Rob wrote in a recent comment he wishes to learn more about Public Choice Theory. I don't think I'll be able to provide a better example of PCT at work than this:
Via Cafe Hayek, ABCNews reports:
On page 432 of the Reid bill, there is a section increasing federal Medicaid subsidies for “certain states recovering from a major disaster.”
The section spends two pages defining which “states” would qualify, saying, among other things, that it would be states that “during the preceding 7 fiscal years” have been declared a “major disaster area.”
I am told the section applies to exactly one state: Louisiana, the home of moderate Democrat Mary Landrieu, who has been playing hard to get on the health care bill.
In other words, the bill spends two pages describing would could be written with a single word: Louisiana. (This may also help explain why the bill is long.)
Senator Harry Reid, who drafted the bill, cannot pass it without the support of Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu.
How much does it cost? According to the Congressional Budget Office: $100 million.
(Emphasis mine)
In the real world, we would call something like this a bribe. But I guess because Reid is doing it with other people's money, as opposed to his own, it doesn't fit the precise definition of "bribe." Just business as usual in Washington, D.C.
And this racket is what Matt Yglesias thinks will improve health care.
Despicable.
(Kudos to ABCNews for bringing this to light. No doubt there are many other "provisions" like this that need to be identified and brought into public view)
Showing posts with label Matt Yglesias. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Matt Yglesias. Show all posts
Yglesias is the Naive One
Matt Yglesias doesn't agree completely with Dr. Jeffrey Flier's take on the health care bill, which I linked to earlier. Yglesias writes:
Dealing with this will be hard. If the bill Harry Reid unveiled yesterday is signed into law, it will be easier. It will be easier in part because the bill directly tackles the fiscal problem and reduces the deficit. And it will be easier in part because senators and members of congress who are considering additional ideas to improve the situation will have a recent precedent available of legislative success. If the bill is defeated, tackling the problem gets harder. It doesn’t open the door to a broader national conversation in which citizens lose their bias toward the status quo or interest groups lose their desire to fight for the biggest possible slice of pie.
It would be nice if health reform did more to control costs and reform the delivery system than this bill does. But it does something to control costs and it does something to reform the delivery system. And it improves access for millions of people in need. To hold that latter factor hostage to a pie-in-the-sky belief that if the whole thing goes down in flames more radical change will somehow become possible seems to me to exhibit very strange political judgment.
Yglesias calls Flier naive, but I think it is Yglesias who is the naive one. He just assumes that if this bill is passed things will start to get better. But why so much faith in further government intervention, Matt? What evidence do you have that government intervention has done more good than harm since the 1960's? Faith-based conclusions are about as naive as it gets.
Matt also says that it would "exhibit very strange political judgement" if people were to think that the failing of this bill would lead to more radical change. First off, the current bill is not "radical change". This is further socialization of the market. It is not "reform", as every liberal journalist and politician would have you believe.
Radical change would be implementing a more free-market system. I don't think this will happen, at least not for next few years, but stopping this monstrosity would be a start.
Dealing with this will be hard. If the bill Harry Reid unveiled yesterday is signed into law, it will be easier. It will be easier in part because the bill directly tackles the fiscal problem and reduces the deficit. And it will be easier in part because senators and members of congress who are considering additional ideas to improve the situation will have a recent precedent available of legislative success. If the bill is defeated, tackling the problem gets harder. It doesn’t open the door to a broader national conversation in which citizens lose their bias toward the status quo or interest groups lose their desire to fight for the biggest possible slice of pie.
It would be nice if health reform did more to control costs and reform the delivery system than this bill does. But it does something to control costs and it does something to reform the delivery system. And it improves access for millions of people in need. To hold that latter factor hostage to a pie-in-the-sky belief that if the whole thing goes down in flames more radical change will somehow become possible seems to me to exhibit very strange political judgment.
Yglesias calls Flier naive, but I think it is Yglesias who is the naive one. He just assumes that if this bill is passed things will start to get better. But why so much faith in further government intervention, Matt? What evidence do you have that government intervention has done more good than harm since the 1960's? Faith-based conclusions are about as naive as it gets.
Matt also says that it would "exhibit very strange political judgement" if people were to think that the failing of this bill would lead to more radical change. First off, the current bill is not "radical change". This is further socialization of the market. It is not "reform", as every liberal journalist and politician would have you believe.
Radical change would be implementing a more free-market system. I don't think this will happen, at least not for next few years, but stopping this monstrosity would be a start.
Twenty Years Ago The Wall Fell
November 9, 1989 is one of the most important days in modern history. Unfortunately I don't think one out of every ten high school students in the country could tell you why.
Some voices from around the web:
Radley Balko: Today, Berlin celebrates the 20th anniversary of the fall of The Wall. Sadly, much of Europe is already beginning to forget the atrocities wrought by communism. We libertarians regularly make the point that while Nazism is still regularly and justifiably vilified, communism periodically enjoys rebirths of chic. The point can’t be made enough. Not to diminish the horrors of Nazism, but to confront the cultural whitewashing of the horrors of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Il, and the others.
Pete Boettke: Let's remember the sheer joy of that day, and the celebration of life evident in the faces of the young (and old) as the tore down the wall figuratively and literally and reclaimed their basic human freedoms. And let us also remember the intellectual arguments from our discipline of economics and political economy that so thoroughly demonstrated that tyranny fails to deliver the goods, while freedom actually works. Even us cool-headed academics can get passionate about the fact that there is only one economic system that simultaneously delivers individual autonomy, generalized prosperity, and peaceful cooperation among diverse groups. Capitalism is not just ruthlessly efficient, it is civilizing -- must be championed by economists no less than the efficiency properties of a private property order and freedom of exchange. And political capitalism is NOT capitalism, but instead statism that both uses, and is used by, an alliance between business and government to profit some at the expense of others.
Roger Pilon: What does he [President Obama] think? Where does he stand on this fundamental clash of ideas? What meaning is to be drawn from his decision to forgo the commemoration in Berlin today? One can only speculate from what he has said and done, but the record does not inspire.
Matt Yglesias: It’s hard to think of non-cliché things to say on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. But I was interested to learn while in the former East Germany, that in the GDR economic system being a waiter was considered a very desirable job. It was apparently disorienting for some ambitious young East Germans who’d achieved the dream of waiterdom to discover that this is a low-status position in a market economy. The guy I heard about this from at greatest length made the transition okay, however, and now works in PR for Volkswagen.
Tyler Cowen: I first visited Berlin in 1985, while traveling with Randall Kroszner. We drove to West Berlin by car and we were terrified for the few hours we were underway in East Germany. Randy did not drive over the speed limit once. I was hardly a communist sympathizer but still I was unprepared for the day trip to East Berlin. I saw soldiers goose-stepping down one of the main streets. In the stores old ladies yelled and swung their brooms at me. Many buildings still had bullet marks or bomb damage from World War II. In a restaurant we ate a rubber Wiener Schnitzel and shared a table with an East German family; they did not have enough trust in their government to speak a word to us. I was unable to spend my mandatory thirty-mark conversion on anything useful; I carried back some Stendahl and Goethe but didn't want the Lenin. This was in the capital city in the showcase of the communist world.
My biggest impression was simply that I had never seen evil before.
Some voices from around the web:
Radley Balko: Today, Berlin celebrates the 20th anniversary of the fall of The Wall. Sadly, much of Europe is already beginning to forget the atrocities wrought by communism. We libertarians regularly make the point that while Nazism is still regularly and justifiably vilified, communism periodically enjoys rebirths of chic. The point can’t be made enough. Not to diminish the horrors of Nazism, but to confront the cultural whitewashing of the horrors of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Il, and the others.
Pete Boettke: Let's remember the sheer joy of that day, and the celebration of life evident in the faces of the young (and old) as the tore down the wall figuratively and literally and reclaimed their basic human freedoms. And let us also remember the intellectual arguments from our discipline of economics and political economy that so thoroughly demonstrated that tyranny fails to deliver the goods, while freedom actually works. Even us cool-headed academics can get passionate about the fact that there is only one economic system that simultaneously delivers individual autonomy, generalized prosperity, and peaceful cooperation among diverse groups. Capitalism is not just ruthlessly efficient, it is civilizing -- must be championed by economists no less than the efficiency properties of a private property order and freedom of exchange. And political capitalism is NOT capitalism, but instead statism that both uses, and is used by, an alliance between business and government to profit some at the expense of others.
Roger Pilon: What does he [President Obama] think? Where does he stand on this fundamental clash of ideas? What meaning is to be drawn from his decision to forgo the commemoration in Berlin today? One can only speculate from what he has said and done, but the record does not inspire.
Matt Yglesias: It’s hard to think of non-cliché things to say on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. But I was interested to learn while in the former East Germany, that in the GDR economic system being a waiter was considered a very desirable job. It was apparently disorienting for some ambitious young East Germans who’d achieved the dream of waiterdom to discover that this is a low-status position in a market economy. The guy I heard about this from at greatest length made the transition okay, however, and now works in PR for Volkswagen.
Tyler Cowen: I first visited Berlin in 1985, while traveling with Randall Kroszner. We drove to West Berlin by car and we were terrified for the few hours we were underway in East Germany. Randy did not drive over the speed limit once. I was hardly a communist sympathizer but still I was unprepared for the day trip to East Berlin. I saw soldiers goose-stepping down one of the main streets. In the stores old ladies yelled and swung their brooms at me. Many buildings still had bullet marks or bomb damage from World War II. In a restaurant we ate a rubber Wiener Schnitzel and shared a table with an East German family; they did not have enough trust in their government to speak a word to us. I was unable to spend my mandatory thirty-mark conversion on anything useful; I carried back some Stendahl and Goethe but didn't want the Lenin. This was in the capital city in the showcase of the communist world.
My biggest impression was simply that I had never seen evil before.
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