At least attempt to read the thread before flouting your ignorance.
Venezuela is not one of the ten countries I listed as successfully delivering public services.
Nor is that the equivalent of socialism. Except in the sheltered minds of morons incapable of adressing an argument with anything more than memes of their equally imbecilic president.
Vintage. Cursive italic. Iron gall.
azkid (June 20th, 2019)
Touched the last nerve, I see.
calamus (June 20th, 2019)
One example: the latest last tax cuts benefitted large corporations and the rich directly and the lower and middle class much less if at all. Those tax cuts were intended to "trickle down" but many large corps simply did stock buybacks with the extra money.
Lowering top tier taxes had been going on since Reagan. Horse and sparrow economics hasn't really done much for the little guy.
Going back to the financial crisis a few years ago, the greed of a few bankrupted many individuals (and companies), and many people are still only just recovering. Who got the bailout? Not individuals but large companies. On top of the financial damage inflicted by companies our tax dollars went to bail out those same greedy companies.
Unfortunately, wages have been pretty stagnant for awhile while housing costs seem to keep growing. Healthcare costs keep growing as well. And education costs. All putting more and more pressure on the middle and lower classes. Sure unemployment numbers look great but nobody mentions how many jobs people have to work just to get by.
Somehow it is totally acceptable for a family to end up destitute and homeless from getting sick one time, because they can't afford healthcare or insurance, while it is also perfectly fine to bail out or subsidize big companies.
A few things are mingled together here. First, which is what I agree with, is an aversion to "corporate welfare". Doesn't matter to me whether it's subsidies to large corporate farms or automaker bailouts.
Second is tax cuts to corporations. I tend to agree with lower tax rates in general. Lower corporate tax rates appear to me to increase investment, which leads to job growth. Kennedy, Reagan and Trump in particular have advocated and implemented this, and the results seem consistent. Job growth leads to a higher demand and lower supply, which increases wages. I believe this is reasonably demonstrable. You just have to pick the right field, and most of the liberal arts degrees don't work out.
Education and healthcare costs are affected greatly by administrative burden / costs, most of which are mandated by the State. I'll post links later when I have a little more time. Healthcare costs in particular are interesting, and there's a reasonable argument that the problem is that we don't directly see the costs since a great portion of them are "hidden" by insurance. There is a lot of writing on this subject, what the costs used to be, and how businesses began offering healthcare as a tax-free method of offering "higher wages" to employees. There have been startups of doctors offering subscription based fixed fee healthcare, which is in line with how healthcare used to be delivered. It seems to be a viable, successful alternative.
Housing is a tricky topic given the variety of markets and their demand. A 1920's craftsman "fixer-upper" is worth 60-80k in the midwest, and $150k or so when renovated. This same type construction is worth over a million in a California market. Housing regulations and restrictions which are largely governed locally tend to be a major influence. San Francisco is a prime example of how government can screw up a housing market.
calamus (June 20th, 2019)
The U.S. never really left the gold standard...
carlos.q (June 30th, 2019)
I live in a failed state. Our island is bankrupt as a result of a toxic combination of generous tax breaks for the rich, including pharmaceutical companies, and many corrupt politicians. Meanwhile there is a constantly diminishing quality of life for the rest of us.
Back on topic, the Hoover Institution has a pretty good article on drug pricing, development and production costs, etc...
From the article:
The basic flaw behind both proposals is that they assume that there is a unique “price” at which pharmaceutical drugs sell. That assumption often works in competitive markets in which the costs of development are low relative to the marginal (i.e. additional) cost of production for each unit. But so-called marginal cost pricing does not work for new pharmaceutical drugs whose development costs are already high and getting ever higher. Companies are constantly researching and trying to develop new drugs with strong therapeutic properties and tolerable side effects. They also face huge costs in shepherding promising drugs through three stages of clinical trials, each one more complicated than the last. Many promising new drugs wash out in these clinical trials, which means that a pharmaceutical company can remain solvent only if its blockbuster drugs yield enough revenue to offset the costs of its duds. And finally, companies incur huge financing costs as they bring drugs to market. Development and clinical trials take years to complete, and drug companies have to find ways to finance expenditures made in year one with revenues that will only start, typically, some eight to 10 years later.
So how are these costs best recovered over the relatively short period during which the drugs receive patent protection, which today works out to around 11 years, give or take, for a major blockbuster drug? The common suggestion is that each purchaser should only be required to pay for the marginal cost of producing the drug that he or she consumes. This was the idea behind Trump’s aborted executive order. In a market that is characterized by high fixed costs of development, that strategy offers favorable prospects for all customers but one—the first. So if a drug takes one billion dollars to research and develop, but only $10 to produce each unit, the marginal cost formula says that the first consumer has to pay the billion dollars so that the other consumers can get the favorable deal. That formula guarantees that no drug will ever make it to market.
It's difficult to formulate mitigation strategies without introducing deleterious side-effects. And yet, I think minor tweaks with incentives and regulations is by far the safer route, trying to attenuate the extreme cases of abuse.
I don't think it's reasonable to compare potential state ownership of pharmaceutical production with any service that the government provides, whether they arguably perform that service well or not. Production of goods and providing services are different thigns. We can point to cases where government has achieved great things that were not fundamentally services, e.g. going to the moon, but off the top of my head I can't think of any that didn't involve exorbitant, often nearly prohibitive costs. If the goal is to save somebody money, I would think long and hard about having the state control it. Is there some model of state production of any goods (not services) that has been a fiscal success?
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Mike
SIR (July 16th, 2019)
What i find more than slightly incongruous about the USA perspective is how willing, in the main, the average US citizen is to finance the state security apparatus i.e. military and police, whilst still finding state funded healthcare such a contentious proposition; but the funny thing is, folks who own guns are more likely to have more than a modicum of first aid knowledge than those who don't - tells us something about freedom, what?
azkid (August 20th, 2019)
In reading the post at the link I didn't see any mention of health care: did I just miss it? It reads to me as claiming hypocrisy in advocating gun control [disarming civilians] while leaving police in possession of guns.
I didn't read through the comments, but surely you wouldn't cite a comment as expressing the perspective of the "average US citizen" much less that it reflects the views of Americans "in the main."
I don't know what the average US citizen would be willing to finance or not if you gave them an actual choice. Be that as it may, I don't see a useful comparison there. A substantial percentage of voters enjoy better healthcare coverage through their employers than the US government will ever provide. There are drawbacks to linking coverage to employers, of course, but every election there's a right-here-right-now issue of whether you're willing to cast a vote that will change your situation for the worse. As for the military, it's not like people don't argue for spending less on it, but for the most part its an established thing that isn't a separate consideration. The government requires its taxes. Where the money actually goes, the average citizen knows not.
Police are funded primarily at the local and state level. There is often a lot of hand-wringing over proposals to raise taxes so that police and fire personnel can get raises and/or better equipment or facilities.
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Mike
Do you think that the government would refrain from doing the same thing? A better solution would be to have the government produce all out-of-patent medicines at a fixed price, but to also allow private competition. A better solution still might be to allow the importation of medicines from overseas. That would provide the competition necessary to moderate prices.
SIR (August 30th, 2019)
After the disaster of Obamacare, the chance of getting state funded healthcare is near zero. Healthcare in the US is expensive due in large part to the healthcare system administrators, who receive stupendous compensation. Those same healthcare plans also donate to political campaigns, making government representatives reluctant to get rid of them.
For example, Senator Kamala Harris, a very leftist presidential candidate, recently proposed a public healthcare plan for all that will not get rid of private insurance. Her proposal allows private insurers to remain if they follow the new rules. The new rules ultimately determined by elected officials, who receive campaign donations from the private insurers. Guess whose interests are going to be prioritized?
mhosea (August 30th, 2019)
I agree your ideas could very well be an improvement/evolution of my basic idea - i appreciate your constructive contribution, pity there cannot be more like it rather than frequent arguements that seem to be the prevalent response when anyone tries to make a reformative suggestion.
Pendragon (September 3rd, 2019)
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