More so than Jay, I am troubled by Democratic Party proposals to fix our health care system that are built around the private insurance model. It is contradictory – it says that we fix the problem by spreading the problem around. The private insurance model is the reason why we have 47 million uninsured, millions more underinsured, and seniors, the poor, and children dumped onto government as the insurer of last resort.
Private insurance is a profit-driven model, and as such, has to confine itself to the lowest risk clients they can find. That’s the nature of the beast – it cannot be changed. Health insurance salespeople sift through the rubble looking for profitable clients, screening out the others. My wife and I, with our pre-existing conditions, have been told by agents not even to bother applying, and are sent packing instead to the ultra-expensive Montana health care pool for unprofitable health care clients. (It exists by government mandate – that alone is informative.)
So I am intrigued by Obama’s statements during the campaign, and by the Baucus proposal, that would make it illegal to reject people for insurance based on pre-existing conditions. I’m encouraged by this because it would undermine the private insurance model, and perhaps act as a driving force towards government-sponsored health care. No private insurer can survive if it has to provide insurance to all comers. Their business model is built around rejection of high risks.
Of course, the private insurance people are probalby miles ahead of me here. They might be willing to take on higher risk clients if we help them out – subsidy. That might well be our future – government-subsidized private insurance. That is the most expensive model we could possibly design, complete with all of the waste and extravagance of subsidy coupled with the greed and inefficiency and golden parachutes of the private insurers. It is no solution – it has all of the earmarks of a boondoggle.
The cleanest way to health care is to eliminate insurance pools, and simply provide care to everyone, high and low risk alike. Insurers can find other ways to make a living – an honest living. In other industrialized countries, it works just fine. People in Canada, Great Britain, France and Germany are mostly happy with their systems, far more satisfied than we are with ours. Maybe I’m being overly pessimistic here, but I see big brother private insurer in my future, want him or not. He’s bought his way in, and it will take major surgery to remove him.
Obama is a nice change, but he does not represent major change. That much is readily apparent as we watch him assemble his team with retreads, excluding progressives.
Piece of Mindful 
>>>>watch him assemble his team with retreads
chuckle
>>>>The cleanest way to health care is to eliminate insurance pools, and simply provide care to everyone, high and low risk alike.
Sounds nice, but you will still have problems, like even more of the current problem of young healthy people not buying insurance…until they get sick…then they go down and buy insurance for the day…go to the hospital…get healed…cancel the insurance…rinse and repeat. I suppose you could make buying insurance mandatory, but then you criminalize the uninsured, who will show up at emergency rooms anyway. It all has problems, so part of it is choosing with which problems to hassle.
>>>>People in Canada, Great Britain, France and Germany are mostly happy with their systems, far more satisfied than we are with ours.
They have some of our problems, some worse problems, some things better. One of the best links I read was a detailed explanation of the French system and how we could morph our medicare system into the French system.
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You don’t have the problem of adverse selection with single payer, nor do you have the problem of young and healthy not contributing.
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I’m supporting any plan like Max’s, Dems, Canada, or the Euro Weenies, anything that would triple the unemployment rate the fastest.
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Evidential data please. Sounds like your fear talking.
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Isn’t single payer simply one big pool? How about morale hazard (as opposed to moral hazard) as an economic offset to adverse selection?
How do we deal with pricing for services? Canadian doctors work 20% more for 20% less in earnings. The average French doc makes $55K a years (according to Ezra Klein at least.) And, like the Canadians, we’re going to have to all but eliminate punitive damages (the Canadians have nationalized their med liability insurance as well and limited non-economic damages to $350K Canadian.)
I know that satisfaction is 90% expectation. Lowering American’s expectations is going to be painful. No?
Just askin’.
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What Dave Budge said. With single payer you have all the problems of a monopoly/captured regulator, i.e. you lose a lot of incentives.
You need to maintain some type of price differentiation, e.g. obese smokers have higher health care costs than the physically fit. If there is too much sense that the healthy are subsidizing the flagrantly reckless, people begin to abandon the system.
>>>>You don’t have the problem of adverse selection with single payer… What is your mechanism to compel people to participate? Payroll deduction?
>>>>nor do you have the problem of young and healthy not contributing… How do you deal with those who refuse to participate? It is now mandatory to carry auto liability insurance, but we have many who don’t. Our local city attorney instituted a policy where anyone stopped with no insurance has their car impounded until they can show they have insurance. But in health care people just show up at the emergency room.
The automobile market works a little bit because I can buy a $500 car, or I can buy a $50,000 car and get what I pay for to some extent. With one payer and one price, the consumer is going to want a $50,000 car every time, and the providers are going to want to provide a $500 car, so you end up with the desultory system of an East Germany/Soviet Union.
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Dave – liability for malpractice is something I haven’t much considered. My immediate response is “huh?”.
Yes, single payer is one large pool. It works because it removes the incentive to price sick people out of the market. Simple fact is that if someone is sick, we ought to take care of them. When you start pricing in incentives for profit, you automatically bring in incentives not to take care of sick people. The 47 million uninsured are not there because of government inefficiency, but rather because of market efficiency. Taking care of them is expensive.
Simple fact is that when you remove market mechanisms and use “us”, or our government as the tool by which we take care of people, you eliminate massive bureaucracies that have developed to protect private profit from sick people. It is no coincidence that other countries manage to take care of 100% of their people for a fraction per capita of what we spend.
There is no incentive to abuse the single payer system, Fred, as almost all people don’t relish going to the doctor and usually only do so when they are sick and uncomfortable. The Canadian system, for all its flaws, puts this notion to rest. It also eases the burden of getting preventive care, which is disincentivized in our system.
And as I read your words, Fred, I’m struck that you are bound up in the private insurance model, rather than single payer, and think that you’ll still be dealing with insurance salesmen rather than doctors.
Dave – I’m not terribly concerned about doctor’s income – we tend to worship them in this society. How much would they earn in a free market? Would they make house calls? I think it was George Carlin who reminded us that somewhere in this country is the worst doctor, and he has patients and they are seeing him this moment.
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“Simple fact is that if someone is sick, we ought to take care of them.”
Does this mean that everyone – even really fat people – should get a heart transplant? Should alcoholics get liver transplants? Should smokers get lung transplants?
“Dave – I’m not terribly concerned about doctor’s income…”
I bet they are.
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I’d do triage. Pocketbook considerations should not be a priority. Right now we don’t do liver transplants for people who are likely to abuse the new organ. And I doubt excessively obese people qualify for a new heart. Bad example, I think.
I agree – doctors are concerned about their income. Are you concerned about mine? Or are we all on our own?
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Doctors will be definitely concerned with income when they’re still paying off massive student debts from their education. What’s the incentive to bring new doctors into the field?
You’ll end up with a doctor’s shortage, no R&D, long waits for routine care, and people unhappy with their care but no method for redress. And you do have to think about the things Dave mentions… It’s amazing to me what a dream world you live in, Mark.
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I once worked with a geologist who fancied himself doctor material. He said he chose geology over medicine because he wanted the money faster. I thought to myself that we were all better off.
If financial incentives are the only reason to choose medicine as one’s life’s work, then we’ll wind up with a low class of doctors. My parents told me of doctors in Billings, my home town, who lived in the neighborhoods and rubbed elbows with the common folk. Now they all live under the rims and around the country club. They are a class unto themselves.
Anyway, we can make as many doctors as we want. Cuba exports them.
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“You’ll end up with a doctor’s shortage, no R&D, long waits for routine care, and people unhappy with their care but no method for redress.”
We already have all of these things! Well, maybe with the exception of no R&D. And we’re spending nearly 20% of our GDP on this system. I really can’t believe anyone defends the status quo.
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I only have one more comment; be careful what you wish for.
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Philosophically speaking, Dave, that’s good advice at any time. But to get slightly more Buddhist, “Change is inevitable. To struggle is an option.”
“Does this mean that everyone – even really fat people – should get a heart transplant? Should alcoholics get liver transplants? Should smokers get lung transplants?:
The current answer to that question is ‘yes’ … if they can afford it. What you are attempting to do is break it down on the assumption of limited resource. If there are enough doctors, livers, lungs and hearts out there, this question is pointless. It only becomes an issue if those things are subjected to the morality of the supposed ‘free market’. They are expensive, hence only those who can afford them should get them. But if they weren’t expensive, then those who can afford more have lost something (exclusivity). Have they lost the right to health care? No. All they’ve lost is the right to lord it over others that they can get health care others can’t afford. So, you attempt to maintain the arbitrary moral nature of the ‘free market’ with claims of ‘deserving’ based on little save an artificial exclusivity. The rich man should be able to smoke cigars and drink fine scotch. He can afford body parts, right?
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Seniors seem to like Medicare. The working poor will like it too. The rich can supplement all they want for elective procedures. Micro-business will finally be able to compete with the bigs for top recruits looking for health and retirement packages. How many “private” policies have exploded when raid/bankruptcy/reorganization vaporizes their fantasy just before Medicare kicks in. Think Enron, Montana Power, GM, etc.
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Actually, Wulfgar, the way the system works now is that even really rich fat people can’t get heart transplants nor can (with the possible exception of Mickey Mantle) rich alcoholics get liver transplants. It’s true that those without insurance get short shrift in transplants but most of the decisions made for such things are based on the medical viability of the procedure. Of course the shortage of some organs, such as kidneys and livers, might be eased if I was able to electively sell my organs so that rich people could buy them and the donor organs were then made more available to those who couldn’t afford them.
But, more to your point that I’m building a moral construct for free markets; I’m not in this case. This discussion has been on the table for years and was intensively debated when Oregon set up their universal health plan (since overturned) where limits on services was the mainstay of the program. Oregon health officials clearly said that the state could afford basic care for everyone but could not afford heart transplants for anyone. Their egalitarian choice was that it made sense to cover 95% of all medically necessary needs to the exclusion of rare occurrences. All I was doing was pointing out that a broad statement such as Mark’s has necessary limitations.
Take, for example, something like how joint replacements effect Medicare. These procedures are now common place, have added billions to the Medicare bill and will increase as the demographic shift to the baby boomers emerges. In Canada the average wait time for a knee replacement is 8 months and Canadian health officials are concerned that the situation will become dire in the next several years.
So, as the ranks of elders swell so will the costs. The question then is; since 85% of Americans are insured and provided with comparatively quick service, will expectations derail the desire to ration medicine on non-economic grounds? It’s simply a question, Rob, not a statement. As I said earlier, satisfaction is 95% expectation.
And, just for the record, there will always be a shortage of everything at some point. Resources are always finite.
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>>>>So, you attempt to maintain the arbitrary moral nature of the ‘free market’ with claims of ‘deserving’ based on little save an artificial exclusivity. (Wulfgar)
It is not arbitrary. “Markets” arise naturally in response to shortages. We have a market for cocaine, we have no market for ocean water.
>>>>If there are enough doctors, livers, lungs and hearts out there, this question is pointless.
As Dave said, resources are always finite. Even if you flood the (pause) market with doctors, livers, lungs, and hearts you still have other bottlenecks such as nurses and operating room time. People’s time is valuable. If there are too many doctors around, some will drop out until those left get a wage they will take. We are always allocating limited resources.
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>>>>Yes, single payer is one large pool. It works because it removes the incentive to price sick people out of the market.
Even single payer needs to control costs.
>>>>Simple fact is that if someone is sick, we ought to take care of them.
I would say the simple fact is at some point people need to take care of themselves. What’s wrong with everyone paying for their own health care? Most people buy their own cars. If someone needs transportation, ought we buy them a car?
>>>>Simple fact is that when you remove market mechanisms and use “us”, or our government as the tool by which we take care of people, you eliminate massive bureaucracies that have developed to protect private profit from sick people. It is no coincidence that other countries manage to take care of 100% of their people for a fraction per capita of what we spend.
There are two different things at work here. One is the high cost of insurance. The other is the high cost of health care. I like that you want to eliminate the administrative costs of insurance, but we still have our expensive health care system, a system that is expensive in large part because of a lack of price discovery by consumers.
>>>>There is no incentive to abuse the single payer system…The Canadian system, for all its flaws, puts this notion to rest.
I was thinking of the abuse we saw in the New York/Massachusetts attempts to mandate one price insurance: people dropped in and out. If you advocate general fund revenues supporting the system, that is something else with its own pluses and minuses.
>>>>It also eases the burden of getting preventive care, which is disincentivized in our system.
I’ll give you a point here. We need to deliver cheaper health care for routine things. Just kicking in a single payer system might mask this expensive sleigh ride, but the problem still exists.
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>>>>There is no incentive to abuse the single payer system…The Canadian system, for all its flaws, puts this notion to rest.”
Actually, I’d like to see the data on that.
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Try this – a person who lived in both California and Vancouver BC compares the Canadian system to ours. It’s an unusual article in that it isn’t disgruntled Americans spewing falsehoods about the Canadian system. She does a good job of explaining the strengths and shortcomings of both systems.
Here and here.
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Well, I didn’t see any data at all related to morale hazard. What we need to see is data on number of visits per capita per year, etc.
I think both of arguments she makes are void of any real data. For example, doctors work hours. U.S. doctors don’t spend much time doing administrative tasks as she presents although it’s true that they have full time staff for that purpose. Secondly, I’ve read in a few places that Canadian Docs work more than the average American doc. I suppose we have to be careful with the numbers (you know, lies, damn lies and statistics. Like the reason that the U.S. shows much higher infant mortality than most of the world is because our definition of a viable birth is radically different than the rest of the world. We save more premature births than the rest of the world.)
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I don’t know how to access those kinds of numbers.
Bottom line for me is customer satisfaction. Most Canadians don’t want our health care system.
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Again, satisfaction is 95% expectations. My point from the beginning.
At the same time the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 85% of Americans with Insurance were satisfied or very satisfied with their insurance.
Although I’ll assume your correct that most Canadians don’t want our health care system I wonder if they want theirs?
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I’m very satisfied with my insurance. I’m an insider. I have access to our excellent health care system.
I don’t have access to polling, but the articles I linked to indicated that Canadians bicker, just like we do. But their patron saint is the man who started the movement to get rid of the insurance companies.
And notice that the tidal movement is towards, and not away from, centralized medical care.
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“And notice that the tidal movement is towards, and not away from, centralized medical care.”
As your mother asked: “If everyone was jumping off a bridge does that mean you should too?”
Look there’s no denying that the system is broken. But are there any new ideas out there that might put some creativity into the scheme? It’s like we get to choose either bad or worse. Which is which depends on your vantage point I suppose.
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It’s a matter of outlook – are we communities, or isolated individuals? Communities take care of their members. I don’t fear communities, I don’t fear government solutions to large problems, I don’t mind paying my share, helping out the less fortunate. We differ in outlook.
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>>>>I’m very satisfied with my insurance. I’m an insider. I have access to our excellent health care system.
Maybe this is somewhat of a problem: people with good insurance don’t care about the costs, such as General Motors and their generous health plans. If people were aware that they were being charged $12 for one tylenol, maybe they would complain or find a cheaper distributor. But with good insurance they don’t even know what these things cost. Informed consumers are the best method for finding an efficient system. Second best is having bureaucratic overlords find the efficiencies.
>>>>Communities take care of their members. I don’t fear communities, I don’t fear government solutions to large problems
I’d like to gently remind you that government policies often undermine communities: generous transfer payments lessen the need for community support, so we get more isolated individuals. Open borders/invite in the world brings on demographic changes that overwhelm traditional communities.
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Mark, I don;t see that what you said says anything differently than how I feel. I don’t mind paying taxes. I mind paying for things I don’t believe in – and so do you like, say, the war.
As for fearing government, you fear that too, say, like in imperialism, hegemony, and corporatism.
This isn’t a discussion about greed, it’s a discussion about a complex system in need of overhaul.
But where is it that conservatives/libertarians don’t believe in community? (google “spontaneous order”) Where is it that libertarians don’t believe in helping the unfortunate? If you think that’s true, you don’t understand the basis of the philosophy. Lest I be accused of name dropping I’ll leave out the figure heads of libertarian philosophy. Your continued insistence that “rational self-interest” means selfish disregard makes me know you have some learning to do.
None of that is true. Throw out everything you ever learned about libertarianism. It seems what you’ve learned was from those who don’t know.
Let me put it this way: Both Rand and Chomsky consider(ed) themselves anarchists – it makes sense we understand not only their differences but their similarities. No?
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The bulk of our medical costs are people who are really sick – your 80/20 rule, with a disproportionate amount going to seniors. Doctors complain about Medicare’s cost controls, many refuse to take on Medicare/Medicaid patients. The thing about $12 Tylenol is overblown hype used by the right wing to divert attention from the real problems in health care – burdensome bureaucracy brought about by private sector inefficiency.
Being an insider means I have access to the system – nothing more. It costs more to be an outsider – you have to use emergency rooms if you use doctors at all (where Tylenol is still $12), you don’t get regular checkups, you let conditions get worse for fear of the cost of treatment. 18,000 people die every year in this country for lack of insurance. It’s a disgrace.
You offer supporting evidence to my theory that the right is anti-community. Greed is not a virtue.
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Dave – It is one thing to care about the well being of communities of people, another to offer effective means of achieving that goal. I don’t see where libertarians have ever offered anything beyond personal charity, which has never been adequate. “Rational self interest” sounds like euphemism.
Chomsky is more a democratic socialist than an anarchist, though he does bat about the term. His bottom line is that each person should have a voice in a decision to the extent that the decision affects that person.
I do fear the militaristic and oppressive side of government, ala Bush and his wars and invasion of privacy and torture, etc. But I don’t fear that government seeks to take my freedom by running large public programs for good things, like social security and health care. It’s very cynical to use fear of the worst aspects of government to prevent us from having the best.
Libertarianism is to me like astrology – a curiosity, nothing more. I don’t mean to be insulting – probably a bad example, but I can’t think of a better one – maybe theology – intense theorizing about things that aren’t useful. The world is a messy place. You guys seem to think you can straighten it out. You can’t.
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Fred – here’s a corollary to your 80/20 rule: 22% of health care costs are absorbed by 1% of the population.
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“I don’t see where libertarians have ever offered anything beyond personal charity, which has never been adequate.”
Then you haven’t haven’t studied the literature, as I said. F.A Hayek, seen as the father of the libertarian movement said:
This, of course, is one of the paradoxes that many libertarians ignore. But the idea comes from Hayek’s precursors such as John Stewart Mill, Herbert Spencer and Henry George. (I might say that libertarian intellectuals all understand that even Locke saw an eventual limitation to land ownership and its efficacy in economic rights.)
“Chomsky is more a democratic socialist than an anarchist, though he does bat about the term. His bottom line is that each person should have a voice in a decision to the extent that the decision affects that person.”
Chomsky also describes himself as a left libertarian in several instances. But Rand also thought that each person should the ultimate voice in decisions that affect them personally only Rand rejects the use of violent force by the state and as the prerequisite of all other rights.
Then, of course, there are modern utilitarian libertarians – like much of the writers at Reason Magazine and Cato – who are not market purest but look to find ways that market principals can be used as an alternative to government designed programs. They (as well as I) typically feel that market dynamism does better in reacting to the efficient distribution of resources even within the context social programs. That, however, doesn’t make them against social programs per se. For example, regardless of your discussion that single payer insurance is more efficient, which you only have proven as to administrative costs (there are many, many more costs in the equation than you choose to argue) it makes better sense if the government simply gives citizens who cannot afford health insurance the money to buy it on the free market while addressing the issue of adverse selection by other means (regulatory or systemic by designed re-insurance for catastrophic care.)
“I do fear the militaristic and oppressive side of government, ala Bush and his wars and invasion of privacy and torture, etc. But I don’t fear that government seeks to take my freedom by running large public programs for good things, like social security and health care. It’s very cynical to use fear of the worst aspects of government to prevent us from having the best.”
The rub here is in your subjective use of “the best”. I can’t help but point out the contradiction, as I have before, in thinking that a government that is able to do “the worst” should, in practice, be trusted to do “the best.”
“The world is a messy place. You guys seem to think you can straighten it out. You can’t.”
I would argue that it is you who thinks this messy place can be straightened out by central planning. I know of no libertarians who think any utopia can be achieved. What we do believe is that many problems are solved by communities through “spontaneous order” and, if you want proof, look at New Orleans post Katrina. The number of homes built or rebuilt by private organization, such as Habitat for Humanity, is about ten times what the government has produced so far. What that shows us is that the fusion of the left and libertarianism has some promise.
Socialists deny us legitimacy – through propaganda – because of our positions on property rights. Conservatives deny us legitimacy – through propaganda – because of positions on social issues.
Like I said, throw out all you’ve learned about libertarianism.
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Very, very interesting. I did not know that Hayek had written that – it is indeed surprising. Just a couple of notes –
I said “It’s very cynical to use fear of the worst aspects of government to prevent us from having the best.”, and you more or less repeated the canard that we can expect the worst from government is we depend on it to do good things … that is how I read it. But remember, we’ve had Social Security since the 1930’s, Medicare and Medicaid since the 1960’s, and no one has been enslaved. In fact it is neocons who profess a belief in free markets who have attacked our constitution, but that is irrelevant, I suppose.
And I believe it is widely accepted that all systems left untended continually gravitate towards chaos. Far from making order, we are constantly fighting to stay even. Government solutions don’t solve anything – they merely alleviate suffering for many. Most problems will never be solved.
I agree with Hayek (and Wm F Buckley) that it would not hurt to provide foodstuffs for people – but not food stamps. I see far too much frozen pizza being bought by overweight poor people. It’s downright depressing.
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I don’t think that fear and skepticism – perhaps realism – are the same thing.
Secondly, like Mao’s foreign minister said about the outcome of the French Revolution, “it’s too soon to tell” in regards to SoSec, Medicare, etc. You see the future of those institutions as sustainable. I see them as a train wreck.
Third, as for societal entropy… Russel Kirk, as well as Hayek, thought that the cumulative leaning in human institutions – family, churches, societal morals and mores, and collective wisdom, have more to do with order than government ever can. I tend to agree with them. On the other hand, Hobbes was much more in your camp. But then Hobbes would have us trade liberty for security.
Last, neocons don’t care about free markets – regardless of what any one of them has ever said on the subject. They are the “big government” wing of the GOP.
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I don’t see a train wreck with Social Security and Medicare – simply an expense that is ongoing. That coupled with the idea that a collective obligation is a threat to freedom, that taxation is evil and totalitarian, has led to these doomsday predictions.
These programs are expensive, but are an effective answer to the collective misery that preceded them. With Social Security, the passing of my generation will relieve much of the burden – the snake is swallowing the pig. Under Reagan we agreed to set aside huge amounts of money to pay for our retirements. There’s an agreement in place. Care to honor it?
Medicare is much more troublesome. An aging population coupled with expensive medical advances leads us towards unpleasant decisions – rationing, much as Canada and other countries with socialized systems of their own face. Our choices are to leave the rationing to the marketplace, which is cruel and cold and naturally favors wealth, or government, which at least has the potential to treat people with a little more equality. But you’re right – it is a huge problem.
You say that religion is a force within society that counterweighs entropy. But I see chaos in religion itself, its natural alliance with fascists, its turning of individuals into tools. My brother is a Catholic priest, and he offers the best that religion can be – a calming force that gives people comfort and sanctuary from the marketplace, which is chaotic and cruel. (There are no politics in his church.) But even in Catholicism there are the forces of chaos – right wing Catholics joining with fundamentalists to fight us liberals who aim to control the world with our secularism and homosexuality and abortion. Religion itself is fighting entropy and is a force that brings about tyranny. These people play on hear, and that is dangerous. Fear is a tool of tyrants.
It’s just ongoing, neverending. There have been periods of openness – the Enlightenment, and the resulting Declaration and Constitution, putting religion in its place, ordering a secular government committed to the general welfare. The there were the 60’s and the rise of feminism and environmentalism. That scared people too. But a shattering event, like 9/11 (or being bombed by the US), brings madmen out of the shadows and gives them power.
The election of Obama, whether he is fake or friendly (I do not know what to expect from him), is a sign that people have returned to their senses. There is always hope.
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>>>>There’s an agreement in place. Care to honor it?
That’s my plan…as I sit here in quiet comfort in front of my computer. The problem is when the time comes we need to shift major revenues from the general fund to cover these obligations. From where are we going to get the money to cover the other big programs we will have come to love and expect? I suspect it will be like aiming an ocean liner for a rocky shore thinking that we can swerve away at the last minute. Look at all the obligations our government is taking on as we speak…write…whatever. Strap on a helmet.
>>>>Our choices are to leave the rationing to the marketplace, which is cruel and cold and naturally favors wealth…
Cruel, cold, and honest.
>>>>or government, which at least has the potential to treat people with a little more equality.
It has the potential, but how often and badly does it miss the mark? I’m not thrilled with the prospect of our bureaucrats running the show. France seems to have got a lot of things right with their health care system. I think the French culture raises up a high quality public servant. US public service attracts too many looters.
>>>>[paragraph here on religion]
You seemed too negative about religion. I see your centrally planned economy by a benevolent secular government as a religion. Maybe we have a competition here.
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Odd that when Wall Street hiccups, we can find the money. That revenue shift will be interesting – we will know at that time whether Reagan intended to help retirees, or merely shift tax burden to the working and middle classes.
We use government to mitigate the cruelty and unfairness of the marketplace. When it comes right down to it, the only people truly exposed to the market are workers. They – the non-unionized ones – the can fired at will.
I said nothing about “centrally planned”, though that is what we have. It’s not us who are doing that.
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