Several people have posted responses to my blog on the Obama proposal for a Soviet-style health care rationing plan. As usual, the Democrats provide evidence that is comprised of assertions by Democratic Party print sources, such as the St. Petersburg Times, as "proof". In parroting the propaganda, they insult anyone who questions it. They claim that those who question it lack "intelligence"; assert that they have "gone nuts"; or say that they "lie". That is the chief line of argument that "progressives" of both parties have followed since the days of Theodore Roosevelt and the Republican Progressive movement.
The "progressives" advocate incompetence in the name of emergency. In the emergency phase they are certain of the accuracy of their own ideas, much as investors in Cisco Systems or Drugstore.com were certain of theirs. They become frantic and insulting when anyone disagrees. They take the printed word as gospel, and claim that they are "enlightened".
Frequently, their programs pass. Sometimes, the incompetence of their ideas does not become evident for several decades. The New York City subways were "nationalized" in the 1930s but the most extreme deterioration occurred in the 1960s; Social Security was established and has functioned for seven decades; and so on. Social Security has transferred wealth from later to earlier generations. In the end, to rephrase Keynes, we are all impoverished, as 15% annual contributions have been sucked out of productive workers' paychecks to subsidize earlier generations. More often, though, their ideas flop almost immediately. OSHA, the occupational safety and health law, is an example. In the failure phase, government control has become entrenched and thousands of failed programs remain in place even though they harm the economy. In the 19th century the real wage grew two percent per year. Following nine decades of "progressive" reform, real wages have grown two percent over the last 35 years.
The argument that rationing already occurs is half true. There are degrees in most economic phenomena. Insurance companies do ration. But if I dislike the decisions of one insurance company, I can move to another. Market competition places some restrictions on insurance companies' abilities to curtail new ideas. There is considerable waste in the current system because many physicians over-treat and insurance companies aren't as good at rationing as the federal government would be. That waste would be eliminated by a national health insurance plan.
However, there is a separate market problem that "progressives" have never grasped. A centralized rationing agency would be conservative and unable to overcome the biases of the professional cadre. As a result, innovation would be much slower than in the current system and may be largely inhibited.
Although the American system is more expensive than other countries', it is also true that the majority of medical innovation occurs in the United States. Much as the socialist economy stalled economic development wherever it has been adopted, giving greater control of rationing decisions to a centralized economic agency would slow innovation world wide.
The concept of centralized health care reform is outdated. If anything, states should be in charge of reform, if reform is necessary. Moreover, the advocates of reform need to clarify how dynamic market innovation can occur under any kind of reform proposal.
So far, I have not heard any advocate of health care reform describe how innovation will occur under a centralized system. In fact, to the extent that the American economy has become regulated and centralized, innovation in the health care field has been considerably slowed. Several years ago Fortune ran an article about how university research in the cancer field has become dominated by entrenched academic interests that have inhibited innovation. The government agencies that fund research have been captured by the entrenched interests. Likewise, non-traditional cures have been illegalized.
Countries with national health insurance plans have not been innovative in the health care field. It is primarily the United States, which still has some elements of free markets, that has innovated. Moreover, the most important innovations in health care, aspirin, penicillin and the polio vaccine, were created before government intervention and regulation was escalated in the 1960s. That was also when health costs began to rise.
Thus, while Democrats can call those who question or think for themselves "stupid" or "nuts" they may step back and ask themselves how well the government programs, such as Social Security, that they have already adopted, have functioned. Given the decline in Social Security Benefits that has occurred, and that worse will follow, one would think that the Democrats might re-consider the lynch mob approach to reform that they have overseen since the 1930s. But they will not re-consider, much as a zealot will not reconsider his faith.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Democrats' and Republicans' Impoverishment Plans
The Democrats have this impoverishment plan:
1. Teach children that production of wealth is immoral while taxation is moral.
2. Tax output of productive Americans and redistribute it to the wealthy-–George Soros, Long Term Capital Management, Bear Stearns, the Washington nomenclatura, university professors and Keynesian economists.
3. Tell the poor that you are acting in their interest because of your “conscience”. Develop a social security and medicare plan that redistributes wealth inter-generationally from low wage earner to low wage earner. When it fails, institute a rationing scheme, call it “national health insurance” and raise the social security retirement age.
4. Convince Americans that receiving $180,000 in social security benefits for $200,000 in out-of-pocket contributions is a good deal. Convince Americans that health care in Cuba at $250 per year is better than in America.
5. Set interest rates at zero so that middle income people cannot save and induce them to invest in the stock market at inflated prices. Further ensure that middle income people cannot save by taxing incomes, property, inheritance, capital gains and sales.
6. Allocate freshly printed money (created to reduce interest rates to zero) to unproductive Wall Street, banking, hedge fund and corporate executives, insuring that wage earners will pay higher prices for milk while hedge fund managers buy $30 million houses in Greenwich, Connecticut and the Dakotas. Facilitate this process through subsidization of the stock and real estate markets, repeatedly inducing long term “sucker rallies”.
7. Convince Americans that taxation of 50% of your income is too little for the same level of services that used to be provided at 10% of your income.
8. Increase tax rates most on innovative and harder working Americans and transfer their money to Democratic contributors.
But the Republicans also have an impoverishment plan.
1. Read and parrot all Democratic Party information sources such as the New York Times and CNN.
2. Never repeal the Democrats’ impoverishment plan.
3. Do not educate Americans as to the effects of the Democrats’ impoverishment plan.
4. When elected, spend more than Democrats.
5. Declare a national emergency and emphasize the need to transfer even more printed money to unproductive, wealthy interests six weeks before the presidential election.
1. Teach children that production of wealth is immoral while taxation is moral.
2. Tax output of productive Americans and redistribute it to the wealthy-–George Soros, Long Term Capital Management, Bear Stearns, the Washington nomenclatura, university professors and Keynesian economists.
3. Tell the poor that you are acting in their interest because of your “conscience”. Develop a social security and medicare plan that redistributes wealth inter-generationally from low wage earner to low wage earner. When it fails, institute a rationing scheme, call it “national health insurance” and raise the social security retirement age.
4. Convince Americans that receiving $180,000 in social security benefits for $200,000 in out-of-pocket contributions is a good deal. Convince Americans that health care in Cuba at $250 per year is better than in America.
5. Set interest rates at zero so that middle income people cannot save and induce them to invest in the stock market at inflated prices. Further ensure that middle income people cannot save by taxing incomes, property, inheritance, capital gains and sales.
6. Allocate freshly printed money (created to reduce interest rates to zero) to unproductive Wall Street, banking, hedge fund and corporate executives, insuring that wage earners will pay higher prices for milk while hedge fund managers buy $30 million houses in Greenwich, Connecticut and the Dakotas. Facilitate this process through subsidization of the stock and real estate markets, repeatedly inducing long term “sucker rallies”.
7. Convince Americans that taxation of 50% of your income is too little for the same level of services that used to be provided at 10% of your income.
8. Increase tax rates most on innovative and harder working Americans and transfer their money to Democratic contributors.
But the Republicans also have an impoverishment plan.
1. Read and parrot all Democratic Party information sources such as the New York Times and CNN.
2. Never repeal the Democrats’ impoverishment plan.
3. Do not educate Americans as to the effects of the Democrats’ impoverishment plan.
4. When elected, spend more than Democrats.
5. Declare a national emergency and emphasize the need to transfer even more printed money to unproductive, wealthy interests six weeks before the presidential election.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Phil Orenstein On The Question of Obama's Eligibility
Phil Orenstein has an excellent blog on Democracy Project in which he raises new concerns about Barack Obama's birth certificate. As Phil mentions, I had run a petition last summer and obtained more than five thousand signatures. Phil writes that the issue has gone much further. 58% of Republicans now have questions about Obama's birth certificate, yet the Democratic Party organs, Daily Kos and the New York Times, continue to spin questions about it as taboo.
Phil asks:
"The birthers have some valid points when they wonder where is the transparency, openness and change, the bold themes of the new Obama administration, when not only the birth certificate, but also his kindergarten and school documentation, College records, Columbia thesis, his passport and medical records have never been revealed to the public?...Why hasn’t the entire birth certificate been released, which details in its 'long form” the attending physician present and in which hospital he was born?'"
As Phil points out, the Democratic Party position on this as reflected in the New York Times has been one sided. On the one hand, the Democrats sued John McCain concerning his birthplace issue and the Times covered this story. In contrast, the Democrats spin the Obama birthplace issue as off limits and the Times has not covered the story.
Perhaps what is revealing is not that the Democratic media favors the Democrats but that the Republicans have pursued a mentally retarded strategy of relying on the Democratic Party media. Aren't the Republicans smart enough to start their own media?
Phil concludes that:
"my battle will continue to be on the policy issues which will undoubtedly expose the hidden phantoms of the Obama presidency. The immediacy of the battle at hand will hardly leave me time to pursue questions regarding Obama’s birth certificate. The socialized healthcare legislation has just passed the final House committee, clearing the way for a floor vote in September after the August Congressional recess."
Phil asks:
"The birthers have some valid points when they wonder where is the transparency, openness and change, the bold themes of the new Obama administration, when not only the birth certificate, but also his kindergarten and school documentation, College records, Columbia thesis, his passport and medical records have never been revealed to the public?...Why hasn’t the entire birth certificate been released, which details in its 'long form” the attending physician present and in which hospital he was born?'"
As Phil points out, the Democratic Party position on this as reflected in the New York Times has been one sided. On the one hand, the Democrats sued John McCain concerning his birthplace issue and the Times covered this story. In contrast, the Democrats spin the Obama birthplace issue as off limits and the Times has not covered the story.
Perhaps what is revealing is not that the Democratic media favors the Democrats but that the Republicans have pursued a mentally retarded strategy of relying on the Democratic Party media. Aren't the Republicans smart enough to start their own media?
Phil concludes that:
"my battle will continue to be on the policy issues which will undoubtedly expose the hidden phantoms of the Obama presidency. The immediacy of the battle at hand will hardly leave me time to pursue questions regarding Obama’s birth certificate. The socialized healthcare legislation has just passed the final House committee, clearing the way for a floor vote in September after the August Congressional recess."
Mitchell Langbert Defamed At Brooklyn College
I just received a phone call from a colleague at Brooklyn College. Allegedly, a reader has anonymously called four different Brooklyn College offices, including the Provost's office, and told them that I have done something unethical. The caller did not leave his name and did not provide any specific information about the accusation. I called the Provost's office and they indicated that the caller had failed to provide his identity but made accusations about me, refusing to provide specific information about the accusations.
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