Nullius in Verba

Now that it looks like the Liberals have a chance…

Stephane Dion states that “Stephen Harper squandered the surplus on.” Then he goes on to insert either tax cuts, innovation spending, the GST or whatever is appropriate for the moment. This leaves me to ask, what exactly would Dion do with the surplus’ which, if I may remind him, come from you and I, and not some magic place. There is no macro economic plan I know of which proposes government keep surpluses accruing over years. Wait, actually there is a plan, its’ one where a dictator puts all that money in his Swiss Bank Account, but I digress. Even companies will invest profits or provide dividends while keeping a small amount to use as a contingency plan - something Paul Martin borrowed from the business world. So what did Harper do with the cash? Three billion spent on the military, which even the outgoing Liberals were planning on doing to refurbish a dying Canadian institution. Four billion spent on Health Care, on which has actually resulted in a reduction in waiting lists according to surgeons I have spoken with (we’ll see the big numbers). Six billion was used to lower the GST, while not the favorite of Economists, Harper was correct in stating that this is a regressive tax which harms the poor more than the rich - something every Economist knows, but the media won’t report (Harper has done more for the poor than the Liberals in 10 years so far).

So what would the Liberals have done? Probably nearly the same thing if in that situation. Or do they suggest not spending on Health Care or the desperate military, which was launched into Afghanistan by the Liberals in the first place?

What depresses me the most is not that Dion can say these things, in fact its what every opposition member would do. It is that the Mainstream Media isn’t all over Dion about this every time he opens his pie hole. Why don’t they ask about the Health Care spending, like “Hey Dion would you not have spent on Health Care, old boy?” There is a bias.

I think it is time to review these articles on the Green Shift, and how it will not reduce emissions but is likely to increase emissions, and moreover how even Jack Mintz, the Economist who helped write the plan, thinks it isn’t necessarily going to work.

Secondly let’s consider the NDP’s plan to increase corporate taxes. During a time when it is even more necessary to reduce taxes to make us more competitive against other leading countries (Stephen Harper plans to reduce our corporate taxes to the lowest in the G-7), Jack Layton wants to raise them. The OECD summarized the findings of the harmful effects of corporate taxes which I describe briefly in this article. In an open economy, Layton will only succeed in helping the blue collar workers lose their jobs. Right now Canada is rated to lead the G-7 in growth, albeit slow growth.

Yes, many economists describe a Keynsian style system of government spending through recessions, but Harper is correct in saying that once you go down that path it is hard to come back. Keynsianism is easy to understand, and lefties like that, but Robert Lucas and Milton Freidman have rightly critisized it and many have pointed out its failures. As both an economist and a politician I think he has good insight into the problems of Keynsian economics, what do you fund? Who gets funding? Are you picking winners and losers? Once a subsidy is given, it is not easy to take it away. Are you pouring money down the drain? Will the public go for it? It is easy as an economist to describe the best methods of targeted subsidies, but the public is as likely not to agree! You are constrained by public foolishness and corporate greed or seeking legalized monopoly establishment. Soon I will describe the critical paper that demonstrated government action extended the Great Depression.

Its not really useful if you read these, get your lefty friends to read the evidence. Or let them know the evidence. They believe in fairy tales.

Some few of you may be wondering what exactly happened to my website, and me for that matter over the last few weeks. Well to put it simply Rogers decided that I probably didn’t need a phone line and so they cancelled it. For no reason. After phoning their useless customer service over days and hours at a time and getting absolutely no-where my poor wife decided to go with another phone line carrier. And there it is. Thank God for the free market because it is truly what saves us from useless people and ineffective government.

(British Telecom used to “rent” people standard crappy phones like this one, whether the customer wanted it or not. As part of the phone line package one had to rent it. The joke was that there were hundreds of these things littering British junkyards as people quickly replaced them with modern phones. Thus you were renting an invisible phone.)

When the British people awoke from the stuporous haze of socialism and realized that it was at fault for their floundering economy, Margaret Thatcher privatized British Telecommunications, leaving economists with one of the greatest examples of why privatization is better for the welfare of all people. Even scientists with a social bent had to agree, as the landmark study by Galal et al. revealed that post privatization British people were better off as a whole.

***

I have just finished one of those crappy weeks where I am left to contemplate the raw state of mankind. It is quite evident from my observations working as a doctor that to put it quite simply there are some people who don’t care how much the rest of us pay for their health care. For example, they will continue to smoke when they have Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease and burn wads of taxpayer money with each breath of forced Oxygen, atrovent, ventolin, and the pitiful salary they are paying me to push on their chest when they try and die. Apparently another doctor feels the same way.

We spend a lot of money on mentally competent people who don’t value themselves. An economist would not be as judgemental, however. An economist would dryly state the fact: some people would rather trade years of life for enjoyment in the here and now. Its called opportunity costs and present value. An economist would beg the question of why we would pay to prolong someone’s life when they clearly wanted to trade years of life for puffs of smoke? Perhaps we are making the wrong moral judgement by treating them?

Unfortunately as a bleeding heart, even in a realistically structured insurance system where people pay higher costs if they chose to abuse their bodies unlike the naive one in Canada, people like me would still donate their time to push on the chests of those who try and kill themselves.

However what really crushes my soul is that some people have absolutely no emotional attachment to their children. I have seen people rather take care of a pet dog than be there for their child who is dying in hospital. It has nothing to do with being poor or rich, high IQ or low, but rather a clear lack of integrity. And this happens way too often.

The worst example of human selfishness is the woman who abuses drugs during pregnancy. As a libertarian I don’t specifically feel government has a role in regards to drug abuse, but in the case of pregnant women this is one case where government can actually do something. When anyone has a child they make a moral agreement to be there for the child and do everything to preserve the child’s health.

However government fails us here, as usual. A pregnant woman who abuses drugs cannot be incarcerated against her will in order to protect the child until it is delivered. This is a by-product ruling from our generally useless Supreme Court, made after the state of Saskatchewan incarcerated one of these women (who incidently became rehabilitated during this time and afterwards). (Winnipeg Child and Family Services v. D.F.G. in 1997). The main reason is simply to protect the women who choose to have abortions since the courts try and do everything in their power to ensure a fetus is not a human being until delivered. Only two Supreme Court judges had the intelligence to make the argument of “intent” that we make all the time for murder: if a woman intends to carry a child to term she must do everything a reasonable human would do to protect the child.

As Homer Simpson once said, “Humans are the only animals that will weasel out of things, except for the weasel.” And what do you expect of a system of toad-stools appointed by the Liberal Party of Canada?

(Pope Alexander VI was one of the most corrupt popes the world has ever known. His so called “piety” reminds me of the double-speak we get from the left. On the outside is this projection of virtue while inside is a devilish self interest.)

So there it is, another mini-tragety week.

***

A while ago I spoke of an organization called Kiva.org where you can make interest free loans to people in developing countries who are trying to make their lives better. This is much better than a subsidy since it works on a system of responsibility rather than government bureaucracy.

Anyhow my first repayment has come in from the person I lent money to. Very good. I encourage you all to give this a try instead of all the usual top heavy charities out there.

Many socialists love to point to the evil United States health care system and smirk. Indeed there are entire organizations made up of socialists throwing boulders at the US that are somehow given credibility by the media. Harvard University has an entire department devoted to it.

Now there are several things wrong with the US health care system and as an employee of this Canadian one I can affirm that there are several things wrong with ours as well. So much so that I would rather have the US system.

The problem is that most socialists assume that public health care will be much cheaper in the US like they think it is elsewhere. The important point to remember is that public health care in the US isn’t very cheap at all for a variety of reasons. What people don’t realize is that the US has one of the largest social safety nets in the world, and with that comes rent seekers. Socialists will claim that the public system is better for example, because it is a monopsony but the problem with monopsony all you junior economists is that a monopsony is Pareto inefficient due to a decrease in optimal quantity purchased and that means waiting lists (notice how they love economic words when it suits them?).

(Creating disasters - the government has been doing it for millenia)

The main reason socialists love public health care is because they know they can get rich off of it. The idea of of more unions and bureaucrats makes them incredibly happy.

Lets do some quick goat calculations in today’s game:

“How many more bureaucrats could the US hire if the system was Public?”

Ok get out your calculators.  

• The US GDP : $13 ,244,550,000,000.00
• Percent spent on health care 15.3%, total spent $2,026,416,150,000.00
• Percent spent on public health care 44%, total $891,623,106,000.00
• Percent spent on private health care 56%, total $1,134,793,044,000.00
• Current population 302,280,000. People covered under both systems 253,915,200
• Percent of those covered by public system 27%, population covered 68,557,104
• Percent covered by private system 69%, 175,201,488 (There are a few percent covered by other systems)
• Cost of public system per person in system: $13,005.55
• Cost of private system per person in system: $6,477.07
• Cost of US system if it was fully public: $13,005.55 X 243,758,592 = $3,170,215,488,000.00

The increase in cost of a full Public System is $1,143,799,388,000.00.

(A graph for Captain Capitalism. Click to Enlarge)

Cost of a bureaucrat: $40,000.00.  Projected increased number of bureaucrats: 28 million!!!

And that, folks, is a lot of bureaucrats!

Just think how extra fun it will be to try and navigate your 80 year old parents through a system with 28 million more bureaucrats.

Oh and just so you know, if you have a heart attack, you want to have it in the US. You’re more likely to survive. Indeed, when you actually look at mortality and morbidity outcomes between Canada and the US in terms of things doctors can change, all that money may result in better outcomes. 

* Raw Data from OECD.

As someone who works as a doctor, the following is all too common.

From On The Fence Films

Now I am not arguing the US system is perfect, no system is. But the US spends as much per capital on socialized medicine as we do! They have socialized medicine down there, Medicare and Medicaid. A single woman with 2 kids making under $30,000 a year is covered by Medicaid.

I have seen the frustration of not being able to get on certain medicine in Canada because its “not covered yet” - but is covered for those in government or working for government, of course.

Then of course we have idiot socialists like Ehrenreich of the LA Times in the US railing as often as they can on the unfairness of the public medical system down there. How there are rooms filled with crap from the last patient, long waiting lists etc.

Once you get past the emergency room, friends assured us, the quality of care at County-USC is quite good. And it was, if you could ignore the previous patient’s bloody bandages left on the base of your gurney, or the towels stained with urine — some wet, some already dry — that covered the floor of the bathroom on the ward. The doctors, when you saw them, were attentive enough. But seeing a doctor was no easy task.

If idiots like that think the same thing doesn’t happen up here, I have some great farmland in Alaska to sell you. 

Time for a rethink.