Romney Could Use ObamaCare Waivers Against ObamaCare

Romney claims he will repeal ObamaCare on his first day in office. The president, however, has no power to repeal any law. What Romney could do, however, is issue a blanket waiver from ObamaCare to everyone. Better yet, he could issue a waiver to everyone except those Obama has already granted waivers--1200+ labor unions and businesses that contributed to Obama (http://www.theblaze.com/stories/how-many-businesses-are-exempt-the-final-number-of-obamacare-waivers-is-in/)--and thereby force the biggest-spending supporters of ObamaCare to live under ObamaCare. These ObamaCare supporters would doubtless file suit to protest this discrimination against them, and it would be great to hear these big supporters of ObamaCare arguing in federal court that imposing ObamaCare on them oppresses them!

The Incredible Shrinking Workforce

The US Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) came out with employment numbers for April (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm). While the official unemployment rate fell from 8.2% to 8.1%, the real employment situation worsened. The unemployment rate fell not primarily because of the lackluster addition of 115,000 net new jobs, but primarily because 342,000 people dropped out of the workforce entirely. As a result of people dropping out of the work force, the share of the population working (which economists call the employment-population ratio) fell from 58.5% to 58.4% (http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000). People debate what's the real unemployment rate. The BLS refers to its measure "U3 Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate)" as the official unemployment rate (as you can see). U3, however, ignores both short-term discouraged workers and long-term discouraged workers. The BLS also calculates U4, U5 and U6, which are broader measures of people who would like full-time jobs but don't have them. U4 includes short-term discouraged workers and remains unchanged at 9.5%. U6 includes short-term discouraged workers and part-time workers who want full-time jobs, and remains unchanged at 14.5%. Even U6, however, understates the real problem of unemployment. The share of the population working has dropped substantially not only since the Great Recession started in 2008 (or "officially" started in 2007), but since the "official" end of the Great Recession in 2009. For the share of population working, in fact, the worst 30 months out of the last 300 (the last quarter-century) have all come since the alleged end of the Great Recession in 2009 (http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/under-obama-30-worst-months-employment-past-25-years_645771.html). (Because of two ties among the worst months, the worst 32 months have happened since 2009.) The share of the population working falls during recession and rises during recoveries--during real recoveries. Not since the deep recession of the early 1980s, in fact, has the US suffered such a low share of the population working. While some have tried to write off the substantial drop in the share of the population working as a result of retiring Baby Boomers, it's unlikely that they (or in my case, we: -D) all suddenly and inconveniently decided to retire starting in June of 2009 (basically in the last two years). We can easily enough exclude the impact of retiring workers too by looking at the share of working age population actually working, which economists call the civilian labor participation rate. The share of the working age population currently working actually fell more last month, from 63.8% to 63.6%. Once again we have to go back to the deep recession of the early 1980s to find such a low share of Americans working. The BLS actually has some numbers for civilian labor force participation rates by age, sex, race, and ethnicity (http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_303.htm) that show that, rather than retiring in larger numbers, older workers are remaining in the workforce in larger numbers, as advances in medical care allow the elderly better health, and as the Great Recession's stock market crashes eat into retirement savings and encourage the elderly who can keep their jobs to postpone retirement. So the drops in both share of the working age people working and all Americans working actually understate the shrinkage in employment of people in their prime working years. So what is the real rate of unemployment? Few people argue that it's the official 8.1%. People though have many different estimates. Some people try to take U3 and compensate for the substantial drop in the workforce. Working from U3 and adjusting for the shrinking workforce, people estimate in the vicinity of 11.1% (http://blog.american.com/2012/05/the-awful-april-jobs-report-is-the-real-unemployment-rate-11-1/) or 11.6% (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/real-u-3-unemployment-rate-116). Others start with the U6 rate of 14.5% and add people substantially underemployed, like college-educated workers stuck with full-time jobs at Starbucks. Peter Morici at University of Maryland estimates, working from U6, a real unemployment rate of 18% (http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/Outside-View/2012/05/04/Outside-View-Unemployment-falls-as-discouraged-Americans-quit-looking-for-work/UPI-91411336137138/?spt=hs&or=an), although he doesn't compensate for the long-term discouraged workers that have shrunken the US workforce to 1983 levels. One estimate starts with U6 and then tries to add long-term discouraged workers, arriving at an estimate of 22.5%. Some people have accused the government of deliberately lying to understate unemployment, but the report of 8.1% simply shows the weaknesses in the measure of U3, which economists have used for many decades, rather than any deliberate attempt to deceive. U3 probably works reasonably well as an estimate of unemployment during an economic expansion, but does though suffer deceptive problems during a weak economy. I should point out too that comparisons between the 18% or 22.5% and the 25% peak unemployment rate during the Great Depression suffer from the same problem: that the Great Depression unemployment figures use U3. Someone made an estimate of U6 during the Great Depression (http://www.scribd.com/doc/13282170/Unemployment-1930s-vs-Today) and came up with a peak U6 rate of 37%. So even if the current 22.5% estimate is correct, we're nowhere near as bad in terms of unemployment as we were during the Great Depression. To say that the Great Recession's unemployment rate is nowhere near as bad as the unemployment rate of the Great Depression, however, is to damn the Great Recession with faint praise. There's no doubt that the employment situation remains bleak today, and it might actually be getting worse. I predict too that the employment situation will not improve substantially until the federal government substantially changes its economic policies. The Federal Reserve System has flooded the economy with new money in a vain Keynesian attempt to increase "aggregate demand" (more on that this semester for my macro students) by tricking the economy into real growth. Since the end of 2008, moreover, the federal government has followed Keynesian policy of trying to increase aggregate demand through massive deficit spending (borrowing to spend more than it collects in taxes). Rather than bringing economic growth, however, these policies, based on fatally-flawed Keynesian economic theory, have brought us essentially a long-term recessionary economy of the sort we haven't seen since the Great Depression. Until the Fed and the federal government abandon the Keynesian policies of long-term recession, we're not likely to see a real economic recovery.

51stBirthdayTreasureTower.JPG

More Bad News for 2011

Yesterday the Commerce Department came out with the 2nd quarter estimate of US GDP growth. The so-called "consensus" forecast of economists has predicted an anemic growth rate of 1.8%, but the actual growth rate fell to only 1.3%. You might recall that when the Commerce Department 3 months ago estimated the 1st quarter GDP growth rate at 1.8%, I predicated they would revise it downward, closer to 0%, and indeed they did revise it yesterday down to 1.4%. I predict that they will downgrade the 2nd quarter GDP growth rate from their initial estimate of 1.3% to close to 0% too.

Since GDP actually overstates national income by the amount of new investment that merely replaces old investment (sort of like calculating the income of a business without subtracting depreciation), in reality even aggregate national income isn't growing, and on a per-person basis it's clearly shrinking. We're not in any sort of recovery--we're living in the long-term recession state of the sort we haven't seen since the Great Depression.

We're likely to stay in the long-term recession economy too until the Federal Reserve Board stops inflating the money supply in a vain Keynesian attempt to trick the economy into real growth, and until we have a president and Congress willing to cut marginal income tax rates and at least slow the growth rate of federal spending.

McConnell Leads the Charge to Save Earmarks

It's no surprise that mushy moderate Mitch McConnell, with his National Taxpayer Union average of only 72%, leads the charge to save earmarks--they are the only way he can get his Kentucky-only horse socialist bailouts!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703514904575602690040454972.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_t

Hensarling Could Be an Actual (Mushy?) Conservative

Tea Party favorite Michelle Bachman has dropped out of the race for the number 4 position in the House Republican leadership, the House Republican Conference Chair. She has endorsed the establishment candidate, Jeb Hensarling. So how good does Hensarling sound? For that matter, how good to the other three likely Republican leaders sound?

Hensarling has a substantially more conservative lifetime average from the National Taxpayers Union than Boehner and Cantor, 86% to their 70% ratings. Like the two mushy moderates, Hensarling's record, however, improved drastically in the three Democrat-majority years over his previous performance, in his case from 81% to 93%. The likely third-ranking Republican, Kevin McCarthy of California, bucked the Democrat tide of 2006 to win his first election and so has a record only under Democrat majorities, with an average of 81%, so he falls between the Boehner and Cantor on the one hand and Hensarling on the other hand, into the zone I call mushy conservative.

Breaking down their voting records into the period when the GOP had a majority and the period when the Democrats had a majority, moreover, we see a startling change in their voting patterns: both Boehner and Cantor actually had liberal Republican voting records (64% and 63%) when their votes actually determined spending, taxes and regulation. Boehner and Cantor rose a stunning 20 points to the mushy conservative range only when their votes, under the Democrats, could no longer determine spending, taxes and regulations. Hensarling had a smaller increase, but still 12 points, taking him from mushy conservative when his votes could determine the outcome to solidly conservative then the Democrat majority rendered his votes irrelevant. While McCarthy has no record under a Republican majority, we can see that he voted marginally worse than Boehner and Cantor under the Democrats. I've summarized their voting records below.

We don't yet know how conservatively Tea Party favorite Michelle Bachman will vote, nor do we know whether Boehner, Cantor and Hensarling will revert to their previous records when their votes once again determine spending, taxes and regulations. We also don't know if McCarthy will continue to vote mushy conservative or fall down to the previous levels of Cantor and Boehner. I do know two things: that I would have felt more confident of the Republicans if they'd chosen Michelle Bachman as their 4th-ranking House leader, and that we need to watch the four of them--like a hawk.


Analysis of NTU Averages of Likely House GOP Leadership
Name Likely Position NTU Avg Avg Under GOP Majority Avg Under Dems
John Boehner (OH) Speaker 70% 64% 84%
Eric Cantor (VA) Majority Leader 70% 63% 83%
Kevin McCarthy (CA) Majority Whip 81% - 81%
Jeb Hensarling (TX) Conference Chair 86% 81% 93%


http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44976.html

Obama Wants to Wiretap the Internet

Why aren't liberals screaming bloody murder that Obama wants to wiretap the Internet?!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/us/27wiretap.html?th&emc=th

Obama attacks Israel--again

Obama attacks Israel--again.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/world/middleeast/10jerusalem.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a1

VA Congressional District 11 GOP Primary, June 8, 2010

I don't know if you've heard much about the June 8 GOP primary for Virginia's 11th Congressional district. I haven't heard much but I've seen a few things. I got some campaign literature in the mail from Herrity that uses the term “conservative” almost as often as it uses the word “the.” Today I ran across a link to a pro-Fimian website that claims that Herrity lied when he said that he's never raised taxes and that he has in fact voted with the Democrats on the Fairfax Board of Supervisors to raise your property taxes, at http://www.herrityhikedtaxes.com/. The website there also says that Herrity voted to create a new taxing district to extend the Metro out to Dulles. The new taxing district will start taxing your home in 2013 at a rate of 20 cents per $100 of assessed value. If they assess your home at $200,000, for instance, then you'd have to pay another $400 per year so that politicians and lobbyists can take the Metro from DC to Dulles on your dime.
Here are the minutes from the Fairfax County Board showing that Herrity voted for a property tax hike from $0.92 to $1.04 per $100, or an extra $0.12 per $100. Again assuming an assessment of $200,000 you'd pay an extra $240 per year on top of the $1840 you'd already be paying, or a total of $2080. That's more than a month and a half of rent for me! http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/bosclerk/summary/2009/09-04-27.pdf
On the Herrity side they're claiming that Fimian used to say that Herrity was "a conservative's conservative" but neglect to mention that Fimian called Herrity that BEFORE Herrity voted to increase your annual real state taxes by $640 (half a month's rent to me). They also claim that Fimian has no record to run on, but of course that's always true of anyone who hasn't had a previous career in politics.
I think that the worst case for Fimian, ironically, comes from Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor's endorsement of him. Both sides are treating Cantor as though he were the conservative he claims to be, but I just calculated his National Taxpayer's Union lifetime average on spending, taxes and regulation, and it comes to a paltry 69.78 out of 100. In my book that's only a D+. John McCain, whom some conservatives in the last presidential election were saying is "as bad a Obama," actually has a lifetime record of 77.88, or a C+ in my book--a whole letter grade better than Cantor. (Obama actually has a Senate average of 9.33, what I call a K+, so far below an F that Obama couldn't even aspire to get as high as an F.) Still, Herrity has a list of endorsements from a gaggle of local GOP politicians about whom I know nothing and who could be, especially here in northern Virginia, a bunch of liberal, tax-and-spend, gun-control-freak RINOs (Republicans in Name Only).
I've noticed, furthermore, that in politics friendships often transcend or ignore political ideology in ways that ideological activists like me often find hard to understand. Back in Iowa, for instance, I knew a conservative small-town business owner who loved my political columns and voted Republican in most races, but voted for an exceptionally liberal Democrat for the local state house repeatedly because the business owner went to high school with the candidate. Even though his high school chum voted for everything the business owner hated about liberal policies, the business owner proved exceedingly reluctant to consider voting for his chum's conservative opponent. I never did ask for whom he ultimately voted, but if I had to bet real money (if I had any) I'd bet that he reverted to traditional form and voted for his liberal chum over the ideologically-compatible conservative Republican. So while an endorsement from Cantor doesn't say that Fimian's a conservative like Fimian claims, it also doesn't say that Fimian's not a conservative either, and we do know that Herrity has voted to raise taxes at least twice. I’ve always thought that politician endorsements of political candidates generally carry little water (and less information).
I'll try to keep an eye out for more information. On local races of this sort without much attention from the national media (both liberal and alternative) it's harder to get real information. Much of what I’ve read has shed more heat than light, consisting mostly of name-calling and personal attacks rather than information. Based on the little I know so far, however, Fimian seems like the more conservative candidate.

CBS News Online Poll Results

A CBS News online poll currently shows 68% give Obama an F on the economy, 60% on foreign policy, 79% on health care, 32% on Afghanistan (not a majority but a plurality), 36% on Iraq (again a plurality), 58% on terrorism, 55% on energy and the environment, 59% on social issues, 78% on bipartisanship, and 64% on his overall job. These are staggeringly bad numbers, and the funny thing is that he gets his least-bad results for the one area on which liberals most oppose him--Afghanistan! Although I gave Obama an F in most areas, I did give him a D on Afghanistan because while he's been losing the war there (much as Bush spent years losing the war in Iraq before he agreed to McCain's surge) he hasn't cut and run like the John Edwards leftists want him to (when they're not too busy cheating on their spouses to care about foreign policy).

Given Obama’s imposition of fascist health care on us, it's no surprise that Obama scores worst on health care, where 79% give him an F, but note that an almost identical share (78%) gives him an F on bipartisanship. Obama made a big deal during the 2008 presidential campaign claiming he would govern with bipartisan support. The liberal media spread Obama's claim far and wide, even though Obama, according to the National Taxpayers Union ratings, has the most liberal voting record on spending, taxes and regulation of any member of the Senate. Mushy moderates tend to fall for such liberal media claims, but the viciously partisan imposition of fascist health care by Obama and his Democrat allies in Congress has, for the moment, revealed to mushy moderates (and even some mushy liberals who are wishing they'd supported Hillary in the Democrat primaries) the preposterous fraud behind Obama's claims to bipartisanship. Obama's fraudulent bipartisan claims should serve as a salient lesson to mushy moderates and mushy liberals not to believe liberal media propaganda about Democrats. People have short political memories, however, so I wouldn't count on mushies learning any long-term political lessons, although I'd be happy to have them prove me wrong.

To vote in the poll and see the results, you can go to http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-6116297-503544.html?tag= and then scroll down.

Democrats Could Lose Even Old Safe Seats

As the New York Times story at the link below demonstrates, even the liberal media have to admit that the Democrats' creation of massive new Big Business subsidies and shoving of fascist health care down our throats have created such a backlash against the Democrats that they might lose even some of their traditionally safe seats in Congress. It's the very likelihood that Democrats will suffer major losses in November that leads them to their current scorched earth policy, trying to impose as much fascist control as possible over our lives now, knowing that when they're back in the minority they can use the filibuster to stop Americans from repealing the fascism that Democrats are imposing on us now. I don’t expect Democrats to lose the 40 House seats required to lose their majority entirely this November alone, nor to lose the Senate (which would require Democrats to lose every competitive contest). I do expect, however, that they will suffer substantially more than the traditional midterm congressional losses, losing their ability to overcoming virtually any filibuster in the Senate while losing a practical, working House majority in support of most of their fascist policies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/us/politics/25campaign.html?th&emc=th

GM Used TARP to "Repay" Loan

You might recall that on October 3, 2008, Democrats in Congress passed a massive bailout of Wall Street investment firms called TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), which the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) optimistically (or disingenuously) estimated would cost "only" $700 billion of your tax dollars. Although President Bush supported the massive TARP bailout of Big Business, not a single Republican in the House or Senate supported it.

Seeing big financial institutions get a government bailout, the Big Three American auto companies, GM, Ford and Chrysler, went begging to the federal government on November 19, 2008 to get their own multi-billion-dollar bailout. Congressional Democrats and President Bush agreed to an auto bailout bill that the CBO again optimistically estimated would cost "only" $15 billion. Conservative Republicans in the Senate, however, filibustered the auto bailout. Of 41 Republicans in the Senate, only 10 liberal or mushy moderates ones voted to kill the filibuster, along with 40 Democrats and the Senate's two liberal "independents" (who caucus with the Democrats). A supermajority of 31 Republicans (just more than three-fourths) joined 4 Democrats in supporting the filibuster. Without 60 votes to kill the filibuster, the Democrats failed to bring this second Big Business bailout to a vote, and it died.

Not to be deterred by Congress, President Bush unconstitutionally used an "executive order" to amend the first massive bailout law, TARP, to allow himself to give to the auto companies some of the money intended to bail out financial firms. GM and Chrysler eagerly took the TARP money, but Ford executives, wanting to keep their jobs, changed their minds. (Once Obama became president, he used the Bush-Democrat bailout of GM to force the old GM CEO to resign.)

On February 18, 2009, GM and Chrysler again approached the federal government, hats in hand, begging for another bailout. On February 24, Obama announced in an address before the joint session of Congress that he would give GM and Chrysler another $15 billion of your tax money. (It amazes me that liberal Democrats still run around claiming that it's Republicans and not liberal Democrats who support Big Business.)

You might have noticed recently that the new CEO of GM has been running TV ads where he crows about how GM has paid back the billions of dollars of your tax money that the federal government gave GM so that the United Auto Workers could continue to be the most overpaid union workers in the world. As Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) reports in the two stories below, however, Obama's GM CEO should be eating crow instead: TARP's own inspector general, Neil Barofsky, reports that GM merely used more TARP money to "pay back" the subsidies, which came largely from TARP money in the first place! So GM's much-vaunted repayment is half like using your VISA card to pay off your MasterCard--and half like using your VISA card to repay your VISA card! I must say that the Democrats' capacity for blatant deception never ceases to amaze me.

http://newsmax.com/InsideCover/charles-grassley-gm-bailout/2010/04/23/id/356756?s=al&promo_code=9CE6-1

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/04/22/grassley-slams-gm-administration-loans-repaid-bailout-money/

Socialist Porn?

The historically savvy among you might think I'm referring to the infamous pornography produced under the rule of the German National Socialist chancellor, Adolf Hitler, but as the following story shows, I'm actually referring to the use of taxpayer-purchased computers at the Securities and Exchange Commission, a federal agency dedicated to socializing as much of American capital markets as possible. While the SEC bureaucrats pretend to regulate capital markets to protect investors, they actually spend your tax dollars surfing the web for Internet porn! With thriving free markets in porn, we hardly need socialist porn, but the following story sure gives me a great laugh. I say let's fire the whole lot of them, close down the SEC, and let them go home to surf for Internet porn on their own computers! :-D

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/04/23/republicans-slam-sec-porn-surfing-report/

US Navy Denied Access to FoxNews.com

I've just learned that the government has denied the US Navy access to FoxNews.com. You can read about it at http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/04/16/navy-access-fox-news-web-site-blocked/. Do we really believe the blockage is just an "error?"

The Story On Medical Insurance

The story on medical insurance starts with how WW II wage and price controls led defense contractors to offer health insurance as additional, unregulated income to attract workers from other industries since the wage and price controls prohibited paying higher wages. Congress exempted health insurance from taxation too, making it all the more attractive. Once labor unions—which the New Deal turned into government-enforced labor cartels—got a taste of tax-free health insurance they began to demand not just more of it, but an ever-increasing share of their income in it. The pro-union government policies of the 1950s and especially 1960s, and reduced competition from the European companies laid low by the war, meant that large American corporations gave in to these demands.

By the late 1960s, when government started inflating the money supply to pay for the Great Society social programs and the Vietnam War without overtly raising taxes (inflation is a covert tax on your money), large, tax-free health insurance polices had become the norm for Big Labor. All that money being diverted into health care had the predictable effect of raising health care prices relative to the prices of other goods and service. When the stagflation of the 1970s pushed millions of Americans into higher tax brackets while lowering their real (inflation-adjusted) pre-tax earnings, they looked at Big Labor and started demanding the same sorts of benefits. When these other Americans got a taste of tax-free medical insurance, they wanted more too. It took a while, but where once very few people had health insurance and nobody needed it for a simple annual physical, decades later almost every takes it for granted and believes they need it. (I have actually survived without it, but that’s another story.) All that additional spending on health care naturally raised health care prices relative to other goods and services even more than Big Labor’s health benefits did.

As tax-free health insurance became more widespread, it also mutated from health insurance into prepaid medical care. Unlike real insurance, where if you use it you end up paying higher rates, with much so-called health insurance, if you don’t use it, you lose it, and within certain parameters you do not pay more. I, for instance, have exhausted both the office visit benefit and the diagnostic benefit of the half-hearted health insurance that I buy through my private university as a part-timer there. My rates will not rise as a result of my using my benefits. If I were, on the other hand, to smash up my 12-year-old car, I would get almost no money from the insurance company (because of the age of the car and because the policy, as real insurance, has a large deductible) and they would almost certainly raise my rates (assuming I’m at fault). (In Denver I had a minor accident where I caught the side-stripping of my car on the wall of a parking garage. Repairing it cost just under that the amount for which Colorado law would allow them to raise my premiums, so they cancelled my policy instead! Thank you state of Colorado for pricing me out of the market! The state of VA did the same thing for private health insurance for me which is part of why I went without insurance entirely for a while—actually a couple of whiles.)

The widespread development of prepaid heath care has predictably driven up prices of medical care relative to prices of other goods and services. It’s very much like the impact of student loans: a cat chasing its tail; the faster it runs, the faster the tail runs away from it.

Health insurance also suffers from state as well as federal regulation. If you have several preexisting conditions, for instance, the natural response of an insurance company would be to 1. Exclude the preexisting conditions or 2. Charge more for preexisting conditions. When I first went to apply for an individual health insurance plan, I had three pre-existing conditions. Aetna, which so far as I can tell seems to be the best of the over-regulated lot of big health insurance (pre-paid health) companies, increases the base premium by 25% for each preexisting condition. So for my three conditions they would have been willing to write me a policy with a premium 75% higher than the base. I would have paid it too, as my family was willing to help out (I couldn’t have afforded even the base at that time). My family was willing to cough up the $450 per month to have me insured. The state of Virginia, however, in its infinite liberal compassion, “protected” me from “price gouging” by limiting insurance companies to a 50% increase in the premium over the base. Aetna couldn’t legally charge me for all three preexisting conditions, so the VA price control, rather than protecting me, simply priced me out of the market. Instead of having a policy at 175% of base, I had no policy at 150% of base. Neat, huh?

And at the federal level during the Clinton years liberals came up with a “solution” for my lack of heath care: they passed a law (called HIPPA) allowing states to create state monopolies for “high-risk” patients. The law allows either a fascist monopoly, wherein the state government grants the monopoly to a state-regulated private company, or a communist monopoly, wherein the state offers the insurance itself. In VA we have the fascist version, and VA happened to have granted the monopoly to Aetna. So VA wouldn’t let Aetna offer me a normal policy for $450/month, but it would let Aetna offer me a high-risk policy for $4500/month. I kid you not.

There is another aspect to the rise of medical prices relative to other goods and services. As real incomes per person rise, as they have done in every year in the industrialized countries since the Industrial Revolution except during recessions and depressions (so that the average real income has risen about 25 times, or 2400%, in the US since 1700), people can afford not just to buy more and better food, clothing, shelter, transportation, health care and entertainment, but shift more of their income from food, clothing and shelter to transportation, health care and entertainment. Even for a compulsive overeater in the grips of the disease there’s some sort of point of satiation (called a bliss point in economics), where more food or better quality food doesn’t appeal to the person. While the bliss points for clothing and shelter might range much higher, it’s still true that as income levels have skyrocketed over the past 200+ years, people have shifted proportionately from good, clothing and shelter to transportation, entertainment and medical care. The improvements in medical care have been profound. At the turn of the 19th century, average life expectancy in America was about 55 years. Most likely you and I, had we survived to age 49, wouldn’t plan on lasting much longer. My 81-year-old mother most likely would have been long in her grave. My dad probably would have died 30 years ago rather than 3 years ago. The leading cause of death among woman was childbirth. People would have regarded the tragic death of my high school friend Margie from pregnancy complications as commonplace, not the rare tragedy that it was thanks to our not having socialism destroy medical innovation in America. Men on average lived longer than women, even though women rarely smoked. (Indeed one of the perverse effects of 1960s/1970s feminism, which took smoking as a symbol of liberation, was to reduce the average number of years by which women had come to outlive men, although the gap remained around 7 years or so last I checked.) We pay more for medical care in part because we get far more than we used to, just as we pay more for entertainment because we get far more than we used to.

I don’t hear too many complaints about entertainers making too much money or about the un-affordability of sporting events—and certainly not to the degree where most liberals want the government to seize control of such things. Americans voluntarily choose to spend billions of dollars annually on entertainment instead of health care. At the same time it’s natural that as we get higher incomes we spend an increasing share of treatments that extend our lives and improve its quality. People now routinely spend millions on relief from ailments like allergies and arthritis with which people once just suffered. Cancer used to be an automatic death sentence when I was a kid, so much so that I can recall the days when people were actually afraid to say the word lest just saying it might invoke the disease. Now millions routinely live for years with various types of cancer. Probably some day the treatments that now sometimes cure and often at least slow the cancer will seem crude and barbaric, and we will have much better treatments. The more people spend on these things—whether treatments to remove allergies or treatments to cure cancer—the better they’ll get if scientists and companies are left to do research and respond to patient demands rather than political demands.

The British National Health Service provides a good, brief example of what happens when government seizes control of health care: Britain actually has fewer hospital beds now than it did before government seized control of health care, and for years after we had dialysis routinely in America, British doctors lied to patients with kidney failure, telling the patients that there was nothing medical science could do for them. That’s what socialist medical care—whether fascist or communist—does to doctors: it turns them into liars for the state and stifles medical innovation. The irony under socialist health care is that it forces nearly everyone to have the same lousy care—everyone except the politicians who give themselves better health care, and the very rich who can afford to spent the money to travel to a more market-oriented health care system, like ours (or like ours was before ObamaCare) and pay for good health care.

It’s a perverse trait of humans that if someone invents something that we really, really love we often resent them for it and demand that government seize control of it and give it to use for free. Public transportation in the big cities, for instance, started out entirely private. People found it so useful that they soon clamored to have government first regulate its prices, and then seize control of it entirely. We see the same sort of thing happening now with health care. Sure, government’s labor, taxation and monetary policies have artificially inflated the price of medical care relative to all other goods, but ultimately it’s the wondrous and constantly-improving state of medical care that sets our bliss point for medical care astronomically high, so that as our incomes rise it will continue to be natural for us to spend an increasing share of our income on health care just as we do on entertainment. Setting aside the inflation of medical prices from bad government policy, it’s actually a good thing that we can afford to pay spend increasingly-larger shares of our income on increasingly-better health care.

Obama and the Working Poor

Thanks to the passage of Obama's fascist health care plan, my insurance company raised the premium on my half-hearted basic health insurance.  Since the fascist health care plan imposes so many new regulations and taxes, however, my insurance company dropped the best of the three optional supplementary insurance plans, which I elected when I first started teaching at my online university, so with lower coverage my overall premium actually went down.  So my paycheck actually contained an extra $12 today!  So I'm paying a tiny bit less to get only one-third the health care benefits.  And people say that Obama isn't helping the working poor!

Gallup: Obama & Democrats at All-Time Lows

With the majority of Americans opposed to Obama's imposition of fascist health care on us, it's not surprise that passage of ObamaCare hasn't stopped his downward slide in the polls:

Gallup: Obama Numbers at All-Time Low
http://newsmax.com/InsideCover/obama-gallup-poll-numbers/2010/04/12/id/355405?s=al&promo_code=9BC3-1

nor that Democrats have also reached their all-time low in the polls:
Gallup: Democrats' Approval at Historic Low
http://newsmax.com/InsideCover/gallup-democrats-approval-healthcare/2010/04/12/id/355438

and are trailing in reelection races for November--where they haven't already announced that (because they're trailing) that they're retiring. In the wake of Scott Brown's upset in the great state of Taxachusetts--arguably the most liberal state in the union--probably no seat is safe for Democrats in the wake of their imposition of fascist health care, with its taxes, cuts in medical care, regulations, and prison sentences. As the second story above indicates, Democrats on spring recess are scattering like cockroaches exposed to the light, largely refusing to meet with (angry) constituents who opposed ObamaCare. The real question right now is: how much more damage to American can the liberal Democrats do before those (angry) constituents throw the bums out in November? I think we can expect the Democrats to continue their slash-and-burn tactics to impose as much government control as possible between now and then, lying, cheating and stealing as they did when the House pretended to pass the Senate version of ObamaCare and Obama pretended he could amend legislation by executive order in promising to pro-life Democrats that despite the Senate version's funding of abortions, Obama wouldn't fund any abortions. But hey, welcome to the Democrats, the party of compassion!

Obama Tacking to the Right After Taxachusetts Defeat?

Last week's special election in Taxachusetts to replace the late Ted Kennedy in the US Senate served as a referendum on Obama's fascist health care plan, with its mandates, taxes, fines and prison sentences. A majority of voters in what's arguably the most liberal state in the republic came out and soundly defeated Democrat Martha Coakley and gave the seat to a Republican for the first time in decades. Scott Brown, the Republican victor, promised during the election to oppose Obama's fascist health care program.

A week later, according to liberal media outlet The New York Times, Obama plans to tack sharply to the right, pretending fiscal conservatism by proposing to freeze some discretionary domestic spending, while leaving defense spending and entitlements untouched. Since entitlement spending makes up the majority of (non-interest) spending in the budget, even Obama's wildly optimistic (some might say, "delusional" or "deceitful") show his alleged freeze reducing the projected $9 trillion in federal budget deficits by only $250 billion, or less than 3%. In the meantime, his budget for the coming fiscal year would actually increase spending even more with another $150 trillion of "stimulus" pork spending. Even the liberal New York Times admits in the story below that all of Obama's talk of freezing the budget would serve mostly as a symbol of fiscal conservatism--while leaving trillions of dollars of new pork on top of the trillions of dollars of continuing pork.

Keep in mind, too, that the federal government uses something called "baseline budgeting." Under baseline budgeting the Congressional Budget Office estimates next year's "need" for spending and then calls that the baseline. Somehow the "need" increases every single year, even after adjusting for inflation and population growth. So baseline federal spending increases every single year in real dollars per person. Obama's proposed "cuts," even if they did materialize, would simply represent reductions in the baseline projected rate of increase, not actual cuts in spending from one year to the next.

Worse still, Congress has shown repeatedly, particularly Democrat Congresses in the 1980s and early 1990s, that "spend more now, cut later" actually means "spend more now, spend even more later." Each time Democrats and mushy moderates like Bob Dole promised Reagan and the first Bush that they would "cut the budget" they actually authorized far more than even the baseline. I would expect Obama, who's first-year spending binge dwarfs anything under FDR or LBJ (or indeed the two combined) to accept let Congress get away with far more in spending increases than Reagan or even Bush did.

Still, while Obama's calls for a budget freeze probably consist of roughly have delusion and half deceit, it's good to see that despite some liberal media claims to the contrary, Scott Brown's victory does indeed signal that Americans are fed up with Obama's liberal policies of tax, spend, regulate and imprison.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/us/politics/26budget.html?th&emc=th

McConnell: Bernanke Will Win; McCain Opposes

Yesterday I learned that Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky predicted that Ben Bernanke will win Senate approval for another term as chairman of the Federal Reserve System. (Technically the position has the title, "Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System," but as that's a bureaucratic mouthful even for journalists, nobody uses the full title.) McConnell himself wouldn't say which way he would vote, and I suspect is waiting to see which way the political winds are blowing. While some critics on both right and left have criticized the job he's done harshly, many in the big business community like him--as well they might, since he spent tens of billions of dollars bailing them out of the financial mess his inflationary policies helped Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac cause.)

Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, however, came out in opposition to the reappointment of Bernanke, whose policies destroyed McCain's presidential candidacy in the weeks after the Republican presidential convention in 2008. McCain came out of the convention leading Obama, but fell behind once Bernanke's 2007-2008 inflationary bubble burst as I warned my students it would as far back as fall of 2007.

Republican Senator John Cornyn has also come out against reappointing Bernanke, and according to the news report below, "Some Republicans have imposed a procedural block on Bernanke's confirmation, forcing Senate leaders to secure a super-majority of 60 votes in the 100-member chamber to advance the nomination." Requiring 60 votes can likely means that some Republicans have initiated a filibuster against Bernanke's reappointment. Republican Senator Orin Hatch of Utah, however, supports the nomination, and while two Democrats (Boxer of California and Feingold of Wisconsin) oppose it too, I suspect that President Obama won't have too much trouble rounding up enough Democrats to combine with Hatch and other pro-Bernanke Republicans to kill the filibuster. Still, I can't recall any nominee for Fed chairman to get this sort of opposition on both sides of the aisle in the Senate.

You can read a bit more about the story at http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/bernanke-mcconnell-confirmation-vote/2010/01/24/id/347821