Recent comments

I'd like to respond to 'Better Solution's' comments and suggestions: "Check out their track records on social security - underfunded and inefficient, medicare - same, post office -broke and inefficient, border control - are you kidding?" Social Security ... would not be underfunded if administrations and Congress had raised the cap on income subject to the tax, or slightly increased the tax itself, which Reagan did. The first is preferable, and it should be noted that Reagan had the political capital to get away with raising the tax. The truth is: a. Social Security is flagging because of the increase in baby boomers reaching retirement age, the lower number of workers paying in due to reduced birth rates, and currently the high rate of unemployment. b. There's also a problem in that war spending (particularly) has meant a drain on the treasury and the need to sell more Treasury bonds, which saps the SS fund. c. at something like 2% admin costs, Social Security can hardly be called inefficient. The same is true of Medicare. a. Again admin costs are tiny compared to private insurance admin loading. b. Medicare covers only the elderly, that part of the population with the highest need for major medical treatment and long-term care. c. If Medicare were expanded to cover the whole population, the high costs for the elderly would be offset by the lower incidence of use among the young and healthy. The Post Office ... delivers your mail, wherever it has to go. a. That includes the lone cabin in remote mountain canyons for the same price as a letter destined for across town. b. Some 40 years back, the private couriers came into the market. The free market. What they could do, that the PO by law cannot, is to refuse to deliver in out-of-the-way places or else charge an arm and a leg for the privilege. c. In short, the private couriers took the cream routes and left the PO with everything else. We subsidize PO service so that everyone can still mail a letter, but we subsidize it twice over when we pay high rates for that sexy overnight courier service. Immigration and border control, well, there's a can of worms! a. The best way to keep hordes of people from coming into the country would be to help them want to stay where they are. As long as there is gross income inequity, trade-driven job loss, war, famine and mayhem ... people will think they might have it better in the US. b. The Border Fence is a great boondoggle (and threat to wildlife habitat). Flat out pandering to the shrill anti-immigrant voices. c. There are better solutions to the border problem. As an emigrant, I've experienced a different approach, which works a lot better AND funds the host-country general revenues and social security and health programs. In short, the argument that government programs are inefficient and ineffective is hollow. It's based on urban myth, propounded by opponents of rational change. However, I WOULD agree that the legislation currently before us on health care reform doesn't do the job voters had hoped for last November. Failing a single-payer plan, there should be no requirement for people to buy insurance, and there should be no subsidy of such a mandate to add more money to the already bloated private insurance profits. But, I'd be concerned about admin costs for tax rebates and other means suggested for taking the money out of public coffers and redirecting it, via low-income customers, into the insurance companies. Why is it exactly that what works in other industrialized countries (single-payer basic health care for all, with optional private top-up for those who like 'the frills') would be a bad idea for the US?