Over The Falls In A Barrel

Daredevils have been going over the Niagara Falls for over a century.  Sometimes in a barrel.  Sometimes not.  Sometimes they survive.  Sometimes not.  Curiously, the results of the plunge rarely live up to expectations.

Despite the risks, and the known history of this stunt, people continue to try it to this day.

Which brings us to the fiscal waterfall that is Obamacare.

The Washington Post has a story on the impending massive rate hikes that young people are about to experience.

The result: Older, sicker people will pay lower premiums. Younger, healthier people will pay higher ones to make up the difference. The price of a policy for a young, healthy man in, for instance, Milwaukee, could triple from $58 per month to $175, according to a survey of insurers released by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a center-right think tank, and a former director of the Congressional Budget Office.

Curiously, the above is not precisely news to those that were paying attention when Obamacare was first passed into law.  It has been clear from the beginning that the intent of this nationalized health care system was to take money from the young and the healthy only to give it to the poor and the less well.

But we were promised that we could keep our current doctor and current insurance plan if we were happy with them.  Of course that promise did not stop my physician from buckling under the new federal regulatory burdens to end up selling his practice to our local mega-hospital.  The story above is really focused on people that have to buy individual health insurance.  It doesn't really apply to those that obtain insurance via our employers.

Right?

It has become very clear to everyone involved who is analytical and not ideological that the rational strategy, for both large and small firms, is to cease providing health care insurance to employees.

No company wants to admit that they are considering eliminating health insurance as an option, or be the first one to drop their health insurance plan, but once a competitor does so, the preference cascade will begin. The clear sentiment is “We will not be the first one to drop our health insurance plan, but we would be a close second.”

The coming preference cascade for employer group health plans is what the Democrats fear the most, because Obamacare was sold to the masses as “if you like your health insurance plan, you can keep it.”

The people who really know the law, and who have been following the avalanche of regulations, have already figured this out. It will take a while for this specialized knowledge to seep downward, because right now only $800+ an hour ERISA attorneys and the most sophisticated HR people understand how Obamacare really works.

The fruits of government action have long been known by anyone with the least interest in history.  Those fruits inevitably cause costs to rise and access/quality to fall.  Government will...once again...break our rhetorical legs and then expect gratitude for the crutches it offers.

The result of socialism is as predictable as the seasons.  It is to create an equality of poverty by destroying the means of producing wealth.

When the current scheme fails...a result of which I have no doubt...will the government advocate a return to free(er) markets?  Or will they say that he problem is that we did not cede enough power over our private lives to the federal nanny?

The Straw

...that broke the camel's back.

Professional golfer Phil Mickelson has recently taken a little flak for indicating that he plans on leaving California in the wake of his announced plans to relocate to a state with lower tax rates.  Specifically, California has recently increased their income tax rates by roughly 3 percent for the next seven years.  The sales tax was also increased.  These changes were made in an attempt to close the current sizable annual budget deficit being run by the state of California.

My sympathies lie primarily with Phil.  We aren't even close to being in the same income range, but as a matter of principle, I believe that a person has a right to the income they earn that should not be cavalierly set aside.  However, there are a couple of issues that have been studiously ignored in this discussion.

The first is the matter of comparing apples to apples.

According to Mr. Mickelson, his future total tax rate will be a little north of 60% of his income.  This includes federal income taxes, federal FICA taxes, federal Medicare taxes, state income taxes, and one presumes that local income taxes are included if appropriate.  Some of his critics have compared that tax rate with the 14% income tax rate paid by Mitt Romney and his wife.  That is an incomplete comparison designed to confuse the issue.

The Romney's most certainly paid payroll and appropriate income taxes for any wages they may have received.  Of course, if they did not receive any wages, then they didn't pay payroll or income taxes at those rates.

Under the area of comparable tax rates, the double taxation of dividends is also studiously ignored in these discussions.  Dividends are paid out of after tax profits by corporations.  When a further tax is then levied on the individual receiving those dividends, then the money is effectively taxed at the cumulative rate of the corporate income tax and the individual investment tax.

It is partially due to this double taxation that we have elected to charge a lower tax rate on investment income.  Good, bad, or indifferent; I make no assertion as to whether or not this is good public policy.

The second issue is the relative need for government to consume Mr. Mickelson's wealth.  Back in 2009 when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor of California, Robb Allen of Sharp as a Marble had a partial list of agencies, commissions, boards, and other state government organizations.  At the time, the suggestion was that prisons would have to close and state police would have to be laid off to balance the budget.  The point at the time is that there were a great many other state agencies that could have been down sized or perhaps even eliminated in order to minimize cuts to critical prison and law enforcement budgets.

A similar case can be made with respect to federal government spending as well.

As a former resident of California, it truly pains me to watch the current fiscal debacle unfold.  The roots of that debacle can be found in the lack of government fiscal restraint.  Poor spending priorities can never be solved by increasing taxation.

When taxation levels are high enough to represent injustice to the people earning that money, precautions to limit exposure to confiscatory taxation are more than justified.  The camel has no obligation to stand still as the last straw is dropped in place.

Who Owns You?

On the international front, socialism is on the rise in France.  Socialists recently won control of most of the government and immediate set to work solving their deficit problems by raising taxes on the rich.  Those taxes were one factor for Johnny Depp's decision to return to the U.S.  There have been other reports of France's elite moving to the U.K., Belgium, and other countries to avoid those confiscatory tax rates. 

Recently, France's Prime Minister had a hissy fit over several high profile actors, and others that took similar precautions to preserve their earnings.

I find the bureaucratic outrage to be more than a little amusing.  It is as if these socialists believe that those people are the property of the state rather than being individuals who have the freedom to choose the conditions in which they live.  Why should they be surprised when those individuals exercise that freedom in the face of an overly bureaucratic government that is imposing an intolerable level of taxation?

The exodus is predictable, as is the socialist response.  Sadly.

It Didn't Work Then

Periodically, I have moments where I enjoy my online reading preferences.  One of those was a couple of days ago when Mr. Obama's campaign began pushing the idea that Mr. Romney favored fewer firemen, teachers, etc.

The Blogfather had the perfect quick take on the subject.

As my father-in-law once said, when they talk about taxes it’s always for teachers, firemen, and police — but when they spend your taxes, it always seems to go to some guy in a leather chair downtown you never heard of.

As Reason noted, a lot of the stimulus money was advertised as going to help local government jobs like teachers, cops, and firemen, but on those few occasions when the money actually supported those jobs, those people got laid off anyway after the gravy train ran empty.  Not exactly the sort of jobs program that was advertised up front.

From Mr. Romney's campaign:

“President Obama fundamentally believes in raising taxes to grow government. He believes that we must hire more government workers to fix the economy. Every day, we learn why President Obama has not been the leader to take us out of this economic crisis. President Obama wants to stimulate government, Mitt Romney wants to stimulate the real world economy.” 

It's good to understand the talking points before they come out so I can just bypass the conversation altogether later on.

Go South Young Man

In the "news you can use" category comes an assessment of energy consumption based on various regions of the United States.  Do you love Mother Earth?  Then perhaps you ought to be moving south!

Perhaps the blue model politicians whose tax and spend policies are driving businesses and residents out of their states are smarter than they look. They could be green activists, steadily working to save the earth by driving people out of the northeast. We look forward to green activists introducing legislation in Congress to levy new taxes on those whose choice to live in cold states imposes costs on the more virtuous and eco-friendly inhabitants of Texas and South Carolina.

Victims Of Communism Day

Lacking a pre-programmed entry for today, I will simply note that Loyalty Day (as practiced in the U.S.) is also a great candidate for Victims of Communism Day.  The Volohk Conspiracy also has more.

Healthcare Denied

When you hear that people are concerned about government health care systems denying coverage to patients, understand that there is a rational basis for that concern.

When Kenneth Warden was diagnosed with terminal bladder cancer, his hospital consultant sent him home to die, ruling that at 78 he was too old to treat.

Even the palliative surgery or chemotherapy that could have eased his distressing symptoms were declared off-limits because of his age.

So we are just talking about one case, right?  It has to be an outlier, right?

This kind of ‘professional opinion’ appears to be costing more than 14,000 lives each year, thanks to routine discrimination by doctors who assume older patients are too frail for surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy. 

This is according to experts at Macmillan Cancer Support, who warned last week that every day up to 40 elderly cancer sufferers are dying needlessly because they are being denied the best treatments. This is particularly true, it says, for patients over the age of 70.

The charity estimates that if the treatment of older patients matched that on offer in the U.S., as many as 14,000 lives could be saved every year.

Nope.  There are rational reasons for not granting government any more power over our lives than it already has.

Freedom Works....

....each and every time it is tried.

That is particularly true when one considers the impact of freedom...including free market economics...on the percentage of people living in poverty.  A small hint: the more freedom there is, the fewer people living in poverty.

"Nations in the top quartile of economic freedom had an average per-capita GDP of $31,501 in 2009, compared to $4,545 for those nations in the bottom quartile," says Cato. The rate of extreme poverty is 2.7 percent in the top quartile and 41 percent in the bottom one.

Among many people a generation ago -- and among a few today -- free markets and private property were seen as the cause of poverty. But the number of adherents has dwindled in the face of repeated refutation.

The latest cover story in The Economist magazine is: "Cuba hurtles toward capitalism." Cuba! Even communists eventually have to make peace with reality.

Stanley Fish - Authoritarian - Progressive

If Stanley Fish is a typical "progressive", then apparently being "progressive" and being "authoritarian are not substantially dissimilar positions.  Via Protein Wisdom -

“Progressivism” is, as Fish notes — and as I’ve spent years on protein wisdom demonstrating through my various discussions of identity politics and language — a belief system that, once its kernel assumptions are adopted, will lead fundamentally and inexorably to tyranny. Fish doesn’t call it such, of course. He chooses “might makes right.” But there is no difference. Tyranny and authoritarianism — when lorded over by the “liberal” — is, by virtue of the adopted morality of those running it, both moral and good.

Criminal Occupation

Disclaimer first, opinion after...

I am certain that most of the Occupy folks are decent enough people.  It is always tempting to make the weirdos and oddballs be the mean rather than the outlier.

But still, the Tea Party folks never had weirdos and oddballs of these dimensions.  Check out the list of serious crimes that are being committed in these Obamavilles.  And those are just the ones that have been reported.

The list does not include the many crimes that the various Occupy committees have successfully hushed up.  Their official position appears to be that they are unwilling to engage local law enforcement over criminal activities.

Rape appears to be the most common crime that these "committees" have the most trouble containing.

Worth considering by but unlisted is racism/anti-Semitism.  (A prominent theme for those following the Occupy antics via Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit.)

Many of the positive changes in our society over the last 30-40 years have occurred due to an expanded sense of tolerance.  What is lacking from the Occupy folks is discernment.  Tolerance is what causes a 16 year old girl to avert her gaze to the normal nudity experience when one is preparing for a good night's sleep.  Discernment is what causes her to call the cops when she becomes the object of to public masturbation.

Sadly, she possessed more discernment than the supposed adults that are running these protests.

The Difference Between Occupiers And Tea Partiers

While there are some elements that should unite the two groups (i.e. distrust of the well connected well-to-do and their government toadies), there are other elements in which the difference could not be more clear.  Jeff Jacoby tries to get some mileage out of the 10th Commandment, but the larger point is in the sadly growing catalog of vandalism, rape, assault, and continued threats of violence from the Occupy group. 

Where the Tea Party folks left their gathering spots devoid of trash, the Occupy folks trash their gathering spots.  Policy pretentions aside, the Occupy folks appear to value nothing beyond their own existence.  Nothing matters to them unless it matters to them; narcissism in spades.

Of course, it only takes a few bad apples to spoil the barrel.  Were it not for a complacent media that ignores the blatant lawlessness of those few bad apples and their prior zealous attempts to convert a few minor blemishes into a worm in every Tea Party apple, we might justly and quickly purge the public debate such destructive disinterest in the well being of anyone not "occupying" a tent located inside a major metropolitan park.

Only then can a serious discussion of the issues at hand commence.

Successfully Patient

I have been intending to write something along these lines for quite some time.  Guy Fawkes was not, despite his popularity among anachronistic anarchists, a friend of liberty.

I waited long enough for someone else to pretty well cover my thoughts.  Success at last!

Won't You Please Let Me In?

Via the Blogfather comes this excellent essay from The Volokh Conspiracy about the Occupy movements and the underlying socioeconomic forces that have created it.  The short version is that they have dutifully gotten their tickets punched and now expect the rewards to flow regardless of their actual talents or the collective need for their "abilities".  Such as they are.

The longer version....

From Surprising Corners

I was listening to someone a couple weeks ago.  This person is a hard core anti-socialist, pro-freedom individual.  They mildly chastised me once for suggesting that corporations should not be considered the legal equivalent of a person.

They were observing that some of the Occupy protesters were making a few fair points about their respective situations.  His concern was that the Occupy movement would be subverted by the minority that wants to impose socialism on the country.

The point?  This is someone that I would not expect to be giving any credence to any of the OWS arguments.

I have some further thoughts that I am working on and hope to have posted soon.  Given that I am writing this post a couple weeks in advance, you might have seen them by now!

Who Is A Racist?

After being subjected to two year's worth of slurs suggesting that the Tea Party is based in racism, the news of this weeks "Occupy" protest in Atlanta is spreading quickly.  The group that is/was protesting there refused to let John Lewis, civil rights stalwart and legend, speak.

Congressman Lewis (D, GA) was ready to talk to the group, but they didn't give him a chance to speak.
"I was going to say, I stand with you. I support you, what you're down," said Lewis to the media.

He said he wasn't disappointed he wasn't able to address the crowd. Several people CBS Atlanta spoke to were upset.

Michelle Williams was excited to attend the event and no longer wanted to be associated with the movement, citing how Lewis was treated.

"I am angry because this is not what democracy is all about. This is Marxist more Stalin like. Your movement, you're just riff-raff. You're an organized mob," said Williams.

I am prepared to be a bit kinder....one might suggest more civil...than many left leaning polemicists by suggesting that the decision to not let Mr. Lewis speak was probably made by whatever passes for "leadership" in this movement and does not reflect the thoughts of the many participants.

I disagree with Mr. Lewis on a long list of issues.  But even I would be interested in what he had to say.

A side note to Ms. Williams.  The "leadership".  This "movement".  Marxist.  Stalinist.

This isn't particularly new.

As Dr. Wes suggests, this group isn't particularly gifted with "clue".

Why "Too Big To Fail"...Ensures Failure

Why is an excess of government a bad idea?  Because it fosters failure and stifles progress.

That would be the lesson learned by the leader of the Tea Party while he visited Poland.

Read the whole thing.

Why We Loathe BIG Government

One of the most frustrating issues in my political life is the apparent lack of appreciation amongst my many leftish friends for the basis of my point of view.  I'm not looking for agreement.  Just an appreciation for why I believe the things I believe.

And "because yer nuts" doesn't count.

Begging For Equal Time

The Tea Party is allegedly a racist organization funded by billionaires.

What does that make these folks?

Someone wake me when that story hits the front pages of the NYTimes and Washington Post.  'Cause then I'll know that the world is about to be raptured!

They Told Me.....

Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit fame has an ongoing series of "The told me if I voted Republican that....." over at his site.  You fill in the dots with some theoretically pernicious federal policy that some in the media and on the left....but I repeat myself....have expressed regarding voting for Republicans.  Of course, the policies that are mentioned are currently being enacted by Democrats and other presumably left of center organizations.

The most recent edition is about astronomer Martin Gaskell.  He has been denied the position of running the observatory for the University of Kentucky.  Because he is a Christian.

Glenn's observations are great, as always.  One that he bypassed was the concern expressed by the university that Mr. Gaskell might be "potentially evangelical".  Not that he was confirmed to be evangelical.  And no explanation of how being evangelical might make him unsuitable for the position in question.  They had a fear....an irrational and unfounded fear....and acted upon it.

Which is exactly what the left says about pretty much anyone that isn't on the left.  Someone's Freudian slip is showing......

I think diversity training is in order.

How To Screw Up A Market In One Easy Lesson

Periodically, 'Diversity Lane' will knock one out of the park.  This be it.