Prisoner's dilemma. You can't control the other side's behavior; only your own. If you give an inch, there's no way to guarantee that the other side will also give an inch, rather than taking a mile.
For the record, I don't believe in fetal rights, but neither do I believe that misogyny is a significant factor for those who do.
If the answer is other than all men are islands entire unto themselves, then the question becomes how much am I my brothers keeper?
Not really. In addition to dependent relationships, there are also cooperative relationships. I am not my grocer's keeper, nor is he mine, but we trade for our mutual benefit.
Are you saying that certain areas are legally classified as Urban Food Deserts, and that food stamp recipients living in those areas are allowed to spend them at fast food restaurants, whereas food stamp recipients living in other areas are not?
Or are you just making a snarky comment about the low quality and/or total lack of grocery stores in certain areas?
In fact, all you really said is that taxing corporations leads to more resources wasted on minimizing tax liability than taxing individuals directly does, which would seem to argue in favor of taxing individuals more directly, rather than through corporate taxes.
What I mean is, not one thing you said above contradicts what Romney said, which is that the burden of taxes on corporations is borne by individual people.
That's even worse. Politicians' desire for reelection is ostensibly how the government is compelled to serve the people. I'll grant that elected politicians don't have absolute control over the government (judicial appointments are for life, and bureaucracy can take on a life of its own), but this just means that the government has even less incentive to serve the people than my last comment implied.
Why is this either/or and not both/and? Why not help this uninsured person as well as people overseas?
Because there are resource constraints. You have to spend an awful lot of money on the global poor to reach the point where the best use of your marginal charity dollar is a very expensive medical treatment for a middle-class person who just couldn't be bothered to buy health insurance.
And this isn't just a hypothetical. Many of the richest Americans tliterally have more money than they know what to do with, and have plans to give away most of their money either during their lifetimes or after their deaths. Taxing them has essentially zero effect on how much they personally will consume---it just means they have less money to give to charity.
In particular, the Gates Foundation, which manages Gates' and Buffett's charitable giving, focuses on third-world issues. Raising taxes on Gates and Buffett in order to fund middle-class entitlements in the US is in a very real sense trading the lives of third-world children for the comfort of middle-class Americans.
It may also be worth asking why people consider this particular man's life to be worth saving at such great expense, when there are children in the third world dying of cheaply treatable diseases all the time.
From a moral perspective, the guy who just couldn't be bothered to buy health insurance (remember that this was the premise of the question) is clearly less sympathetic than the third-world children. From a utilitarian perspective, why save one life when you can save many?
For some reason people just value the life of the irresponsible American more than that of the innocent third-world children. I don't think it's racism, exactly, but I think it's something similar. This idea that we're going to draw a a circle around some morally irrelevant category, and everyone in that circle is one of us, and everyone outside is one of them, and therefore less important. I can't think of a reason not to call it bigotry.
If the end to which corporations aim are profits, and the happiness of customers is at best a means towards that end, then the end to which democratic governments aim is reelection, and the happiness of voters at best a means towards that end.
You're divorcing the phrase from the specific point it was intended to convey, and that's not how language works. He said that one way of reducing the deficit was to raise taxes on people. A heckler yelled out "Corporations!" and Romney rightly pointed out that raising taxes on corporations is raising taxes on people. In that specific context, "Corporations are people" is a perfectly valid way of communicating that point.
And certainly, in any context, "Corporations are people" is more correct than that shibboleth of democratic fundamentalism, "The government is us."
Microsoft is not a person, no matter what Mitt Romney says.
I just want to call out this misrepresentation of a perfectly reasonble thing that Mitt Romney said. Romney didn't say that a corporation is a person. He said that, in the context of taxation, corporations are people. You can't tax corporations without taxing people.
But this notion that government is something completely different from the citizens who drive its actions is not helpful.
How do you say this right after making fun of Romney for saying that corporations are people, and not have your head explode from the cognitive dissonance?
No, because I don't think that that's a valid interpretation of the fact pattern. I don't think that McDonald's and Wal-Mart are taking people who would otherwise be engineers or mechanics or accountants and forcing them into low-productivity jobs. This is the stuff of left-wing fairy tales.
They're taking people who otherwise would not be doing much of anything useful, because they lack marketable skills, because they're retired, because they're students who can only work part-time, and/or because they live in places where there just aren't any better opportunities, and giving them something productive to do.
These are underutilized segments of the labor market, as evidenced by their low rates of employment, and the fact that companies like McDonald's and Wal-Mart have found ways to utilize them effectively is a very good thing for everyone involved. People who wouldn't otherwise have jobs have them, consumers get lower prices, taxpayers get a break from supporting the unemployed, and shareholders profit. This is a success of capitalism, not a failure.
Haque asks: “How’s Marx doing on this score? You tell me. I’ll merely point out: America’s largest private employer is Walmart. America’s second largest employer is McDonald’s.”
This is painfully sloppy thinking. The fact that they're the largest employers doesn't mean that they're typical employers. In fact, they're pretty obviously atypical by virtue of being the largest. That doesn't necessarily mean that their jobs are atypical, but they are. In fact, Wal-Mart in particular, but also McDonald's to some extent ("McJobs") are considered by many on the left to be uniquely bad employers.
Both are national chains with a business model built around extensive utilization of low-productivity labor. Naturally these jobs are going to be at the low end of the compensation spectrum.
When it comes to health care, Singapore is to Europe as Europe is to the US, at least as far as expenditures and life expectancy are concerned. So why is the left always talking about Europe instead of Singapore?
What you're describing sounds an awful lot to me like the strawman that conservatives have in mind when they think they're criticizing libertarianism. You're free to use drugs, and if you can't hold a job down because you keep showing up to work high, we'll bail you out. You can have sex with whoever you want, and if you have a child you can't afford, we'll bail you out. If you contract HIV, we'll bail you out. If you gamble away your mortgage payment or retirement savings, we'll bail you out.
Maximization of moral hazard just isn't a good principle around which to organize a society.
The problem is, this doesn't even rise to the level of anecdotal evidence, because you don't know for sure what your father would have done under different circumstances. Maybe he would have quit his job and gone on to do something great, but nothing kills good intentions like opportunity. It's not even clear from your story why he couldn't get some other job that offered health insurance.
Now, I'm sure that there is actual anecdotal evidence out there. But there are two countervailing effects. One is the one that you mention. The other is that a lot of people, given a chance to take it easy, will do just that. Even with the best of intentions, it can be hard to find and keep a good full-time job without the financial and social pressure to do so.
There's no rational basis on which to assert a priori that one particular effect dominates the other.
Universal healthcare would go a long way toward allowing people to be more independent, more entrepreneurial, and less risk-averse in their private ambitions.
Is there any evidence for this? Seems to me that there's plenty of data available for a natural experiment.
This from Yglesias yesterday, and now this from you today. When did "If we have a generous welfare state, people who can work but don't feel like it will be able to choose not to" become a talking point for proponents of the welfare state?
Generally speaking, if there's good reason to believe that an investment will pay off in the long run, firms will make it. If they make an investment only in response to the requirements of a regulation, then the most likely reason is that from a private perspective the business model adopted in response to the regulation is inferior to the pre-regulation model. I see no reason to believe that regulators have any special insight into this question.
Now, there may be specific cases in which by some happy accident the regulation leads firms to make an investment that pays off better than expected, such that the regulation actually makes them better off than they were before. But there's no reason to expect this to be the rule.
The argument for regulation is that it corrects negative externalities. Claims to the effect that on average it makes us better off in ways independent of the correction of those externalities are highly questionable at best.
And come to think of it, it doesn't even always apply during a recession. If a regulation renders a marginally profitable firm or project unprofitable, e.g. by increasing the cost of building something by more than it increases the amount it can be sold or rented for, then it could result in the firm shutting down or the project being cancelled.
Now, in principle a regulation should only render unprofitable those projects which shouldn't be profitable anyway because of externalities the regulation is designed to address. In practice, it doesn't always work this way. And in any case, a recession is not the best time to be interfering with economic activity.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “A Question for both Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Supporters”
Prisoner's dilemma. You can't control the other side's behavior; only your own. If you give an inch, there's no way to guarantee that the other side will also give an inch, rather than taking a mile.
For the record, I don't believe in fetal rights, but neither do I believe that misogyny is a significant factor for those who do.
On “Should Microsoft Let This Man Die?”
If the answer is other than all men are islands entire unto themselves, then the question becomes how much am I my brothers keeper?
Not really. In addition to dependent relationships, there are also cooperative relationships. I am not my grocer's keeper, nor is he mine, but we trade for our mutual benefit.
"
Are you saying that certain areas are legally classified as Urban Food Deserts, and that food stamp recipients living in those areas are allowed to spend them at fast food restaurants, whereas food stamp recipients living in other areas are not?
Or are you just making a snarky comment about the low quality and/or total lack of grocery stores in certain areas?
"
In fact, all you really said is that taxing corporations leads to more resources wasted on minimizing tax liability than taxing individuals directly does, which would seem to argue in favor of taxing individuals more directly, rather than through corporate taxes.
"
What I mean is, not one thing you said above contradicts what Romney said, which is that the burden of taxes on corporations is borne by individual people.
"
Would you care to explain how any of this is at all relevant?
"
That's even worse. Politicians' desire for reelection is ostensibly how the government is compelled to serve the people. I'll grant that elected politicians don't have absolute control over the government (judicial appointments are for life, and bureaucracy can take on a life of its own), but this just means that the government has even less incentive to serve the people than my last comment implied.
"
Why is this either/or and not both/and? Why not help this uninsured person as well as people overseas?
Because there are resource constraints. You have to spend an awful lot of money on the global poor to reach the point where the best use of your marginal charity dollar is a very expensive medical treatment for a middle-class person who just couldn't be bothered to buy health insurance.
And this isn't just a hypothetical. Many of the richest Americans tliterally have more money than they know what to do with, and have plans to give away most of their money either during their lifetimes or after their deaths. Taxing them has essentially zero effect on how much they personally will consume---it just means they have less money to give to charity.
In particular, the Gates Foundation, which manages Gates' and Buffett's charitable giving, focuses on third-world issues. Raising taxes on Gates and Buffett in order to fund middle-class entitlements in the US is in a very real sense trading the lives of third-world children for the comfort of middle-class Americans.
On “Gripes”
More than a little bit and you might as well just eat a stick of butter.
I will not have you slandering butter with this odious comparison.
On “Should Microsoft Let This Man Die?”
It may also be worth asking why people consider this particular man's life to be worth saving at such great expense, when there are children in the third world dying of cheaply treatable diseases all the time.
From a moral perspective, the guy who just couldn't be bothered to buy health insurance (remember that this was the premise of the question) is clearly less sympathetic than the third-world children. From a utilitarian perspective, why save one life when you can save many?
For some reason people just value the life of the irresponsible American more than that of the innocent third-world children. I don't think it's racism, exactly, but I think it's something similar. This idea that we're going to draw a a circle around some morally irrelevant category, and everyone in that circle is one of us, and everyone outside is one of them, and therefore less important. I can't think of a reason not to call it bigotry.
"
Or as Ryan phrased it, "But this notion that government is something completely different from the citizens who drive its actions is not helpful."
"
If the end to which corporations aim are profits, and the happiness of customers is at best a means towards that end, then the end to which democratic governments aim is reelection, and the happiness of voters at best a means towards that end.
"
You're divorcing the phrase from the specific point it was intended to convey, and that's not how language works. He said that one way of reducing the deficit was to raise taxes on people. A heckler yelled out "Corporations!" and Romney rightly pointed out that raising taxes on corporations is raising taxes on people. In that specific context, "Corporations are people" is a perfectly valid way of communicating that point.
And certainly, in any context, "Corporations are people" is more correct than that shibboleth of democratic fundamentalism, "The government is us."
"
Microsoft is not a person, no matter what Mitt Romney says.
I just want to call out this misrepresentation of a perfectly reasonble thing that Mitt Romney said. Romney didn't say that a corporation is a person. He said that, in the context of taxation, corporations are people. You can't tax corporations without taxing people.
But this notion that government is something completely different from the citizens who drive its actions is not helpful.
How do you say this right after making fun of Romney for saying that corporations are people, and not have your head explode from the cognitive dissonance?
On “Beyond Capitalism”
No, because I don't think that that's a valid interpretation of the fact pattern. I don't think that McDonald's and Wal-Mart are taking people who would otherwise be engineers or mechanics or accountants and forcing them into low-productivity jobs. This is the stuff of left-wing fairy tales.
They're taking people who otherwise would not be doing much of anything useful, because they lack marketable skills, because they're retired, because they're students who can only work part-time, and/or because they live in places where there just aren't any better opportunities, and giving them something productive to do.
These are underutilized segments of the labor market, as evidenced by their low rates of employment, and the fact that companies like McDonald's and Wal-Mart have found ways to utilize them effectively is a very good thing for everyone involved. People who wouldn't otherwise have jobs have them, consumers get lower prices, taxpayers get a break from supporting the unemployed, and shareholders profit. This is a success of capitalism, not a failure.
"
Haque asks: “How’s Marx doing on this score? You tell me. I’ll merely point out: America’s largest private employer is Walmart. America’s second largest employer is McDonald’s.”
This is painfully sloppy thinking. The fact that they're the largest employers doesn't mean that they're typical employers. In fact, they're pretty obviously atypical by virtue of being the largest. That doesn't necessarily mean that their jobs are atypical, but they are. In fact, Wal-Mart in particular, but also McDonald's to some extent ("McJobs") are considered by many on the left to be uniquely bad employers.
Both are national chains with a business model built around extensive utilization of low-productivity labor. Naturally these jobs are going to be at the low end of the compensation spectrum.
"
When it comes to health care, Singapore is to Europe as Europe is to the US, at least as far as expenditures and life expectancy are concerned. So why is the left always talking about Europe instead of Singapore?
"
Adjusting for demographics is racist.
"
What you're describing sounds an awful lot to me like the strawman that conservatives have in mind when they think they're criticizing libertarianism. You're free to use drugs, and if you can't hold a job down because you keep showing up to work high, we'll bail you out. You can have sex with whoever you want, and if you have a child you can't afford, we'll bail you out. If you contract HIV, we'll bail you out. If you gamble away your mortgage payment or retirement savings, we'll bail you out.
Maximization of moral hazard just isn't a good principle around which to organize a society.
"
Seriously. The left has an entire continent devoted to their ideology. Why do they have to ruin this one, too?
On “A More Human Economy: The Jobless Future and the Medium Chill”
The problem is, this doesn't even rise to the level of anecdotal evidence, because you don't know for sure what your father would have done under different circumstances. Maybe he would have quit his job and gone on to do something great, but nothing kills good intentions like opportunity. It's not even clear from your story why he couldn't get some other job that offered health insurance.
Now, I'm sure that there is actual anecdotal evidence out there. But there are two countervailing effects. One is the one that you mention. The other is that a lot of people, given a chance to take it easy, will do just that. Even with the best of intentions, it can be hard to find and keep a good full-time job without the financial and social pressure to do so.
There's no rational basis on which to assert a priori that one particular effect dominates the other.
"
Universal healthcare would go a long way toward allowing people to be more independent, more entrepreneurial, and less risk-averse in their private ambitions.
Is there any evidence for this? Seems to me that there's plenty of data available for a natural experiment.
"
This from Yglesias yesterday, and now this from you today. When did "If we have a generous welfare state, people who can work but don't feel like it will be able to choose not to" become a talking point for proponents of the welfare state?
On “Unleashing the power of capitalism on talk radio”
I'd like to see that paper.
Generally speaking, if there's good reason to believe that an investment will pay off in the long run, firms will make it. If they make an investment only in response to the requirements of a regulation, then the most likely reason is that from a private perspective the business model adopted in response to the regulation is inferior to the pre-regulation model. I see no reason to believe that regulators have any special insight into this question.
Now, there may be specific cases in which by some happy accident the regulation leads firms to make an investment that pays off better than expected, such that the regulation actually makes them better off than they were before. But there's no reason to expect this to be the rule.
The argument for regulation is that it corrects negative externalities. Claims to the effect that on average it makes us better off in ways independent of the correction of those externalities are highly questionable at best.
"
And come to think of it, it doesn't even always apply during a recession. If a regulation renders a marginally profitable firm or project unprofitable, e.g. by increasing the cost of building something by more than it increases the amount it can be sold or rented for, then it could result in the firm shutting down or the project being cancelled.
Now, in principle a regulation should only render unprofitable those projects which shouldn't be profitable anyway because of externalities the regulation is designed to address. In practice, it doesn't always work this way. And in any case, a recession is not the best time to be interfering with economic activity.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.