Author: Redactor

national politics & policies too much government

No Waiting for the Lies

From the beginning, Democrats urged us to reserve judgment about their beloved “Affordable Care Act.” Wait, they said, until enacted . . . “to find out what’s in it.”

Then they said: wait till we see how it works.

Now, they tell us to wait some more, while they figure out how to bring some competence to the “glitch”-ridden healthcare.gov.

Waiting was the thing some folks feared most. The closer the country got to socialized medicine, the more queues, lines, and waiting lists would get set up, as bureaucrats scrambled to prevent disastrous cost overruns. Hobbled with regulations and mandates and increased demand (without properly paying for said demand — such is the way of politicians’ promises), it was never unreasonable to expect that “death by waiting” would eventually become the integral feature (not a bug!) of the new system.

Still, in one thing, there was no wait. Though the president may have been lied to right up until healthcare.gov’s launch — misled about the testing and integrity of the IT system — there was at least one lie known from the beginning as a lie: that we could all keep our current insurance policies.

Considering the extent of Obamacare’s regulations, that was impossible. Only a small set of choices would be available to Americans. Most legacy policies just wouldn’t cut it, short a special waiver from Washington.

Now, hundreds of thousands of Americans are getting cancellation notices from their insurers. Others, more “lucky,” are being informed that their policies will be upgraded to the nearest Obamacare-acceptable alternative, at raised rates.

This is the Honest Truth about Obamacare: Obama lied; his staff lied; Congress lied.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Tags dishonesty, ObamaCare, rationing

Thought

Jean-Baptiste Say

The multiplication of a product commonly reduces its price: that reduction extends its consumption; and so its production, though become more rapid, nevertheless gives employment to more hands than before. It is beyond question that the manufacture of cotton now occupies more hands in England, France, and Germany than it did before the introduction of the machinery that has abridged and perfected this branch of manufacture in so remarkable a degree.

media and media people too much government

Detroit Ironies

Detroit, Michigan, is a failed city. In recognition of this, its government went to court yesterday to beg for bankruptcy status, and the protection that implies — mainly, the legal ability to force the re-prioritization of its $18 billion debt:

In his opening statement, attorney Bruce Bennett said he “could stand here for hours” to describe the “mountain of evidence” that shows Detroit is insolvent. Without relief, he added, 65 cents of every dollar . . . residents pay in taxes could be needed to address the problem, leaving little for everyday services for 700,000 residents.

There’s hardly anything hopeful about this story.

Recently, libertarians have noted that the people of the city have begun to band together, solving voluntarily and through community and market activity the deficit in services coming from city government. Fine, fine, but enough for a solution?

Still, for real drollery, consider the witless comment by MSNBC’s most witless socialist, Melissa Harris-Perry, that Detroit’s troubles are the result of what happens when government becomes “small enough to drown in a bathtub” (a witticism of my friend Grover Norquist). Hilarious, in that Detroit’s corrupt and spendthrift pols are anything but libertarian, and Detroit government anything but small.

The fact that Detroit can no longer competently enforce some of its own laws only shows the ultimate result of the policy of over-governance.

Despite what socialists and (perhaps) some libertarians may say, liberty is not “no government.” It’s the right amount of good government, defending rights and property from vandals, con men, thieves.

In Detroit, the vandals have been the government.

And a bankruptcy ruling would simply confirm that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Tags bankruptcy, Detroit, libertarianism

free trade & free markets too much government

Obamacare as Bad as Windows 8?

Post author By Redactor
Post date October 23, 2013
5 Comments on Obamacare as Bad as Windows 8?

The spectacular failure of Healthcare.gov to sign people up for the much-promised easy-to-access “healthcare” plans, has now gone mainstream.

So, how bad is it?

Worse than Windows 8?

Just as I know of no one, personally, who has bought a medical coverage package through the new Obamacare system, I also know of no one, personally, who likes Windows 8 . . . at least, on a non-touchscreen computer.

So, are the disasters comparable?

Healthcare.gov fails to hook customers with insurers; Windows 8 fails to do basic o.s.-type tasks, like allow you to do your work.

Still, people are buying Windows 8 computers. Voluntarily. But sales are down, far enough that a number of manufacturers have been selling computers without operating systems installed. And Microsoft is offering discounts to manufacturers for including Windows 8.

Surely Microsoft will speed up the delivery of Windows 9, or at least some fix that makes Windows 8 more usable.

But what will the Obama Administration do?

There are a lot of expert Web technicians out there. For hire. Big companies — Amazon, Travelocity, Priceline — find them and manage to put together successful online trading services. So, surely if the government spends two or three times what businesses spend, it will get a workable system about half as good.

It’s what we expect from government.

Of course, Microsoft could fail, and isn’t too big to fail. But I expect it will survive, simply because of the possibility. The fear. The disincentive.

Those who believe in government über alles, however, forswear such incentives. Bad programs are expected to continue forever and ever.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Tags ObamaCare, Windows 8

too much government

Where the Jobs Are

Sixteen days. The federal government went into shutdown mode for that long, if a soft shutdown, with most services carrying on — and some government bureaus going into overkill mode to stick it to citizens.

But during those 16 axial rotations, some of the things that carried on “business as usual”-wise might surprise you.

Federal job applications, for instance.

“The government is still aggressively hiring,” informs Lily Whiteman. In a fascinating Washington Post article, Annys Shin quotes this author of How to Land a Top-Paying Federal Job to help explain the weird fact that, during the shutdown, the government was bombarded with job applications, and was even advertising a few positions. But, as Whiteman stated, it’s hardly inexplicable. Government is “where the jobs are.”

And, as Shin’s reportage makes clear, this popularity of federal work

reflects the continued weakness of the job market, four years out from the end of the Great Recession, federal hiring experts said. As much as the public sector has been buffeted by turmoil in recent months, it is still seen as a haven from something even more uncertain: the private sector.

The federal government is alive and well and siphoning wealth in large gulps. The best way to spark a sputtering private-sector job recovery isn’t more government, but for Congress to go into a long, long repeal session, and jettison our most burdensome programs, taxes, spending, regulations, and unfulfillable promises.

It’s no wonder the Great Recession is still going on. After all, Big Government is still going on and on and on and on . . .

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Tags federal jobs, recession

Thought

Thomas Mackay

We can have exactly as many paupers as the country chooses to pay for.
Thomas Mackay, Methods of Social Reform (London: John Murray, 1896), p. 210.

free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

Affordable [sic] Healthcare [sick]

Post author By Redactor
Post date October 21, 2013
2 Comments on Affordable [sic] Healthcare [sick]

The Pelosi-Obama Affordable Care Act was passed as a pig-in-a-poke. Now with that poke open, with the pig fully emergent as of next year, what do we know about “Obamacare”?

It’s not socialized medicine, but it is heavily regulated- and subsidized-medicine, almost designed not to work. Its inevitable failures will be said to require more government as “fixes,” eventually (some Democrats hope) going all the way to, yes, socialized medicine.

It’s chockfull of new subsidies, which raise medical costs by making demand for services even more inelastic . . . and thus can only increase taxpayer burdens and more strain on budgets. The original reason so many Americans opposed the reform was that promoting a new “entitlement” even as the old entitlements of Social Security and Medicaid teetered further into insolvency was the very opposite of common sense.
It’s filled with new “mandates” at every level, for businesses as well as individuals. A few have been postponed, but the bulk of the increased regulations are indeed going into effect next year. That will generally raise prices.

But by how much? Well, a new all-state study predicts that

insurance premiums will increase under the first year of Obamacare in 45 of 50 states. This finding flies in the face of President Obama’s promise that his health care overhaul would cause premiums “for the typical family” to fall by $2500.

Why the decrease in five states?

Those had already embraced the goofy over-regulations that Democrats just seem to love.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Tags medical costs, ObamaCare, subsidy

Thought

Murray N. Rothbard

Subsidies prolong the life of inefficient firms and prevent the flexibility of the market from fully satisfying consumer wants. The greater the extent of government subsidy, the more the market is prevented from working, the more resources are frozen in inefficient ways, and the lower will be the standard of living of everyone. Furthermore, the more government intervenes and subsidizes, the more caste conflict will be created in society, for individuals and groups will benefit only at one another’s expense.