Practice Good Theory

The "individual mandate" (buy health-coverage or pay a fine) is the political focus for the week. I hope the SCOTUS decides the "mandate" is unconstitutional and also rejects all of Obamacare. The problem with health-care: The problem with the U.S. healthcare system is that it is already heavily statist. Medicare and Medicaid control a big part of healthcare spending. Just as important, the government has imposed huge costs on private insurance via mandates, making it impossible for the poor to afford legal health-care. Existing mandates:  While the SCOTUS was debating the "individual mandate", the GOP in Michigan  was mandating that anyone who buys private insurance must also buy coverage for autism. To someone with private health-insurance a mandate that says "y ou must also buy cover for disease XYZ, whether you want to or not ", costs money. Compared to this, a mandate that says " you must buy health insurance " has no immedi

Background:  This is the fourth post in a series looking at U.S. government debt. In previous posts I considered  the official U.S. Federal debt  ( $10 Tr. ), the liabilities for "entitlements"  ( $6 Tr. over the next 12 years) and other liabilities  ( $4.5 Tr ). The official debt is over 60% of GDP. Adding entitlements, we're at 100% of GDP. Adding it all, we are nearer 150% of GDP. These levels are high, but the bigger issue is that there is no plan to change this trend.  Neither major political party has any plans to reduce the debt in the next decade. Under current plans, we will add another  $9 Tr.  in debt. over the next 12 years.  The U.S. is planning to go bankrupt, some time in the future. Crying wolf?  But, haven't we heard all this before? In the 1970s, people were already warning about U.S. debt levels, and in the 1980's and 1990s. So, isn't the fear of bankruptcy just "crying wolf"? Historical debt levels: This graph sho

Here is a time-line ( from John Maudlin ): 2009 Dec: European Central Bank (ECB) president says there is "no possibility" of a Greek default 2010 Jan: European monetary commissioner says there is "no Plan B" for Greece because it will not default 2010 Sep: Greek Finance minister says there will be no restructuring of debt 2012 Mar: Greek defaults on its debt, changing some laws with retroactive effect Consider that it took over two years from when a default seemed a so likely that it was being denied officially, to the time it actually occurred. Sometimes these things can take a while to unravel. Mostly, this was wasted time... but, that's how things play out on the political stage. Defaulting on one's debt is not a good thing. However, there's a good reason for bankruptcy law: if a debtor simply cannot pay his bills, there comes a point where the best solution is to recognize reality. Similarly, it sometimes makes sense for a creditor to

Lewis Carroll is blogging here now. This post is all his. ( Archive.org has multiple formats of this short essay , including Kindle, PDF etc.)  BREAKFAST, dinner, tea; in extreme cases, breakfast, luncheon, dinner, tea, supper, and a glass of something hot at bedtime. What care we take about feeding the lucky body! Which of us does as much for his mind? And what causes the difference? Is the body so much the more important of the two? By no means: but life depends on the body being fed, whereas we can continue to exist as animals (scarcely as men) though the mind be utterly starved and neglected. Therefore Nature provides that, in case of serious neglect of the body, such terrible consequences of discomfort and pain shall ensue, as will soon bring us back to a sense of our duty: and some of the functions necessary to life she does for us altogether, leaving us no choice in the matter. It would fare but ill with many of us if we were left to superintend our own digestion and