange as societal convenience and from a societal need. It evolved into the use of precious metals as a medium of exchange and from there bank notes that could be redeemed in precious metals were used as a medium of exchange. Inflating the money supply by a government (community thing??) was difficult under these systems but was fraudulently done by clipping metal coins. The current worldwide money system is the result of national government central banks that can for the most part print paper and electronic money out of thin air and are capable of this since the money is backed only by the good faith and intentions of the central banks.
Since central banks are government entities their interest lies in handling government debts and in that regard, they are biased towards inflating the money supply and keeping interest rates lower than might otherwise be the case. Keynesian economists who influence most of the worlds’ economies and central bankers use the rationale that the central banks are required to stabilize the business cycles mainly by inflation. Deflation is the ever stated anathema to these economists and bankers. Somehow paying less for computers and other devices that become more affordable through technology when applied across the board becomes something bad. The much less popular adherents to no government interference in interest rates and money supplies, from the Austrian School of economics, have shown that the central banks (the US Federal Reserve system and before that government regulated and controlled banks with fractional reserve requirements) are the cause of those cycles.
It is interesting to note that those EU countries that came close to default recently before being bailed out by other EU nations got into that predicament because they had no longer the ability to control interest rates and their money supplies and with ever rising interest rates a looming crises of failure to be able to pay the interest on their government debt became a problem. National debts can be handled or inevitable crises postponed (and made worse by that postponement) as long as the central banks will take any means to keep interest rates low. In fact the US debt would become problematic with higher interest rates.
Re: angech (Comment #132998)
Under duress, this has given way to a community approach over the power of the individual. For instance, here is an individual’s account of the case of Flint, Michigan during the Depression
“a community approach”
Select elitist government bureaucrats telling people what to do is not a community approach, if that’s what people are thinking.
Andrew
Eli,
When a bond is called, the principal on the bond is paid to the bond owner, absent bankruptcy. The same applies to bank notes. Any other action would be considered a default on the obligation and result in financial chaos if the situation were not already chaotic. The hyperinflation in Germany in the 1920’s is an example. But even there, the old Marks were eventually able to be exchanged for new Marks, but at a rate of 1E12 old Marks for one new Mark. The new Marks were indexed to gold, but not redeemable in gold.
Silver certificates in the US were retired from circulation. But they were still worth their face value to the individuals who still possessed them, possibly more to collectors, and they were replaced with Federal Reserve Notes. Paper Canadian one and two dollar bills are still worth their face value even though they have been replaced with coins.
A major contribution to the German hyperinflation was the insistence that Germany pay reparations for WWI in goods, specie or hard currency. There is also a school of thought that the rise of the Nazi Party and therefore WWII was another result of the demand for reparations payment by the short sighted British and French governments of the time.
RB,
And that worked out so well. /sarc See for example the recession of 1937-8. It took what amounted to the end of the New Deal due to WWII to finally end the Great Depression.
I distinctly remember the first time I heard a politician utter the phrase “how much is that tax break going to cost the government?”. A moment of clarity shall we call it. I knew there were distinct ideological differences in politicians, and I knew I would never vote for that particular ideology. Possibly this could be called semantics, but I don’t think so.
Kenneth,
That isn’t what central bankers mean by deflation. Deflation is a reduction in prices caused by a lack of demand for whatever reason. In the Austrian school, it would be a reduction in the money supply. But I think you actually need to use the product of money velocity and money supply. We aren’t getting inflation now because the velocity of money is dropping fast enough so that the product remains relatively constant.
Cause and effect gets uncertain here. If the velocity of money weren’t falling so fast we would have inflation. OTOH, if the velocity of money weren’t falling so fast, we wouldn’t need to be throwing money out of helicopters because the economy would be much healthier.
By the way, try expanding the curve of job participation rate you linked above back to 1948. It looks like a case could be made that the bulge in the participation rate correlates with boomers entering the work force. Now that boomers are retiring, perhaps job participation is dropping back to pre-boomer levels.
Tom Scharf,
I believe that the CBO is required to score tax bills on a cost basis. Of course they use static analysis so the revenue from a tax increase and cost of a tax cut are always overestimated. The reductio ad absurdum of this method has been demonstrated by changes in the capital gains tax rate. Increases in the rate have led to decreased total revenue while cuts have increased total revenue. The Laffer curve for this tax appears to have a sharp peak around 15%. Once again, fairness trumps efficiency.
Kenneth,
Some data on the fraction of the population ages 18-64 over time is here.
In 1970, it was 56%, in 2009 it was 63% and in 2030 it’s projected to be 57%. I don’t know if this includes illegal immigrants.
DeWitt,
I suspect the cause for moribund economic growth is mainly the nature of ‘quantitative easing’. Most of the new money being printed by the Fed is going to buy treasury notes, so for practical purposes, the money is funding government debt expenditure, and is not really available to help finance investment driven growth. The earlier phases involved $2+ trillion in purchases of bad bank debt, etc. But once again, this did not free up money to fund business investment, just kept lots of insolvent banks going; the banks still are not willing to lend with attractive terms except to large, well established firms (AKA very low risk), even though they pay almost nothing for their funds.
The situation in Japan is even worse: the government spends all the money the BOJ injects, plus a vast quantity of bank funds that private individuals and companies save (the personal saving rate in Japan is very high). The answer is for the government to stop spending all the accumulated capital by raising taxes, cutting spending, and creating incentives for spending and investment. But that is politically problematic in Japan.
SteveF,
Raising taxes was tried during the Great Depression. The highest marginal tax rate went from 25% to 63% in 1932 and increased further to 79% in 1936. Needless to say, it didn’t help. In fact, there was a substantial recession in 1937-38.
Deleveraging is always painful The longer you delay, the more painful it gets. China, for example, is on the verge of a leverage crisis. The Chinese government is throwing money into less and less productive areas. Leveraging can last longer than you would think, but when a crisis comes, it comes fast and seemingly out of nowhere.
If you want to stimulate growth with fiscal policy, cut spending and taxes. The crony capitalists and rent seekers will suffer initially, but the economy as a whole will benefit. The IMF was always recommending raising taxes and cutting spending, otherwise known as austerity programs, to countries with financial problems. It never worked for them either.
SteveF,
By the way, I do agree that the structure of the Quantitative Easing program has been perverse. The government benefits from low interest rates. The big banks benefit from essentially free money paid by the Treasury for holding massive amounts of T-bills. But other than Wall Street, pretty much no one else benefits. I think I said something that above ( http://rankexploits.com/musings/2014/mooney-framed-as-a-free-market/#comment-132839 ). As you say, it doesn’t matter if interest rates are low if you can’t borrow money. And low interest rates drive investors into riskier investments. That causes bubbles which eventually pop.
I love the ads from the gold and silver bugs. First it was get in now before it goes even higher. Now it’s get in now because prices won’t go lower. Inverse ETF’s are looking better and better. Which reminds me. I still need to reduce my foreign stock fund holdings. The dollar appears poised to rise substantially wrt foreign currencies, particularly the yen.
DeWitt,
The situation in the early 1930’s in the States was nothing like that in Japan today. I agree that tax increases in the USA in 1932 were crazy. But the best mix of spending cuts and revenue probably depends a bit on the situation. Japan has huge personal and business savings rates, and tax rates which are low and profoundly disconnected from public expenditures. If taxes were raised, savings would decline, at least to some extent.
Ed Yardeni posits that QE may be even more perverse in that it is CAUSING deflation, do reversing it.
He makes the case that during the crises, recapitalizing the banks made sense, but since then, excess dollars are not increasing consumption and if they are used for increased capacity when the aging and retiring community is not demanding more goods and services, then the results is perversely – FALLING PRICES!
SteveF,
Other than outright confiscation, I don’t see how you can discourage saving more than by having near zero interest rates on savings. This is Japan’s problem for the last twenty years:
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/japan/government-debt-to-gdp
Make sure the starting date of the graph is 1980
How anyone can look at that graph and still believe that there is such a thing as fiscal stimulus is beyond me. I also don’t believe that there is such a thing as a savings rate that is too high. IMO the problem is that opportunities for productive investment are too low for whatever reason, usually government intervention in the economy which raises the cost of starting a new business to prohibitive levels. The same thing that had the managed economy proponents drooling over the Japanese economy in the 1980’s is likely the cause of the current problems.
“That isn’t what central bankers mean by deflation. Deflation is a reduction in prices caused by a lack of demand for whatever reason. In the Austrian school, it would be a reduction in the money supply. But I think you actually need to use the product of money velocity and money supply. We aren’t getting inflation now because the velocity of money is dropping fast enough so that the product remains relatively constant.”
DeWitt, I agree and so would the Austrians that inflation and deflation strictly defined is the increase and decrease in the money supply. They would also agree as would most economists that the velocity of money and the supply are what affects, at least eventually, the price level. That is why I stated above somewhere that the Federal Reserve can increase the money supply in hopes of spurring the economy through inflation, but if the velocity is not there that it is like pushing on a rope. Central bankers fear deflation because they fear that the consumer will put off spending in hopes that prices will fall even further and in my view that could be applied to price decreases for whatever reason and including technology advances. I personally would not mind deflation and do not see why central bankers fear it so. If it is a long run phenomena it encourages saving and investment and that is a good thing and if it is a short run phenomena as the result of a recession it is good because it hastens the necessary corrections that are needed to get out of the recession.
“By the way, try expanding the curve of job participation rate you linked above back to 1948. It looks like a case could be made that the bulge in the participation rate correlates with boomers entering the work force. Now that boomers are retiring, perhaps job participation is dropping back to pre-boomer levels.”
I would think that going from a one to a two job holder family must have had an effect on the job participation rate somewhere back in the 1950s and 1960s. I somehow doubt that that situation has changed much in recent years. Part of the fall off in the job participation rate in recent years is no doubt due to retirement of the boomers, but I also do not doubt that the decision to retire for a goodly portion had to do with a bad job market. How many times have you heard people say that they did not save enough for retirement and now plan on working late into life?
I have heard a number of liberal commentators and defenders of the status quo talk about the fall off in the job participation rate being a very natural demographic thing, but never once mention that, for whatever the reason causing the major decrease in that rate, it means there will be fewer people contributing to SS and Medicare and more people taking from it.
Kenneth,
Normally when the price of something goes down because of productivity or, in the case of commodities, supply increases, the consumer then has money to buy something else or save. The producer produces and and sells more items, hires more worker and/or pays them more. That’s good deflation. Bad deflation is when the price goes down because the consumer doesn’t have enough money to buy it at the old price and production drops. Bad deflation can lead rapidly to an economic death spiral. Central Bankers prefer a little inflation because it isn’t always easy to differentiate between good and bad deflation.
I had to settle for this statistic of the increase in the percentage of woman in the work force which shows that that percentage went from 32 % in 1948 to 60 % in 2000.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LNS11300002
I’m closing comments here and opening a new thread.