Michael Cannon on America's socialized health care; Steve Stewart-Williams on online sadism; and on autism; James Devereaux on presidents, democracy, and power
The Roman senate was able to maintain relevance long into the imperial period in part because it more or less subsumed a lot of judicial and business functions. Their concept of the separation of powers was a lot more limited than what would emerge in the early modern period.
The US Constitution sharply limits Congress' participation in activities outside legislation, taxation, and spending. But Congress has opted to delegate most of its authority to the executive branch, despite some strong informal norms concerning non-delegation. Judicial review also developed into something much more powerful and pervasive than the founders anticipated such that any act of Congress is subject to inconceivable layers of possible negation by various lawyers.
John Adams worried about and anticipated that the scheme of legislative bicameralism would be overcome by practical politics. Adams viewed bicameralism as a means of providing representation to different classes. He portrayed the House as the people's tribunal; in more modern terms the bottom 90% in terms of wealth. He saw the Senate as the house of the elite 1-10% of society in terms of wealth and land ownership. He perceived the presidency as the balancing monarchical branch.
Adams was concerned that, as had happened in dozens of other republics that he examined, that either the aristocrats would successfully subvert the bicameral scheme or that the democratic house would run wild and destroy society (the source of his famous anti-democratic quote). Applying Adams' rubric to the situation today, he would quickly perceive that the aristocrats successfully subverted the bicameral scheme of Congress. We have two aristocratic houses split into two parties that both purport to represent the masses of the people, but who generally better represent their fractious aristocratic clients. Then you have a president who basically does the same thing with the executive's various usurped powers on behalf of various factions both domestic and foreign.
In the cases of republics dominated by factions of aristocrats who hate each other, Adams argued that such a form encouraged a virulent Italian-style assassination politics. Adams criticizes Machiavelli's uncritical acceptance of this amoral method of power politics at great length, I think longer than he does in refuting any other thinker. This is why he and the other federalists, under the tutelage of Montesquieu, developed this highly artificial system of checks and balances; they believed that they could prevent the ills that had given republicanism a bad reputation. Adams had to spend a lot of time arguing why the Constitution was resistant to Machiavellianism, and also in arguing for a public-spiritedness that would reduce the chances of the subversion of that system into a Machiavellian arena.
And only been informed of selected events in the last few years.
I don’t understand the import of this view. It’s not as if charismatic authority is some sort of fleeting, inconstant thing. It’s always there and has always been there.
As such, it does nothing to explain why now is different
Our medical system demonstrates why socialism doesn't work. Institutions with no real skin in the game evolve into rent-seeking institutions independent of their official objectives.
I've always thought of schadenfredue as related to hoisted by one's own petard, that the joy was because their own dogma got run over by their own karma, that they got their comeuppance.
"Congress is doomed to losing its formal powers" . . . or "is resigned to losing its formal powers" or "is happily wallowing in slothful grift after having cheerfully given up its formal powers."
If you had asked typical conservatives in 2010 if Tylenol and vaccines were to blame for autism, they would have scoffed. Now some "conservatives" are leading the charge that someone, something, anything other than bad luck must be to blame for my child's autism.
It's sad to see so many otherwise sharp folks go down the rabbit hole of the loony-left anti-vax rabbit hole promoted by far-left nuts like RFK Jr. The COVID vaccine was useless at best and damaging at worst. But that doesn't mean that all vaccines and all medicine are also bad.
I have no idea whether Tylenol taken during pregnancy is to blame for autism, but I'm old enough to remember viewing photos of children born without arms, or with flippers where their arms should have been, as a result of their mothers taking thalidomide for nausea during pregnancy, and the conclusion I drew from that episode was the precautionary principle that pregnant women should probably avoid most pharmaceuticals to remedy the normal discomforts associated with pregnancy. After all, they are advised to avoid drinking alcohol and eating certain types of foods, like 'soft cheeses,' for some reason. And after the press conference with Trump and RFK on the possible link between autism and pregnancy, I was astonished to see Tik Toks posted by narcissistic pregnant women with a severe case of TDS downing Tylenol as an act of defiance, so I would be careful about claiming that 'conservatives' have gone down 'the rabbit hole of the loony-left' simply for warning pregnant women about taking Tylenol. Just when you think conservatives are catching up with the 'loony left,' a certain segment of the 'loony left' (much to my chagrin, usually female) says 'hold my beer!'
There's a difference between recommending pregnant women generally avoid Tylenol -- which makes sense to me -- and the more specific claim that Tylenol causes autism, which is far more dubious.
When a particular approach to disputed facts becomes institutionally locked-in, its proponents forfeit any claim to the benefit of doubt. This includes not only cases of legal regulation but of alleged proof mediated by the thoroughly corrupt credentialed class.
"the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports that in the United States, government controls 84% of health spending."
I was skeptical from the start and finally got around to looking at it more. It's not what oecd says. They say 84% of spending is covered by mandatory prepayments. But they don't define mandatory prepayments. By Googling, best I can tell it includes a variety of insurance plans that are not government.
If anyone is more specifically aware of "mandatory prepayments," please share.
The current broad definition of interstate commerce was one of many violations of the constitution that were forced on the Supreme Court when FDR threatened to pack the court. The specific case was Wickard v Filburn.
At best it will take several more Trump-like administrations to clean up these system-corrupting effects of the New Deal, if we're ever to get our Constitutional form of government back.
Devereaux has good points, and is readably brief, but totally fails to note the powers of judges, and misses on Congress. US Congress, after failing for decades to do its job of making a budget, has shut down the government.*. Ha! Trump couldn’t do it, alone.
The SCOTUS, following popular opinion, have frequently denied the 10th Amendment, reserving to states & people rights & powers not expressly given to the Feds. The Roe Abortion decision in 1972 centralized a health issue that should have been at the state level. Many voters, maybe most, want all the laws in every state to be the same, especially if it’s a law they like.
The reality is that most laws are pretty close to what most folk want, except on illegal immigration. Yet there are inevitable problems in life, as well as technological & demographic changes, and even history, like the increasing history that legalization of pot has led to more crazy folk & more social problems with crazy folk. It’s far easier to get folk to agree that some real policy is bad, because of the bad effects, than to agree on a better policy—because every real policy has some bad effects.
Trade-offs all the way down, in real life. Unlike movies & video games with absolute good vs evil.
It’s likely, tho less talked about, that after Trump & Reps solve, hugely reduce, the illegal immigration problem, a lot of current Rep voters will drift back away from even caring enough to vote.
The key power of the purse that Congress has is constrained by inflation, and maybe by increasing fragility of increasing national debt. Tho Japan at 260% debt/GNP is doing fine, so far. Who gets the new money first, and how much, remains the main issue of Congress.
The excerpted claims from Michael Cannon about OECD reporting are puzzling. First, when did Cuba join the OECD? The only relevant reference I am able to find to Cuba in an OECD publication is on page 148 of an OECD publication entitled Health at a Glance: Latin America and the Caribbean 2023 stating “general government health expenditure constituted the main source of funding in 2019 (regional average of 57%) (Figure 6.6). Cuba has the largest share with 89%.” Is this the 89% Cannon references? If we want to compare Cuba to the United States on this measure, the OECD reports at figure 7.12 “Figure 7.12. Health expenditure from public sources as share of total health expenditure, 2021” of a publication entitled Health at a Glance 2023 that 56% of US health spending comes from public sources. See: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/health-at-a-glance-2023_7a7afb35-en/full-report/public-funding-of-health-spending_712db152.html#figure-d1e29796-4f0dbe2216
We can find an 84% figure for the United States in the Country Note for the United States in the Health Care at a Glance 23 publication, in the .pdf at https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/health-at-a-glance-2023_4b49102f-en/united-states_4268c3ef-en.html but that states “84% of spending covered by mandatory prepayment, was higher than the OECD average of 76%. Mandatory prepayment is not the same thing as public sources of total health care expenditure, so one wonders if Cannon is comparing apples and oranges here. And the OECD tends to report everything in the US as mandatory because of the Obamacare employer coverage requirements, so even there, “mandatory prepayment” covers a wide variety of health systems.
Cannon doesn’t identify any countries that have a system of minimal government interference such as he proposes. He does mention Germany though, approvingly though, stating “German residents have the freedom to purchase affordable, secure, lifelong health insurance at actuarially fair rates.” The so-called freedom to purchase is actually a mandatory requirement (as is long term care insurance) and includes dental coverage:
“In Germany, health insurance coverage is provided by two different systems: the SHI and the private health insurance (PHI). The SHI scheme provides reliable health protection to almost 90 percent of the population. More than 70 million citizens are insured with a SHI fund to receive the best medical care possible.
Solidarity as a matter of principle
The SHI funds operate based on the principle of solidarity: Contributions are determined by the members’ financial capacities, while insurance benefits are the same for everyone. This means, the almost 100 health insurance funds that currently exist grant medically necessary services both to their paying members and to the approximately 16 million people who are co-insured free of charge as family members. Hence, the fundamental principle of the statutory health insurance is the solidarity-based sharing of burden – between the healthy and the sick, between those with higher and lower incomes, between the young and the elderly, between singles and families.”
In 2021 he share of public funding for healthcare was 85.5 %.
High earners may qualify to opt out of the SHI into private insurance:
“People with high income and self-employed people can purchase private health insurance or keep the statutory health insurance. Coverage of services is roughly the same in both systems, apart from certain newly launched drugs, which are paid for by private insurance. There is no restriction on patients’ choice of hospitals, and patient copays for hospital stays do not differ across hospitals.”
One might also note that insurance premiums are adjusted by age and by pre-existing conditions.
At any rate, I would take Cannon’s assertions with a grain of salt. Or two. If somebody knows of a successful healthcare system with minimal government involvement, I’d love to hear about it.
Which leaves us with Dr. Kling’s claim that “The myth is that government interventions increase access to health care. In reality, government interventions subsidize demand and restrict supply.” Maybe in some cases in the United States, but the quite obvious fact is that around the world, government run health care systems actually do expand access to care and at costs much lower than in the US. Maybe if the US had a viable political structure and competent leaders and administrators, reform might be possible. But unicorns and laissez-faire healthcare are not going to rescue anyone anytime soon.
"Congress attempts to mitigate the unintended consequences of government price-setting with — you guessed it — more government price-setting."
It's one of the most aggravating aspects of central planners. They distort markets and prices, then "fix" the distortions with more distortions, almost as if they are trying to recreate markets and prices. Didn't Henry Hazlitt (Economics In One Lesson, not the current Hazlett, but I always get the spellings confused) write a story about a dictator who gradually reinvented free markets? Unfortunately, while a fun story, it was hard to suspend disbelief long enough to buy into the plot.
How does subsidizing employer purchase of health insurance (or Medicare Medicaid or ACA) restrict supply?
The fact that the system is already so heavily intervened is what makes rationalization of the intervention (generalizing ACA with tax credits) so appealing.
The regulatory state does far more than just subsidize health care, which is the "increased demand" side. It regulates the hell out of it, controls pharmaceuticals, procedures, and medical school graduates, generally makes medical care expensive and slow, discourages innovation, and just generally meddles far more than is healthy.
No, he's quite clear. "Government interventions" is the subject. There are two verb-object pairs: "subsidize demand" and "restrict supply". Those two are only related as far as being a result of the common subject.
Maybe I was “looking for” a way to disagree, because it is only the “restrict supply” that I disagree with. Subsidies for the thing subsidized, not for the inputs into the things subsidized are generally OK. Child allowance Si, public daycare, no.
Agree that charismatic authority isn't new, but more interesting to me is why Congress continues to defer power to the Executive Office. Laziness, ability to shift blame, and a general short-sightedness is gradually walking towards Congressional obsolescence. It's sort of a tragedy of the commons that helps open the door for autocrats.
I was going to make much the same comment, as I have become more and more sceptical that Congress "lost" its legislative powers. I think in the wake of the post-FDR/WWII expansion of 'independent' agencies, I'm starting to think Congress discovered that they could dispense with a lot of the nitty-gritty of legislating in favor of offloading that work to TLAs, and then being heroes to their constituents when they helped them work around the bureaucracy they created.
1. There's little glory in being one of many hard workers battling the elite behind the scenes.
2. It's so much more useful politically to point at someone else, to rant and rail, and blame them for the problem,
3. The last thing any bureaucrat (which includes politicians) wants to do is solve the problem which created their job and keeps expanding their fiefdom.
"When it comes to shaming people online, schadenfreude is often a bigger motivator than moral outrage"
I think this framing and the paper itself is kind of weird, maybe it is just WEIRD, or maybe because I'm not an academic who has made social justice a sacred good it is somewhat perplexing. What percentage of people actually engage in online shaming? And his model slots people into a dyad of being motived by social justice or a hedonic motive. So, there are only two broad categories of motivation? Another dyad? From Chatgpt on schadenfreude and the moral dyad, "The pleasure isn’t random cruelty: it’s framed as cosmic symmetry. Their downfall “proves” the moral logic of the dyad." Witnessing someone get their comeuppance would be dyadic completion and highly consistent with moral motivation, and the outrage might vary based on the person and some of their other characteristics.
Also from the study, "Participants were 225 students at an Australian university (79% female; Mage = 22.20)" Maybe this study is getting at some truths, but it is hard for me to believe it is a good study with this participant profile, or that I should extrapolate it very widely.
Tyler Cowen link on charitable giving and some possible insights into hedonic vs. presumed more intellectual motivation from 2014: “…those motivated by altruism will respond positively to appeals based on evidence, whereas those motivated by warm glow may respond negatively to appeals based on evidence as it turns off the emotional trigger for giving, or highlights uncertainty in aid effectiveness.” - https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/04/does-greater-charitable-effectiveness-spur-more-donations.html
Re: Devereaux:
The Roman senate was able to maintain relevance long into the imperial period in part because it more or less subsumed a lot of judicial and business functions. Their concept of the separation of powers was a lot more limited than what would emerge in the early modern period.
The US Constitution sharply limits Congress' participation in activities outside legislation, taxation, and spending. But Congress has opted to delegate most of its authority to the executive branch, despite some strong informal norms concerning non-delegation. Judicial review also developed into something much more powerful and pervasive than the founders anticipated such that any act of Congress is subject to inconceivable layers of possible negation by various lawyers.
John Adams worried about and anticipated that the scheme of legislative bicameralism would be overcome by practical politics. Adams viewed bicameralism as a means of providing representation to different classes. He portrayed the House as the people's tribunal; in more modern terms the bottom 90% in terms of wealth. He saw the Senate as the house of the elite 1-10% of society in terms of wealth and land ownership. He perceived the presidency as the balancing monarchical branch.
Adams was concerned that, as had happened in dozens of other republics that he examined, that either the aristocrats would successfully subvert the bicameral scheme or that the democratic house would run wild and destroy society (the source of his famous anti-democratic quote). Applying Adams' rubric to the situation today, he would quickly perceive that the aristocrats successfully subverted the bicameral scheme of Congress. We have two aristocratic houses split into two parties that both purport to represent the masses of the people, but who generally better represent their fractious aristocratic clients. Then you have a president who basically does the same thing with the executive's various usurped powers on behalf of various factions both domestic and foreign.
In the cases of republics dominated by factions of aristocrats who hate each other, Adams argued that such a form encouraged a virulent Italian-style assassination politics. Adams criticizes Machiavelli's uncritical acceptance of this amoral method of power politics at great length, I think longer than he does in refuting any other thinker. This is why he and the other federalists, under the tutelage of Montesquieu, developed this highly artificial system of checks and balances; they believed that they could prevent the ills that had given republicanism a bad reputation. Adams had to spend a lot of time arguing why the Constitution was resistant to Machiavellianism, and also in arguing for a public-spiritedness that would reduce the chances of the subversion of that system into a Machiavellian arena.
His opponents considered John Adams to be too favorable to monarchy. He was also well-fed. Thus, the derisive title, "His Rotundity".
And he threw newspaper editors and publishers in jail for insulting him, just 7 years after the first amendment had been ratified.
"This translates into a gradual undermining of constitutional authority, both as a document and in the institutional arrangements outlined therein."
The author sounds like he has been living in a cave on an isolated Pacific island his entire life.
And only been informed of selected events in the last few years.
I don’t understand the import of this view. It’s not as if charismatic authority is some sort of fleeting, inconstant thing. It’s always there and has always been there.
As such, it does nothing to explain why now is different
Maybe now isn't different.
Our medical system demonstrates why socialism doesn't work. Institutions with no real skin in the game evolve into rent-seeking institutions independent of their official objectives.
Epicaricacy....Rejoicing at or deriving pleasure from the misfortunes of others.
It's not just the Germans who have words for the phenomenon.
I've always thought of schadenfredue as related to hoisted by one's own petard, that the joy was because their own dogma got run over by their own karma, that they got their comeuppance.
It's a good thing we never had charismatic leaders in the past, or democracy would have been destroyed by now.
"Congress is doomed to losing its formal powers" . . . or "is resigned to losing its formal powers" or "is happily wallowing in slothful grift after having cheerfully given up its formal powers."
If you had asked typical conservatives in 2010 if Tylenol and vaccines were to blame for autism, they would have scoffed. Now some "conservatives" are leading the charge that someone, something, anything other than bad luck must be to blame for my child's autism.
It's sad to see so many otherwise sharp folks go down the rabbit hole of the loony-left anti-vax rabbit hole promoted by far-left nuts like RFK Jr. The COVID vaccine was useless at best and damaging at worst. But that doesn't mean that all vaccines and all medicine are also bad.
I have no idea whether Tylenol taken during pregnancy is to blame for autism, but I'm old enough to remember viewing photos of children born without arms, or with flippers where their arms should have been, as a result of their mothers taking thalidomide for nausea during pregnancy, and the conclusion I drew from that episode was the precautionary principle that pregnant women should probably avoid most pharmaceuticals to remedy the normal discomforts associated with pregnancy. After all, they are advised to avoid drinking alcohol and eating certain types of foods, like 'soft cheeses,' for some reason. And after the press conference with Trump and RFK on the possible link between autism and pregnancy, I was astonished to see Tik Toks posted by narcissistic pregnant women with a severe case of TDS downing Tylenol as an act of defiance, so I would be careful about claiming that 'conservatives' have gone down 'the rabbit hole of the loony-left' simply for warning pregnant women about taking Tylenol. Just when you think conservatives are catching up with the 'loony left,' a certain segment of the 'loony left' (much to my chagrin, usually female) says 'hold my beer!'
There's a difference between recommending pregnant women generally avoid Tylenol -- which makes sense to me -- and the more specific claim that Tylenol causes autism, which is far more dubious.
But it is a scientific claim. Whereas the proposition " bad luck must be to blame for my child's autism." is not scientific.
A "claim" yes. One that requires evidence that is sorely lacking.
Conservatives used to believe that "shit happens." For many, that is no longer the case.
When a particular approach to disputed facts becomes institutionally locked-in, its proponents forfeit any claim to the benefit of doubt. This includes not only cases of legal regulation but of alleged proof mediated by the thoroughly corrupt credentialed class.
"the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports that in the United States, government controls 84% of health spending."
I was skeptical from the start and finally got around to looking at it more. It's not what oecd says. They say 84% of spending is covered by mandatory prepayments. But they don't define mandatory prepayments. By Googling, best I can tell it includes a variety of insurance plans that are not government.
If anyone is more specifically aware of "mandatory prepayments," please share.
What happened to the Federal authority to regulate trade according to the Constitution?
It was supposed to be only inter-State trade, but somehow got expanded to everything.
Basically, the Constitution says what the Supreme court can get away with.
The current broad definition of interstate commerce was one of many violations of the constitution that were forced on the Supreme Court when FDR threatened to pack the court. The specific case was Wickard v Filburn.
At best it will take several more Trump-like administrations to clean up these system-corrupting effects of the New Deal, if we're ever to get our Constitutional form of government back.
I would say something different, that the Constitution is just a piece of paper without an informed body of citizens dedicated to its protection.
Devereaux has good points, and is readably brief, but totally fails to note the powers of judges, and misses on Congress. US Congress, after failing for decades to do its job of making a budget, has shut down the government.*. Ha! Trump couldn’t do it, alone.
The SCOTUS, following popular opinion, have frequently denied the 10th Amendment, reserving to states & people rights & powers not expressly given to the Feds. The Roe Abortion decision in 1972 centralized a health issue that should have been at the state level. Many voters, maybe most, want all the laws in every state to be the same, especially if it’s a law they like.
The reality is that most laws are pretty close to what most folk want, except on illegal immigration. Yet there are inevitable problems in life, as well as technological & demographic changes, and even history, like the increasing history that legalization of pot has led to more crazy folk & more social problems with crazy folk. It’s far easier to get folk to agree that some real policy is bad, because of the bad effects, than to agree on a better policy—because every real policy has some bad effects.
Trade-offs all the way down, in real life. Unlike movies & video games with absolute good vs evil.
It’s likely, tho less talked about, that after Trump & Reps solve, hugely reduce, the illegal immigration problem, a lot of current Rep voters will drift back away from even caring enough to vote.
The key power of the purse that Congress has is constrained by inflation, and maybe by increasing fragility of increasing national debt. Tho Japan at 260% debt/GNP is doing fine, so far. Who gets the new money first, and how much, remains the main issue of Congress.
*Last budget on time was 1997, tho some non-CR budgets were merely late. This Yahoo/AP news notes the effects expected. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/happen-theres-government-shutdown-days-040441251.html
The excerpted claims from Michael Cannon about OECD reporting are puzzling. First, when did Cuba join the OECD? The only relevant reference I am able to find to Cuba in an OECD publication is on page 148 of an OECD publication entitled Health at a Glance: Latin America and the Caribbean 2023 stating “general government health expenditure constituted the main source of funding in 2019 (regional average of 57%) (Figure 6.6). Cuba has the largest share with 89%.” Is this the 89% Cannon references? If we want to compare Cuba to the United States on this measure, the OECD reports at figure 7.12 “Figure 7.12. Health expenditure from public sources as share of total health expenditure, 2021” of a publication entitled Health at a Glance 2023 that 56% of US health spending comes from public sources. See: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/health-at-a-glance-2023_7a7afb35-en/full-report/public-funding-of-health-spending_712db152.html#figure-d1e29796-4f0dbe2216
We can find an 84% figure for the United States in the Country Note for the United States in the Health Care at a Glance 23 publication, in the .pdf at https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/health-at-a-glance-2023_4b49102f-en/united-states_4268c3ef-en.html but that states “84% of spending covered by mandatory prepayment, was higher than the OECD average of 76%. Mandatory prepayment is not the same thing as public sources of total health care expenditure, so one wonders if Cannon is comparing apples and oranges here. And the OECD tends to report everything in the US as mandatory because of the Obamacare employer coverage requirements, so even there, “mandatory prepayment” covers a wide variety of health systems.
Cannon doesn’t identify any countries that have a system of minimal government interference such as he proposes. He does mention Germany though, approvingly though, stating “German residents have the freedom to purchase affordable, secure, lifelong health insurance at actuarially fair rates.” The so-called freedom to purchase is actually a mandatory requirement (as is long term care insurance) and includes dental coverage:
“In Germany, health insurance coverage is provided by two different systems: the SHI and the private health insurance (PHI). The SHI scheme provides reliable health protection to almost 90 percent of the population. More than 70 million citizens are insured with a SHI fund to receive the best medical care possible.
Solidarity as a matter of principle
The SHI funds operate based on the principle of solidarity: Contributions are determined by the members’ financial capacities, while insurance benefits are the same for everyone. This means, the almost 100 health insurance funds that currently exist grant medically necessary services both to their paying members and to the approximately 16 million people who are co-insured free of charge as family members. Hence, the fundamental principle of the statutory health insurance is the solidarity-based sharing of burden – between the healthy and the sick, between those with higher and lower incomes, between the young and the elderly, between singles and families.”
(https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/en/themen/krankenversicherung/online-ratgeber-krankenversicherung/krankenversicherung/statutory-health-insurance-shi.html )
In 2021 he share of public funding for healthcare was 85.5 %.
High earners may qualify to opt out of the SHI into private insurance:
“People with high income and self-employed people can purchase private health insurance or keep the statutory health insurance. Coverage of services is roughly the same in both systems, apart from certain newly launched drugs, which are paid for by private insurance. There is no restriction on patients’ choice of hospitals, and patient copays for hospital stays do not differ across hospitals.”
(https://healthsystemsfacts.org/national-health-systems/bismarck-model/germany/germany-health-system-coverage/ )
One might also note that insurance premiums are adjusted by age and by pre-existing conditions.
At any rate, I would take Cannon’s assertions with a grain of salt. Or two. If somebody knows of a successful healthcare system with minimal government involvement, I’d love to hear about it.
Which leaves us with Dr. Kling’s claim that “The myth is that government interventions increase access to health care. In reality, government interventions subsidize demand and restrict supply.” Maybe in some cases in the United States, but the quite obvious fact is that around the world, government run health care systems actually do expand access to care and at costs much lower than in the US. Maybe if the US had a viable political structure and competent leaders and administrators, reform might be possible. But unicorns and laissez-faire healthcare are not going to rescue anyone anytime soon.
This particular quote ...
"Congress attempts to mitigate the unintended consequences of government price-setting with — you guessed it — more government price-setting."
It's one of the most aggravating aspects of central planners. They distort markets and prices, then "fix" the distortions with more distortions, almost as if they are trying to recreate markets and prices. Didn't Henry Hazlitt (Economics In One Lesson, not the current Hazlett, but I always get the spellings confused) write a story about a dictator who gradually reinvented free markets? Unfortunately, while a fun story, it was hard to suspend disbelief long enough to buy into the plot.
How does subsidizing employer purchase of health insurance (or Medicare Medicaid or ACA) restrict supply?
The fact that the system is already so heavily intervened is what makes rationalization of the intervention (generalizing ACA with tax credits) so appealing.
The regulatory state does far more than just subsidize health care, which is the "increased demand" side. It regulates the hell out of it, controls pharmaceuticals, procedures, and medical school graduates, generally makes medical care expensive and slow, discourages innovation, and just generally meddles far more than is healthy.
I agree but that is not what AK said. He said that subsidizing health insurance restricted supply.
"government interventions subsidize demand and restrict supply"
"subsidizing employer purchase of health insurance (or Medicare Medicaid or ACA)" is the subsidize demand half of "subsidize demand; restrict supply."
That's obvious enough, but he seemed to be saying that it did both.
No, he's quite clear. "Government interventions" is the subject. There are two verb-object pairs: "subsidize demand" and "restrict supply". Those two are only related as far as being a result of the common subject.
OK I misunderstood.
Well now. I thought I was the only one who read things too quickly and said … things. Thanks.
Maybe I was “looking for” a way to disagree, because it is only the “restrict supply” that I disagree with. Subsidies for the thing subsidized, not for the inputs into the things subsidized are generally OK. Child allowance Si, public daycare, no.
Agree that charismatic authority isn't new, but more interesting to me is why Congress continues to defer power to the Executive Office. Laziness, ability to shift blame, and a general short-sightedness is gradually walking towards Congressional obsolescence. It's sort of a tragedy of the commons that helps open the door for autocrats.
I was going to make much the same comment, as I have become more and more sceptical that Congress "lost" its legislative powers. I think in the wake of the post-FDR/WWII expansion of 'independent' agencies, I'm starting to think Congress discovered that they could dispense with a lot of the nitty-gritty of legislating in favor of offloading that work to TLAs, and then being heroes to their constituents when they helped them work around the bureaucracy they created.
TLA = Three Letter Acronym
Three reasons:
1. There's little glory in being one of many hard workers battling the elite behind the scenes.
2. It's so much more useful politically to point at someone else, to rant and rail, and blame them for the problem,
3. The last thing any bureaucrat (which includes politicians) wants to do is solve the problem which created their job and keeps expanding their fiefdom.
"When it comes to shaming people online, schadenfreude is often a bigger motivator than moral outrage"
I think this framing and the paper itself is kind of weird, maybe it is just WEIRD, or maybe because I'm not an academic who has made social justice a sacred good it is somewhat perplexing. What percentage of people actually engage in online shaming? And his model slots people into a dyad of being motived by social justice or a hedonic motive. So, there are only two broad categories of motivation? Another dyad? From Chatgpt on schadenfreude and the moral dyad, "The pleasure isn’t random cruelty: it’s framed as cosmic symmetry. Their downfall “proves” the moral logic of the dyad." Witnessing someone get their comeuppance would be dyadic completion and highly consistent with moral motivation, and the outrage might vary based on the person and some of their other characteristics.
Also from the study, "Participants were 225 students at an Australian university (79% female; Mage = 22.20)" Maybe this study is getting at some truths, but it is hard for me to believe it is a good study with this participant profile, or that I should extrapolate it very widely.
Tyler Cowen link on charitable giving and some possible insights into hedonic vs. presumed more intellectual motivation from 2014: “…those motivated by altruism will respond positively to appeals based on evidence, whereas those motivated by warm glow may respond negatively to appeals based on evidence as it turns off the emotional trigger for giving, or highlights uncertainty in aid effectiveness.” - https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/04/does-greater-charitable-effectiveness-spur-more-donations.html
Arnold forgot to write “have a nice day!” at the end of today’s post.