Tag: economics
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A Novel Approach
As the clock starts in our efforts to reform out Utah health care system I was encouraged by this Op-Ed in the Salt Lake Tribune. Making health insurance affordable – forcing carriers to offer so-called “affordable plans” – will not result in affordable health care. . . . our priority must be to restore the…
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Block Grants
When I read The Coming Crisis of Big Government I gained a measure of hope that there might be some possibility left for averting the crisis of our soon-to-balloon costs for social security and Medicare. One of the central examples in the article relate to the use of block grants to restructure some of the…
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Buyers of Medical Services
Reach Upward nails it again when he talks about Serving Medical Customers. One of the primary rules of economics is that suppliers do their best to supply what buyers actually demand. Who are the real buyers of medical services? Not you. Unless you pay for everything yourself or have only catastrophic insurance, you are not…
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Imports and Jobs
I had asked whether our markets would be better served with a tit for tat approach to tariffs rather than a more dedicated insistence on free trade on imports. If I had any lingering doubts on the subject they were laid to rest after reading Why Politicians Are Wrong about Imports and Jobs. Unless the…
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Free Marketer’s Dilemma
I’m a proponent of the value of free markets and their ability to enrich people. The problem is that the free market only works in a closed system, in other words a free market is not favored when intersecting with markets which are being manipulated. The issue of how to compensate for intersecting our supposedly…
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Income vs Consumption
I found it fascinating to read You Are What You Spend to see how different the economic picture is depending on the way we measure economic position. . . . renewed attention is being given to the gap between the haves and have-nots in America. Most of this debate, however, is focused on the wrong…
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Feeling Bloated
As if the Republican party (thanks largely to the current administration) had not long ago lost any credibility to apply the “tax and spend” label to the Democrats, the American Enterprise Institute has now published a report on just how fat our favorite Elephant is. (hat tip Cato @ Liberty) Allowing for our military expenditures,…
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Nobody Seems Impressed
I chuckled as I returned to an article from early December by Paul Krugman about how: In past financial crises — the stock market crash of 1987, the aftermath of Russia’s default in 1998 — the Fed has been able to wave its magic wand and make market turmoil disappear. But this time the magic…
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Promote Job Creation
Bob Herbert and I often differ in our views but I really like what he said about economic stimulus as is being discussed in D.C. There is no question that some kind of stimulus package geared to the needs of ordinary Americans is in order. But that won’t begin to solve the fundamental problem. Good…
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Unalienable Rights
On the issues of gay rights, abortion rights, or womens rights I think that Ron Paul captures the truth with his repeated assertion that there is only one kind of rights – individual rights. These are the rights that were called unalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence. When individual rights are properly protected many…