Greg Mankiw links to a WSJ piece about our negative bequest to our children. It’s a point I’ve made many times myself (and am sometimes accused of bashing the elderly because of this). A good quote from the WSJ piece:
[R]egardless of how much they have contributed, the hard reality is that the federal government has already spent it. No matter how deserving they are, it is younger generations of workers who have to come up with the money.
It is morally wrong to force young people to make good on false promises made before they were even born. It is an outrage, a scandal, a shame on our society. A society that invests in the old at the expense of (actually, to the large detriment of) the young cannot survive. A caring and kind society cares for the weak and elderly and helpless; a dynamic and just society allows the young to grow and prosper on their own merits. If America is to prosper as a nation, the young must be given room to build families and careers. To build lives, without the onerous, crushing burden of debt run up by their forebears.
Never mind questions of ethics or “fairness”: it’s just math. The numbers do not, cannot, and will not ever even up, no matter what accounting tricks the government uses. Until we fundamentally change how the Big Three entitlement programs (SS, Medicare, Medicaid) work, we will continue to load up our young people with a crippling load of debt they had no hand in accruing.
“Monty”, “A hot cup of DOOM!, no cream, no sugar”, Ace of Spades H.Q., 2011-05-12
May 13, 2011
QotD: The financial legacy of the Baby Boomers
May 9, 2011
What’s coming up in the next set of Canada Health Act revisions
This is an old post from 2005, but now that we have a majority federal government, we can expect to see much or all of this program implemented fairly quickly:
As we’ve all been made aware by the constant drumbeat of media-generated panic, obesity is the biggest problem facing the Canadian healthcare system. Canadians are getting much fatter, getting less exercise, and generally imperilling their own health and, in the aggregate, the entire healthcare system — the core of the Canadian identity. The government is moving to confront this looming problem in the very near future.
Tackling Obesity
Because voluntary measures have failed, the federal government, in consultation with the provinces and territories, is going to amend the Canada Health Act, the cornerstone of the healthcare system. Poor health is no longer an individual problem: it affects the entire country. This means that the government is going to get very serious about tackling the causes of the problem, not just treating the patient after the problem becomes severe.
The current provincial health ID cards will become federalized: this is to ensure that all Canadians are able to get consistent treatment when travelling outside their home provinces. The new ID cards will carry biometric information and it will be mandatory to carry these cards at all times.
To ensure that we comply — it is for the sake of our healthcare system — the health ID card will be requested on boarding all public transit, commuter rail, airplanes, ferries, and ships. Inexpensive card readers will speed processing. No ID? No travel. Simple as that. Our healthcare system is too important to risk for minor concerns like individual rights, privacy, or freedom of movement.
It is expected that the major banks will quickly realize the advantage of integrating their ABM networks with the new universal ID card, obviating the need for them to maintain their own card issuing services. Any who do not quickly adapt will find it difficult to get government business. But it will be strictly voluntary, of course.
Once the banks have adapted, the government can phase out the production of printed money . . . there will be no need for it since you will always carry your combined ID/ATM card. This will be a boon to shopkeepers, banks, and anyone involved in handling money right now.
One of the biggest advantages of this will be that the government will be able to act decisively to combat the scourge of obesity: all food purchases will be directly traceable to show who is eating too much or too much of the wrong kind of food. Within a few years, as the existing printed “Nutrition Facts” information is encoded into RFID tags, it will be possible for your ID/ATM card to restrict the amount of food you purchase to the recommended daily allowance for your diet. Won’t that be great? You won’t even need to think about what to eat, because you’ll only be allowed to eat the “right” amount of the “right” foods, as determined by the government.
Of course, those Canadians who have allowed themselves to eat too much should not be given the same top-priority access to healthcare that their less weighty fellow citizens should have . . . overweight patients will be treated in inverse proportion to their deviation from the norm. That’s only fair, and fairness is nearly as important an aspect of Canadianness as Universal Healthcare.
There may be some bleeding hearts in the civil liberties movement who decry this extension of government power, but we can safely ignore them. The only thing that makes Canada the great place it is today is universal healthcare. This has been repeated so often that most of us accept the concept without any doubt or uncertainty.
Universal healthcare is Canada; Canada is universal healthcare.
Universal healthcare matters more than anything else, again as uncounted public opinion polls and government surveys have discovered, so anything that strengthens the healthcare system is good for Canada. Critics of the system are clearly not acting in the best interests of the healthcare of all Canadians, so we must move to suppress such unpatriotic — even treasonous — talk.
Snuffing Out Smoking
After obesity, the next greatest threat to the system is already being addressed by all levels of government: smoking. It will soon be possible, using the same combination of mandatory ID/ATM cards and RFID tags to completely stamp out the purchase of tobacco products. The government would be remiss if they failed to take full advantage of the current wave of public support to make tobacco use illegal everywhere. Canadians are naturally law-abiding: they will quickly adapt to the need for vigilance for signs of illegal tobacco use. Snitch lines may be required in certain areas to provide more support to those Canadians who want to ensure the health of their fellow citizens — and, of course, the essential healthcare system!
Other methods can be used to ensure compliance, especially in the delivery of healthcare: patients who have smoked will be required to wait longer for all services, to be fair to those patients who never smoked. In the model of “plea bargaining”, patients may be able to get faster aid by reporting others who supplied them with tobacco.
Annihilating Alcohol
Alcohol abuse is the next problem to be overcome. The cost to the healthcare system from treating the direct results of alcohol abuse are staggering. It is manifestly unfair that non-drinking Canadians must pay to rectify the self-inflicted damage of alcohol by drinkers. Earlier Canadian and American governments tried to stamp it out during the last century, but they failed. This government will not: we have the tools to enforce compliance that earlier governments lacked.
As a first step, all sales and production of alcoholic beverages will be nationalized. All citizens must apply for permits to allow them to drink alcoholic beverages, which will only be available from government outlets at strictly controlled times. Sensible limits will be applied, so that packaging that encourages abuse (24-packs of beer, 1.18 litre bottles of alcohol, etc.) will be quickly removed from use. Purchase limits will be strictly enforced, to ensure that so called “binge drinking” can be controlled and eliminated. Drunkenness will be dealt with as sabotage of the healthcare system.
Importing alcohol will be eliminated as a source of health problems, and domestic production will be gradually curtailed and then eliminated in turn. Home brewing and winemaking will be very quickly made illegal: snitch lines will certainly be needed to enforce this, but good Canadians will realize that the health of all requires us to clamp down on those who do not follow good health guidelines.
Enforcing Exercise
It’s not going to be easy to make Canadians as healthy as possible, but the vigour of our Universal Healthcare system can only be enhanced by improving the physical well-being of all Canadians. Voluntary efforts to encourage healthy exercise have been a dismal failure, so mandatory exercise is the only way to move forward. In the short term, all public and private schools, offices, factories, and other workplaces will be required to add exercise periods to every workday.
Mandatory exercise, however, will not be allowed to encourage carelessness and risk-taking — so-called “extreme” sports are all foreign concepts to Canadian culture, and should be discouraged at all cost. The healthcare system must not be held hostage to stupid, careless victims of unnecessary accidents. They’ll be in last place for healthcare services, after the obese, the smokers, and the drinkers.
The End Result
Let’s be honest . . . this is going to be a gruelling regime, and some will not have the intestinal fortitude to pull through. By phase IV of our program, we should expect to see some weaker souls emigrating to escape the rigours of our brave new healthy world. We should let them go, but ensure that they have paid a fair price for the privilege of living in the healthiest country in the world: a sliding scale tax on property maxxing out at 90% for the wealthiest.
But what a wonderful country it will be without them: everyone at the absolute peak of health and vitality (because getting sick will be illegal).
April 19, 2011
Things that keep on rising in price … like healthcare costs
Kevin Libin points out that Michael Ignatieff may have been even more accurate than he himself realized:
The politicians are finally talking about it, but if you listened to what Mr. Ignatieff said during last week’s English-language debate, you might have found yourself feeling a bit depressed. Perhaps because the Liberal leader effectively argued that if Canadians wanted to keep getting decent medical treatment, they were going to have to learn to live without lots of other things.
“This comes down to a moment of choice,” Mr. Ignatieff intoned. Canadians could either vote for personal income tax breaks, planned corporate income tax cuts, new equipment for the Canadian Forces, all promised by the Conservatives, or, he said, “you can support health care.”
To be accurate, he used language that was far more politically loaded (“multi-million dollar expenditure on prisons … big gifts to upper-middle class Canadians”), but his message was the same: affording public health care means sacrificing other possible priorities.
There’s certainly much to suggest he’s got a point.
If our healthcare costs keep rising, unbounded by any kind of cost control, it will either consume the economy, or cause its collapse. And, of course, the large number of soon-to-retire Baby Boomers are about to need much higher health spending as the natural aging process starts taking its inevitable toll. Fun times ahead, folks.
Already, nine out of 10 provinces spend the majority of their own source revenues (which excludes federal transfers) on health care, according to the Fraser Institute’s report “Canada’s Medicare Bubble.” Only Alberta is just barely under 50%; Nova Scotia spends 88%.
With all the good will in the world, the government can’t keep increasing their healthcare spending . . . they’re almost out of money already.
March 5, 2011
Expanding the already expansive interpretation of the “Commerce Clause”
Rich Lowry explains why the recent court decision by Judge Gladys Kessler has such wide-reaching implications:
The easy-to-grasp distinction between an activity and inactivity is one of the most powerful legal arguments of ObamaCare’s opponents. But they hadn’t yet run up against a jurist as ingenious as Judge Kessler. She brushes aside the activity/inactivity distinction because not doing something is a choice and therefore “mental activity.”
Why hadn’t someone thought of this before? The sophists in Eric Holder’s Justice Department must be embarrassed that they didn’t themselves dredge up this killer rejoinder.
[. . .]
Kessler writes, “It is pure semantics to argue that an individual who makes a choice to forgo health insurance is not ‘acting,’ especially given the serious economic and health-related consequences to every individual of that choice. Making a choice is an affirmative action, whether one decides to do something or not do something.”
[. . .]
Under the Kessler principle, there’s no nonconduct that the federal government can’t reach. Every day, most Americans engage in nonactivities that affect interstate commerce. If you decide not to buy a house, not to buy a Chrysler or not to buy a Snuggie, you’ve impacted interstate conduct through affirmative mental actions. We’ve gone from the Constitution giving Congress the power to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes,” to regulating on the basis of the mental activities of individuals deciding not to do something.
If this precedent stands, the Commerce clause has effectively swallowed the bill of rights: there will be no sphere of human activity that the US federal government can’t regulate.
H/T to David Harsanyi for the link.
February 17, 2011
I believe this is my first-ever reference to “Justin Bieber”
And it’s prompted by Jimmie Bise, Jr, who also observes (most accurately) that “We bloggers are a mercenary lot who’ll find reason to write about almost anything if it’ll bring us that sweet, sweet blog traffic.”
The bad news is that Rolling Stone actually thinks anyone, anywhere, truly cares what Justin Bieber thinks about political parties, socialized medicine, or anything else beyond singing the word “baby” several times in a row.
Look, I get that we like to get inside the heads of entertainers we admire, but there really does have to be a limit. Rolling Stone, once upon a time, was a magazine that published real journalism from writers like Hunter S. Thompson, P.J. O’Rourke, and Lester Bangs. It was probably the go-to publication for details of the Patty Hearst abduction and its interview with Charles Manson in 1970 is one of the most chilling looks into a mind stuffed full of madness I’ve ever read. Now, thanks to the decline started by ardent progressive Jann Wenner, we just get a fluff interview with a 16 year-old kid on issues in which he has almost no knowledge or experience and wretched hacks like Matt Taibbi.
If nothing else, the Justin Bieber interview shows us what we lost. I’m actually sorry for it.
While a lot of what Hunter S. Thompson produced was vivid and entertaining, it probably skirted well clear of formal “journalism” even in the golden glow of nostalgia. But other than that little quibble, and that Jann Wenner was a co-founder of Rolling Stone . . . which means the decline he’s lamenting was actually baked in to the original recipie . . .
August 28, 2010
QotD: The Canadian (lack of) taste for charismatic leadership
Canadians like their politicians dull. Perhaps at some point, many moons ago, this was a defense mechanism of sorts. A dull politician is unlikely to do anything rash and interventionist, thereby mucking up the daily life of the nation. This is no longer a safe strategy. Lester Pearson was politely dull, and unleashed Medicare, an ahistorical flag and Pierre Trudeau on an unsuspecting nation. Never was so much harm, done by so few, in so short a period of time, than in Mike Pearson’s five years in office. Much of what people blame Trudeau for was actually begun by Pearson. But who could hate Mike? He was such a nice guy. He wore a bow tie.
There have been only three genuinely charismatic Prime Ministers in Canadian history: Wilfred Laurier, John Diefenbaker and Pierre Trudeau. John A Macdonald might be a weak fourth, depending on how fond you are of boozy charm. What did they all have in common? What the Elder President Bush disdainfully called the “vision thing.” You may not like their visions, but they were about something and attracted a train of almost fanatical — by Canadian standards — followers.
You can’t run into an aging baby boomer in Toronto, they are ubiquitous here, without being bored to tears with their particular Trudeau story. They campaigned for him. They met him walking down some solitary Montreal street. You get the odd Trudeau in the wilderness stories. The funny ones usually involve a disco, a blond and something that happened after the third cocktail. Urban legends used to surround Laurier as well. Dief, as Peter C Newman noted, had the presence of an Old Testament prophet.
Their vision and their charisma were not coincidences, but corollaries. Just being charming and interesting will get you only so far.
Publius, “Iggy Why”, Gods of the Copybook Headings, 2010-08-26
June 18, 2010
A “new chapter in U.S. history”
Ron Hart congratulates President Obama for delivering on his promised change:
We are so in debt to China that President Obama had to visit their president in his first year in office. It was an important meeting between the most powerful communist leader in the world and the president of China.
Obama is so popular in China that a nightclub named after him opened in Beijing. In keeping with the Obama theme, the club opened with $10 trillion in debt. It will, hopefully, close in just four years with $15 trillion in debt and no apologies to its “hope-based” investors.
[. . .]
To sum up our situation just short of two years into this Obamanation of an administration: Our debt is much higher, an unwanted ObamaCare bill that will cost us at least $2 trillion more than predicted was rammed through Congress, more troops are in Afghanistan, unemployment is much higher even after a union handout “stimulus” bill, and the biggest tax increase in American history is coming in 2011. So yes, Mr. President, technically I guess you can say you have brought about “change.”
As for your assertion, Mr. Obama, that you are going to usher in a “new chapter in U.S. history,” it looks like you will make good on that too. Unfortunately, it will be Chapter 11.
H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord.
April 26, 2010
P.J. O’Rourke definitely wasn’t an “A” student
At least, based on his apparent contempt for “A” students:
America has made the mistake of letting the A student run things. It was A students who briefly took over the business world during the period of derivatives, credit swaps, and collateralized debt obligations. We’re still reeling from the effects. This is why good businessmen have always adhered to the maxim: “A students work for B students.” Or, as a businessman friend of mine put it, “B students work for C students — A students teach.”
It was a bunch of A students at the Defense Department who planned the syllabus for the Iraq war, and to hell with what happened to the Iraqi Class of ’03 after they’d graduated from Shock and Awe.
The U.S. tax code was written by A students. Every April 15 we have to pay somebody who got an A in accounting to keep ourselves from being sent to jail.
Now there’s health care reform — just the kind of thing that would earn an A on a term paper from that twerp of a grad student who teaches Econ 101.
Why are A students so hateful? I’m sure up at Harvard, over at the New York Times, and inside the White House they think we just envy their smarts. Maybe we are resentful clods gawking with bitter incomprehension at the intellectual magnificence of our betters. If so, why are our betters spending so much time nervously insisting that they’re smarter than Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement? They are. You can look it up (if you have a fancy education the way our betters do and know what the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary is). “Smart” has its root in the Old English word for being a pain. The adjective has eight other principal definitions ranging from “brisk” to “fashionable” to “neat.” Only two definitions indicate cleverness — smart as in “clever in talk” and smart as in “clever in looking after one’s own interests.” Don’t get smart with me.
Whole piece here.
March 23, 2010
QotD: The future of Obamacare
There will be court challenges to Obamacare but I doubt if they will be entirely successful. I further find it unlikely that the GOP, if they achieve majority status again, will be able to repeal it. Perhaps a combination of the two but that may be the most unlikely scenario at all.
Prediction? In five years, the Republican party will be embracing Obamacare and will be running on a platform that boasts they are the best party to manage it efficiently.
Rick Moran, “NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE REFORM DONE”, Right Wing Nuthouse, 2010-03-22
March 15, 2010
QotD: Process matters
Libertarians are process people, something that our political opponents find impossible to believe can be real, rather than disingenuous. So when I say that I think Lawrence v. Texas might be the right result morally but the wrong result legally, it must be that I secretly want sodomy to be illegal, or at the very least don’t care. Or when I am troubled by government intervening in the Chrysler bankruptcy process, it’s because I hate unions. And of course, when I am against post-hoc legal judgments against bankers or their bonuses, it’s just because I’m an apologist for rich people.
But to a libertarian, process matters. Having a good process is better than getting a good outcome, because a good process is one that maximizes your chances of getting good outcomes over time.
Megan McArdle, “The Process of Passing Health Care”, The Atlantic, 2009-12-22
March 3, 2010
QotD: Canada’s national inferiority complex
But when I refer to casting off our national inferiority complex, I don’t mean the permission we suddenly seem to have given ourselves to be overjoyed by our nation’s athletic accomplishments. Rather, I’m talking about the way most of our major national policies of the past half-century have really just been masks for our national angst. Multiculturalism, universal health care, soft power diplomacy, economic and cultural nationalism and others are all, in part, efforts to downplay our own fear that we are an insignificant nation. Through them, we reassure ourselves of our moral superiority, especially toward the Americans.
Maybe Vancouver finally made us willing to stop defining ourselves through our belief in giant government programs and our fear and resentment of the United States.
Now, perhaps, we can also give ourselves permission to stop trying to manufacture a distinctly Canadian culture and just let one evolve naturally.
We are not Americans. We are never going to be Americans. No amount of economic or cultural protectionism is going to keep U.S. influences out. But also, American influences were never going to impoverish us or strip our identity away.
Maybe now, with the Olympics over and our new-found national confidence high, we’ll get past our common belief that universal health care makes us a better country and gives us superior care. For far too long we have planned health care through this sort of political filter rather than a medical one.
Perhaps instead of sneering at the Americans about their melting pot approach to immigration and insisting our multicultural approach is superior, we’ll now come to see the two as different sides of the same coin.
I think we have already come to understand that while we were tremendous peacekeepers under the UN, what the world needs now is peacemakers. There was nothing wrong with our old role. We were very good at it. But now we have moved on. We have re-equipped ourselves and are getting on with the heavy lifting of fighting in hot spots and bringing aid directly to stricken regions.
Those who still cling to the old notion of Canada as only ever a non-fighting nation, that works only through the UN and cares deeply what the rest of the world thinks of us, have been left behind by events.
Lorne Gunter, “In Vancouver and Whistler, shades of Vimy”, National Post, 2010-03-03
February 23, 2010
BBC accused of bias in euthanasia debate
The BBC’s decision to broadcast Terry Pratchett’s speech on euthanasia tribunals is cited as evidence that the corporation is acting as an advocate on this highly emotional issue:
The Care Not Killing Alliance accused the BBC of flouting impartiality rules and adopting a “campaigning stance” in an attempt to step up pressure on the Government to legalise assisted suicide.
The decision to broadcast Sir Terry Pratchett’s speech advocating “euthanasia tribunals” in full earlier this month was an example of unbalanced reporting, the alliance claimed.
Lord Carlile, chairman of the alliance and the Government’s independent reviewer of terror legislation, has demanded a meeting with BBC bosses to seek answers over the “biased” coverage.
In a letter to Sir Michael Lyons, the chairman of the BBC trust, the Liberal Democrat peer also raised questions over the corporation’s failure to inform police that a veteran presenter had confessed to killing his lover on one of its programmes.
H/T to Elizabeth for the link.
February 3, 2010
More on Premier Williams’ medical decision
Following up to yesterday’s post on Newfoundland and Labrador premier Danny Williams and his decision to seek care out-of-country for his heart condition:
I have always argued that every Canadian should be free to seek treatment wherever he or she wants. Elective or lifesaving, complicated or straightforward, it is none of my business where Danny Williams goes for his operation, or who pays for it.
True, there would be something of a hypocrisy factor at play if Mr. Williams has preached the virtues of Canada’s state-monopoly care and now, when he has to put his faith in the system, he has flown the coop rather than stand in line for a treatment he could receive here.
But we don’t know what exactly is wrong with the brash and charming politician, who is one of the few chunks of flavour in the floury roux of Canadian politics. Perhaps what ails him can only be fixed south of the border — in which case, the province might even have paid for his treatment in a foreign clinic.
The point I am trying to make here is that only because we have turned health care into a political hot potato are any of us even wondering whether the premier is justified in going to an American clinic.
Well, when an ordinary person has to wait months and months just to see a specialist, and then wait even longer for surgery, while the political class can (apparently) get immediate attention and care, it becomes difficult to continue believing that all Canadians are entitled to equal care . . .
I can’t disagree with Lorne Gunter here:
What I resent is the way premiers and prime ministers won’t free you or me to buy insurance that would enable us to procure first-class care in times of need. What I resent is the way many limousine liberals lash us to the mast of the good ship Medicare, then run off to the United States when it’s their lives or their families’ on the line. They are like public school trustees who send their kids to private school.
February 2, 2010
Not the first, certainly not the last
Danny Williams, premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, will be having heart surgery later this week. This is a bit of a surprise to most, as he’s known to be a regular exerciser and hasn’t missed time for illness recently. Here’s Kenyon Wallace’s report:
Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams is to have heart surgery in the United States later this week, a press conference this morning is expected to confirm.
Media reports last night suggested the popular 59-year-old Premier has opted not to remain in his home province or country for the scheduled surgery, opting instead for treatment at a U.S. institution. The exact destination is not known.
“I can confirm that Premier Williams did leave the province this morning and will be undergoing heart surgery later this week,” said Mr. Williams’ spokeswoman, Elizabeth Matthews, in an email to the Canadian Press.
Not the first Canadian politician to elect to get medical care in the United States, and (on past experience) he’ll certainly not be the last one either. A cynic might note that the leaders don’t have the same confidence in the Canadian healthcare system that the people do . . . or it might be that politicians see themselves as far too important to have to wait until their turn under our system (where wait times are a quiet shame).
November 25, 2009
QotD: Why Canadian-style healthcare won’t succeed in the United States
Speaking from immediate personal experience here: Many Americans have romantic visions of Canadian health care but Canadian health care works as it does only because Canadians are deferential to authority and unwilling to complain loudly no matter the situation. The shock of a visit to an ER department will not dent a Canadian’s feckless stoicism. Loud complaints are just another way of drawing undue attention to yourself, this considered extremely rude north of the border; so much so that queue jumpers earn little opprobrium while the man kicking the queue jumper out of line earns frowns of disapproval (again, personal experience as the line enforcer). Consequently, wait times, waiting lists and twelve hours of nothing at the emergency room are just another government thing to be endured.
Like the winter, supposedly.
I am reminded of an observation to the effect an armed society is a polite society. Obama can enact his shitty little elitist plan as he likes; I doubt it will change the American character, at least not before Obama’s shitty little elitist plan is revoked. In the meantime, I pity the fool American medical resident who talks to his or her patients the way I saw patients dealt with at one of downtown Toronto’s elite hospitals yesterday.
Nick Packwood, “Why socialist medicine will fail in the United States”, Ghost of a Flea, 2009-11-24
