Tag Archives: Socialism

News

Does government dependency make people happier and more moral?

6 Comments

Here’s a funny story in the UK Daily Mail. (H/T The Blog Prof)

Excerpt:

A jobless couple rake in £95,000 in state benefits a year – and even have breakfast delivered to the door each morning, courtesy of the taxpayer.

The money – five times the starting salary of a teacher – goes to unemployed Pete and Sam Smith and their ten children, who live in a rentfree four-bedroom house.

[…]The Smiths were moved last month by the local authority from a house in Bath, which the landlord accused them of wrecking, to the large house in the Bristol suburb of Kingswood.

But Mrs Smith, 36, complained that the house was too small, the breakfast portions too stingy and said she could afford to buy her brood only one Nintendo Wii games console between them.

She claims she is also forced to pay £100 a week to keep her five cats in a cattery.

‘It’s very cramped here,’ she told the News of the World. ‘We’ve been told we might not be given a new house for another nine months, which is ridiculous.

‘The breakfast supplied by the council isn’t like proper hot food. It’s usually eggs, beans, tinned tomatoes and cereal, which isn’t really enough for us all and we have to heat it up ourselves.’

[…]Mrs Smith receives up to £140-a-week child benefits for her children aged from four months to 14 years.

The family also get disability living allowance, carer’s allowance, tax credits and income support.

The total with child benefits is £44,954. They then receive a £950-aweek bed-and-breakfast deal where the council pays for breakfasts delivered to their home, which comes to £49,400 – a total of £94,354 a year.

You may want to read this Arthur Brooks column that argues that it isn’t money that makes people happy – it’s the freedom to work, save and spend how you please. Arthur Brooks is the same guy who previously wrote a book showing that those who oppose redistribution of wealth give far more in charity than than those who support it. You can read about that in this article.

News

If insurance companies complain about Obamacare, they get sanctioned

1 Comment

Want to know how the Obammunists are responding to businesses who complain about having to raise helath care premiums on their employees (or drop coverage completely)?

From Yahoo News. (H/T Hot Air)

Excerpt:

President Barack Obama’s top health official on Thursday warned the insurance industry that the administration won’t tolerate blaming premium hikes on the new health overhaul law.

“There will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a letter to the insurance lobby.

“Simply stated, we will not stand idly by as insurers blame their premium hikes and increased profits on the requirement that they provide consumers with basic protections,” Sebelius said. She warned that bad actors may be excluded from new health insurance markets that will open in 2014 under the law. They’d lose out on a big pool of customers, as many as 30 million people nationwide.

This sort of shows the level of economic ignorance present in the current White House. They require more things to be covered, like pre-existing conditions and covering children until they are 26, and then they expect that there will be no “unjustified rate increases” in the cost of health care plans. Huh? You might as well put a bunch of zombies in charge of the country. Who doesn’t understand that if insurance companies have to cover more claims, then the cost of premiums will increase? It makes no sense that premiums would stay the same – the money has to come from somewhere!

Ed Morrisey writes:

Rarely have we heard a Cabinet official tell Americans to stay out of political debates at the risk of losing their businesses.  It points out the danger in having government run industries and holding a position where politicians can actually destroy a business out of spite.  It also demonstrates the thin skin of our current administration, where Hope and Change means keeping your mouth shut and pretending that everyone is happy while businesses slowly circle the drain.

This administration is the most anti-business administration in history. We’re losing jobs and wealth at a precipitous rate. They don’t know what they are doing, and their threats only scare businesses even more. It’s government by ignorant bullies.

News

What does universal health care really mean?

2 Comments

I think the point of universal health care (at least the government-run variety) is pretty clear. The goal is to equalize life outcomes so that people who work the hardest pay the most into the system, and people who live in risky/immoral lifestyles withdraw the most. The biggest losers in such a system are the productive people who make responsible, moral decisions about their lifestyle – they pay the most and withdraw the least. The biggest winners are people who don’t work at all but who withdraw a lot.

I think that universal health care makes people irresponsible. The driving force behind universal health care is the idea that people should be able to do anything they want to pursue happiness any way they please, and that the natural limits of reality should be circumvented by spending other people’s money to “equalize life outcomes”.

Socialized medicine proponents are funny people. They think that no one should have to deal with the costs of their own decisions as long as they are sincere in their pursuit of happiness – it’s just not possible to predict what decisions will lead to good outcomes and what decisions will lead to bad outcomes. I once had two Canadian women bragging to me in an airport about how great socialized medicine was until I explained to them that at my salary level I would be paying 50% of my salary to the government and I had not been to the doctor for anything other than a check-up in my entire life. They could not see why I might like to opt out of such a system even after I explained it to them. They apparently thought that at any moment I might develop the urge for an abortion or two and then who would pay for it? Life is so unpredictable for a Canadian woman – it’s better not to have to worry about it and just let someone else pay.

So, let’s see what passes for health care in various universal health care systems around the world.

  • Here’s my previous post on taxpayer-funded in vitro fertilization in Ontario, Canada. It’s a human right! And that means it’s FREEEEEE!
  • But there’s more. Sex-changes are also a human right in Ontario, Canada. It’s FREEEEEE! The taxpayer has loads of money for that.
  • Do you know what else is FREEEEEE! in socialist countries like the UK? Breast enlargements. Yeah, because it’s a human right!

And of course it goes without saying that abortion is a human right everywhere, and should be taxpayer-funded. It really is about playing on people’s fears, and buying votes with other people’s money. The reason that the socialists don’t want health care to be left to private companies instead of government is because private companies would insist that people pay based on their likelihood of filing a claim – as with car insurance. But that is too “judgmental” for the universal health care proponents – they think that no one should feel obligated to behave responsibly just because of petty things like money.

I wonder what my readers think about this.

Is it OK for some citizens to make decisions that are costly and risky as they pursue happiness in non-standard ways, and then assign blame and costs for the inevitable failures and expenses to their neighbors? Is there a right to pursue happiness at the expense of others? Is life predictable enough that people should be able to rationally assess the costs and risks of their own decisions? Would private insurers do a better job of holding people accountable to make good decisions about their own lifestyles? Should people choose how much health care they want based on the coverages they want and the risks they want to incur? Should a person be able to say that they don’t want to be covered for sex changes and have the amount they pay into the system reduced? Should a person be able to opt out of government health care entirely and just buy a medical insurance policy privately, based on their own needs?