Is there anyone who has or knows of a place I can find the exact details of this Bill? I've gotten so much crossfire from the various journalists, and I just want to look for myself at the plan. Just to know.

Government should "first, do no harm." That would make a good sign for the next Tea Party.

Actually, not all agencies got raises. The Department of Defense was told by the Obama administration to cut back by 10%.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123595811964905929.html

While people may snicker and point to the large amount of money spent on Iraq and Afghanistan, at the very least you got a tangible product: terrorists swarmed on Iraq in waves, and our soldiers put them out of our misery.

The budget cuts are across the board, so first people will begin saving money by:
-maintenance costs (by delaying maintenance items as long as possible, which can ultimately damage equipment)
-delaying weapon systems (allowing China and Russia a chance to catch up and gain superiority)
-drawing down manpower, which will result in loss of vital skill sets

Now, I'm all for keeping the military in check, and there are areas that can use some cuts, but to give billions to the Departments of Agriculture, HUD, and others that fail to give any return on investment, while short changing our sailors and soldiers who work around the clock (I bet you'll never see a HUD official working on the weekend) is ridiculous.

Plus, as required by the Constitution, all military funding is reviewed every 2 years. So, even if a crappy project pops in, there is a constant review process to redetermine whether it is necessary, and cut it if it isn't. I don't see that process in other departments.

The military shouldn't have to hold a bake sale to purchase body armor because some homeless drunk wants more tax payer dollars for alcohol.

Facts straight, please. From Ryan's article:

The White House proposes to spend $533.7 billion on the Pentagon, a 4% increase over 2009. Include spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, which would be another $130 billion (or a total of $664 billion), and overall defense spending would be around 4.2% of GDP, the same as 2007.

Yep, Obama has it in for the military. Hates the vets, too. From Kaus:

Officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs ... said they expect to hire more than 17,000 new employees by the end of the year, many at hospitals and other facilities to fulfill Obama's pledge to expand veterans' access to health care.

Regarding the original Kaus post Amy commented on, I think he makes a good point here:

If that's the goal, it gives us another reason to think that all federal "spending"--even relatively effective, non-"wasteful" spending--is not alike. I happen to believe there will be a huge social equality payoff if the vast majority of Americans are in the same health care system. Any such system that provides good care--a necessity if the affluent are going to buy into it--will be very expensive. But it will be worth it. The equivalent spending on the Commerce Department or Community Development Block Grants or HUD or the Veteran's Administration or farm subsidies--well, not such a big social equality payoff, even though there might be a money equality payoff in Yglesias' chart. Even valued check-mailing programs like Social Security, beyond a certain point, don't do much for social equality. The checks are a good thing. They even reinforce the common value of work. But they don't erase invidious economic differences the way actually sitting around in the same hospital waiting room does.

It's clear that spending is going to happen, and I think that there are real merits to things like universal health care (downsides, too, but I think on balance it's worth it). But I feel like the junk that gets thrown in to satisfy every little interest group's pet projects will have far fewer broad benefits that money spent on a focused few big projects that improve everyone's lives (education, health care, the environment).

Scott, look in thomas,loc,gov. And cheers to you for wanting the source, not somebody's secondhand report!

I can't wait to see the effects of rewarding people for doing things wrong.

One of my disappointments in the stimulus bill was that Obama missed an opportunity for real leadership by placing some goals of his own *before* Congress started working on it. Those goals could have been used to ensure the bill was most stimulative, and also used to point the spending in directions Obama wants to go and help keep it from just being "let's just give everyone a 15% budget increase."

One goal may have been that every item proposed, contain an estimate of the numbers of jobs it would create this year, in two years, five years, and ten years out.

Another goal may have been to produce X% new green, blue, white, but not government collared jobs.

Right now we're told by some the bill is okay because there are estimates it's only 2-10% wasteful, not bad by most government measures. And yet, 2% of 787 Billion is still a whopping big amount of waste.

And we're also told this bill will be too small, and we are going to need another.

the problem with giving HUD $1.5B? It becomes the new baseline. They won't be able to do their job now for less then that.

Audacity? I'll give him that. Take a recession and make it an excuse to fund every pet project the left ever had... Worse? An aweful lot of people seem to be buying it. For now. Untill the breadstore shelves are empty and the bread ladies stand around doing nothing and making worhtless money, because there is no bread to be baught anyway. {June of '83 East Berlin DDR, seen with my own eyes.}

OI? And I can't even buy fingers that work...

"worthless money, because there is no bread to be bought anyway."

I linked to the wrong article. My bad on that one:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/01/30/defense-official-obama-calling-defense-budget-cuts/

10% cut for 2010, not necessarily this year.

To answer Amy's question, Congress places restrictions on what the military can and can't buy. For example, most major military equipment must come from US companies, which in of itself is a good thing. We had issues in WWII when we lost the ability to get silk from Japan (and thus synthetic fibers were born, to make everything from parachutes to submarine optics).

But the problem is often there is little competition for military contracts. Competition is what keeps costs down. Sadly, we have seen competition reduced because of:
- Restrictions Congress places on companies for selling products to foreign governments (including allies)
- No-contest contracts awarded by Congress to favored companies (another version of pork)
- Preferences to companies that may charge more, but are owned by women/minorities/disabled/something other than a white guy.

The biggest issue is the lack of a solid, national view of US interests by most Congressmen and women. President Clinton demonstrated this by axing most submarine production during the 1990's. With no submarines to produce, Electric Boat and Northrup Gruman downsized, losing valuable personnel and the gained knowledge they had.

Then, suddenly we start noticing the effects:
Enemy submarines start popping up within sight of US carriers, retention rates plummet for personnel (they get worked to death on their first tours and quit), etc. So, suddenly, we have to have a new submarine. The initial costs are now higher, because we start from scratch and rebuild our knowledgebase. Thus, the high cost of seemingly simplistic items.

The best way to fix this, in my opinion, is:
- Assign a comptroller to review military specifications. Right now many things have to meet spec's that are often not necessary. Reducing these requirements in areas that aren't mission critical will allow use of commercial products, which are cheaper (thanks to capitalism)
- Allow competition on 95% of military contracts, and cut the pork-barrel crap from the programs
- Clearly spell out National Policy, and restrict most military spending to items that forward our national policy
- Make a better effort to align the State Department and the Department of Defenses goals, so that we go to war less often. This would require treating ambassador appointments as more than political favors, and perhaps giving the State departments personnel more authority to execute money decisions by people at the front end, rather than waiting for Congressmen who aren't there and can't be bothered to read overseas reports

> I think that there are real merits
> to things like universal
> health care

1. Name them.

2. What "things" are "like" universal health care?

Fascinating choice of words, fascinating. "...things like universal health care..."

You have the odor of a man with a rich, detailed and only incompletely-hidden fantasy life of Marxist control of those you regards as your lessers (a distaste you will mask chatter of compassion towards them).

I have mixed feelings about universal health care. I want there to be a way for it to work, for all the promises of universal health care supporters to be true, but no large organization that I can think of has ever been more efficient than many small organizations. Are there any?

Crid,

Can you really think of nothing of merit from universal health care?

Not without knowing how to pay for it. I think a new Ferrari would make my life just about perfect, until I realize what it would take to have one. (I'd have to murder a banker in his sleep and take the keys to the vault from the pocket of his suit.)

In any case, it was the Cheezhead who offered the thought. We should let him explain what he likes about the idea. And how (and who) he wants to cover the expense.

And, most tantalizing of all, what he means by "things like universal health care." Once again, twice in two days, I'm stumped for a metaphor. This is a guy who thinks UHC is just one hue in a rainbow of social projects. That's not just grandiose, it's insane. (Unless there's something I've not understood, which we can be certain he won't fail to report in the clearest imaginable terms...)

I can't wait for someone to get back to me on this. What project of similar scale could sit alongside universal health care?

Putting a man on Mars?

Populating Mars?

Populating Saturn?

Eliminating kitchen accidents?

Merits:
1. Lower % of GDP goes to health care overall.
2. Better health of population as a whole. Helps improve people's productivity.
3. Emergency rooms stop shutting down because they're out of money from treating the uninsured's minor infections and illnesses that could have been much more effectively and cheaply treated previously.
...

The rest of the civilized world does this. Don't act like this is prohibitively expensive. We already spend way more per person than anywhere else on health care. Our system makes it much harder on individual contractors and small businesses that don't get the scaling benefits that large companies do. It's time to do this.

You have the odor of a man with a rich, detailed and only incompletely-hidden fantasy life of Marxist control of those you regards as your lessers (a distaste you will mask chatter of compassion towards them).

Is the odor function a new firefox plug-in?

The sad thing about the DOD cuts is that they won't come out of Senator Foghorn's (INSERT NAME OF YOUR STATE HERE) contractor kickback slush fund.

But let's not get all flag-wavy about it and pretend that making any DOD cuts at all would be catastrophic.

What's catastrophic is that we spend trillions to defend ourselves and we get slaughtered by 19 non-Iraqis with boxcutters.

It's not just the budget that needs to be adjusted.

> Lower % of GDP goes to
> health care overall.

Says who? Does anyone really believe that? Secondly, why do you have to say "overall"? Who will pay more? Will I enjoy better health care, or worse?

> Better health of population
> as a whole.

That's an extremely personal matter, isn't it? Are you not just looking for a way to take control of people's lives?

> Helps improve people's
> productivity.

Aren't we the world's most productive already?

> could have been much more
> effectively and cheaply
> treated previously.

Yes yes yes, we hear this all the time, but I'm just not convinced it's true, and have seen discussion to the contrary. So many expensive things that happen to us are lifestyle choices. Pulling obese but impoverished Americans (and other residents) into the doctor's office six months before the first heart attack and saying "You really oughta lose some weight" isn't likely to help much.

> The rest of the civilized
> world does this.

I don't believe that, either. Who exactly is "the rest of the civilized world"? Do they pay for their own military defense? What's the wait time for a sore knee? Are political and other well-connected types permitted to cut in line?

> Don't act like this is
> prohibitively expensive.

I don't think I'll have to pretend or anything. Between Bush's folly and Obama's insanity, there's just no way it can happen.

But hey, you never answer the other thing: What ELSE do you want to do on the scale?

You've seen in here in earlier days, but let's say it just one more time together:

INSURANCE DOES NOT CREATE WEALTH.

True, all spending is stimulative--and those grantees will in turn be spending the $1.5 billion somewhere.

I don't think that this is always so.

Firstly there is the case of new financing which simply displaces alternate existing sources of financing. For instance, if an agency attributes the stimulus spending to existing salary obligations, but applies the monies originally allocated for this purpose to reserves or to accelerate the service of debt obligations.

Secondly there is the case of spending which incurs ancillary a/o complementary costs equal to, or in excess of, the stimulus spending. On a net basis, this can result in less spending in the domestic economy.

For instance, if spending were applied to port upgrades, but these upgrades required that shipping concerns incur costs to adapt to them. The cumulative costs of these complementary upgrades may exceed the spending applied to the ports. And it's possible that most,or all, of this spending would go to foreign markets.

Then you have the case of spending which is directly applied to enhancing the scale and scope of cost-increasing endeavors. Such as if you increase the budget of regulatory agencies, and they apply these funds to enforcement and auditing. Here the parties that are likely targets of these agencies may sequester funds prior to the disbursement of this new financing in anticipation of its effects. And even if they don't, the financing creates costs at a significant multiple of its value.

This isn't to say that no public financing is stimulative, just that it's not categorically so.

Crid, you probably think that public education is a bad idea.

I don't know what your insurance is like, so I don't know if it would be better or worse. But as Kaus points out, for a system like this to be acceptable politically, it would need to be pretty damn good, otherwise the high income earners won't have it (me included). The rest of the civilized world, is broadly understood to be Western Europe, Canada, Japan, and probably some other places I'm forgetting. All of these places manage health care.

Insurance doesn't create wealth, but it helps people to do it.

Other good investments in our society: providing better college access to qualified students (more grants, cheaper loans), universal pre-K, more money for research, etc. All of these things are investments now that pay dividends in the long run.

> The rest of the civilized world,
> is broadly understood to be
> Western Europe, Canada, Japan,
> and probably some other places
> I'm forgetting.

As it happens, all of the places you remember to mention are dependent on the United States for defense of their borders. Iddin'at sump'um? Providing that protection isn't cheap. Imagine if we had all that money here at home to spend on our health care... Then we could be even more civilized! Which would be just totally faboo!

...As long as the world didn't descend into madness without us. Should we take the risk?

(And watch out for renegade commas, OK? Pet peeve.)

> but it helps people to do it.

Did the Constitution say "Government is here to help?"

Raddy? Anyone?

And just to be clear: If by "It helps people to do it" you mean insurance, then I don't think so. In any case, that's our point of contention, and just restating your position affords no evidence.

Caring for people costs money.

We already spend more on military than the whole rest of the world. If we cut a few billion of the budget, the world won't go to hell. In fact, it would be a great idea for us to quit policing so much of the world anyway. We can fund spectacular health care just by letting the Iraqis have their country back.

In addition to foreign policy sanity, the issues of health care, the environment, education, and etc are the reasons why I voted for Obama. I hope he does what he said he'd do on these things. I think the U.S. will be a better place if we have more of a European style social safety net. Health care is a big part of that. And I'm willing to pay more in taxes for that to happen.

You're wrong. Universal health care would encourage wealth creation by decoupling insurance costs from the size of the company one works for. More people would be free to start small businesses or work as independent contractors because they wouldn't need to rely on their employers to subsidize their health care.

Wicked, dicey, contingent, prayerful speculation.

Pasadena.

> I think the U.S. will be a better
> place if we have more of a
> European style social safety net.

Europe has that net because we protect them! You can't hear this, can you?

Talk like that has always sounded like a father who wants to join his unemployed son in the room over the garage because he too wants to sit on the couch eating pizza and playing video games all day.

Can't happen

Nah, you don't know your history. Europe has that safety net because it's part of the social compact they've been operating under since the 19th century, well before they were a protectorate of the U.S. They're happy to let us spend money to protect them but we simply don't need to spend that much. We spend more money on it than the entire rest of the world combined, and it's still only about 4% of our GDP. If you think we can't afford health care for people, you're nuts. As I said, give Iraq back to its people, spend part of the savings on health care. Done and done.

Pasadena is kinda hot. Games at the Rose bowl are cool though. Not sure why it's teh relevance tho.

"Social compact" is a cute phrase meaning "authoritarian pattern." We don't much go for that over here. Hillary Clinton is not our mommy, and we weren't interested in her plans for our health care. Having a hundred thousand troops in Europe even at this hour is a bargain compared to letting them at each other's throats again, but let no one have any illusions about who's who and what's what. We gave Europe it's first six decades of relative piece in about six centuries. Even if, if if if, we could afford health care for everyone... God, it's too preposterous to finish the sentence. Health care is not conveniently priced, but that doesn't mean things will go better when we give it away.

Pasadena is Hollywood for No Thanks, Babe. Pasadena!

Sorry, "relative peace" etc

Getting late, spring forward, all that.

cheezburg - are you 17 or something?

Socialized medicine does not work anywhere it has been tried, and for the same reason the HMO system in the US is failing - complete opacity of cost.

And Canadians rely on our open system of health care right now, since their system cannot effectively care for people. You are more likely to die of a whole host of treatable maladies in Canada than you are in the US, regardless of your financial situation.

Besides, if you think that we can simply wave a magic wand and give everyone insurance, you're completely ignorant of the laws of economics.

Oh, and if we hadn't been spending all that money protecting Europe during the cold war, then either the USSR would have overrun them (had they not rebuilt their militaries), or we'd have had to go kick Germany's ass again after their inevitable attempt to take all of Europe again.

so... this universal healthcare thing... cheezburg, you really want your healthcare from the IRS? Controlled by the IRS? Why did my friend from Canada go to India to get back surgery? Why does another from the UK get her dental work done at my dentist in the US when she is in town for conventions? Every Utopia has a seedy underside. I have no problem with your interest in UHC, I just don't think you are looking at the whole picture. Docs are getting out of the industry now because of the difficulties in dealing with insurance companies, and they look like pikers in comparison to the government. So what are you going to do when your health problem is deemed unimportant by the Office of UHC? Or you have to wait a year to see a specialist, and by that time the cancer has spread? Same friend that comes to the US for dental? Her mom had aggressive breast cancer... by the time she got to the specialist, they had to do the double mastect, and that wasn't enough... then they wouldn't do the chemo because they didn't think she whould live anyway.

I'm sure there are more than a few who could put you in touch with real people that can tell you real stories about how the walking corpses look so much better with rosy colored glases. Medicade/medicare don't do that well anyway.

It isn't within the purview of the government to take care of me, and even the little things they have tried have never worked as sold.

Oh, and Crid? It'll cost something less than 20B to get us to the moon. Mars will probably be less than 100B all told... and the expansion into tha asteroid belt for mining? Will pay all that back. Plus all that is over a 20+ year period... Space current budget is only 18B a year for the whole agency... it's pretty chaep camparatively.

Not 17. 35. Director of operations for a profitable small business, married, positive net worth. We'll see what happens with insurance and the rest. As I said. We hired Obama to implement universal health care. Ya'll might not like it, but it's part of what he ran on. Hope we win and you lose.

Psst: Brian - Cold war's over. The U.S. needs to make smart decisions about how to do things now that no one single entity can challenge us. It's both less lethal and more complicated.

Final thought: I'm not someone who thinks this makes everything perfect. I think it's a net plus, which is all one can hope for in government.

SwissArmyD,

Hadn't heard of expected gains from mining asteroids. Cool concept; hope it happens.

"Crid, you probably think that public education is a bad idea."

I don't know about Crid, but *I* think it's a bad idea. The "public" part is the reason it costs an average of $11,000 per year per kid for grades K-12 of school, and a lot of them still can't read. Only with government do you get so little for so much money. We don't have government-run grocery stores, yet somehow everyone gets enough to eat.

well cheezburg, I didn't hire anyone to give me universal healthcare, and I know a lot of Dems who voted for him that would be surprised you think he has a mandate for that. Most taxpayers in the US are agin' it. Or don't they count if they are footing the bill?

"now that no one single entity can challenge us."

um, because China has disarmed? Because everyone with nukes suddenly had a change of heart? Because there isn't anyone in Russia that remembers it, or was part of the cold war? So our friend Putin hasn't spent his adult life as KGB? Things have become astonishingly more complicated, not less, The previous threats are mostly still there [in a more decrepit and desperate form], PLUS that additional threats of untied to country terror...

We don't have government-run grocery stores, yet somehow everyone gets enough to eat.

This is dumb. There's a clear short-term profit interest in food. Education is more complicated - the yields come years down the road and are the product of much more complicated math.

Were you only educated on private money exclusively? Not if you went to public school, or parochial school, or any of the other major educational systems in the U.S. because they all either get public money or big tax breaks. Personally, I did time in public schools and Catholic schools. Got into Ivies, got degrees (BA, MS, Ph.D) from top quality state universities and got good jobs because of it. And my experience isn't unique. That story is a big reason why the U.S. has been the tech and science innovation center of the world for years.

Now, if you worship at Ayn's alter, you probably think all of that is incidental.

Personally, I think the question is how to make the public system be as innovative and effective as possible. Because we need the next generation to be sharper than us.

Most taxpayers in the US are agin' it. Or don't they count if they are footing the bill?

Despite the folksy touch (who says "agin"?. Sounds like faux U.S. Southern, not Swiss, but whatever), you need to cite a source when you make these claims. My understanding is that people in the U.S. support universal healthcare. Obama certainly made it clear he was for universal coverage of some sort when he was running. If you voted for him, you voted for that. If you didn't vote for him, you voted for the guy who lost. I'm sorry you're disappointed, but as we all know, elections have consequences.

"I think the question is how to make the public system be as innovative and effective as possible."

That's a complete oxymoron - again, because of the "public" part.

Generally, we expect people to pay for feeding their own kids and think that if people can't afford to feed their kids, they shouldn't be having kids in the first place. However, since it happens anyway and isn't the fault of the kids, we have a program called Food Stamps that ensures everyone gets enough to eat. The government doesn't run the grocery stores.

I simply feel the same way about education.

"Because we need the next generation to be sharper than us."

That is already a lost cause. Sorry.

well, yeah that's my family, kinda folksy, since the ranch side of the family uses such words, and has since I was "kneehigh to a grasshopper"... even the PhD's in the family tend to be on the colorful side of language usage.

for being agin' it, I was surely using hyperbole to draw the conclusion from the number of people who don't support stimulus plan: rasmussen...

I don't have polls for what real numbers are of people who actually pay taxes [the top 50%, paying 96.5% of all income taxes] Because I doubt anyone has polled them, since they are the silent majority... but they are also those who are more likely to have health insurance to begin with...

If you look at countries with single payer systems like Japan an Taiwan, you can see this is going to lead bad places, even Europe is putting more market oriented approaches, because that is the only way they can afford it. AND YET, the waiting lists for getting to see a doc, and the rationing required to have the system, have those escaped your view?

oh, yeah, swiss is for swiss army knife, I'm more Norwegian/Swedish/English... no Swiss that I am aware of...

> "I think the question is how to
> make the public system be as
> innovative as possible...

Why? If public systems are so fabulous, why do they need to innovate? If innovation is what you're after, why don't you just take it where you find it (most reliably, the private sector)?

Because you're not into innovation, or education or even caring for people. What you're into is centralized control. As a (proudly) well-educated little spud —"Ivies, got degrees (BA, MS, Ph.D)"— you're confident that you'll be the teacher's pet again someday if only the world can be transformed into the schoolrooms you remember so fondly.

--

Hey guys! More tidings of great health care "in the civilized world"!

Well, cheezburg, you're certainly naive for a 35 year old.

We hired Obama to implement universal health care. Ya'll might not like it, but it's part of what he ran on. Hope we win and you lose.

Speak for yourself, I didn't vote for the moron. If he wins, America is dead.

Psst: Brian - Cold war's over. The U.S. needs to make smart decisions about how to do things now that no one single entity can challenge us. It's both less lethal and more complicated.

Chinese ships challenge us daily, Iran is threatening the entire middle east and a goodly chunk of Europe, Russia is getting belligerent, North Korea remains a threat. If anything, it's more lethal than ever, as we were never in any danger of a REAL shooting war with the USSR.

Final thought: I'm not someone who thinks this makes everything perfect. I think it's a net plus, which is all one can hope for in government.

Then you're an idiot. There is nothing that Government does in the social sphere that ends up being a "net plus". If the government takes over healthcare, don't expect to get any. You're 60 and you get cancer? Here - go die. You break your leg on a motorcycle? Sorry, that wasn't an approved lifestyle choice. Live with a deformed leg.

If you hope for anything positive from government, you are as naive as an infant child.

Unlike you, I KNOW that the government exists solely to fuck me in the ass.

Wow, where this thread went....

Crid you write, "INSURANCE DOES NOT CREATE WEALTH".

Huh? That's exactly what the "paper" wealth that you claim is being destroyed right now was based on. Selling insurance and having insurance.

Amy, if you're still here, a good article on Obamanomics in the WSJ from the Dean of my MBA program: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123655553728965955.html

Unlike you, I KNOW that the government exists solely to fuck me in the ass.

I hope your paranoia is justified, because if so, well that's good news for the rest of us.

> Huh? That's exactly what the
> "paper" wealth that you claim
> is being destroyed right now
> was based on.

Jerry, if you're an MBA, you oughta be able to put it in an English sentence. What is "based on the 'paper' wealth", and when did I say anything is being destroyed?

Do you seriously, seriously believe that insurance creates wealth? (Maybe not... Your meaning isn't clear.)

> if so, well that's good

Props for crackling towel-snap.

Well, not JUST me. That was kinda the "royal we" put into the first person.

Government does not exist to benefit the governed. It is a parasite. Government will fuck everyone in the ass given the opportunity.

Which is why the founders wanted it to be relatively powerless. Smaller dick, less painful ass-fucking.

And the MBA is the single worst educational invention ever. MBAs are to blame for the destruction of the American manufacturer. When engineers ran companies, they made stuff. Now they farm it out and fail to support it. Why? Because some fucking MBA found a cost savings of a trillionth of a cent somewhere and decided that quality and customer loyalty were secondary concerns to the illusion of fiscal efficiency.

First, I'm an engineer. Went to get an MBA a decade ago to figure out what happened in the other parts of a company and how that was destroying our fine work... That was actually interesting and useful. But I am an engineer then and now.

Second, oh, sorry to hear that the government is out to fuck us all. I had sort of suspected that was what was happening.

Crid,

"Jerry, if you're an MBA, you oughta be able to put it in an English sentence. What is "based on the 'paper' wealth", and when did I say anything is being destroyed?

Do you seriously, seriously believe that insurance creates wealth? (Maybe not... Your meaning isn't clear.)"

Crid, maybe I just dreamed it in an alcoholic cloud, but didn't we have a discussion in another thread about all the wealth being destroyed, where I said it was wealth only on paper.... That's what derivatives and hedge funds and CDOs and AIG were all about. Taking risky investments, getting/making insurance for them, and claiming they were now sure things and worth gazillions.

> I said it was wealth only
> on paper....

Those papers hold expressions of belief. They describe what people think can and perhaps will be done with some asset. Buffett doesn't have file cabinets full of magical sparkling puppy love, he's got a bunch of paper. And that paper means that if he borrows $5 to pay for his lunch, you can trust him to pay you back tomorrow.

The wealth's destroyed when people lose faith in earlier beliefs about assets. It doesn't even much matter whether those people were, in some emotionally gratifying definition, wrong. To say that the Dutch investors were wrong is more about a naive schoolboy taunting "losers" than about the dispensation of wealth. On the day before the crash, it was nice to have a thick garden of Tulips.

Insurance doesn't create wealth. It doesn't take something that used to be worth x and transform it into something that's worth x+1. (...Unless you're the insurance agent, but presumably he's not the guy whose well-being we're concerned with.)

Insurance merely aggregates wealth. It takes a bunch of dollars from a bunch of pockets and gathers them in one place. But they're not worth any more than they were before you took them, and the people would be exactly as pleased to have them returned as they were disheartened to part with them. They're not worth any more, they're just set aside to cover a pooled risk.

Insurance doesn't create wealth. Insurance doesn't create wealth. Insurance doesn't create wealth. It won't make the care for the little people any less expensive. But it will in all likelihood sharply diminish the care received by the middle class, and encourage the wealthy to further remove their assets from the world of public finance.

I hear what you're saying about the derivatives... Very clever guys got into the

Aw hell, let's just look at some favorite links. Speaking of x+1, here's a little trinket from before the crash, and this piece from a few months ago describes the broader comeuppance.

I think this crash happened because a lot of forces including Wall Street, Main street, Capital Hill, hungry Chinese and avaricious Sheiks were pushing too hard. It's not because a few clowns in an insurance company were playing with a book of matches.

(See next comment)

Hearing this guy on the radio was what clued me into the problem. He said the financial services had become the biggest sector of the economy. Like simple insurers, financial services don't actually create value... At least, not enough value to sustain lives of American comfort.

Former boss of mine once said that manufacturing was the only human endeavor that CREATED value.

He's right.

Intel takes silicon, boron, phosphorus and a handful of other chemicals that are worth a few pennies and turns them into a CPU that's worth $100. And they do so without expending anywhere near $100 worth of effort doing so.

Wealth has been created.

Financial services guys take your money, and loan it to Intel. When Intel makes more money, they can then sell that loan you made to someone else for more than you originally gave them, and you suddenly have more money. But wealth wasn't created by the financial services guy, he was merely the facilitator of the loan between you and Intel, and he skimmed a little off the top for himself while he was at it.

Insurance guys take your money and give it to Financial services guys in the hopes that they will find enough people to do this whole loan trade thing (you call it equities) such that they can make more money off of the investing than they ultimately have to pay in claims. Wealth isn't created there either.

Then there's guys like Madoff who take money from you, and from Insurance guys and convert it not into equities and capital gains, but hookers, Ferraris and high-grade cocaine.

In that case, wealth is certainly not created. It's just transferred to one man who spreads it around a bit.

Well... Arbitrage is not a completely useless activity. There really are a few blessed people out there who can find value in financial instruments that other people can't see. When they're the only ones who can find that value, you might as well say they created it. There are so few people like that, and their (legal) gleanings are so slight, that you don't lose any righteousness by acknowledging their gift.

Madoff's example comes to mind as well. He was, for all his corruption, a tremendously bright guy. And any of the deeper articles about him will explain that there are other tremendously bright guys in Manhattan... Not very many, but several of them. They knew everything he knew, and they knew he wasn't playing by the rules, even if they didn't know (or care) enough to call his bluff publicly.

The problem is that when the financial services is the largest sector of your economy, it's a safe bet that most of those people are (as you describe) skimming off trace amounts of money rather than finding new value in its management. And Americans of all kinds like to be well paid, and it's safe to assume most of those people weren't earning their high American wages through that service to you. (If you have Realplayer software and you don't want to read the book, listen to Kevin Phillips Investigates the Cause of Our Bad Money.)

It's easy to admire miners and farmers and rough-palmed "-smiths" of all sorts, and Phillips stresses the importance of craftsmanship and industry. But we're modern men and women, and much of the work we can do for each other is intellectual (but not necessarily financial). Just for example, there's a lot of value in software. And no matter what anyone tells you, Bill Gates doesn't sell it by the pound... He's just so good at it that it seems like he does.

We can't return to the 19th, 18th, or 14th century. As we talk about what went wrong, we can't let ourselves imagine the future as a simplistic age of sweaty, strong-backed men whose women bring glasses of organic lemonade in the middle of the afternoon. There are evil forces in Islam (and the Gore Left) who will use the appeal of that imagery to control us.

Then you're an idiot.

Name calling is the most effective form of argumentation; I believe the Romans or Greeks considered it the ideal form of persuasion. I concede!

Well how else am I supposed to indicate to you that you are basing your entire belief system on something that just ain't so?

You believe that government can do good. All evidence points to the opposite being true.

Which means that you are either of sub-par intellect, or your sanity is not up to scratch.

Either way, it doesn't say good things about you.

As a (proudly) well-educated little spud —"Ivies, got degrees (BA, MS, Ph.D)"— you're confident that you'll be the teacher's pet again someday if only the world can be transformed into the schoolrooms you remember so fondly.

I'm proud of my education. I worked my ass off for a long time to get it, and it has helped open doors for me to build a good life so far. Mock away if it improves things for you.

Despite the problems with elementary and secondary education, our university system is the one that people from across the world aspire to send their children to. It produces the basic science that our industries rely on; Ph.D. math projects turn into companies that transform entire industries; researchers at these institutions find cures for diseases. Yeah, it's terrible the way they do this. Clearly a waste of tax dollars!

You believe that government can do good. All evidence points to the opposite being true.

You were just talking about needing the military to defend us. Is that safety not a good provided by the government? How about the roads you drive on? Might be kinda bumpy but they're a damn site better than most of the world. Where'd those come from?

What did the Romans or Greeks think of arguments like this:

> you probably think that public
> education is a bad idea.

?

We like to sit out here on the porch and spit tobacco, at least until the lady of the house comes out to chase us away. As noted the other day, she almost never does.

Aw Shit Cheezy, you made it seem like you were leaving!

Allright, where's my Skoal?

Pressed send too quickly:

If you think those thing are good things, then you too think government can do good. After that it's just a matter of degree - what should government do and not do.

What did the Romans or Greeks think of arguments like this:

> you probably think that public
> education is a bad idea.

I dunno, it's early here, haven't had coffee yet - you thought I left because I went to bed. But it can be clarifying to exaggerate someone's position in a debate - push their logic a bit and see how they respond. I'm doing that to brian too, just above.

> I'm proud of my education. I
> worked my ass off for a long
> time to get it

As noted in the link, scholars often think their own toil is more rigorous than that of other people. Other people universally disagree, even as they grant you some of the unearned deference typical of our age. In this forum especially, you get no brownie points.

> Mock away if it
> improves things

You've made it very easy.

> our university system is the
> one that people from across
> the world aspire to

I grew up on a campus, in student housing as culturally diverse as the United Nations. I learned to read (in the buildings across the road at the top of the image) with the children of the professors who taught those aspirants. It was the proctologist's view of academe: I saw plenty of waste, indeed, and know schoolboy shit when I smell it.

Long on snark, short on substance!

Well, doggone it, I'm just so glad you're here! With every comment you make, there'll time for both.

Cheezburg -

The military is really the only thing they do well. And Clinton tried to fuck that up.

Other than that, you've got nothing.

Private schools produce better output than public schools in every measure. Most roads are built and maintained by private companies under contract to the government (at least here). The roads that are built and maintained by the government tend to be the worst roads going.

The government does not do good. They do mediocre at best.

And whenever the government attempts something grand and complex, they fuck it up beyond recognition. The only exception to this is the space race that landed us on the moon - but that was driven more by military concerns anyhow, so success there is less surprising.

In closing, sure - government is better than nothing. But there are so many alternatives to government that are not only superior, but easily within our grasp that it is just not possible to believe that we ought look to government first.

Private schools produce better output than public schools in every measure.

Grand, unsupported assertions will get you into trouble in debates. Let's take a look at a few measures and see if you're correct.

Look at all the state schools listed as best values here:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/best-value-colleges.htm

Oh, but certainly no public high schools are among the best in the country, right?

http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/high-schools/2008/12/04/best-high-schools-gold-medal-list.html

Assertion fail.

If you were to have said, the very best institutions tend to be privately run, you'd be correct. But these schools are usually both expensive and small. They're not up to the task of generating a large body of reasonably well-educated people. Public schools did what private schools couldn't: create a system where anyone with the chops and willingness to study can become reasonably well-educated.

"Other good investments in our society: providing better college access to qualified students (more grants, cheaper loans), universal pre-K, more money for research, etc. All of these things are investments now that pay dividends in the long run."

WHy, exactly, do we want any of these? A qualified student will get into college and have the money to pay. There are very few universities who say tough luck if you can't pay. Even Ivy Leagues will get you the money if you're smart enough to go.

Universal Prek? Why? There are a few advantages for kids who had GOOD preK and kids who had none in kindergarten, but by 3rd grade they are all gone. All of them. Why should we spend hundreds of billions to make something that has NO lasting effect whatsoever? Just to lower childcare costs a bit for parents? I don't think that's the taxpayers' job.

Public schools did what private schools couldn't: create a system where anyone with the chops and willingness to study can become reasonably well-educated.

Grand, unsupported assertions will get you into trouble in debates. Let's take a look at this article and see if you're correct:

U.S. Teens Trail Peers [washington post]

Assertion fail.

Aggregate results matter, not isolated instances. The number of public schools that suck far outnumber those that are excellent.

There are very very few things the government can do better than the private sector. And there are also very few things that only the government can do. It should limit itself to those things.

Read carefully. I wrote "anyone with the chops and willingness to study can become reasonably well-educated."

This is a true statement. Not everyone succeeds, but anyone who is reasonably bright and willing to work can do so.

There are very very few things the government can do better than the private sector.

In general, this is true. We just differ on where that line should be drawn.

WHy, exactly, do we want any of these?

You're a little late to the discussion. But we want these things - or I and people who think like me do - because we consider them to be good investments in the future of our society that will pay significant dividends in the long run.

Cheezburg -

You want "these things" (meaning government health care) because you consider it a good investment.

The burden of proof rests with you. Show me anywhere in the world where the socialized medicine system is more effective in treating people than the system we have in the US now.

The provision in the spendulus to create an office of medical effectiveness has as its goal one thing - finding a way to convince Americans that it is noble to die young and therefore not be a burden to the medical system.

I challenge you to find a way to explain "duty to die" to me in a way I can ever find acceptable. Because that's where all socialized medicine systems MUST ultimately end up.

Universal health care would encourage wealth creation by decoupling insurance costs from the size of the company one works for.

Decoupling insurance costs from employers is a great idea, but coupling them to an equally-distant government doesn't help. A better idea is to move the costs as close to the consumer as possible so that each person can comparison shop.

To minimize medical costs, have everybody pay cash for medical care. That's obviously not realistic or desirable, but moving in that direction will improve things across the board.

The military is really the only thing they [the government] do well.

I am skeptical of this assertion. Yes, the US military is arguably the most effective on the planet, and "least bad" is sufficient to achieve our military goals, but the military has just as much inefficiency and waste as any other massive bureaucracy. The stereotype of the quartermaster who refuses to issue needed supplies in order to avoid running out was not invented out of whole cloth. The word "snafu" comes from the military.

I'm very pro-military, but they're not superhuman.

I challenge you to find a way to explain "duty to die" to me in a way I can ever find acceptable. Because that's where all socialized medicine systems MUST ultimately end up.

What bothers me is that I can't see any non-post-scarcity medical system that doesn't have "duty to die". In a cash-only system, people who run out of money don't get care. In a hybrid cash-insurance system like the one we have, it takes longer before running out of money. In a socialized medicine system everybody runs out of money together. Not a good outcome.

Show me anywhere in the world where the socialized medicine system is more effective in treating people than the system we have in the US now.

According to the WHO's list we're #37, behind a host of socialized systems:
http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html

And yet we spend a bigger % of GDP than almost any other nation:
http://www.photius.com/rankings/total_health_expenditure_as_pecent_of_gdp_2000_to_2005.html

Sounds like we've got some room to improve. And it's a clear a majority of the U.S. population favors universal health care:

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/03/opinion_health_care.html

The provision in the spendulus to create an office of medical effectiveness has as its goal one thing - finding a way to convince Americans that it is noble to die young and therefore not be a burden to the medical system.

Not sure what a spendulus is, but I can't agree more with the rest of your statement. Yes, if only we could convince people to die younger, sacrifice themselves for the greater good!

When I read comments like this, I think, does he really believe this, or is he just being provocative. I really can't tell.

Cheezburg -

Using WHO studies that look at things like "infant mortality" is useless because the definition of "born alive" differs among nations.

In the United States, the five-year cancer survival rates exceed all other nations. Period.

That Americans favor universal health care does not indicate that it is a good idea, or that they have a clue. The majority of Americans were against separating from Britain and against entering World War II. Consensus does not imply correctness.

"Spendulus" is a derogatory term for the stimulus bill that passed with only three Republican votes in the Senate and none in the House. That you did not know this term tells me that you are living in a self-imposed vacuum, as the term was used everywhere, including the major news outlets.

If you'd been around for the last talk we had about that very issue, you would have seen the links to the story that detailed the creation of just such an office whose job it is to review treatment options, and find ways to get doctors to stop doing things to save old people's lives.

Which has a side benefit of not having to pay them Social Security as well, so y'know, bonus!

Ceding power to government results in death everywhere it has ever happened. That you are either arrogant, naive, or stupid enough to think that Obama can magically get it right after 50,000 years of human history indicate nobody can proves that you really believe this, or are just trolling. I really can't tell.

Since you can't tell about me, let me tell you this - I really believe that socialized medicine kills, that nationalization destroys the generation of capital and disincentivizes the creation of new ideas, and that government is typically the worst possible way to accomplish something.

I am an anarcho-capitalist. Beyond enforcing basic rules of transparency and equity, the government ought to fuck off.

According to the WHO's list we're #37, behind a host of socialized systems:

The WHO's ranking gives points for being socialized, and so is not useful for comparing socialized vs non-socialized health care systems.

Someone look it up: How many nations on the list handle their own defense?

Brian, thanks for the clarification of where you are coming from. I did a search for spendulus, and the places where it came up were Fox news (don't watch any television news), Michelle Malkin (don't read crazy people), and a variety of more marginal sources of news. The conservative/libertarian people I read didn't show up, nor did other mainstream outlets.

I really believe that socialized medicine kills

Then why is it that the life expectancy of the U.S. trails so many countries with socialized medicine? Or is that stat distorted, too?

Someone look it up: How many nations on the list handle their own defense?

Maybe it's time they did more of it! It would be wise of us to scale back our military adventurism in places like Iraq and invest more money at home anyway.

Well, I guess you consider Instapundit to be a crazy person too. And CNBC. And the Wall Street Journal.

And the reason that countries with socialized medicine have higher life expectancies is because they are cooking the books.

You don't understand the statistics, and you can't be bothered to look at the source data.

First, anyone that pops out of a uterus and draws a breath is counted as born alive in the US. This is not true in some other countries.

Also counted in that statistic are those who die prematurely from accidents and crime. Lots of inner-city kids dying at 16 will tend to drive your average down. And the number of people dying doing stupid shit in this country is vastly higher than in the UK.

If American medicine is so damned awful, and our life expectancies so short, can you explain why just about every one of my grandparents and their siblings have lived past eighty, and several are still going strong?

If you are going to continue to accept propaganda as fact, then we have nothing further to discuss. I've looked at the raw numbers. I know bullshit when I see it.

> It would be wise of us to scale
> back our military adventurism in
> places like Iraq and invest more
> money at home anyway.

It would be cute if you meant that, but of course you don't. I'd be very surprised if you wanted less American wealth sustaining nations overseas.

It's a tick with you: "things like"; "places like".

But belittling six decades of American defense of both the nations we defeated and and the ones we liberated in Europe as "military adventurism" is beyond cynical; it's flatly infantile. Again, we've given them their first two generations of peace in half a millennium. If we'd done it to conquer, their lives would be much, much different than they are.

And yet, howsoever backhandedly, you've conceded that the American taxpayer is already paying for "universal" health care, just not his own.

Baby steps for the rest of us, but a big day for you. Try to get some rest!

If American medicine is so damned awful, and our life expectancies so short, can you explain why just about every one of my grandparents and their siblings have lived past eighty, and several are still going strong?

Didn't say it was so damned awful, just that it could be improved and made more affordable. And if you understand anything about statistics, you'd know better than to generalize from such a small and highly correlated sample as your own family.

But belittling six decades of American defense of both the nations we defeated and and the ones we liberated in Europe as "military adventurism" is beyond cynical

I'm belittling Iraq as adventurism. I'm not belittling post-WWII reconstruction of Europe or the past need to defend Europe during the cold war. But Europe is no longer under no significant military threat at present. We can allocate our resources elsewhere.

I've also conceded nothing. But since you pretend that there is a zero-sum situation where military expenses are the one reason we can't fund universal health care, I've played along and explained how military expenses can be cut substantially.

Brian, I looked and unless the Googles are failing, nothing with spendulus and either the CNBC website or the WSJ's website comes up when I search for spendulus+Wall+Street+Journal or +CNBC. So, not sure if they actually used that term. I read Reynolds a bit a while ago, but I don't find his style of two sentences of snark and a link very engaging; his dogged support (as a purported libertarian!) of GWB also made him interesting. I do read TAC with some frequency; I like John Derbyshire a lot; the guys are Reason are worth reading frequently; Megan McArdle at the Atlantic is good, too. But most of the popular "conservative" media these days seem, well, kinda dumbed down and not very thought-provoking (e.g., LGF, K-Lo & Jonah and most of NRO, etc.). The conservative side needs better nerds, IMO.

"also made him interesting" -> "also made him uninteresting"

So you're admitting that you're a BDS-infected moron who can't think for himself, and instead just regurgitates talking points from MoveOn.org.

Thanks for clearing that up. I'm done with you now.

"Then why is it that the life expectancy of the U.S. trails so many countries with socialized medicine? Or is that stat distorted, too?"

Well, we are fat-asses who like to do our best to off ourselves with bad habits. Can't blame medicine for the extremely large #'s of obese heart disease and diabetes patients. That they live at all is quite a testament, actually. I'd rather have medical care as-is here than care anywhere else. We are simply the best at it.

Many countries don't consider an infant alive until it survives 24 hours or more, up to a week. If we didn't count all immediate post-natal deaths as deaths, our rate would be lower too.

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/dyb/dyb2002/NotesTab16.pdf

So you're admitting that you're a BDS-infected moron who can't think for himself, and instead just regurgitates talking points from MoveOn.org.

One can think Bush was a terrible president without being infected by the dreaded "BDS".

I'm not a moveonorg type; I doubt they appreciate Bacevitch and Derb and Larison and other smart conservatives. I think there are very useful aspects of conservative thought, just not among the juvenile name-calling right-wing chatterers you seem to enjoy. The bloggers whom I most agree with on substance are Mickey Kaus and the people at the New Republic. Neither of which are bastions of orthodox leftist thinking.

But continue on in your little cocoon lumping everyone who opposes the stuff you think into a tiny little leftist box. That sort of thinking wins every time!

Kaus and TNR aren't exactly bastions of conservative thought.

In fact, prior to the devolution of American liberal thought into the seething pit of revenge that is represented by MoveOn and Kos, TNR was pretty much the standard-bearer for progressivism.

Which means that not only do you know nothing about conservatism, you know nothing about yourself.

Which makes you a troll or a moby.