Posts Tagged ‘Economy’
18 Feb, 2010
I think American government works well when it’s strictly limited. When Americans try to implement Euro-style social democracy, they fail due to the nature of American government. It is uniquely unsuited to centralized technocratic governance.
At this point, it seems more plausible that the cost of health insurance will keep rising, just as the costs of health care services have continued to climb. The upshot is that the burdens of mandatory purchase, the subsidy costs and the associated implicit marginal tax rates will all increase, eventually to the point of unsustainability. — Tyler Cowen
We continue to debate healthcare proposals in this country, almost non-stop, while the economy burns and fails to recover in any meaningful fashion. On the minds of politicians is not the well-being of the citizenry, or it’s interests, but rather it is the progression of a certain agenda above all else, as the mechanisms are in place to do so; whether or not it can be accomplished within the ranks of the party is mildly debatable, at least.
What the government might consider, rather than this agenda that is, are ideas proven to generate a little momentum in the recovery process: tax breaks, tending to the fiscal health of the federal government, reducing regulatory control on private sector practices, etc. But, health care is just too important.
The quote below is a from Tyler Cowen, How an Insurance Mandate Could Leave Many Worse Off, discussing why the current proposals are eventually doomed to thrive in the pile of unsustainable government ideas.
A further problem is “mandate creep,” which we’ve seen at the state level, as groups lobby for various types of coverage — whether for acupuncture, alcoholism and fertility treatments, for example, or for chiropractor services or marriage counseling.
There are now about 1,500 insurance mandates among the various states, and hundreds of others are under consideration. The dynamic at work here is that the affected groups have a big incentive to push for mandates, while most other people are unaware of the specific issues and don’t become involved.
Because mandates don’t stay modest for long, health insurance would become all the more expensive. The Obama administration’s cost estimates haven’t considered these longer-run “political economy” issues.
Why politicians will not look to these sorts of predictions as an indicator of why their current plans are foolhardy and dangerous is nerve wracking. This is all via, Tyler Cowen. Be sure to read through the comments as it is usually an interesting discussion.
Robert Higgs | The Beacon
I’m starting to really like this guy. A more rational head have I rarely had the pleasure of spotting on such reasonable shoulders (or something less awkward sounding, you fill in the blanks). For Example:
There’s something charmingly quaint about the leftists’ continuing attack on capitalism, which is a type of economic order that, if it ever existed at all in this country, has not existed in recognizable form since the 1920s—in a more plausible assessment, not since the years before World War I. Yet the so-called progressives never tire of beating the long-dead horse of capitalism. Are they so ideologically blind that they cannot see how governments at every level have intervened and intervened again until they have displaced or distorted every element of the economic order that might once have contributed to its capitalist character?
Indeed, sir, indeed.
In spite of our machinations, we continue to lose money, jobs, and inflation is probably about to burst forth with a furry. We should not be shocked to learn then that we are bleeding jobs; we are shedding them in order to reach some new equilibrium while our economy attempts to recover. But, uh…the thing is, I thought the President, and Congress, had a plan for that? You know, the trillion dollar stimulus. Remember how that was supposed to save or create over 3 million jobs?
I’ll tell you, I’m still waiting. I feel as though the numbers used to sell this plan were fudged a bit. No, I don’t just feel it, I know it. Their plan was to print a bunch of money, create a ton of debt and feed it into the economy in order to give it a bit of a kick start, but their plan never really pumped money into anything. As passed, it was more of an entitlement package; and now, everything they do is an effort to get an agenda shoved through. Universal healthcare, take overs of industry and banking, etc. The left is pushing hard, and they claim that all of this is just about turning the economy around, not radically altering the face of our political system.
This video in particular is an apt criticism of the plan’s claims of employment figures if the stimulus passed versus not being passed.
Robert Barro on Lessons of the Great Depression
No I think what is much clearer is the role of the financial system and the credit implosion, both in the 1930s and today. The rest of the stuff may just be a sideshow, it may not be that important. There’s a strong tendency for the economy to recover on its own, as long as it’s not subject to further new shocks, so a likely scenario is that that is what will happen today as well. And then the Obama administration will say that it’s because of our policy that things recovered, and there won’t be any way to prove whether that’s right or wrong.
29 Apr, 2009
A lot of fellows nowadays have a B.A., M.D., or Ph.D. Unfortunately, they don’t have a J.O.B.
The Panic of 1825
A look at a central banking intervention in a banking crisis—perhaps a way to interpret the current economic situation. While what the article describes is on a smaller scale than what we see now, it may be an example of why such actions might work.
I don’t want to admit that they might work, but it is an interesting thought.
Great Myths of the Great Depression
We certainly need to evaluate what we have learned from the reasons for the extension and severity of the recession and depression of our economy in the 1930’s; namely that monetary policy and negative attitudes towards business, policy and attitudes that are eerily familiar today, are some of the primary reasons we should be studying.
Failed policies of the past will not save us, Mr. Obama.
I read a rather interesting piece this morning, LET IT DIE: Rushkoff on the economy, describing the nature of the makeup of our economy as “a system set in place for the benefit of 14th Century monarchs who have long since left this earth.”
And this makes sense to me. What Ruskoff proposes might even be more libertarian and laissez-faire than simply keeping government out of business.
It is a call to return to economic transactions that make sense on the local level. Exchanging real goods and services and creating real wealth in those exchanges. I’m blown away by this and wish that it could be, but know that it will not. Not until modern civilization collapses at least.
Rushkoff states:
As painful as it might be to watch, and as irritating as it might be to those with shrinking retirement savings, the collapse of the centralized corporate economy is ultimately a good thing. It makes room for a real economy to rise up in its place. And while it may be temporarily uncomfortable for the rich, and even temporarily devastating for the poor, it may be the fastest and least violent way to dismantle a system set in place for the benefit of 14th Century monarchs who have long since left this earth.
…The current financial crisis is the best opportunity we have had in a very long time for a bloodless revolution against the faceless fascism under which we have been living, unaware, for much too long. Let us seize the day.
Indeed. I start to think, after reading this piece, that perhaps early politicians were right to oppose a central bank; the articles of confederation might have had it right.
Republicans Plan “Stimulus Two”
Also known as the “No Cost Stimulus Act of 2009.” I love this new plan. Other than the fact that it is guaranteed to never see the light of day, the floor of congress, the mainstream media, etc.
As described:
…the plan would, among other things, speed up leasing for oil and gas exploration in the outer continental shelf; open up the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge for energy production “in an environmentally-sensitive way” and with revenues directed to renewable energy projects; speed the licensing procedure for new nuclear power plants; speed the resolutions of lawsuits over federal oil and gas leasing; and prohibit the Endangered Species Act and Clean Air Act from being used as the basis for cap-and-trade and other carbon regulation/taxation.