Quote of the Day
Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour.
Sit with a pretty girl for an hour,
and it seems like a minute.
That's relativity.
Albert Einstein
Economics Study Conclusions of the Day
- Income tax progressivity affects the number of new firms. The number of new firms opening in a state is a key indicator of beneficial creative destruction and innovation that will improve living standards for the state’s residents over time. Other studies have found that new firm entry accounts for 20–50 percent of a state’s overall productivity growth. The latest economic data show that the rate of start-up creation is sensitive to personal income tax progressivity. A 1 percent increase in personal income tax progressivity is associated with a reduction of 1.2 percent in the growth rate of the number of firms.
- A higher average tax burden reduces state economic growth. Dividing total tax revenue by gross state product (GSP) shows that a 1 percent increase in a state’s average tax rate is associated with a decrease of 1.9 percent in the growth rate of its GSP.
- Higher state taxes generally reduce state economic growth, GSP, and even population. It is clear that people produce or consume less, or even move to a different state, in response to higher taxes. Not all types of tax increases can be expected to significantly harm economic outcomes, but higher taxes are generally correlated with lower standards of living.
Pope Benedict wins the Battle of the Popes World Cup 2014 final. Congratulations, champion Germany http://t.co/zrjmBNtTD1
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) July 13, 2014
Isn't it time to stop making human sacrifices to the false god of Nationalism? No more foreign adventures, old men's war games, moms' tears!
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) July 14, 201
Are Food Trucks/Carts As Safe As Restaurants?Pro-Liberty Thought of the Day
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| Via Voluntary Virtues Network |
Image of the Day
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| Via Being Classically Liberal |
A Golden Oldie: Libertarian FAQ's
Duck Tales and the Fed
Lysander Spooner: The Difference Between a Mugger and the Government
Goodman On "Free" Healthcare
I have written a number of pieces on healthcare, and Goodman is one of my favorite sources (although I haven't had a chance to review Priceless).
There are a few points I've made in past posts that I want to reinforce first:
- First, one of the selling points of the Medicare Part D (drug benefit) is that the program might essentially pay for itself in the long run in terms of more serious health care expenditures. That is a dubious claim (among other things, people don't necessarily purchase or take their meds). But only roughly a quarter of program costs addresses catastrophic costs.
- Second, I made a comment about the well-known (to business and economics students) Pareto principle--the idea that only a small fraction of causes (roughly 20%) accounts for most (80%) of the effects, i.e., "In health care in the United States, 20% of patients have been found to use 80% of health care resources."
The reason I mention that is that Goodman explicitly references the Canadian system in his latest post:
Now suppose you are a Minister of Health. Can you afford to spend half of all health care dollars on 5 percent of the voters? (Even if they survive to the next election, they are probably too sick to get to the polls and vote for you anyway!) Can you afford to spend virtually nothing on the vast majority of voters just because they happen to be healthy?One of the differences in my exchanges with the AnCap was that for a number of the most common cancers, US patients had a higher survival rate. What Goodman points out is "In a typical U.S. insurance pool about 5 percent of enrollees will spend 50 percent of the money. About 10 percent will spend 70 percent. The numbers differ a bit from group to group, but you get the idea: a small number of people spend most of our health care dollars in any given year." This is consistent with the Pareto principle.
That is why it is easier to see a primary care physician in Britain than it is in the United States, but harder to see a specialist and much harder to access expensive technology. In the 1970s, the British invented the CAT scanner and for a while supplied half the world’s usage (probably with government subsidies). But the NHS bought very few CAT scanners for use by British patients. The British also invented renal dialysis (along with the United States), but even today Britain has one of the lowest dialysis rates in all of Europe.
Similar observations apply to Canada, where services for the relatively healthy are ubiquitous and expensive technology is scarce. PET scans, for example, can detect metabolic cancer about a year earlier than MRI scans. At last count, the United States had more than 1,000 PET scanners, while the Canadian Medicare system had only about 18!
Now let's get to a fundmental fact of politics: why do you think the fascists are obsessed with the upper 1%, when everyone knows that the upper 1%'s assets cannot sustain the Dems' vast welfare state? Even if you stole all their assets, it would barely dent one year's deficit--and where do you then find the money? Obama never did grasp the point--recall his infamous faux pas in the 2008 campaign? Basically speaking to an elitist "progressive" group in San Francisco, he couldn't figure out why Midwesterners would irrationally cling to their guns and Bibles: after all, he was offering them a better tax deal than his opponents at the expense of those nefarious 1%... Do you think the Dems care about the 1%? Do their votes make or break an election?
Goodman is pursuing a related point: if just 5% account for half of expenses, where do you look to control costs? At the expense of the other 95% whom vote and subsidize the 5%? As Goodman points out, the 5% may not even be reliable voters. (So we have systems where seeing a physician in Britain or Canada for routine problems may not be an issue--which is most voters' view of the healthcare system. However, for more catastrophic issues requiring expensive specialists and technology, there may be more limited resources, typically translating into waiting lists.) There is no incentive in a government monopoly; the consumers are all captive with no market competition to encourage creative destruction, innovation, cost-cutting. Given a politically-dominated sector, the incentive is to focus on healthcare for the many, ordinary, minor out-of-pocket expenses, like birth control or preventive care, of dubious medical value. Of course, the propagandists will promote if and when a preventive test detects an issue (but of course they don't mention the false positives). Is Goodman in a state of denial about preventive tests? I don't think so; I suspect that he's taking into account false positives: remember the political kerfuffle after a research study suggested that a mammogram every 2 years after the year of 50 did not increase the woman's risk of developing advanced breast cancer? In any event, if insurance companies believed that preventive care paid for itself, they would already be providing it "free" without a legal mandate.
A Pancreatic Cancer Patient Seeks To Become a Survivor
Facebook Corner
That's because these fascists ARE xenophobes, racists, and nativists; all crackpots worshipping corrupt restrictionist failed immigration legislation. No self-respecting pro-liberty person would ever associate with these self-destructive individuals. The only thing that these morons have done is help convert California into a showcase of "progressive" Democratic failure.
(Reason). Libertarians are the ones who tend to both support same-sex marriage and people's right not to be compelled to work in service of one; to want to get both our bosses and the government out of birth control decisions; and to take free speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of association, and personal autonomy very seriously.
It's clear this author seems to be unintelligibly jumping between (social) liberalism and libertarianism; how the author identifies liberalism with the Reagan policies on tax and regulation is, at best, muddled.
I do think, however, the author has a point in discussing imposing nontraditional socially experimental policy on a community. In fact, I think Rockwell and Rothbard in the early 1990's identified a fusion concept of libertarianism called paleolibertarianism, which identified with cultural conservatism and rejected socially experimental policy with relevant unintended consequences. This does not mean intervening against those whom engage in licentious behavior or nontraditional relationships from a standpoint of Thomistic tolerance.
The people of California twice ratified traditional marriage propositions which were rejected by judicial fiat; notice this judicial authoritarianism was despite a domestic partnership proposition referring marriage-like legal protections. Either the greater community has a right to reflect public morals policy or it doesn't. But to rely on judicial authoritarianism to impose politically correct policy contradicts the right of association, including those prefer traditional social norms/constructs, seems a betrayal of libertarian principles. I would expect, at minimum, an argument of privatization of traditional institutions. Let the states market their policies for gays; so long as no one intervenes against the right of gays to associate and/or migrate...
(I basically agreed with one person's comment and the following is a response to her critics, except I don't agree with part of the LP statement): " I can't say I support same sex marriage; nor do I oppose it...it has very little to do with me. What I oppose is the government involvement in marriage...or the belief that the government has any place in regulating the relationships of consenting adults. The Libertarian platform is quite clear as to what the party stands for “Sexual orientation, preference, gender, or gender identity should have no impact on the government's treatment of individuals, such as in I do think, however, the author has a point in discussing imposing nontraditional socially experimental policy on a community. In fact, I think Rockwell and Rothbard in the early 1990's identified a fusion concept of libertarianism called paleolibertarianism, which identified with cultural conservatism and rejected socially experimental policy with relevant unintended consequences. This does not mean intervening against those whom engage in licentious behavior or nontraditional relationships from a standpoint of Thomistic tolerance.
The people of California twice ratified traditional marriage propositions which were rejected by judicial fiat; notice this judicial authoritarianism was despite a domestic partnership proposition referring marriage-like legal protections. Either the greater community has a right to reflect public morals policy or it doesn't. But to rely on judicial authoritarianism to impose politically correct policy contradicts the right of association, including those prefer traditional social norms/constructs, seems a betrayal of libertarian principles. I would expect, at minimum, an argument of privatization of traditional institutions. Let the states market their policies for gays; so long as no one intervenes against the right of gays to associate and/or migrate...
These authoritarian sophists are trying to shove politically correct dictates about the traditionally heterosexual marriage construct down the throats of those whom prefer to live within a traditional social context. We do not want the State intervening in social norms. Whether gays can call their commitments "marriage" because they lack faith in their own historical traditions, they don't have the moral authority to impose their own values on the greater community.
Those of us who recognize, as Thomas Aquinas did, that human laws should only prohibit those vices"...from which it is possible for the majority to abstain; and chiefly those that are to the hurt of others, without the prohibition of which human society could not be maintained..." (e.g., murder, theft), do recognize the prudence of live and let live with respect to gays and their relationships. We would not seek to deter gays whom wanted special legal recognition to migrate to a state or greater community conferring those recognitions. Isn't that the whole point of a free market of states? Let the states compete to attract the 4% of the US gay population.
But when libertarians-in-name-only seek to impose socially experimental policies on the private sector, they are intrinsically contradicting their own principles; the correct libertarian position is NOT to impose nontraditional norms on a more traditional community but to seek independence of the law from private sector institutions of marriage and family.
(Drudge Report). Pentagon gives pink slips to hundreds of soldiers, including active-duty officers...
It's about time that we wind down our overly expensive, counterproductive, morally hazardous foreign adventures and start reducing our unsustainable, bloated national spending across the board.
More Marriage Proposals
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of the original artist via IPI |
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| Courtesy of Dana Summers via Townhall |
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| Courtesy of Rick McKee via PatriotPost Obama Calls For Border Patrol Against the Tea Party |
Anne Murray, "Broken Hearted Me"
