Redistribution

It's not simple redistribution. It's rererererererererererererereredistribution.

The detriments of this bill go beyond redistribution, as distasteful as that aspect may be. We are looking at a massive increase in government control of health care delivery. Expect a major decline in the quality and diversity of goods and services, friends.

And of course, redistribution is bad, but the promise of taking care of others' vital needs when the government is careening toward bankruptcy is really a cruel hoax.

“But, suppose, nonetheless, our theory collapsed, and we were right back where we started. We could follow Mr. Buckley, arguing not against redistribution but merely Federal administration of it, or Prof. Hayek, in a conversation with him, arguing against the ethical but not the economic assumptions of redistribution, and, in effect, conceding them, or Prof. Friedman, asked what the free market would do for the poor, proposing the negative income tax, a better means of redistribution.

Or, unable to prove that redistribution made the poor poorer, we could still make the other side prove that it didn’t, that the larger proportion of the smaller cake was not smaller in absolute terms.

And that would require no mathematics or morality, just the simple wit so little regarded in ethical and learned circles today.”

http://econotrashtalk.org/#The_Forbidden_Theory...

Well, if everyone, except Sam, agrees that it all comes down to redistribution, why don't any of us want to tak about redistribution itself? Does it pay, does it actually make the poore richer, or poorer, does it reduce income inequality, or increase it?

Why not get to the heart of the issue, why just keep tap dancing around it?

Do you really want to do something about it, or just sit around and bellyache about it?

Of course, DG, political action is always about conscription and redistribution.

Now, go out and tell everyone you meet to go tell everyone else they meet that it all boils down to redistribution, and pretty soon, the world will be saved from redistribution.

Time to rediscover Master Morality.

Paul Krugman thinks the answer to his toothache is a button he pushes to contact his errand boy, who runs to the local 7-11 which, due to medical regulations, can’t fill his prescription so he goes across the street to the gas station, where he gets held-up, so Krugman advocates gun laws, only to be saved by passing police who drive him to the closest CVS, which is closed, due to zoning laws, and eventually winds up in a ditch with his dispatch in hand after he’s neglected for 2 days because the local government is broke from spending too much. Which Krugman wholeheartedly advocates.

Merry freakin Xmas, Krughole.

"...it was...above all in Imperial Russia that the state was...penetrating...the...economy...Lenin inherited the state capitalist machine."

Modern Times, Paul Johnson, Pp 14, 15

It is not just redistribution but Communism.

With "the rich entitled to no more medical care than the poor," and "from each according to his abilities and to each according to his needs," ObamaCare is CommieCare, and, without the Myth of the Middle Way, the welfare state the way to a Communist police state.

It can't happen here? It’s happening, and the slumbering American public may not be that far from waking up some morning and finding that America is no longer America, but Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.

"Reassured, perhaps, by these constitutional manoeuvres, the great city of Petrograd went about its business and pleasures. Even on the day Kerensky was overthrown, all the shops remained open, the trams ran, the cinemas were crowded. The Salvation Army...played on street corners. Karsavina was at the Mariinsky. Chaliapin sang at concerts. There were packed public lectures. Society congregated at Contant's restaurant. There was extravagant gambling."

Modern Times by Paul Johnson, P 64

Americans will be at the ballparks and rock concerts.

At a lecture by Kerensky at UCLA, which I attended, a Russian in the audience, in what looked like a comic opera sailor suit, got up and, shaking his fist at him, demanded to know why he didn't stop Lenin.

While Pres. Obama may be too nice to be the next Hitler or Stalin, is he too nice to be the next Kerensky?

References:

http://econotrashtalk.org/#The_Logic_of_Liberalism

http://econotrashtalk.org/#The_Forbidden_Theory...

And like in the communism, political capital will buy better care.

Communism is nothing more than shifting the spoils from those who earn it by helping their fellow man to those who get it by restricting their fellow man.

Reagan once said that all systems are all capitalists, the question is who owns the capital. I think a bunch of capital is about to be confiscated.

I think the question is not who owns the capital but who controls it. I don't see fascist systems as all that different from socialist systems.

The insurmountable problem with "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" is that there is no incentive to produce as much as you are able (unless you are able to produce away from the prying eyes and hands of the state) and there is every incentive to demonstrate need. Thus, only the clever and well connected will have material wealth and the poor (in both brains and material wealth) will live in unimaginable poverty. If I'm not mistaken, that's pretty much DG Lesvic's mantra - redistribution leads to less overall wealth and greater disparities in wealth and privilege. It makes the poor much poorer and the powerful much more rich.

Fascism is the Trojan Horse of socialism, its concession to the middle class, race war in place of class war. But the Jews are merely the first to go, for when there are no more of them to blame for its troubles, the revolution must turn upon its own, the corrupted Gentiles, and betrayers of the revolution.

All government spending, and government required spending, is paid for by those who labor to create value.

Thus it has always been, and thus it will always be.

The rich will bear none of the burden imposed by health care mandates, of that we can be certain.

The "rich" will bear the burden of having to pay more for their own health care than they otherwise would. But, the rich will not pay for some other family's care. Just a tweak. I agree with you and I enjoy reading your persistent reminder every time you post it.

For the Great Depression, FDR vowed to "soak the rich", but it was the working class that got dunked, especially the poor.

Always, Sam.

Oh c'mon Russ.

This is just the senate's way of wishing the nation a Merry Christmas!

Good point. I can't help but think of the Hillary ad leading up to the campaign with all the presents under the tree.

I agree with txslr that the article made the bill appear more reasonable than it is. I also disagree with the conclusion. The cost will not be borne mostly by the target group for two main reasons (and probably others). If you can figure out how to make a lot of money, you can figure out how to reduce your tax bill. There are a million ways to do this without raising the ire of the IRS. Government won't collect the revenue it needs to maintain current spending and pay the subsidies.

If the government can't collect the subsidy for the high earners, then they have to raise the tax on the blessed middle class - which is conveniently less responsive to tax increases and the taxing of which usually raises tax revenue (or so says my ancient Barro macro econ text). That's when the wailing will begin in earnest and the demands to control "costs" (by which they of course mean "spending") will become especially difficult to ignore. The rationing will commence in earnest and people who are not well connected and/or rich will pay with their lives, their health and their nerves on wait lists.

Of course, the promised health care benefits are to begin AFTER the tax scheme to pay for them. So, this whole thing will likely start with a shortfall and spiral downhill from there.

I just can't see a scenario where the cost of one's healthcare will ever truly be borne by anyone other than the consumer of said health care.

I think that the article makes it appear more reasonable than it is. It is not simply a transfer from rich to poor, for example. It involves a myriad of transfers - from young to old, from healthy to sick - and who ultimately bears what portion of the burden is unclear. And of course, if you simply transfered money from some group to some other target group, the targeted would be unlikely to purchase health insurance with the proceeds, so the objective is clearly not to simply improve the lot of the poor, sick, old or whomever. What is defined as "health coverage" is also stilted as the recipients will be receiving a combination of health insurance and a kind of pre-paid basic health care plan, and the justifications for these two types of benefits seem to me to be very different, but they are inevitably simply lumped together.

Yes, but a simple redistribution would eliminate the chance to send rents to your favorite rent seekers.

And you can bet there's a lot of rental space in 2000+ pages of "reform." I'm sure there's a huge hole in this bucket.