What the future needs!

Via Carpe Diem: Years after activists accused Nike and other Western brands of running Third World sweatshops, the issue has taken a surprising turn. The path of discovery winds from coastal factory floors far into China's interior, past women knee-deep in streams pounding laundry. It continues down a dusty village lane to a startling sight: arrays of gleaming three-story houses with balconies, balustrades and even Greek columns rising from rice paddies. It turns out that factory workers -- not the activists labeled "preachy" by one expert, and not the Nike executives so wounded by criticism -- get the last laugh. Villagers who "went out," as Chinese say, for what critics described as dead-end manufacturing jobs are sending money back and returning with savings, building houses and starting businesses. And Mark Perry observes . . . We shouldn't judge China's working and living standards with a 21st century American viewpoint, but we should more realis

Carpe Diem quotes from the report: Following these fundamental changes to the market, there was a sharp increase in the number of taxis. By the end of 2001, the number of taxis in the Dublin area had doubled from 2,700 pre -liberalization to 5,500. These trends continued, so that by the end of 2003, the number of taxis in the Dublin area had increased to 8,400. Similar trends were seen in the country as a whole. In 2000, there were a total of 4,200 taxis in the country and this had risen to 16,000 by end 2004." Mark Perry adds . . . Deregulation also led to a significant reduction in waiting times for a taxi, from 11.5 minutes in 1997 to 6.2 minutes in 2008, resulting in an estimated value of time savings of more than $400 million annually for Irish consumers. This is a good example of how excessive regulation stifles competition, leading to high prices and poor service, and how deregulation restores competition (often the best "regulator" of all), resulting in lower

Via Mark Perry at Carpe Diem, top 400 taxpayers pasy 2% of all income taxes.

Great overview from Mark Perry at Carpe Diem.

According to NY Times via Carpe Diem, the U.S. leads the world in the export of services.

According to the NY Times via Carpe Diem, new hope for the supply side: If all the schools being proposed actually opened, they would amount to an 18 percent increase in the 131 medical schools across the country. (By comparison, there are 200 law schools approved by the American Bar Association.) And beyond the new schools, many existing schools are expanding enrollment, sometimes through branch campuses.

Via Williams Shughart at the Independent Institute: It is ludicrous to characterize the discount rate as the interest rate that penalizes banks for having to apply for “emergency” loans from the central bank. If it is to serve that purpose, as I learned at the knees of Tom Saving and Phil Gramm, the discount rate must closely approximate the market interest rate. Banks otherwise will have incentive to borrow funds from the Fed and then relend them at a profit. Given that market interest rates on mortgages and other secured consumer loans currently are running at five or six percent per year, it makes only a small difference in profitability if lenders can borrow from the Fed at three-quarters rather than one-half of one percent.

Via the Life Exension Foundation: Standard cancer treatments not only often fail to eradicate cancer, but can make it worse. That argument isn't coming from a fringe proponent of alternative medicine, but from the founder of the University of Michigan's Comprehensive Cancer Center and a pioneer in research on why cancers recur and spread to other parts of the body. The reason breast cancer and other malignancies often return aggressively after treatment is that when tumor cells die under assault from chemotherapy and radiation, they give off substances that can reactivate a special set of master cells known as cancer stem cells, Dr. Wicha said in an interview Tuesday. Dr. Wicha's lab has found that inflammatory molecules secreted by dying tumor cells can hook up with the stem cells and cause them in effect to come out of hibernation.

The Knowledge Problem  Abolish the Federal Reserve Manifesto Fire the drug czar  The Golden Rule Foreign Policy

An issue of the Cato Journal that covers this question.

The seeming state of things as of 2-25-10: Under the President’s proposal - released Monday and modeled after Senator Reid’s plan that passed the Senate, according to ABC News - there is no prohibition on abortion coverage in federally subsidized plans participating in the Exchange.  Instead the proposal includes layers of accounting gimmicks that demand that plans participating in the Exchange or the new government-run plan that will be managed by the Office of Personnel Management must establish “allocation accounts” when elective abortion is a covered benefit (p. 2073-2074).  Everyone enrolled in these plans must pay a monthly abortion premium (p. 2072, lines 18-21), and these funds will be used to pay for the elective abortion services.  The Obama proposal directs insurance companies to assess the cost of elective abortion coverage (p. 2074-2075), and charge a minimum of $1 per enrollee per month (p. 2075, lines 8-10).

AAPS summarizes: So what would be the effect of proposed federal insurance rules? Obama said premiums would go down; Alexander said they would go up. The CBO weighed in with a 28-page analysis . The answer seems to be: “It depends.” Large group plans, small group plans, nongroup plans? Income level (i.e. subsidy level)? “Bare-bones plan” (probably to be outlawed), “Cadillac plan (prepare to be taxed), or just-right plan?

From AAPS: Two-thirds of hospitals already lose money on Medicare patients, and virtually all lose on Medicaid, writes Len Nichols, Ph.D., in the Feb 24 New England Journal of Medicine .

Via AAPS: While Sen. Lamar Alexander stated that 50% of physicians refuse to see new Medicaid patients because of low fees, one survey showed the rate is only 28%.

Via Carpe Diem -- points made by  Jacob Sullum and John Stossel -- efficiently summarized by Mark Perry as follows: According to government data, 95.8% of Americans who have tried crack are NOT regular users, and 97.4% of those who have tried meth are NOT regular users.

Nice graphs and analysis from Carpe Diem.

From Annenberg's FactCheck.org: Sen. Lamar Alexander said premiums will go up for “millions” under the Senate bill and president’s plan, while President Barack Obama said families buying the same coverage they have now would pay much less. Both were misleading. The Congressional Budget Office said premiums for those in the group market wouldn’t change significantly, while the average premium for those who buy their own coverage would go up. Alexander also said “50 percent of doctors won’t see new [Medicaid] patients.” But a 2008 survey says only 28 percent refuse to take any new Medicaid patients. Sen. Harry Reid cited a poll that said 58 percent would be “angry or disappointed” if health care overhaul doesn’t pass. True, but respondents in the poll were also split 43-43 on whether they supported the legislation that is currently being proposed. Obama repeated an inflated claim we’ve covered before. He said insured families pay about $1,000 a year in their premiums to cover cos

Via the Washington Post: The federal government has awarded more than $107 billion in contract payments, grants and other benefits over the past decade to foreign and multinational American companies while they were doing business in Iran, despite Washington’s efforts to discourage investment there, records show .

Is he as special as he thinks he is? From AAPS:  Obama himself spoke for 119 minutes, longer than the 110 minutes used by Republicans from whose ideas he purportedly wanted to learn. (Other Democrats spoke for 114 minutes.) But as Obama said, he can go overtime: “I’m the President.”

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation: The Department of Defense has released more than 800 heavily-redacted pages of intelligence oversight reports, detailing activities that its Inspector General has “reason to believe are unlawful.”

From Carpe Diem , quoting Ronald E. Bachman , President and CEO of Healthcare Visions and a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis : . . . the health care bill passed by the Senate (December 24, 2009) does not directly outlaw HSA-eligible plans, but it restricts HSA options in insidious ways that will delay, deny, defeat and ultimately kill them. The proposed Senate health reform does not focus on improving health or health care. It is more about political power, centralizing federal control, growing government and expanding bureaucracies."

From Carpe Diem: Bottom Line: Artificially raising wages for unskilled workers reduces the demand for those workers at the same time that it increases the number of unskilled workers looking for work, which results in an excess supply of unskilled workers. Period. And another term for an "excess supply of unskilled workers" is an "increase in the teenage jobless rate." Despite the wishful thinking of politicians and labor unions, the laws of supply and demand are not optional.

Great editorial in HAARETZ, especially this . . . Ultimately, we need to internalize the insight that even Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad voiced this week, when he said that all the talk about an Iranian bomb is irrational and meaningless. This is not simply because any Iranian attempt to destroy Israel via a nuclear bomb would kill countless Palestinians, but because it would surely lead to the destruction of Iran itself by Israel and the United States. Therefore, the idiotic claim that Iran could bring about Israel's destruction does not hold water. While it is true that Ahmadinejad would love Israel to implode of its own accord, a self-confident and strong nation should not take such statements too seriously. And it certainly should not view them as an existential threat.

I'm beginning to think that our current President, like our last one, is a complete idiot.

In the Soviet Union party member were first among equals. Our unequal system of government and private schools provide another example. And socialist healthcare provides yet another.

Carpe Diem quotes Thomas Sowell: If medical insurance simply covered risks-- which is what insurance is all about-- that would be far less expensive than covering completely predictable things like annual checkups. Far more people could afford medical insurance, thereby reducing the ranks of the uninsured. How the incentives create a political failure that gets labeled as market failure: But all the political incentives are for politicians to create mandates forcing insurance companies to cover an ever increasing range of treatments, and thereby forcing those who buy insurance to pay ever higher premiums to cover the costs of these mandates. That way, politicians can play Santa Claus and make insurance companies play Scrooge. It is great political theater.

Great cartoon and graphs in this post from Carpe Diem. I especially love this graph . . .

Have it performed by a GI.

An excellent article from Arnold Kling.

A valuable Arnold Kling summary of a talk by Stephen Davies.

A good summary of what ails it.

From Rasmussen Reports: More active government with more services and higher taxes? Just 23% of U.S. voters say they prefer a more active government with more services and higher taxes over one with fewer services and lower taxes, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. This finding has remained fairly consistent since regular tracking on this question began in November 2006. Fewer government services and lower taxes? Two-thirds (66%) of voters prefer a government with fewer services and lower taxes. In August at the height of the congressional town hall controversy over the health care plan, 70% felt that way. The partisan breakdown . . . Eighty-eight percent (88%) of Republicans and 68% of voters not affiliated with either major political party favor a government with fewer services and lower taxes. Democrats are more closely divided: 38% like a more active government with more services and higher taxes, while 45% prefer one with fewer services and lower

From Rasmussen Reports: 69% say cities have no right to ban handguns

From Rasmussen Reports: 55% say Congress should start over on healthcare.

From Congress.org: But the trio of Senators are backing sector-by-sector controls on greenhouse gas emissions that target the nation’s biggest polluters and may bring moderate lawmakers from coal and oil states on board. Their idea   is to cap emissions solely on the electric utility industry, tax the transportation sector for using fossil fuels, and eventually phase in regulation of manufacturers.

From Congress.org: Senate Democrats know they need cross-party support to get a climate bill past a filibuster. Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has been working with John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) to hatch a plan both parties could support.

From the Washington Post: On Thursday, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) introduced a bill that would put a two-year freeze on the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gases from power plants. His was the latest of various congressional proposals -- from both chambers and both parties -- designed to delay or overturn the EPA's regulations . . . Rockefeller's legislation would not affect the EPA's plans to limit greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks. But it would prevent the agency from implementing -- or even doing much work on -- caps on emissions from such "stationary sources" as power plants and factories. Experts say the bill could postpone regulations for as much as four years.  He's protecting the West Virginia coal industry, of course. But other bills are also being offered . . . Sens. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) are co-sponsoring a "resolution of disapproval" introduced by Sen. Lis

From the Washington Post: "There is no too-big-to-fail guarantee on the part of the U.S. government," Herbert M. Allison Jr., assistant Treasury secretary for financial stability, told the Congressional Oversight Panel, which is charged by Congress with policing the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program. I'll believe it when I don't see it. 

From the Washington Post: Economic policymakers and many private analysts see a danger that the Greek troubles will lead to the next wave of turmoil for the global economy. Investors are pouring money into government debt around the world, viewing it as a safe investment in an uncertain time. That has helped keep interest rates very low in most large countries . . . One of the lessons of the global financial meltdown is that crises tend to evolve in unpredictable ways . . . when market concerns about Thailand's foreign debt led investors to question the finances of several other East Asian nations, resulting in the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 . . . So far, (this) episode has made it cheaper for the U.S. government to borrow, as investors have moved money into dollars -- and Treasury bonds in particular -- to try to reduce exposure to developments in Europe. The federal government could borrow money for 10 years at 3.6 percent on Thursday based on bond yields, very low by any

From Trita Parsi writing in Time magazine: Iran is the 21st century equivalent of 1930s Russia — a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. The Iranians haven't stumbled upon this mystifying state coincidentally, and the enigma isn't the result of outsiders' failure to try to understand them. Rather, the Iranian government has a deliberate policy aimed at confusing the outside world about its goals and decision-making processes. "There is an intention out there to confuse," a noted Iranian professor told me in Tehran a few years ago. The rulers in Tehran think that opacity and the perception of unpredictability buy them security.

The polls are clear. Most Americans hate the Democrats' healthcare plan. But Obama and Pelosi don't care what you think. They want to use an obscure process called reconciliation to bypass the need for a super-majority in the Senate. This foolish move may cost the Democrats their majority control of Congress, but it will also be hazardous to your health, if they get away with it. Here's the key to stopping them . . . Obama and Pelosi lack the votes they need in the House for their reconciliation scheme to work. Very few House Democrats are as suicidal as the President and the Speaker. We must keep it that way by maintaining the pressure. We know you must be tired of this issue, but you must not relent. Temporary fatigue can lead to a permanent bad outcome. Please send Congress another letter using our quick and easy Educate the Powerful system. Just cut and paste the following simple letter . . . I object to the use of reconciliation to pass the healthcare bill. T

Nice commentary from Ed Brayton over at Science Blogs.

Here's a good summary.

From Rasmussen Reports: 58% support Post Office plan to end Saturday delivery, if the alternative is a government subsidy. Only 48% thinks it's possible for anyone to work their way out of poverty.

Nicole Kidman's knees.

From John Goodman: On the failure to improve access . Massachusetts has already done what ObamaCare promises to do: cut the uninsurance rate in half by enrolling people in Medicaid and subsidizing private insurance. But like ObamaCare, the Massachusetts health plan did nothing to liberate the supply side of the market. As a result, the waiting times to see a new doctor in Boston are twice as long as in any other U.S. city. And there are as many people going to emergency rooms for care in Massachusetts today as there were before the Massachusetts health plan was adopted. Genuine improvement in access to care will require liberating the demand and supply sides of the market in ways that were never discussed at the Summit.

A powerful statement from John Goodman: We will not fundamentally improve quality unless providers compete on quality and no one competes on quality unless he also competes on price.

Today's Downsizer Dispatch from DownsizeDC.org: House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer wants to raise your taxes. Send your Representative and your two Senators a letter rejecting this idea. You can copy or borrow from my letter . . . Here's what Steny Hoyer said at the Brookings Institution on Monday, March 1: “No one likes raising revenue (increasing taxes), and understandably so, but if you’re going to buy, you need to pay." I've got a better idea -- don't buy! Millions of Americans have had to cut their expenses because of the economy. Their prudence is fruitless if you raise their taxes to pay for YOUR orgy of spending. And please don't tell me that you're going to tax the rich, and NOT me. Rich people don't spend most of their money -- they invest it to create jobs! That's how they got rich. So the more you tax them the fewer jobs there will be. YOU don't create jobs, rich people do! Instead, you destroy jobs with high taxes and w

Via The Guardian: Rick Piltz, a former official in the US government climate science programme who now runs the Climate Science Watch website, said Inhofe and others were getting in the way of scientific work. "Scientists who are working in federal labs are being subjected to inquisitions coming from Congress," he said. "There is no question that this is an orchestrated campaign to intimidate scientists." And this . . . "Some of the emails make thinly veiled threats of violence against me and even my family, and law enforcement authorities have been made aware of the matter," he told the Guardian. He said the attacks appeared to be a co-ordinated effort. "Some of them look cut-and-paste." I find it hard to believe that threatening emails would come from an organized central source, such that they would seem "cut and paste," but I have no doubt that people are angry.  When you pay for your research with money taken from people at the

Mr. Obama promised us change, but there's much about him that reminds me of his predecessor. George W. Bush was famous for being stubborn and impervious to evidence. I notice the same trait in our current president. For instance, consider this analysis of the healthcare summit, courtesy of Grace-Marie Turner from the Galen Institute: Rational arguments and facts are discarded. When Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wisc.) detailed at the summit the budget gimmicks in the bills that would put executives of private companies in jail, the president just brushed past his remarks and said he “disagrees.” That means Mr. Obama disagrees with the Congressional Budget Office and the chief Medicare actuary whose analyses are based upon the facts of his double-counting of Medicare savings, ten years of taxes with six years of spending, creation of new budget-busting entitlements, one-fifth of Medicare providers going out of business and jeopardizing care for seniors, and health-insurance premiums rising e

From Rasmussen Reports: 67% say illegal immigrations strains U.S. budget, while 23% disagree.

Via the Washington Post: Poverty will be measured two ways in the coming cencsus, using both the old formula and a new formula. Here's how that turned out in New York . . . Two years, ago, New York City became the nation's first jurisdiction to adopt its own way of measuring poverty, also based on the academy's work. A report issued Tuesday by New York's Center for Economic Opportunity shows that its new approach produces a higher poverty rate. For 2008, the report found, the city's poverty rate was 22 percent under the new formula, compared with slightly less than 18 percent using the official federal definition.

A good summary article from the Washington Times, includes this: It's sometimes tough to see how the jobs math adds up. The administration has estimated that the $862 billion stimulus act would create up to 3.5 million jobs, which would seem like a bad deal if a $15 billion highway funding extension could create 1 million jobs alone, as Mr. Reid has said on the Senate floor. Mr. Reid also has said a health care overhaul "would create 400,000 jobs a year," and that his travel promotion bill "will create tens of thousands of jobs in the service industry."

Fabulous chart from Mark Perry at Carpe Diem:

Via Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal and Carpe Diem: The Chile earthquake was 500 times as powerful as the Haiti quake, but a little over 700 people have died in Chile vs. an estimated 230,000 in Haiti. The difference is the wealth brought to Chile by following the free market advice of Milton Friedman.