National/Big Brother Health Care

"Are we comfortable giving gov't so much control over something so important?"

No, we aren't.  I know I sure am not, and neither is anyone I know, including advocates of universal health care.  No responsible consumer health advocate is calling for the U.S. to adopt the British system, which as you correctly point out is nationalized health care.  It is important to remember that there is a big difference between these two approaches.

In nationalized health care, the doctors and nurses are employees of the government, which also owns all the physical assets of the delivery system.

Universal health care, on the other hand, usually refers to a system in which everyone receives coverage one way or another, but the doctors and nurses remain in private practice, and all the physical assets remain privately owned.  The only thing that really changes is that the insurance companies are either supplemented or largely supplanted, depending on the approach.

There are as many different ways to do this as there are people talking about it.  Some proposals merely supplement the current system by providing affordable public insurance for those citizens who can't currently get adequate private insurance because of cost and/or employment factors.

Other plans make this public insurance option available to everyone, while still others do away with the insurance concept altogether and just guarantee payment of everyone's bills at standard rates, sort of like Medicare.  Most of these proposals still allow for private insurance and/or private payment for services as an option, and under all of them health care providers continue to practice as private enterprises.

These various plans all are commonly referred to collectively as universal health care, but the only thing they really all have in common is that at least some portion of the public has at least some portion of their coverage paid for from public funds.  That, and the fact that none of them are nationalized health care.

RSW... yeah the big difference is who owns the facilities and pays the doctors.  Whether the government acts as the insurer or the government acts as the hospital it can in both cases limit money for treatment or available treatment based on the circumstances... which is a bit scary.

The reason I find it scary is not because I think that the government is hell bent on killing any particular group off or absolutely uncaring about this person or that person.  But because the government is notorious for coming up with rules and regulations in committee that tend to do fairly well for the bulk of the cases but really screw over quite a few people who don't fit well within the structure, which in government, is inherently slow to adapt.  Not good when you're talking about life and death situations.

That said some of the same issues come up in insurance related matters as well.  Just like current government programs have some strange and frustrating hurdles to qualify, insurance can be out of reach for lower income folks who live pay check to pay check.  Decisions on what procedures will be covered and fights to get coverage for something that is obviously covered seem to happen either way.

I haven't really heard any great plans to make healthcare more accessible yet.  Some may help but they seem to cause more problems than they fix.  Most seem to either perpetuate the current problems, intensify them, or are based on some magical pot of gold to pay for it.  I'd really like to hear some better ideas for making healthcare accessible to all who need it while not forcing everyone to settle for 2nd rate health care in the process.  From my own experience I can say without a doubt the current system makes it extremely difficult to get needed healthcare in certain situations.  But I'm not going to join up with the wenalways of the world and start supporting plans mindlessly just because they're trying to fix the problem but, after just a little scrutiny, seem to only complicate the problem.

But I'm an ignorant, Springer watching, neener-face blah blah blah with my aunts and pies and such.  (Just to save someone the trouble).

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Glock21 Op/Ed

"Still, if the US gov't is going to provide "public insurance", won't it be subject to the exact same cost pressures as a fully-nationalized plan?"

Not really, at least not any more than private insurance already is today.  There are probably some differences between a public insurer and a private one, but I don't see at first glance where public and private insurers would necessarily have different responses to "cost pressures."  So long as the payer, whether it is public or private, is wholly separate from the provider, we are talking about a completely different economic model than nationalized medicine.

"I'd be inclined to want to see this done at the State level rather than federal because the States have  far more leeway on dealing with such matters than our limited federal gov't (though I know they rarely act limited)."

There has been a growing trend over the last several years among health care activists impatient with the lack of federal progress to seek state by state solutions.  Of course, that approach has automatically been subject to charges of placing states at economic disadvantages, particularly when there is any kind of clearly identifiable tax burden associated with it.

I'm not sure I'd support a "generous benefit" as much as helping people who really truly need it put basic coverage and care within their reach.  The working poor who are uninsured is a symptom, not the disease itself.  The disease itself is the lack of economic growth in certain areas and regions of the country and especially opportunity among certain segments of the population to take advantage of the economic growth that may be there along with a multitude of other facators.  The deep south constitutes a great number of the working poor but so do many big city communities.

I found a nice report on who constitutes the uninsured with breakdowns for children, parents, and childless adults... and factors such as income and existing elgibility for national programs.  I summarized it here with links and tables.

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Glock21 Op/Ed

The single payer setup seems a lot like medicaid right now.  They'll say they'll only pay so much for certain procedures so private docs and hospitals often refuse to take new patients on the programs.  A solution that leaves people "covered" but still unable to get the care they're "covered" for doesn't seem to really help much. 

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Glock21 Op/Ed

I believe the reason that auto insurance is mandatory is due to the fact that it has serious implications on drivers you may be responsible for injuring.  They don't make anything other than liability mandatory because it's your choice to screw yourself over.

Banks and other creditors often require that you insure your home or car while you're still paying on it as part of the loan agreement since the car or home is often part of the collateral on the loan.

While I agree that even 20 somethings should have health insurance, that I'd be against forcing them to pay for it if they truly don't want it.  I'd like to ensure that they had the option and it was within their grasp.  I didn't mean to imply that it was a good choice not to.  Just that they may have the choice.  Just to clarify.  Thank you for responding respectfully.  It's much appreciated.

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Glock21 Op/Ed

The whole point of insurance is to have people paying in, NOT just the people who need the coverage. Things would be quite chaotic if people had the option of not insuring their autos or homes. Health insurance should be no different.

I completely agree with this (funny how that happens, eh, Wenalway?). From an actuarial standpoint, having low-risk individuals paying into the system reduces the cost for everyone else. When you consider that these low-risk individuals also have (typically) a decent amount of disposable income, it shouldn't be too much of a burden on them. Conversely, high-risk individuals are often living on a very limited, fixed income (Social Security, pension, etc.) and cannot afford their healthcare. When those low-risk individuals grow older, and need more healthcare, they could afford the rates, as they have their own group of low-risk 20somethings to help out. As we've started to phase out existing retirement systems (i.e., Social Security and pensions), the elderly in the future might find themselves poorer than ever.

"It's always best to look at the minority of people who are the "problem" and then force everyone to follow a system that is designed to keep those "problem" people from falling through the cracks. Otherwise, you'll have no equity because some people will be able to keep the full benefits of their good choices and circumstances while others won't be protected from their poor choices and bad luck."

You're right.  As long as we're being sarcastic, people who get sick should just crawl in a hole and die.  Even if they're kids, with no control over their situation.  Or people who work hard all their lives, but whose employer can't afford to keep up with the rising cost of insurance premiums, let alone pay their employees enough to buy it on their own.

People who drive trucks and work behind counters and make beds and mop floors are just "problem" people, as you say.  Why do we even need them?  Just hire illegals for all those jobs.  Nobody thinks that illegals should have benefits.  I mean, they're not even supposed to be here.  They're illegal.  And the people who used to have those jobs will just be unemployed.  That's just bad luck.  Problem solved.

While we're at it, why should we even pay for Medicare?  What makes seniors any more deserving of health care than other citizens?  Cut 'em off, even if their pensions got stolen by crooks or governors.  They should all just stay home and shut up, so we won't be inconvenienced by having to think about them and their significantly higher need for services.

The top five percent of the country is all that counts, anyway.  Everyone else is on their own.  And there's no way we should ever let the other ninety-five percent band together to solve a common problem with a common solution.  Even if the rich are never really required to pay into it even now.

Unfortunately, here is one of the notable differences between SS and health care that makes your comparison unworkable: when people get sick enough, they go to the emergency room.  That means that not only do we end up paying for it anyway, but it ends up costing us more than it would have to subsidize their health insurance in the first place, and sometimes it's just too late.

I don't know yet what the optimal solution should be, but I know that we won't come up with it by pretending everything is already fair and hunky-dory, or that some things are just meant to be unfair.  We've got arguably the best doctors and nurses and hospitals in the world.  Last time I looked, we spend as much or more per capita as any other nation, and by several metrics get the least for our dollars even with the best providers.  We also have some pretty smart people here.  Seems like we ought to be able to figure something out.

Something that isn't socialism.  Something uniquely American.  It doesn't even have to be perfect.  But it can certainly be better for everyone one way or another...

"Every time somebody does something for someone else, the value of that deed would be calculated by a government official and credited to that individual. Then, later, when that individual requires some service of somebody else, he can demonstrate that he is deserving by showing his accumulation of good deed credits. Of course, the value of the service he acquires would be calculated and then subtracted from the total in his record. That way, each person would "deserve" only as much as he has done for others."

I was being sarcastic, as I clearly said.  You, on the other hand, seem to want to put the government in charge of karma.  Talk about big government.

The founding fathers figured out a long time ago that the only way the government could ever be trusted to treat everyone fairly was to require it to treat everyone the same.  The only realistic chance for that to happen even most of the time is if we keep government as small as possible, and as local as possible, and as representative as possible.

The flip side of that equation is that there are certain functions that are either too difficult or too important to be left to local government or chance.  We decide as a society what those functions are.  Once the collective "we" has identified such a function, the only fair way for the government to provide it is for everyone to contribute.

I guess so. I thought you could decide for yourself if you wanted insurance, and what kind of coverage you wanted.

I had no idea that insurance meant the government forces you to pay for someone else's pills.

I see you aren't a HSQD when it comes to word meanings.

The man doesn't believe in taxes, so it's probably not worth talking to him about any sort of government programs.

That's not an attack--it's simply a reality. It's like if someone was trying to sell me a bottle of dragon repellent.

Just for the record, as I have said before, some taxes are a necessary evil. I believe in them in the sense that they are real. I don't believe in them in the sense that I get a feeling of moral superiority by voting to take money from one person and give it to another, and I don't pretend that taxes are anything other than legalized theft.

"voting to take money from one person and give it to another"

We're not.  We're voting to take money from ourselves, and give it one way or another to everyone, including ourselves.  It's called a social contract.

"I don't pretend that taxes are anything other than legalized theft."

I don't like taxes, either.  In fact, I ran for county board on an anti-tax platform.  But I fail to see how taxes can be considered theft when they are levied at the direction (and therefore, with the consent) of the majority of those paying the taxes.

Great points, TM.

I guess my views of public healthcare stem from a selfish viewpoint: I'd like to live in a world where my employees, neighbors, and the guy bagging my groceries are healthy. I don't want to live in a pseudo-feudal society, where the cook at the restaurant might have a serious illness that he can't afford to get taken care of. I'm not talking about the fear of being surrounded by lepers or people that will make me sick - I'd just like to have my fellow man taken care of.

As a capitalist, I'd like to think that the free-market would take care of this. However, there are two major problems with the market in this situation. First, the expected horizon of employees in some industries is too short for companies to realize any benefit in providing employees with health-care, under the current pricing structures. While this situation serves as additional motivation for workers to gain experience and get better jobs, it adds costs to "down-stream" employers that employ older, more experienced workers. Second, as I said earlier, pooling risk with low-risk individuals significantly lowers insurance costs. Illinois recently OKed the creation of Healthcare Purchasing Groups (like the locally-owned Peopull)- groups of (typically) small businesses that are able to obtain significantly cheaper coverage for their employees by pooling their employees to lower their group risk. The actuarial explanation for this is really quite simple: just like in statistics, the error term and the sample size are inversely proportional. However, when low-risk individuals opt out of health insurance, they substantially increase the cost for everyone - essentially, the only people that have insurance are those that need it.

Peopull is a great example of a free-market response to the current insurance environment: due to the actuarial methods employed by the industry, larger groups have lower costs. Small business owners that acknowledged the benefits of health insurance, but were unable to afford coverage (due to an extremely small group size), are now able to provide coverage to their employees.

On a micro level, insurance companies are only beneficial to individuals that will use them the most. After all, the insurance company can only stay in business if it charges people more money that the expected costs associated with insuring them. A truly capitalist view of health insurance would see the inefficiency in such a service and opt out of it, purchasing medical service directly from hospitals and doctors. Granted, their are additional costs we must analyze at a micro level: often, the cash-flows and assets necessary to cover unexpected medical expenses are non-existent, so the economic premium we pay for health insurance is partially an interest payment on the insurance company's pooled assets.

I don't know to what extent I support a nationalized health care system - I think that mandating a certain level of health insurance, like auto insurance, would substantially lower the overall expenses of the system.

Interestingly enough, true capitalists should acknowledge the government subsidies behind the creation of the private health insurance industry. Historically, health insurance benefits were tax-free methods of employee compensation. These subsidies fostered the creation of the industry - not free-market forces. Accordingly, viewing the private health insurance industry as a pillar of capitalism would be a false interpretation.

"Or you could just donate money, without the force of government imposing your decision on everyone."

Which I do, and which I encourage everyone else to do, as well.  In fact, my day job is to write and maintain software that keeps track of charitable payroll deductions, to minimize overhead and make sure that every penny possible goes where its donor intends.

But sometimes we, as a society, recognize needs that are too important to be left to voluntary donations.  I don't think you really mean to imply that the entire government should depend on annual pledge drives to meet its obligations.

Taken another way, when the majority of taxpayers (through its elected representatives in a participatory democracy) decides to levy taxes, society as a whole has actually already volunteered to contribute to the government.  Granted, it has the force of law, but laws can be changed, and taxes repealed.  "Consent of the governed" means that every collective act is voluntary on a certain level.

I have no idea whatsoever what you mean by that, or where it comes from. Either I'm just missing something (which is entirely possible), or that is a huge non-sequiter.

I think he's talking about the problems with total democracy - the very thing our founding fathers warned of. In a total democracy, the majority can vote away the rights of a minority (in this case, the working/middle classes voting to take more money from the upper class).

Ok, let me try to explain.

If the total "donated" is larger when people vote for a tax than when people freely donate what they have, then what is going on in that collective "volunteering" is that some people are  voting to take other people's money rather than give their own. In fact, this is why you want people to vote on taxes rather than donate their own money - because more money will be collected by the government.

I guess my point is that if I volunteer to give $1000 of your money to my favorite charity, I am not really volunteering or being a particularly good person, no matter how much good I do with your money.

"this is why you want people to vote on taxes rather than donate their own money"

Actually, I would prefer that they do both,  And in the long run, I'd like for them to vote to lower taxes.

"some people are  voting to take other people's money rather than give their own"

Again, they are also voting to give their own money, as well.  It's not a "rather" situation, it's an "also."  And those "some people" you refer to can't pass a tax levy by themselves; it requires a majority.  That implies a general consensus.

Ok. So if I vote to give $5 of my own money to a charity and $1000 of your money to the same charity, and receive $100 from that charity (I'm poor), how is my vote not a vote to give myself $95 of your money? And if I have a twin who votes the same, how is that a general consensus?

"So if I vote to give $5 of my own money to a charity and $1000 of your money to the same charity, and receive $100 from that charity (I'm poor), how is my vote not a vote to give myself $95 of your money? And if I have a twin who votes the same, how is that a general consensus?"

While that individual's vote could be perceived as an individual vote for a personal net gain at someone else's expense, that indivdual (even with a twin) can not enact such a tax on their own.  It requires a majority of the population (through their elected representatives) to levy a tax.  Therefore, for your point to be relevant even in general, you would have to demonstrate a net gain from other people's money for the majority of voters.

Your argument only works if the majority of voters are in the category of only giving $5.  That is obviously not the case, so just as obviously your example can not be extended to the society as a whole.  When the society as a whole makes a decision about taxes (and it is only society as a whole that can make such decisions), it applies to the society as a whole, not just isolated individuals.  As I told RSW, if the majority of voters are in poverty, we have a much more serious problem to contend with.

"So what do you think the major reason is for the increasing costs of healthcare?  My first thought is that costs increase rapidly where the consumer doesn't feel the full pain for higher prices, and therefore behavior is seldom altered.  Giving the uninsured insurance won't change this, I agee.  What plan would?"

As I said earlier, I'm not sure what plan would be the perfect solution for the situation we find ourselves in.  Life is messy.

I do think, however, that you've put your finger on the crux of the problem by asking why medical costs rise so much faster than the rest of the economy.  Unfortunately, there seems to be little agreement as to the answer.

Some point to the rising cost of prescription drugs.  Big pharma claims it needs those continually record setting profits as an incentive for R&D.

Others point to malpractice insurance costs, and call for tort reform.  The problem there is that there is little or no statistical correlation between the relative handful of well-publicized big awards and insurance rates.  There may be, however, a correlation between the overall economy, which impacts on insurance companies' return on investments, and their need to make up the difference in their profits by raising rates.

If so, that would presumably impact on health insurance underwriters, as well.  What people often forget is that the real profit for insurance companies comes from the same source as the real profit for banks: return on investment.  Insurance premiums are normally just the seed money for the investment pool.  When investments underperform, however, insurance companies may feel pressure to make up the difference with premium hikes.

I wish it were easy.  I don't think it is...

I am still unclear on the seeming avoidance of the obvious: that the rich get rich on the backs of the poor.  Do you fellas really believe that the American Entrepeneurs are just coming up with great ideas in their basements and then making billions of dollars off it?

Is it not more likely that companies like Microsoft owe their entire fortune to the research done at the expense of taxpayers?  Is it also not a reality that most successful businesses are given literally thousands of different tax breaks, free incentives to build, etc. in order to succeed in our society?  I mean it's not like America is anti-business.  On the contrary, compared to other leading nations our country basically throws money at the business class to get them to push up that GDP.

Why is it so much to expect that the individuals who profit from this societal indulgence pay back more in the way of taxes?  After all they are actually benefitting more from government spending than anyone else.  Furthermore, why is it scandalous to demand that businesses themselves pay taxes on the products and profits they make?

It sounds like some of you would rather we raise the tax burden on these so-called "welfare moms" and lower the taxes on the million and billionaires in this country.  Now I might not be a social conservative, but the Church I attend taught something about the "meek inheriting the earth".  Is this how we express that belief through policy?

I am still unclear on the seeming avoidance of the obvious: that the rich get rich on the backs of the poor.

Interesting theory. Given that poor people don't pay much in taxes, I'm not sure how this is possible. Moreover, innovation is what allows the worker to be productive. Being able to turn a crank won't get you far, but if that crank is attached to a machine that makes something useful, that worker is now able to be productive.

I would like lower taxes for everybody.

If only there existed lands beyond our borders which featured different laws so we could test your hypothesis.

Wow Glock that's not the kind of post I expect from someone like you.  "Fanning the flames of class warfare"?  Seriously?  Is there some class warfare fire I need be aware of and careful to not stoke here on IP.com?  And really ... trickle down economics?  You don't really buy that tripe do you?

Not to get all class warfare on you but the entire premise of your post is completely wrong.  You write:

The value of their labor goes up and competition increases and so to does the pay

Really?  Compared to what?  The top 1% of income earners are making a larger percentage of the overall wealth than at any time since the Great Depression (the last time we had this sustained emphasis on supply-side).  Adjusted for inflation, the average worker's income has stayed the same or even gone down in the same amount of time.  All of this while the tax rate on the top earners has decreased steadily over the last six years.

I am off to a conference for the day so I don't have time to track down the plethora of charts and graphs that exist to prove this point.  Let me just say that believing that trickle-down economics is good for the poor is like being a Cubs fan.  You're never right, but you never stop believing that this time it will all be different.

Yeah, right.

"he infrastructure of a society is created and put in place by workers who are less than disposable.  There are literally no businesses that could be successful without the lower class workers that make them run."

The infrastructure of the American economy is not created by workers, but by the owners of businesses.  There are literally no jobs that could be peformed by workers if businesses weren't created and managed by the people who own them. 

It's a symbiotic relationship, in which both parties agree to provide benefits for the other.  Nobody is being exploited, at least not American citizens, as there are ample choices of occupations and employers and the employee can very freely change either.

I don't see how "class warfare" can be started by looking out for the interests of the poor. If you aren't aware of the class warfare waged by the super rich, it probably means you are being played for a sucker. I am strongly pro-business, but I do not believe that Coca-Cola does better because it is a better produce than Blue Sky Cola. The massive welfare queen businesses are rather anti-capitalist.

It may have been unclear in its more succinct form, so let me restate what I said above: for the many pollyanna types who believe that business will regulate itself, they need only look beyond our borders. A country run by corporate interests is not a very nice place to live, and human rights do indeed erode into nothing.\

Virtual slavery and mistreatment of workers and consumers is not the best long-term producer of wealth, but to many in business there is no long term, since those who take the short term approach can run the long-term off before the long-term benefits are realized.

In such a system, no one benefits in the long term and the short term winners are the ruthless, sadistic and empathy-incapable.

xian... I promise you that I am not a laissez faire capitalist type.  I strongly support our mixed economy though I do like it to lean fairly capitalist.  I consider our economy to be a fairly reasonable mix of capitalist values tempered with some socialist ideas to help with some of the basic flaws in pure capitalism.  Is the mix perfect yet?  I'd say no.  But I'd be more for tweaking than any major overhaul to get it ever closer to being perfected.

My knee jerk reaction with the "class warfare" comments was directed at the statement that the rich were getting rich off the backs of the poor.  It seemed inflammatory to me.  Depicting the rich almost like slaveholders or possibly just brutal and overbearing overseers.  It seemed intended to envoke anger and/or disgust at the rich.  Whereas criticism of individual issues like workers perhaps deserving a bigger slice of the pie when all is said and done is legitimate, but without rhetorical flashbacks to the bloody mass movements of the early Mao years.

I'm not sure what virtual slavery you may be referring to that is actually legal?  Prison worker projects, maybe?

We seem to agree that pure capitalism is not the answer... we probably disagree on what steps should be taken to temper its inherent flaws. 

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Glock21 Op/Ed

First of all, I don't believe I have villified anybody.  I have not depicted "the rich as an evil slavedriver".  If you think I have perhaps you need to re-read my earlier posts.  I have just stated what is actually true: that the rich cannot and would not be rich if it wasn't for the work of the lower classes.  Hopefully this is not some debatable point, right?  I mean this really is Capitalism 101.

Furthermore, I am not sure we can simplify taxation into short phrases like:

Government squandering of cash as opposed to some rich guy re-investing it in the economy

Of course when government spends money it is "squandering" the cash, but when a rich guy buys a fifty million dollar house on the Hamptons that is "re-investing it in the economy"?  Come on.  Government spending makes up a very large chunk of our economy and (again) most businesses wouldn't even exist if the government hadn't initiated the inventions and entrepeneurship in the first place.  Look at the Siebel Center on campus.  Sure that amazing school was started with the donation of a guy who got rich off of a public school and government investment in technology, but even beyond his donation the State and the federal government have chipped in to build this amazing place of learning.  How many hundreds of citizens will go on to make prosperous careers because of these investments?

The infrastructure of the American economy is not created by workers, but by the owners of businesses.

I am not sure I have ever read anything more untrue on this site.  Who mines the coal?  Who drills the oil?  Who lays the pavement and the train tracks?  Rich guys in suits?  Of course not.  But who is buying the house in the Hamptons and who is being diagnosed with lung cancer after 30 years in a mine?  Somewhere someone was asking about the definition of a hero.  Do you consider a guy in a suit who is making millions off of coal futures to be a hero, or is it a guy who works 40-60 hours a week in a coal mine to feed his family?  If it is the latter, why the reluctance to make life a little easier for him and his kids?  Why cling so tightly to abstract and archaic notions about how an economy is supposed to run?  Why not let it go and support government policies that will help the American workers?  Why is that so hard?

If the tax rate on the richest 5% is currently 36% and we need to increase it to 38% or 40% to guarantee quality health care and education for every citizen in America do you really believe the economy will suddenly collapse?  Suddenly we'll become (gasp!) LESS competitive and ... oh, I don't know ... Sri Lanka will suddenly take over our position at the top of the economic barrel.

Come on.  We can do both.  We've done it before.  Programs like Social Security and Medicare actually ushered in eras of unprecedented growth in the country.  Far from being the death blow to America's competitiveness, both of these programs helped create an extremely productive and successful society where most workers were treated a little more fairly.

That is all liberals want to do: to keep the fairness coming.  Conservatives seem to desire a dragging of this country back to the Roaring 20s.  Do you not remember the end of that story?

On June 12th, 2007 at 09:19 PM, Teacher Man said:  "[TM quoting IP]  The infrastructure of the American economy is not created by workers, but by the owners of businesses.

I am not sure I have ever read anything more untrue on this site.  Who mines the coal?  Who drills the oil?  Who lays the pavement and the train tracks?  Rich guys in suits?"

I think IP's point, expressed in his post, was that the relationship between workers and owners is a symbiotic one; that one cannot exist and thrive without the other.  If BP or Shell didn't invest the time, money, and effort into building oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico (just an example), then there would be less possibility for roughnecks to work those offshore rigs...and if there weren't enough (or any) roughnecks for BP to hire, then BP wouldn't be able to keep going....

HG

While I don't advocate communism, it is true that plenty of workers can be kept quite busy without any other citizens making inordinate amounts of profit off of their labor.  The difference in that kind of system is that the State, or the community, profits from the labor instead of a small, select group of wealthy citizens.

What is the benefit of having rich people then? You deny that business and rich investors are needed to create innovation and job growth. You say you don't advocate communism, but given how you think the world works, shouldn't you? If you want to take back the money that the rich people got by exploiting the workers, why let them do it in the first place? Wouldn't that save a lot of needless tax-collection efforts?

According to your model, the world would be great if it were made up entirely of government employees.

Again, I am not advocating communism. No one is saying we need to get rid of the monied/business class. I am just advocating an empathy toward Joe and Jane Worker and a higher tax on the wealthiest Americans in order to pay for free health care and improved education.

You still need to provide substantial incentives for individuals to risk large amounts of their hard-earned money. One of the wealthiest guys I know spent years in poverty before his business took off - when you're running a company, Joe and Jane Worker get their salaries/wages first, and you get whatever's left. If the business didn't take in enough money, you pay them out of your own pocket.

The main service that the wealthy tycoon-types provide is an effective coordination of resources. You're right, TM, the coal won't come out of the ground without someone using a shovel for hours at a time. However, there won't be a mine at all if there isn't someone that coordinates the work of geologists, builds an infrastructure, and hires the proper business managers. Typically, governments fail miserably at this type of coordination.

However, I will concede that some government-run entities can be extremely successful. I use Singapore as an example of this. The only problem is that their government operates exactly like a large corporation - government employees are readily fired or promoted based on their performance. The economic environment is extremely free-market, and the government serves more as an investor than as a regulator. Since its government (effectively) controls the economy and the infrastructure, the country is able to coordinate all of its resources and services to boost the economy. For example, when Singapore wanted to become a leader in high-tech, schools taught students how to be electrical engineers. Now that the country is moving towards a bio-medical economy, schools are teaching biochemistry and medicine.

Singapore also has the advantage of being an extremely small, homogenous country with a focused economy that facilitates this level of central planning. So it's not really an example of what could happen in the United States, but more of an example that government-run economies aren't always failures. The real problem will be finding a way to adapt this government's approach to large-scale economy of the United States. Perhaps the adoption of Singapore's performance evaluations for government employees would improve the government's efficiency - by eliminating the complacency that currently exists in government jobs, the employees would face an environment that better resembles the free-market. Ultimately, in order for a government-run economy to succeed, it must operate more like a free-market, and less like the current system.

Well, for homogeneity, I was looking more at a socio-economic than a linguistical-cutural view. Yes, there are tons of different cultures, nationalities, and languages in Singapore - but everyone has very similar views of work, politics, and education. Their Gini coefficient is close to the U.S.'s, so there's a similar level of wealth distribution - a large disparity between the upper 20% and the lower 20%, but a large percentage of the population is "middle-class."

If you want to take back the money that the rich people got by exploiting the workers, why let them do it in the first place? Wouldn't that save a lot of needless tax-collection efforts? ... According to your model, the world would be great if it were made up entirely of government employees.

What model?  Who exactly is this person that you have addressed these comments to?  It certainly isn't me since I have not advocated taking back all the money rich people have.  I believe my "model" called for a 2% increase on the incomes of the wealthiest 5% in order to pay for free health care and improved education for the other 95%.

How you got communism out of that I'll never know, nor will I continue to ponder.

You're right, TM, the coal won't come out of the ground without someone using a shovel for hours at a time. However, there won't be a mine at all if there isn't someone that coordinates the work of geologists, builds an infrastructure, and hires the proper business managers.

Sure.  My point is that those coordinators don't need to be making 2-3000 times what the coal miner is making.  Maybe they could make ten times what the coal miner is making?  That seems fair, and with the rest of that money we could give all the miners and their children wonderful homes, generous retirement plans, free health care and the best public schools for their kids.  Deal?

Well, that's quite the tale.  The moral of the story?  It's good for the low-wage guy that his bosses are make in a day what he makes in a year.

I'm convinced!

Perhaps this story has a different ending.  Perhaps the board asks the rich guy to take a pay cut in order to provide lower health insurance premiums to the employees.  Maybe the rich guy does it because (gasp!) some people are motivated by something other than money.  Who knows?

But it doesn't really matter because nobody is advocating anything like what you described.  I have no idea why every commenter (besides xian) has tried to paint my position as extreme.  I've been called a communist, a class warrior, a guy who "hates" rich people, and (by way of implication) an idiot.  All because I have the temerity to suggest that raising taxes on the top five percent might be a fair way to provide universal health coverage to the other 95% of Americans.

I can only assume that the reason my position is consistently being painted as extreme leftnik communism is because you all cannot actually engage on a moderate level.  Since there is no good reason to not raise the income taxes of the rich (or cut the $100 billion a year in corporate welfare) to ensure health coverage for every American this is the best you can do?

So now I am suggesting rich CEOs take massive pay cuts.  This morning I was suggesting the we eliminate rich people completely.  What's next?  Am I now declaring the end of money?

Well, I take your comments about my posting style and I think you're right to an extent.  It also seems like this might be a good time for the annual debunking of trickle-down economics from a statistical and economical pov.  I'll get on that on my own little bloggy section of this site.

But while I'm doing that maybe you could prove some of your comments, like:

by taking money out of the potential investment pool it can stifle economic growth which on the macroscopic scale results in less opportunities for the poor and even more people being in a position where they may seek government services.  At the lower tax rates the economy is allowed to expand more, provide more opportunity to reduce the number of those who need help, and even end up with more tax revenue at the lower tax rate because the economy has grown (and thus the taxable income as well).

I mean, that's the theory and almost everyone I know believes it is a load of poopy.  Can you defend it with examples and statistics?