While Obama is out promoting His plan of free unicorns, fluffy bunnies and calorie-free hot fudge sundaes (sprinkles included), his minions in the Senate Financing Committee are going to fund all that “free stuff” by gutting American medical practice and innovation.
Pharmaceutical manufacturing companies fee. This is an annual $2.3 billion fee–$23 billion over the next decade–that would be imposed on drug makers beginning in 2010. Be very afraid. As I type like Speedy Gonzalez to get this to you, dear reader, I’m at a loss to comprehend what sort of logic went into the concept of charging a “fee” based not on profits but on market share, as the Finance Committee is proposing. What if I don’t make a profit? Would I still be on the hook for the fee? And if I’m losing money, where do I get the capital to pay it? This seems to be bad tax policy taken to an extreme.–Now that the committee has set a precedent, it’s seeking to expand it. It’s proposing to do so by levying a $40 billion fee on medical device makers in the decade beginning in 2010. Again, the fee would be assigned by market share, not profits. Am I the only one who thinks this means grandma’s new hip will cost more–or, more likely, that funds needed to develop a new and improved hip for grandma in the future will instead go to the Treasury?
–Why stop there when you can impose a “Clinical Laboratories Fee”? This one comes to $7.5 billion over the next decade. Then comes the big dog: A “Health Insurance Provider Fee” of $60 billion over 10 years, again based on market share.
It’s my strong hope that some Senator will have the sense to ask a few learned economists whether it is more likely these fees will disappear into thin air or be passed on to consumers. I think it’s clear that grandma is going to have to get a new line of credit (good luck with that) next time she needs a major procedure.
It is very troubling to have taxes levied not on the basis of profits but on market share. I can’t wait to watch the fights that break out between industry and the IRS over how that is defined and measured. When it comes to taxes, businesses should be very worried about the precedents being set in this bill.
But it’s not just about the precedents about taxes, but how such draconian and punitive taxes will actually affect, not only the businesses but the consumer’s quality of life when innovative drugs and devices are just not there anymore. A mere 50 years or so ago there were no pace-makers, hip or knee replacements, intraocular lens implants, Lasik, drugs controlling bloodpressure or cholesterol or making transplants viable.
Now why would Obamacrats be so hostile to medical innovation?
As we have long predicted on this blog, the health care “reformers” propose to finance at least part of the “savings” or new benefits — it is impossible to know which — by decreasing the rate of return on medical technology. There are many ways in which this might be done, but the Senate Democrats are proposing to do so directly, by levying a “value added tax” on medical device companies according to their proportion of U.S. sales. This tax would be without regard to profitability, so it would amount to a capital tax on start-ups and a massive income tax surcharge on profitable companies, varying as net margins do. In the case of my own mid-sized company, the tax would be the equivalent of a roughly 20% surcharge on our net income (in all likelihood raising our economic tax rate well above 50%) or 50% of our research and development budget, depending on how you want to look at it.Any way you look at it, the proposed tax is a calculated effort to divert capital from the medical technology industry to other uses in the economy, because new medical technology drives costs that are now going to be assumed by the government (or at least will be if the Senate leadership gets its way). Of course, innovative medtech also extends and saves lives, and makes them more comfortable and more productive.
Just as slashing the hoi poloi’s standard of living reduces their carbon footprint, so will restricting the quality and length of their lives (hey, grannie, why have that hip replacement? You don’t have to hike with your grandkids, reading to them from a wheelchair will be good enough) save the ObamaState some cash to spend on convincing people to give up even more of their liberty for cradle to grave coddling and irresponsibility.
A few weeks ago, I stood in the CVU after my 80 y/o father’s bypass surgery, looking at all the machines with numerous bags and tubes, ticking and whirring, giving measured doses of medication on time, keeping track of his vitals, reporting realtime information on his condition to the medical staff. All of that medicine, all of those devices, all of that medical technology — all of them there allowing my dad to come home to enjoy his family for many more years, all them possible because of the few remaining elements of capitalism left in the American economy.
And I will be damned if I don’t do everything in my power to stop the anti-life Left in their cultish devotion to make those scenarios impossible.
(More information … h/t my sister via email)
Comment by Rusty on 9/16 @ 4:55 am #
I just can’t see myself going to New Deli for that advanced pacemaker.
Comment by Carin on 9/16 @ 5:01 am #
We’re fucked.
Comment by Carin on 9/16 @ 5:14 am #
Darleen, I just don’t understand why one of the orchestrators of this entire POS choose to have expensive surgery instead of taking a pill. He had incurable brain cancer.
Duke’s Brain Tumor Center is known for its “aggressive” approach, said Reid Thompson, director of neurological oncology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, in an interview. Friedman, 59, the Duke center’s chief of neurosurgery, is “a very careful surgeon, a very technically savvy surgeon,” Thompson said.
“People have different philosophical approaches” to cancer treatment, said Mark Gilbert, deputy chair of neuro- oncology at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas in Houston, in an interview. “I tell people to go with the one that makes them most comfortable. If there was one that was right, we’d all be doing it.”
Wait, I thought it was wrong for doctors to have different approaches? The government is going to TELL them which approach is best.
Why did Kennedy’s doctor say such erroneous things? I’m flummoxed.
Comment by Eben on 9/16 @ 5:18 am #
In Obama’s world everything you can do he can do better.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 9/16 @ 5:19 am #
Ayn RAnd was a fucking Cassandra.
Comment by Carin on 9/16 @ 5:26 am #
Rand should be required reading. Honestly.
Comment by Eben on 9/16 @ 5:51 am #
love it when the socialists realize their leaders aren’t actually socialists, they’re fascists, lol.
How’s that hope and change workin’ out for ya?
Comment by Carin on 9/16 @ 5:54 am #
Good thing so many here were so supportive of part D.
Oh … wait …
Comment by Carin on 9/16 @ 5:59 am #
Eben’s right. Meya, you’ve got to admit that move, by Obama and friends, was fascist.
Comment by Abe Froman on 9/16 @ 6:03 am #
It was nice not having to read any comments from meya the hermaphrodite for a while. even if he/she/it was a conservative/libertarian/moderate he/she/it has a personality that would make me want to punch him/her/it in the vagicles.
Comment by Joe on 9/16 @ 6:09 am #
Whether it is intentional or not (and much of this is unintentional), all I can say is: What could go wrong?
A lot.
Comment by meya on 9/16 @ 6:13 am #
“Good thing so many here were so supportive of part D.”
Oh did I miss all the teabagging fun?
Comment by Abe Froman on 9/16 @ 6:21 am #
Oh did I miss all the teabagging fun?
I’m sure you were getting teabagged wherever you were.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 9/16 @ 6:21 am #
“Oh did I miss all the teabagging fun?”
How could you? That’s what you do for a living.
Comment by Neo on 9/16 @ 6:27 am #
… and surely all these taxes will help to bring down the cost of medical care
LOL
Comment by Carin on 9/16 @ 6:31 am #
We were about as supportive of part D as we were of McCain.
Comment by Carin on 9/16 @ 6:33 am #
We were against the expansion of Medicare AND against the government assuming that it can do shit to lower rates. Cost savings and government just don’t belong in the same sentence.
Care to explain how this is a “clawback”? Seems to me more of a “payoff.”
Comment by MarkD on 9/16 @ 6:47 am #
So, Big Pharma moves to New Delhi or some other welcoming locale. You’d almost think these clowns were trying to destroy the nation.
Income from this fee, zero. Jobs lost? Income tax revenues lost? You look it up, I’m sick thinking about it.
If this Congress is the best we can do, we’re doomed.
My deficit neutral suggestion would be to go after Charlie Rangel’s back taxes… On the income he never got from the taxpayer subsidized apartments.
Comment by Darleen on 9/16 @ 7:02 am #
why this minor clawback
WTF are you talking about? AGain, you mendoucheous twatwaffle you want to distract from what is actually posted …. punishing medical companies that make life-saving/life-enhancing drugs and devices is going to mean THOSE DRUGS AND DEVICES WILL CEASE TO EXIST.
The “tax” isn’t on profitability it is on MARKET SHARE. How totally fucked is that?
I’m so glad you are so healthy now, RD/meya, that you pretend you may never need medication beyond an aspirin or ever need a blood transfusion.
Comment by SBP on 9/16 @ 7:04 am #
Hey, SFAG, since you’re here:
What’s YOUR take on illegal alien child sex slaves? For or against?
Comment by Darleen on 9/16 @ 7:05 am #
consider that the whole area of Lasik/Lasek is paid out of pocket — totally free market. Innovations have advanced it, prices have gone down. and the ObamaCare market share tax on medical devices will stiffle that industry, too. Ditto elective plastic surgery.
Comment by Eben on 9/16 @ 7:06 am #
How about this. The government gets out of health care altogether, thus eliminating the hundreds of billions of dollars of artificial inflation and waste that it injects into the system each year and then let’s supply and demand determine prices.
I mean, it works for cars, and t.v.’s and food and clothes and carpet and books and well, you get the picture.
I mean do you think it’s a coincidence that the deeper the government gets into anything the more screwed it becomes? Can you name even one thing that the government is balls deep in that is a model of efficiency and productivity?
Comment by royf on 9/16 @ 7:07 am #
OT but I wanted the good folks here to see this if they haven’t. I would suggest to all the lefty loons not to go look at this photo as if will ruin your day. Anyway here is a high resolution photo from the top of the Capitol Building which was taken by a photographer escorted there by a Congressman.
Enjoy LINK
Comment by sdferr on 9/16 @ 7:13 am #
“…name even one thing that the government is balls deep in that is a model of efficiency and productivity?”
The promotion of lying, perhaps?
Comment by SBP on 9/16 @ 7:16 am #
Related: opposition to Chappaquidicare reaches new high.
Guess the Magickal Tongue of Plastic Jezis didn’t help very much.
Comment by Alec Leamas on 9/16 @ 7:23 am #
But, but, I thought he said that the ‘time for bickering’ is over?
I wonder if we can get it into the 30s?
Pingback by Breaking: Tea Party March pic - YES, Hundreds of thousands [Darleen Click] on 9/16 @ 7:24 am #
[...] you, royf) Posted by Darleen @ 7:24 am | Trackback SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Breaking: Tea Party March [...]
Comment by sdferr on 9/16 @ 7:24 am #
Tapper, writing of Obama’s risk of overexposure [ha! two weeks late Jake!] this weekend: “Democrats say … submitting to an interview [with FoxNewsSunday] might not be the best use of Obama’s time.”
Comment by sdferr on 9/16 @ 7:27 am #
Playing the tarbaby/briar patch strategy: “I don’t think he’s overexposed at all,” said public strategist Mark McKinnon, media consultant to former President George George Bush and presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
Comment by J. "Trashman" Peden on 9/16 @ 7:49 am #
cost-saving measures like using hte government’s buying power to negotiate lower rates?
You mean like the Fed. Employees’ plan which no one else can join, obviously because it’s too expensive overall? Or do you mean the Medicare cost-saving = price-fixing measure which ‘insures’ rationing sans “too high” Private Ins. rates, and is going belly up anyway?
For the Obama Gov’t, “competition” is imperative starvation and atrophy for thee, but not for me. But, hey, it’s what God-is-his-partner hath devined and “said”, so, Yea, it must be.
Comment by BJTexs on 9/16 @ 7:55 am #
My fairness meter just went off. It’s damned inconvenient.
Paragraph one works for me, up to a point. I’d proclaim that if, as Obama has said, that billions of dollars of the cost of this menagerie will come from cost savings in Medicare then prove it. Take 12-18 months and do what no other President has been able to accomplish: Rid Medicare of the so-called billions of dollars in waste. Then come back and use that as a starting point.
I know, ends before means, ends before means, the time for bickering is over. i haven’t even mentioned (cough) tort reform. (cough)
As to part two, well … not exactly. As I’ve commented before the health care system in this country (or, arguably, health care in general) doesn’t conform to the normal free market economic formulas. Health care is expensive: Really, really good health care is really, really expensive. Economies of Scale and other financial rules of the road don’t apply very well to health care. Innovation of the sort that Darleen mentioned above costs money, real money. MRI’s, CAT scans, Echo Cardiograms are expensive to develop and expensive to manufacture. Throw in the average 1.2 billion dollar price tag on the development of cutting edge drugs and the picture becomes clear.
Excellent health care is damned expensive.
I don’t confess to have “the answer” but I do know that a) What Darleen describes above is so wrongheaded as to be mind numbing in it’s moronity and b) the idea that the only way to cover “everyone” is to “smooth” health care quality so that almost everyone gets some lower quality of care doesn’t work for me either.
Not to mention the whole “it’s going to cost way more than you say it will” meme.
It occurs to me that this ideologically driven administration and Democratically controlled Congress simply doesn’t understand what made America great and different from the rest of the industrialized world. Some kind of market driven consumer based plan might create a system for significantly less tax dollars that would allow those at the bottom of the economic scale to receive decent health care while still allowing those who have accomplished some financial status to either pay for or get (as a benefit) a higher quality of care, up to and including the best care in the world. Teh One and the bots find this sort of celebration of success inconceivable based upon the “If only one” rule.
Ultimately, what they have put forward (spotlighted by the jaw dropping details from Darleen’s post) is a classic redistribution of not just wealth, but also access and availability to cutting medicine. There is no way in hell that the plan put forth will result in better health care, thus it will result in worse health care for most except the very wealthy and the political elite.
That’s the problem, not that there is enough free market wang-fu playing upon the health care field. Let’s find a way to do something without yanking both money and quality from those of us who are very happy with the level of care we already receive.
Comment by Darleen on 9/16 @ 8:02 am #
BJTexas
Catastrophic healthcare is expensive. Checkups, routine labs, not so much. There is absolutely no reason people shouldn’t be able to shop for basic insurance that covers just emergencies/hospitalization and leaves the other stuff to be paid out of pocket or through HSA’s.
Note that the Senate Finance committee is committed to stopping people from paying for their own healthcare by reducing and capping flexible savings accounts.
Comment by royf on 9/16 @ 8:03 am #
Gee and just when the Ogabe administration has pulled out their all encompassing trump card here comes Rassmussen with some news guaranteed to have the lefties pissing in their pants.
12% Say Most Opponents of Obama Health Care Plan Are Racist
Wednesday,
September 16, 2009
Twelve percent (12%) of voters nationwide believe that most opponents of President Obama’s health care reform plan are racist. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 67% of voters disagree, and 21% are not sure.
LINK
Comment by sdferr on 9/16 @ 8:04 am #
“MRI’s, CAT scans, Echo Cardiograms are expensive to develop and expensive to manufacture.”
Because the are capital intensive to develop means the have to be subsidized by government intervention BJTexs? Is that the gist of it? If so, I’d say, hold on a sec there pardner. Let’s talk about that.
Comment by BJTexs on 9/16 @ 8:14 am #
Darlleen #34: agreed on all points.
sdferr #36: No, no, no, I did not mean to suggest that in the least (although tax breaks for those industries would be a good thing, I think.) My point was directed at Eben’s comment about just letting the free market “have it’s way” with medicine in general. There are pluses and minuses to that approach with regards to how health care functions in this country. The free market has not proven to be a great leveler of costs in that industry.
that having been said I know in my heart that government participation/subsidizing/ taking fees/taking over is a Kervorkian prescription for national bankruptcy, reduced medical innovation and, ultimately, reduced or denied care.
Comment by SBP on 9/16 @ 8:15 am #
#35 That race card is getting a little frayed around the edges, isn’t it?
Too bad that’s all they have.
Comment by Carin on 9/16 @ 8:19 am #
#35 – This just in: 12% of our population is functionally retarded.
Comment by McGehee on 9/16 @ 8:20 am #
How can we know that?
Comment by Squid on 9/16 @ 8:22 am #
Jumbo jets are expensive to develop and expensive to manufacture, yet somehow the skies are full of them. And for as much as I complain about being treated like cattle every time I fly, I do appreciate that prices dropped by two thirds after the government got out of the way. Perhaps we can give it a shot in health care, too?
Comment by B Moe on 9/16 @ 8:26 am #
Looks like that Cuban health care is right around the corner.
Me? I am starting a leech farm.
Comment by sdferr on 9/16 @ 8:27 am #
“The free market has not proven to be a great leveler of costs in that industry.”
What other mechanism for leveling cost would you posit as having succeeded BJTexs? Price discovery in markets seems to me the most successful mechanism mankind has ever known and no others that I’ve seen have been remotely as capable of delivering the information necessary. On the contrary, every cost “control” measure other than markets we look at results in distortion, inefficiency, supply failure, political power grabs leading to tyranny, etc etc.
Comment by Lost My Cookies on 9/16 @ 8:28 am #
“using hte government’s buying power to negotiate lower rates”
People always say this. It’s as if they’ve never heard of the $500 hammer.
Comment by LTC John on 9/16 @ 8:28 am #
Squid – thanks for reminding me of that. I had forgotten the good old days of Goverment price controls on air travel. I suppose that Southwest stands as an exemplar of what you can do if you get the “G” out of the way of commerce.
Pingback by Legacy Media and Obamacrats flogging the race card [Darleen Click] on 9/16 @ 8:38 am #
[...] royf, It appears so. Twelve percent (12%) of voters nationwide believe that most opponents of President [...]
Comment by J. "Trashman" Peden on 9/16 @ 8:55 am #
12% Say Most Opponents of Obama Health Care Plan Are Racist
‘Sounds like they got the Blacks correctly represented, but somehow missed all the loons.
What, no sense of humor?
Comment by Chris S. on 9/16 @ 8:59 am #
The scenario I would worry about is when the Made in America policies collide with the increased tax burden on medtech (and other industries). If you keep hammering on innovation, it moves elsewhere. And if you penalize it for moving elsewhere by not allowing it to be sold/used in your country, you end up access to nothing. That’s a bad state of affairs for medical issues.
I mean really, it’s penalizing medtech companies for staying in the country. Think about the board room discussion at budget time. “Well, we could save $23 billion dollars over 10 years by bugging out, AND other countries would happily court us to move there. Win win for us.”
Comment by BJTexs on 9/16 @ 9:18 am #
Hey, guys! Don’t shoot the messenger!
I’m a free market, fiscal conservative kind ‘o guy, don”t you know. I’m just a bit skeptical of the free market economies mechanisms creating real cost savings in the health care market. Also a 100% free market health care system (including insurance) doesn’t create a formula for covering those who are unable to afford health care (somewhere in the 8 million range by reasonable estimates.) I’m saying that there will have to be some kind of specialized mechanisms within a consumer based, market driven coverage and care system.
The jumbo jet scenario has a fatal flaw. Most people don’t have to fly somewhere as a matter of life and death. Do we apply the same metric to those low income people who have no coverage if they should happen to have a catastrophic illness? We might be accused of “flipping the coin” on the current admin’s idea that everybody gets less health care so that everybody has health care … but we reserve the right to deny treatment if our panel of experts think the utility doesn’t match the cost.
Again. I don’t have the answers but would like to remain clear eyed about the situation. Jindal seems to have a grasp on a market based, consumer centered plan so I defer to his superior expertise.
Comment by McGehee on 9/16 @ 9:27 am #
BJT, that’s not really what you said, is the thing. “[A] 100% free market health care system (including insurance) doesn’t create a formula for covering those who are unable to afford health care” is very different from “The free market has not proven to be a great leveler of costs in that industry.”
Comment by BJTexs on 9/16 @ 9:27 am #
BYW: Mike K, a regular commentator at Patterico’s and a retired medical doctor, has some common sense ideas for Health Care reform.
Comment by BJTexs on 9/16 @ 9:29 am #
McGehee: Are we to assume, despite the unique aspects of the health care industry as a whole, that the bulk of the spiraling costs in health care and coverage are due to government intervention? If so, then mea culp[a. but i’m not so sure about that.
Comment by sdferr on 9/16 @ 9:32 am #
“…a 100% free market health care system (including insurance) doesn’t create a formula for covering those who are unable to afford health care (somewhere in the 8 million range by reasonable estimates.)”
Which is why government should be invited to stay the hell out of running and regulating charities and religious institutions as well as the health care “system“ (and yes, those are extreme sneer quotes). No formulae needed, just trillions of free transactions daily amongst freely cooperative peoples.
Comment by DarthRove on 9/16 @ 9:41 am #
ER medicine is about the most expensive on the planet. But ERs are full of people with colds, minor cuts, and “oh god this migraine is killing me I gotta have my narcs but where’s the remote for the TV while I’m waiting”. And they’re the ones bitching and moaning that they have to wait 6 hours to see a doc: how come that guy gets to go ahead of me, just because he’s having a heart attack?
Comment by geoffb on 9/16 @ 9:54 am #
This is another illustration of one of the basic differences between the conservatives and the Left.
Conservatives view the world as made up of individuals, individual humans having their own freedom of action, and reaction to the actions of other individuals. Individuals are the basic unit of a society.
On the Left they see groups as that basic unit of society. Groups not individuals. Individuals are only affected as part of a group. Tax a group and that group is affected not any individual unless they are part of that particular group.
Comment by Squid on 9/16 @ 10:27 am #
The jumbo jet scenario has a fatal flaw. Most people don’t have to fly somewhere as a matter of life and death. Do we apply the same metric to those low income people who have no coverage if they should happen to have a catastrophic illness?
If the poor have to cope with a Greyhound level of medical care, I can live with that. If they expect a flight in first class on my dime, they’re sorely mistaken. I may do that for friends and family, but not for some guy I’ve never met.
Given a choice between offering access to ten-year-old medical treatments to the poor, versus freezing the entire population into 2009 medical technology, I think you can guess my preference.
If that makes me a heartless bastard, well, I can live with that.
Comment by cranky-d on 9/16 @ 10:41 am #
#56
I’m a heartless bastard too, then, because I agree with you.
Comment by McGehee on 9/16 @ 12:22 pm #
Government intervention is pervasive in the sector so it would be hard to find a cause of spiraling costs that hasn’t been fueled by government at multiple points along the way.
The cost of government even on you and me goes a long way deeper than just the taxes we pay, or the “business” taxes companies have to cover by raising their prices. Those of us who don’t struggle with our own tax forms have to pay for a person or a software application to do it for us — we don’t tend to count that as a cost of government, but we wouldn’t pay it otherwise. And do we have any clue how much of the price of goods and services we buy, covers expenses mandated by government regulation? Every inch of red-tape handled by every business in the production stream carries a cost that adds to what we have to pay for anything we buy.
And that’s even in things that aren’t in a hyper-regulated industry.
Comment by BJTexs on 9/16 @ 1:12 pm #
(pokes head out of bunker)
Yeesh! INCOMING!!
#56 Squid: I don’t disagree with that statement. However if you and I get to travel in Jumbo Jets and the poor have to walk with bloody feet … enough of that. I’m not willing to dismiss the idea of finding a way for those who cannot afford coverage to get “greyhound” health care as long as it is affordable and the mechanics actually make sense. That said I have exactly zero confidence in the current insane clown posse (h/t Bill Whipple) ensconced in DC to do just that.
McGehee: As a lifelong small businessman I am more than aware of the significant additional costs that government creates all along the “supply chain.” I’d be the first to admit that they’ve created additional costs in health care. That said, the fundamentals of how health care works economically give me pause as to whether simply removing any government presence is enough to dampen consistent double digit increases in costs, both for care and coverage. At least, not with the same assurance that tort reform, done right, will significantly reduce costs. Hey, I may be wrong (and I’m increasingly uncomfortable arguing this point as a free marketer) but my economic eye says that just opening up the entire field to complete free market mechanics may not be enough to alleviate the cost increases or help those who may need help.
I think that the unsaid 500 Lb gorilla is whether or not we should even try to cover those who have no coverage. That’s one that I struggle with. Unlike Jumbo Jets when one becomes ill one may not be able to live without health care.
Comment by BJTexs on 9/16 @ 1:15 pm #
“lifelong small businessman(?)”
Wow, did that come out rather pretentious! My bad!
My dad owned a manufacturing company since the day I was born so that whole “legacy” thing colored that remark. You should also know the the business went belly up in 1989 after 24 years because the market changed and this sort of manufacturing (apparel) went overseas.
Comment by sdferr on 9/16 @ 1:25 pm #
“…opening up the entire field to complete free market mechanics may not be enough…”
But again, BJTexs (and let me put it right out, I know you are arguing in good faith here, so no worries on that front), what sort of cost “leveling”, cost “containment”, “price signaling” measures, what mechanisms in the general sense are we going to be talking about to achieve this goal of reducing price rises, especially price rises that are often caused by, as you’ve noted, expensive novel technologies unimagined only five years ago?
What will take the place of competition, the self interested price fight that rewards the innovator, the discoverer of efficiencies unobserved, or even merely the fellow who can wring a bit more out of his own costs to bring users and consumers what they want?
Comment by BJTexs on 9/16 @ 1:52 pm #
sdferr: The answer is … I don’t know.
I just want to be aware of the structure as it is when any “solutions” are offered. Plus I’m so completely cynical about our government in general that I’m simply not inclined to believe them if they told me that bees make honey … or that Kanye West is a serial douchbag.
Comment by sdferr on 9/16 @ 1:57 pm #
You needn’t characterize the – I don’t even know what to call it properly – thing in any detail, but we are talking about some alternative to a market acting as markets do, so let’s attempt to sketch with charcoal what kind of possibilities there are. So, 1) Government. 2) __________ 3) Government.
That’s all I got.
Comment by BJTexs on 9/16 @ 2:13 pm #
*sigh*
I hear ya brother/sister. Again, we have no assurance that government can act in a competent, much less limited way.
Comment by sdferr on 9/16 @ 2:34 pm #
Part of the problem outlined by Hayek is that even when attempting to be competent in its actions, central decision making organizations like government so squash all the outlying signals of price discovery that in order to keep goods flowing in some semblance of an orderly way, that central decision maker must reach out to control now this, now another, thereupon sequentially all and every component of the economic life it wants to effect. And before it knows what has happened (and even — assuming with Hayek, the good intentions of its initial setting out — against or despite its own wishes) it must control all.
So that in his analysis, any assurance is pointed to fail.
The size and complexity of the problem was hidden from view from the very beginning (and always is) but persuaded by the urgency of the presumed need, the crisis that must be addressed! (kinda like she who must be obeyed), the first step draws on the next; cascading logically along results in disaster.
Comment by McGehee on 9/16 @ 3:12 pm #
Does it need to be “enough” all by itself? Or can it settle for being enough of a step in the right direction to suggest which way to take the next step?
I know how I’d vote: Let not the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Comment by rrpjr on 9/16 @ 3:47 pm #
It’s so depressing to hear more everyday about how these morbidly anti-freedom and parasitic Leftists are eating away at our country, our lives, our futures. How did this happen? How did this filth ever get this kind of power? Who failed us? After all our struggles of the 20th century and after witnessing the worldwide depredations, shattered illusions and human ruins of socialism again and again and again, how did we ever leave them a single opening? I’m sick.
Comment by Scrapiron on 9/16 @ 4:25 pm #
Democrats in congress and in the white house are going all out to prove, to those who don’t already know, that they are the most stupid animals in the world.
Comment by sdferr on 9/16 @ 5:31 pm #
An eye opening comment at NRO on the reason Sen Snowe won’t sign on to the Baucus Health Care Plan:
Read the whole thing fits here.
Comment by B Moe on 9/16 @ 6:06 pm #
You just can’t make this shit up.
Comment by sdferr on 9/17 @ 2:10 pm #
Obama to Joint session of Congress:
Here, Joe Wilson may as well have yelled out “You lie!” but of course, he didn’t. Instead, a week later, the more complex truth emerges. Obama told a false story.
Comment by maggie katzen on 9/17 @ 2:16 pm #
He turned me into a newt!
Comment by JD on 9/17 @ 2:22 pm #
sdferr – He fucking lied about that.
Pingback by Democrat Alan Grayson was right about ‘die quickly’ [Darleen Click] UPDATED on 10/7 @ 7:10 am #
[...] covered here and here ************************** via Maggie Katzen, William Teach has this handy-dandy little [...]