Data porn

"Data porn" is the presentation of meaningful data in a visually interesting and absorbing way. The New York Times has a great example. The only problem is that as far as I could figure there was no way to embed it directly here.

Laughing at Laffer

This is making the rounds of the intertubes today, but I cannot resist piling on, if only to help illustrate the knee-jerkiness of resistance to all things government by econo-ideologues:

If you like the Post Office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they’re run well, just wait till you see Medicare, Medicaid and health care done by the government.

This said by Art Laffer of the Laffer curve, the knee-jerk bit of econ theory used by said knee-jerkers to taxes...

I really wish there were an intellectually honest opponent. It would be so much more interesting.

UPDATE: Just in case it isn't obvious to all already, Medicare and Medicaid are already "done" by the government. And the Post Office is a weird hybrid government sponsored corporation, so not entirely government. And the DMV is a state responsibility, so it isn't entirely obvious that state government and federal government should be lumped together. Just sayin'.

The public servant tax

What is in a name?

I was listening to NPR this morning and again hearing about some state or other that is trying to furlough its workers because the legislature refuses to raise taxes on anyone, because as anyone with half an econ brain knows that taxes hurt the economy ... right? But of course, a furlough is really just a surtax on public servants. Sorry for the lack of precision, but I think the story I was half-listening to was talking about 12 days of furlough, presumably spread over the year. That is equivalent to approximately a 5% tax on pay.

And while some particulary uncompassionate out there may take satisfaction in the idea of their DMV workers paying for needed revenue, we are also taxing "good guys" like teachers and firefighters. All of whom can little afford a tax hike of 5%. You may not like the DMV worker, but he or she buys stuff with her pay check, and one way or the other his or her purchasing habits stimulates whatever private sector job the anti-tax folks work at.

This kind of tax is both unfair and a bad idea for the economy.

Why I'm not a Libertarian

I feel like I have been reading and hearing a lot from Libertarians recently. I guess they proxy for the intellectually (more) honest opposition in the health care debate, and I suppose there are a few friends I love dearly who are of the persuasion, so I get exposed to the arguments more than I would otherwise.

There is absolutely no daylight between me and Libertarians on social issues (legalize drugs--though I might regulate more than the most ardent Lib; government absolutely stays out of the bedroom and the body; individuals decide for themselves what constitutes a family, etc.). I also really believe in many of the economic insights generated by neoclassical economics. So why is it that the GMU crowd drives me so utterly crazy?

Somewhere along the way, and I blame the Reagan era for a lot of this, a myth developed that government was by definition incompetent and free enterprise is by definition infallable. There is no empirical evidence for either claim and plenty of counter-examples. Most importantly, private enterprise is often utterly incompentent, mendacious, and willing to trample liberties far more quickly than any government bureaucrat. And occasionally, when those government bureaucrats are given respect, resources and a functional institutional structure, they can do fabulous and great things. Health care is a great example of this, but by far not the only one.

As a result, I believe that when the assumptions of the fundamental theorems of economics are met: well-defined and -defended property rights, symmetric information, and large numbers of parties on both sides of the potential transactions, there is no good reason for government interferrence. On the other hand, those assumptions are almost never met, and when they are not, there is potential for constructive collective intervention--i.e. the government could play a useful role.

The Libertarian ideology cuts off the search for constructive answers to difficult problems by excluding out of hand a host of possible solutions, and all too often the argument devolves into denegrating government workers and ignoring evidence that doesn't fit. I'd really rather have the conversation focus on where collective action is necessary and appropriate and how best to structure the government's involvement in facilitating such action so that it protects our liberty and social welfare to the extent achievable by mere humans.

I'd also like to be able to talk about the very real problems in dysfunctional competitive environments without having to wade through silly ideological objections to the existence of the problems.

The utter insanity of US health care

I saw this quote from David Cutler's paper on insurance premiums via Matthew Yglesias:

This analysis shows that without health reform, average family premiums will grow to more than $22,000 by 2019, up from $13,100 today.

In contrast, here in Australia I have to purchase health insurance privately, since I do not qualify for their national health care plan, Medicare, nor does work offer it (health insurance isn't tied to employment here). I have the cadillac plan, chock full of bells and whistles--it pays for 100% of my acupuncture up to a very generous limit, for example--designed for people on my type of work visa. For the privilege, I pay a whopping AU$2500 a YEAR. Granted the comparison is not perfect, since this is an individual cover, not a family one (the family costs $5000). But I am quite confident that the coverage is also far better and more reliable than the average US plan that currently costs $13,100.

I think if people in the US realized the magnitude of the excess expense they are paying today, not even the flood of insurance and PhRMA money could stop reform.

Housekeeping

I know that the very worst way to encourage people to become regular readers of a new blog is to not post for a coon's age. To help make up for the long silence, I have added an RSS option over on the right, so that for those of you who use RSS feeds, you don't have to check in here directly.

I don't actually use RSS, so I have no clue how it works.

Also

I've started to ruminate on whistle-blowers. I think it would be interesting to study them, though I am not sure how. What is it about a very small segment of the population that causes them to speak up when it is so obviously against their interests in every dimension?

I'm curious in part because one reason I don't work in industry is because I am afraid I would be one, and yet I still don't understand the impulse. (I suppose I am a whistle-blower of sorts already: every semester here I catch a few cheaters/plagarists AND report them, paperwork and angry emails and unsupportive admin be damned.)