Thursday, May 14. 2009
Who pays for employer-provided medical insurance? You, the employee, pay for it. It comes out of your wages. That is why you can make a case that its cost is a taxable wage-equivalent. Quoted in a fine piece on third-party medical insurance at Hennessey:
Employees ultimately pay for the health insurance that they get through their employer, no matter who writes the check to the insurance company. The view that we can get employers to shoulder the cost of providing health insurance stems from the misconception that employers pay for benefits out of a reservoir of profits. Regardless of a firm’s profits, valued benefits are paid primarily out of workers wages. While workers may not even be aware of the cost of their total health premium, employers make hiring and salary decisions based on the total cost of employment, including both wages and benefits such as health insurance, maternity leave, disability and retirement benefits. They provide health insurance not out of generosity of spirit, but as a way to attract workers – just like wages. When the cost of benefits rises, wages fall (or rise more slowly than they would have otherwise), leaving workers bearing the cost of their benefits in the form of lower wages.
Wednesday, May 13. 2009
 At Am. Thinker:
Human civilization as we know it is only possible in a warm interglacial climate. Short of a catastrophic asteroid impact, the greatest threat to the human race is the onset of another ice age.
Image is Wooly Mammoth in New Jersey, a few thousand years ago, from Moravec
 Mark Steyn's speech of the above title at Hillsdale College (h/t, Powerline). One quote:
Americans face a choice: They can rediscover the animating principles of the American idea—of limited government, a self-reliant citizenry, and the opportunities to exploit your talents to the fullest—or they can join most of the rest of the Western world in terminal decline. To rekindle the spark of liberty once it dies is very difficult. The inertia, the ennui, the fatalism is more pathetic than the demographic decline and fiscal profligacy of the social democratic state, because it's subtler and less tangible. But once in a while it swims into very sharp focus. Here is the writer Oscar van den Boogaard from an interview with the Belgian paper De Standaard. Mr. van den Boogaard, a Dutch gay "humanist" (which is pretty much the trifecta of Eurocool), was reflecting on the accelerating Islamification of the Continent and concluding that the jig was up for the Europe he loved. "I am not a warrior, but who is?" he shrugged. "I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it." In the famous Kubler-Ross five stages of grief, Mr. van den Boogard is past denial, anger, bargaining and depression, and has arrived at a kind of acceptance.
Tuesday, May 12. 2009
Via Coyote:
President Obama says that he wants to nominate a Supreme Court Justice who has “empathy” as opposed to a jurist who makes decisions based on “some abstract legal theory.” Not surprisingly, I’m not the only one troubled by his selection criteria. Thomas Sowell has written an excellent 3 part series “Empathy” Versus Law” (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).
Justice tempered with mercy is fine with me, but "empathy" is for social workers and phony seducers.
The writing of 1984, in The Guardian. (h/t, Althouse's We shall abolish the orgasm.)The piece begins:
 "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
Sixty years after the publication of Orwell's masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four, that crystal first line sounds as natural and compelling as ever. But when you see the original manuscript, you find something else: not so much the ringing clarity, more the obsessive rewriting, in different inks, that betrays the extraordinary turmoil behind its composition.
Probably the definitive novel of the 20th century, a story that remains eternally fresh and contemporary, and whose terms such as "Big Brother", "doublethink" and "newspeak" have become part of everyday currency, Nineteen Eighty-Four has been translated into more than 65 languages and sold millions of copies worldwide, giving George Orwell a unique place in world literature.
Thursday, May 7. 2009
The Dems seem to want everybody to go to college. I want everybody to get a solid HS education, but many will not. Not because of the schools - because they don't want it.
As I have said many times here, one does not "get" educated: one takes it - or does not. As it is, how many colleges are glorified high schools, diploma mills, or propaganda factories?
The Dems want student loans to be a federal entitlement. That would basically make colleges and universities fully under the thumb of the feds, which will lead to everything becoming politicized. Also, they want to eliminate private college loans. Does this all sound sort of familiar?
In part, their wishes sound like a government full-employment plan for PhDs in unmarketable subject areas, and one more power grab over independent and private institutions.
Wednesday, May 6. 2009
We recently noted here that, if you gave 5 people each $100,000 to do something with, after 5 years one guy would be broke, one guy would have a million bucks, and the others somewhere in between.
It's like Jesus' parable of the talents (which of course had nothing to do with money, but with the use of gifts of the spirit.)
Readers know that I don't give a darn what other people make. I care about what I make, how I make it, and what I do with it.
Just One Minute looks at Robert Reich on income inequality. One commenter says:
It's mainly about the dangers of protectionism and Smoot-Hawley - with some cool old film clips too (h/t, Volokh):
Tuesday, May 5. 2009
The current issue of the Digest from the National Bureau of Economic Research carries findings from Stanford University economists looking at the different economic outcomes for similarly situated Jamaica and Barbados from different macroeconomic policies pursued between 1960 to 2002.
Both had the institutional foundation from being British colonies and similar sugar and tourism-based economies, yet from 1960 to 2002 Barbados’ GDP expanded about three times faster than Jamaica’s. The current income gap in favor of Barbados is near five times larger than at independence.
Why?
Jamaica pursued extensive state intervention in the economy, nationalization, income transfers and the like, and borrowed heavily to fund growing deficits. Barbados followed a more restrained posture toward business, spending and borrowing.
Sound portentous?
Going Dutch? No thanks. It's about the 50-50 deal.
To keep the slaves happy, they throw them a few scraps periodically - for which they are supposed to feel grateful as if they were the folks who created the money in the first place, and not you.
Monday, May 4. 2009
 “Capitalism is nothing but a false religion, with Mammon as its god and Adam Smith as its high priest.”
If that is true, how come the Marxists and Socialists all want my money - the fruits of my labor and my saving and investing?
Who is greedier than a Lefty politician? And does anybody love my money more than politicians?
(Disclaimer: I like money. It gives me power over my life, freedom and choices, and personal security. However, I do not want one penny of your money unless I do a job for you.)
A few very thoughtful links about filthy lucre:
Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, discussed at Standpoint.
Bloggingheads TV with Joseph Heath on Filthy Lucre. Economic basics. Well-done.
Your financial planning. Mankiw
 As traditionalist/Centrists here at Maggie's, we tend to prefer Repub candidates because they at least pretend to sound like the word "freedom" matters to them.
Right now, the Repubs are searching the earth, looking for ideas. Wrong. Waste of time. Major national elections are won by appealing, likeable candidates who come across well on TV, have a bit of charisma and energy, and offer some inspiration, celebrity, and excitement to us benighted masses.
The wonkery and the ideology has little to do with it. Very few voted for Obama because he promised to nationalize (ie politicize) our major industries and businesses.
As Riehl rightly says,
The terrific irony here isn't that it's a Bush saying no more Reagan, it's that exit polls showed individual policies actually had little to do with Obama's win. National elections tend to be more thematic, than they are wonkish. All the Democrats really did was demonize Republicans, call for change and voice a lot of platitudes.
GOP turns to Bush aides for advice
Forget Reagan - be like Liberals
My final word on this: It's the candidate, stupid. Any reasonably smart person can make an issue out of anything, but it takes a powerfully convincing talker to reach over the head of the biased MSM and speak directly to people.
As Roger de H says, a party picks a figurehead to decorate their pirate ship.
Thursday, April 30. 2009
Megan addresses the issue of primary care docs. Fact is, internists are sort of our routine GPs now. It's not possible to be an old-time GP any more, doing obstetrics, pediatrics, minor surgery, cardiology, cancer, neurology, psychiatry. You couldn't keep up, for one thing - and no insuror would cover you. The closest things we have to real GPs today are ER docs.
The comments on her post are interesting.
Quote from the WSJ:
Free enterprise is culturally mainstream, for the moment. Asked in a Rasmussen poll conducted this month to choose the better system between capitalism and socialism, 13% of respondents over 40 chose socialism. For those under 30, this percentage rose to 33%. (Republicans were 11 times more likely to prefer capitalism than socialism; Democrats were almost evenly split between the two systems.)
The government has been abetting this trend for years by exempting an increasing number of Americans from federal taxation. My colleague Adam Lerrick showed in these pages last year that the percentage of American adults who have no federal income-tax liability will rise to 49% from 40% under Mr. Obama's tax plan. Another 11% will pay less than 5% of their income in federal income taxes and less than $1,000 in total.
To put a modern twist on the old axiom, a man who is not a socialist at 20 has no heart; a man who is still a socialist at 40 either has no head, or pays no taxes. Social Democrats are working to create a society where the majority are net recipients of the "sharing economy." They are fighting a culture war of attrition with economic tools. Defenders of capitalism risk getting caught flat-footed with increasingly antiquated arguments that free enterprise is a Main Street pocketbook issue. Progressives are working relentlessly to see that it is not.
Please read the whole thing, because he gets to the heart of the issue.
Wednesday, April 29. 2009
Exams, contests, competitions, elections, business. Pollyanna-ish as it may sound, losing or doing poorly in these things offers learning opportunities. People tend not to learn much from winning: they tend to just keep doing the same thing until it stops working. That's when people are forced to re-think.
I have never watched Dr. Phil, but I am told that one of his favorite comments is "And how is that working for you?" It sounds like one of those great AA aphorisms.
Rick Moran has a very thoughtful and, I believe, realistic piece Moderates? Who needs 'em, about whither conservatism. It surely rings true up here in New England, where we lost our last R congressman, Chris Shays, in the last election. One quote:
“Changing historical circumstances” and the recognition that although our principles may be immutable, how they are interpreted is up to each generation. My interpretation of First Principles differs broadly from most of you reading this. Does this mean we can’t be allies in the struggle to bring those principles to the job of governing a great nation? Chasing away those who agree with you in principle but differ with you on interpretation will only lead to permanent minority status for conservatives. I have to think we’re too smart to allow that to happen.
Read the whole thing. Of course Conservatives need appealing, inspiring and articulate spokesmen but, to remain a national force, Conservatism, as a subsection of the GOP, has to recognize regional realities. You just cannot say "Good riddance" to every Chris Shays.
Gotta remember that "All politics is local," and that every voting lever pulled is done by an individual person in a certain place at a certain time with varying emotions, information, and environment. Most voters have no real political philosophy. If they did, we'd probably have a national Libertarian party.
 Via Driscoll:
On “CNN Newsroom” on April 28, Sanchez interviewed Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., about the departure of Sen. Arlen Specter, Pa., from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party. He asked the senator from South Carolina if Specter was correct in his analysis that the conservative wing of the Republican Party was squeezing out a segment of the electorate.
“You’re shrinking the electorate to an extreme - to a point where a regular Republican can’t win,” Sanchez said, paraphrasing Specter. “What do you make of that argument?”
DeMint explained it was which ideology was best suited to give Americans the freedom to choose in their daily lives that propagated a more prosperous society - both economically and culturally.
“That’s quite the opposite,” DeMint said. “We’re seeing across the country right now that the biggest tent of all is the tent of freedom and what we need to do as Republicans is convince Americans that freedom can work in all areas of their life - for every American, whether it’s education, or health care or creating jobs.”
However, with that response, Sanchez had his Jim Mora moment - when Mora, the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts went into his “playoffs” rant after a 40-21 loss to the San Francisco 49ers on Nov. 25, 2001.
“What the hell does that mean?” Sanchez said. “I mean, the biggest tent is freedom? Freedom? I mean you got to do better than that!”
It may be hard to believe, but that is what we're up against, friends. There are Americans who have no clue about why this nation exists.
Monday, April 27. 2009
Peter Orszag is the guy in charge of Obama's domestic agenda. From The New Yorker's Letter from Washington:
Orszag dismissed the criticism as a caricature. “I don’t see how it interferes with the doctor-patient relationship to suggest that it would be better if your doctor had more information about what would work for you,” he said. “The best way of putting it is that your doctor shouldn’t have disincentives to give you the higher-quality care, which often happens now.” Far from a huge government bureaucracy, he proposes a simple adjustment of incentives: “You get paid more if the treatment has been shown to be effective and a little less if not.” Orszag seems more right than wrong about how to bring down health-care costs, but the truth is that, while there is obviously a great deal of waste in the American medical system, nobody knows for certain whether Orszag’s plan—which is now Obama’s plan—will work.
As Orszag explained his ideas, I couldn’t help remembering an encounter I had with him one day in the hallway at O.M.B. I told him that I had read his Princeton undergraduate thesis. He looked at me and smiled a little sheepishly. He said that at some point after his arrival at graduate school, in London, he had had a sudden realization: that he had made a mistake, and the crucial formula that he had used in his thesis, the one that had won him the prize, was incorrect. “It was so innovative,” he said, “that it was wrong.”
Sunday, April 26. 2009
Our Bastiat quote du jour, from this site. Fortunately, it's simple French:
Laissez faire! — Je commence par dire, pour prévenir toute équivoque; que laissez faire s'applique ici aux choses honnêtes, l'État étant institué précisément pour empêcher les choses déshonnêtes.
Cela posé, et quant aux choses innocentes par elles-mêmes, comme le travail, l'échange, l'enseignement, l'association, la banque, etc.; il faut pourtant opter. Il faut que l'État laisse faire ou empêche de faire.
S'il laisse faire, nous serons libres et économiquement administrés, rien ne coûtant moins que de laisser faire.
S'il empêche de faire, malheur à notre liberté et à notre bourse. À notre liberté, puisqu'empêcher c'est lier les bras: à notre bourse, car pour empêcher, il faut des agents, et pour avoir des agents, il faut de l'argent.
À cela les socialistes disent: Laissez faire! mais c'est une horreur! — Et pourquoi, s'il vous plaît? — Parce que; quand on les laisse faire, les hommes font mal et agissent contre leurs intérêts. Il est bon que l'État les dirige.
Voilà qui est plaisant. Quoi! vous avez une telle foi dans la sagacité humaine que vous voulez le suffrage universel et le gouvernement de tous par tous; et puis, ces mêmes hommes que vous jugez aptes à gouverner les autres, vous les proclame inaptes à se gouverner eux-mêmes!
Friday, April 24. 2009
 Interesting link by our News Junkie last night re people who think of themselves as "good." That link led to Ryan Sager's The Al Gore's Fraggin' Giant Mansion Effect. A quote:
If you’re too-well-satisfied that you’re a good greenie, you’re more willing to cut yourself slack when you hurt the environment.
Call it the Al Gore’s Giant Fraggin’ Mansion Effect.
According to a new study in Psychological Science, humans engage in a process called “moral self-regulation.” Basically, we’re constantly calculating the trade-off between being able to see ourselves as good people and the cost of engaging in all that non-advantageous goodness.
You might expect that being prompted (primed) to think of yourself as a good person would make you more altruistic or moral — but, in fact, the exact opposite appears to be the case.
Read the whole thing. I have too many reactions to this to post briefly, but my first thought was that I have seen this many times. (See Obama's Earth Day flights burn 9000 gallons of fuel.) The process goes far beyond Greenieism. Many people play tricks with themselves in order to have their cake and eat it too.
The NJ summed it up perfectly: "They seem to think they get a pass because they're good." It reminds me of our recent QQQ from PJ O'Rourke: "Everybody wants to save the world but nobody wants to help Mom with the dishes."
It's important to most people to view themselves as virtuous. Cheap and easy virtuousness (recycling, donating to charities, volunteering, serving on committees, etc) is often used by people, consciously or unconsciously, to excuse or to compensate for their sins and crimes (eg not reporting cash income, cutting corners, patronizing massage parlors, spreading gossip, lying, etc). In my view, honest people wrestle with sin rather than playing the "moral self-regulation" game.
How many criminals have been described as "pillars of their community," "great guy, always kind and generous," "everybody loved him," "a great supporter of civic causes"? Lots of them.
I am not talking about guilt-driven "conspicuous virtue" here, like the cheating guys who bring their wives roses - I am talking about the secret compromises people make internally so as not to mentally suffer from their feelings of sinfulness and hypocrisy.
I could go on and on on this topic. More later, maybe.
Photo: John Gotti, the "Dapper Don," once a pillar of his community of Howard Beach, Queens, NYC, generous donor to his church and kids' sports, and an avid recycler with a deeply caring interest in the always-Green trash-hauling and recycling biz.
Thursday, April 23. 2009
Quicker than most expected, even those most critical of him, President Obama has unleashed his and his political party’s dénouement as grossly irresponsible and corrupt, to the unacceptable danger to the country’s survival.
His partial and skewed release of formerly secret documents about the interrogation of captured terrorists raises the prominence of the issue, and consequently of other major issues, in ways that very well may, and should, relegate the Democrat Party to the political hinterland for a generation.
1. The weight of informed and involved expertise on the interrogations is that they served to avoid additional terrorist attacks. The MSM’s trumpeting of the Obama partial releases makes it unavoidable for the MSM to provide the consumers of its media with the fuller story that will emerge.
2. Polls have consistently demonstrated the public is more in tune with better safe than sorry, and with little sympathy for applying Americans’ civil rights to foreign terrorists. The risks that Obama is taking with our security, and that of our allies, is not acceptable.
3. The Congressional Democrats, who have harped at every move taken by the Bush administration, own leadership were not only fully informed of those measures at the time but -- before seeking political advantage by unscrupulously reversing course – were advocates of even sterner measures. Continuing exposure of the formerly secret documents will further reveal their crass perfidy.
4. The increased exposure further highlights to the public the recidivism of many released from Guantanamo and the demurral to accept releasees by European countries critical of Guantanamo. This reinforces the conclusion that benign treatment of sworn enemies is suicidal.
5. Members of our intelligence community, and of formerly cooperating foreign intelligence agencies, will pull back from full exertion due to increased restrictions imposed and from reticence to be pilloried by leftists in power.
6. G-d forbid another significant terrorist attack occurs, particularly traceable to the denuding of vigilance among our intelligence agencies, the backlash will be harsh against those who crippled our security.
7. The cumulative impact of 1-5 above, and hopefully not even the 6th, sits on top of the unfolding and recognized debacle of the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats’ handling of the economic downturn to slip by intrusions -- into the economy, into health care, into taxation, into almost any facet of society it can -- that are destructive of our and future generations’ solvency and freedoms. The unease already claims a majority of citizens, and will become overwhelming.
8. The corruption endemic within the Washington and Chicago way of doing things, already evident to any observer, will be increasingly exposed as Democrats and their media allies lose their impunity to stifle full airings.
9. The willingness and arrogance of members of the Obama administration to invent ludicrous and extra-legal rationalizations for power grabs leads to more, as lies beget lies. The cover-ups and the overstepping of clearer legal red lines will create scandal after scandal.
10. In 2010, Republicans will increase their depleted power within Congress. The uniqueness of 2008 will be a memory, there won’t be a tail from a campaigning Obama, and centrists who regret straying into Democrat votes will be reduced. The hue against Obama and Democrat excesses and dangers will lead to more exposures.
The only reason that Obama and Congressional Democrats would avoid this dénouement is if one believes there are too few Americans with the intelligence to know up from down. The Democrats are counting on that poor bet.
Wednesday, April 22. 2009
I had lunch yesterday with a friend who runs a fund at Fidelity in Boston. She mentioned how many friends and acquaintances she has who had been - or had felt - wealthy but are now in desperate straits.
They had overpaid for grand houses in Cambridge and Chestnut Hill, and then did million-dollar renovations and extensions. They overpaid and leveraged themselves further by buying weekend houses in Maine, Nantucket, Westport or Marion. They bought expensive cars, and paid $300,000 on interior decorating. Wherever they travelled, they stayed at the Four Seasons unless they were golfing in Ireland or Scotland. They had had the sort of blind optimism that led them to believe that $1.5 million bonuses would continue forever. They saved next to nothing. And these are not stupid people: these are bright folks, Ivy League MBAs who know math - but unwise.
She told me about somebody like that in their late 30s whose family has had to move into her parents' house in Natick, and who has their two homes on the market.
We spoke of the time-honored and traditionally-admired Yankee virtue of not living within your means, but below your means. We spoke about the Yankee virtues of "making do," "going without," and giving to others. We spoke about ostentatiousness and conspicuous consumption. We pontificated about whether getting and spending represented an emotional or spiritual emptiness, or a hollowness in a part of American culture. We reflected on whether the childish "I want..." had replaced more durable and mature motives and life guidelines. We touched on what God wants from us, as we always do when we are together. We remembered the old-time Yankee pride in driving old, beat-up station wagons to the tattered old WASPy yacht club in Marblehead. We remembered the old-time Yankee pride in owing nothing, and the pride and freedom that confers: owning your life.
Then, after an excellent no-carb lunch and with a couple of chardonnays under our belts, we went shopping.
Photo: Simple but charming living quarters from Sipp's snarky piece on homes: I'm going to say somethng rude now.
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The uproar about income inequality continues to baffle me. Why does relative socioeconomic status matter more than absolute socioeconomic status? If the US has the richest poor people in the world, why is the distance between them and the people at the top such a big deal?
FWIW, Gregg Easterbrook, a liberal, argued in The Progress Paradox that if you factor out immigration, the rise in income inequality disappears. He got severely criticized by the left for this analysis IIRC.
Also I don't trust government definitions of "poor." My friends whose two kids qualify for S-CHIP have a 4 (smallish) bedroom house in an expensive part of town, a car, two cell phones, high-speed internet, a nice desktop & two nice laptops, buy mostly organic groceries, spend disposable income on ebay, gardening hobbies, etc. etc. They live on one-and-a-half salaries (he works full-time, she works part-time out of the house). But they're considered to be in need of government services, apparently. So if they're counted in the numbers of "needy" Texans, no wonder the numbers are skewed.