Too complex

Simon,

You wrote,

"I'm not an economist."

Wy do you say that? You sure seem like one and a pretty damn good one to me.

You wrote,

"...in my humble opinion (I don’t think I’m even supposed to have one)..."

Why not? You're the consumer, aren't you? Then you're the boss.

You wrote,

"the differences between Mises and Friedman are way over-dramatized."

Who the hell are you to be making such a judgment!?

You wrote,

"There are differences in scope and consequently in method."

And then asked,

"Yet, does one...contradict the other?"

Sure. Economics is either a science or a blind faith.

If it is still the same simple logical and literary science of Smith and Ricardo, it is still a science, and you are still the consumer and the boss.

But. if it has really evolved into the "technical" science of Friedman, beyond the scope of humble beings such as yourself, who are not sure they're supposed to have an opinion, it is no longer a science but a blind faith, and you are no longer the consumer and the boss but a subject and a slave.

Doesn't that matter?

There has always seemed to me to be a fundamental flaw in ceteris paribus thinking - just that "all things" can be accounted for and equalized in order to come out with the kind of conclusions we commonly draw.

When Russ was talking about how the pieces have minds of their own (I can't remember exactly what he said), I'm pretty sure he was referring that all the pieces are people with their own set of incentives and motives. Government is implied. That's why Macro can't be a predictive science, the way Physics or Chemistry are. Atoms always behave the same (I'm assuming same atoms, not Hydrogen and Silicon behave the same) So when you have a whole lot of Cesium atoms, lets say a mol 6.02x10^23 atoms, you know exactly what each is going to do.
With Macro, you can have 100 people, and have no fracken clue what any of them are going to do. Are they all Communists? Are they all Libertarians? Are they Rothbardian libertarians or Friedmanits? What country are they from? What age group are they?
Simply put it's far to complex a system to have any real predictive value. Yet being predictive is what makes science....science. You have to be able to test. What happens in Macro if the study doesn't go the way you think it should....do more studies until you get a piece of garbage like Card and Kruguer then latch on to it. Don't mind the shoddy questions or the shoddy stats work. That's not science that's politics.

Prof. Roberts, When you compare markets and government, you omit a crucial element: namely, government (majority rule) involves coercion of the minority. Your discussions of hubris, of complexity, and of problems of evidence are persuasive. But I wish you would also make the case for freedom. Your arguments amount, I think, to a wise critique of utilitarianism. If economics can't adjudicate the controversies about the balance of markets and of government, then we should give less weight to "what works" and more weight to individual freedom, no?

I love hearing/discussing the fundamentals that make up our life and culture. This, to me, is where we can make real progress in better understanding our world so that we can live better. This whole discussion about the nature of economics and in particular Dr. Robert's view that there are assumptions that lie behind our policy prescriptions that we seldom, if ever, discuss begs a even more fundamental questions. How can we know that our assumptions are the correct assumptions? How can we have confidence that our presumptions are interpreting the world as it is and not as we wish it to be? Assumptions by their very nature are not subject to the scientific method. They are unprovable. This is the real head scratcher!

Macro is not science, its a computer game, Sim-Economy, and its still chock full of bugs. It is definitely not ready for release, and not even ready for beta-testing.

Russ, you might be interested in the book "Causality in Macroeconomics": http://www.amazon.com/Causality-Macroeconomics-...

I saw it in the bookstore the other day - it was one of those books I started leafing through out of curiosity and just couldn't stop reading little snipets of it. Anyway, it makes the epistemelogical case for why macro is scientific - and he even goes further to make the point that finding "microfoundations" is completely unnecessary (I think I'd disagree with him there). He compares it to a lot of other empirical sciences that look at complex subject matter, but that we still take a positivist approach to. I think we have to separate an expectation of complete knowledge from an expectation of being able to say something valuable about the macroeconomy using the scientific method. Too often people mistake inability to predict the future with inability to understand the system.

"Too often people mistake inability to predict the future with inability to understand the system."

Just to clarify, doesn't mainstream econ hold that explanatory power and predictive power are the same? And that if a model cannot accurately predict real-world outcomes then it must be flawed?

'Too often people mistake inability to predict the future with inability to understand the system."

But you don't make that mistake, do you Dan? Because you're sooooo smart and insightful. You should be a researcher!

Reading a first volume of Human Action, this couldn't have a better timing for me. Short of retyping couple of paragraphs, I will take some liberty and I hope I don't mess up too much:
Economics is NOT an empirical science. Economics is a deductive system.
It is impossible to abstract any casual relations from study of complex phenomena.

Simon,

I agree completely with you, and with Mises, and that makes two of us here, for the "Austrian School" economists of today, with their empiricism and mathematics, and all the rest of their academic baggage, seem more like Chicagoans to me. I don't what it is that makes an Austrian any more, and how the supposed Austrians of today differ from the Chicagoans.

But I know how Mises differed from Friedman, and just about everyone else in the profession, it seems. So, for me, the distinction is no longer between Austrian and Chicagoan but between Misesian and Friedmanite economics, and the economics of Mises' definitive work, Human Action, and not of his much earlier works such as Money and Credit, nor of reported obscure lectures.

Human Action against the World, it seems.

Human Action wins, hands down!

Why not his other works, out of curiosity?

DG Lesvic,
I'm not an economist and have only a keyhole view on the fascinating world of economics or praxeology. Though in my humble opinion (I don’t think I’m even supposed to have one), the differences between Mises and Friedman are way over-dramatized.
There are differences in scope and consequently in method. Taking a weather analogy from Russ’ podcast, Mises starts his deductions from individual elements - units of air and water, and proceeds to define basic principles that always stand true - like water evaporates up, rain always falls down, etc., and then proceeds with identifying logical consequences of these basic principals.
Friedman on the other hand studies a lot more complex events as a whole - let's say El Niño.
Both of them have to start with assumptions and disregard certain more elemental units. In cease of El Niño there are probably a lot more circumstances that have to somewhat arbitrary be declared consequential or not, and a lot more assumptions that had to be made.
Yet, does one study contradict the other? Does either of them help us predict exact weather a year from now? Do both of them help us understand possible range of weather patterns given certain specific circumstances? Do both of them help debunk charlatans claiming they can change weather if you pay them enough taxes?

Excellent to hear Russ on NPR's Planet Money; Their podcasts are usually pedestrian but this one was worth downloading.

Yes, I've said some not nice things about Planet Money in the past. But, if they're getting around to interviewing Roberts maybe all their investigation into Economics is leading them to some real understanding.

I agree. I don't think it takes a quantitative scientific study to see that developed countries that have publicly provided health care spend less on health care then those countries that don't ( that would be ours) . Nor is a study needed to prove that those same countries with public health care never see a citizen lose their house or go bankrupt paying health care bills. These things are not too complex.

Yes people never go bankrupt in those countries, and at the same time they never get rich either. They all are equally miserable at a subsistence level. You can have that awful horrible reality, not me.

Most Europeans take 6 weeks of vacation. The average American gets 8 days.

How many days off a year do you get ArrowSmith?

And as payment for that lack of vacation, Americans are richer.

Your statement is like those stupid happiness statistics that say rich people are miserable because of money. But the money isn't what makes them unhappy, it's long work hours. With the long work hours come a high salary, which is payment for their hard work, crazy schedule, and lack of vacations.

This isn't hard to understand. It's a trade off. I could make less money by working less hours and taking more vacation now. Or, I could work more, defer vacation, and get more money.

I haven't had a vacation in six years. But without working that time, I now would be without the means (money) to do other things I had planned in the future. If I did things the European way, as you suggest, I wouldn't be in a good position today. I would be about two to three years behind where I am now.

Harder work now means a greater chance for easy street later.

How about you and your dopey comments take a day off, huh Muirgoo?

"I don't think it takes a quantitative scientific study to see that developed countries that have publicly provided health care spend less on health care then those countries that don't ( that would be ours)"

They also use the passage of TIME to compensate for urgency,and they deny coverage to late life cases. Your model does not compensate for this difference: the government manages scarcity by denial of service. Doctors leave canada to come the the USA where they work in better conditions making a better living, giving better care.

As a cancer patient who has experienced healthcare in the UK, Canada and the USA, I'm sorry, but there is absolutely no comparison in quality, availability, or service. None. Period. Our lengthy emergency rooms waits are NOTHING compared to their european equivalents.

We get FAR better health care, far faster, of better quality. Period.
That's why we are happy with it. That is why THE MAJORITY OF US ARE HAPPY WITH OUR HEALTH CARE.

It's not a question of total costs. We spend more on the military per capita, more on interest per capita, more on just about everything. So the argument is specious. In other words, you're misleading either by accident or intent. We spend more because we have more to spend, not the least of which is because our healthcare is one seventh of our economy - and we're selling a really good product.

If you want to prevent bankruptcy from healthcare costs, or to insure the newly immigrant classes, or the young who cannot pay their way, then that's easy enough. But if you put the government between me and my healthcare, you're effectively trying to kill me, moral ambition or not.

Insurance works. Get people into private insurance. Keep a record of their accounts. Subsidize that insurance. Keep it as a debt upon death. No reason that an estate should go to children at the expense of everyone else.

"We get FAR better health care, far faster, of better quality. Period.
That's why we are happy with it. That is why THE MAJORITY OF US ARE HAPPY WITH OUR HEALTH CARE"


http://healthcare-economist.com/2008/01/17/seve...

I wonder if any of the percentage of GDP spent on healthcare includes exports of items or services under that category; if that were the case, one could make the argument that a true comparison of health care across countries would subtract that component, and I don't doubt that America would then spend less as a percentage. Just a thought, I'm not a statistician. Anyone have any ideas?

I mean, is that a valid point? If a medical-device manufacturer sells half his wares outside the U.S., and his exports are included under health care as a percentage of GDP, can we really count that as the "cost" of health care? Or if a foreigner comes to the U.S. for an operation that is performed within our borders, is that really a contributor to the high percentage of GDP? Or if we have transient immigrants from Mexico who benefit from public health care options here but never remain here for more than a few years at best, can we really count their "cost" to health care as a truly permanent and representative cost of American health care? If a lot of them don't permanently stay here and this is true of a good majority of them and this pattern is fairly continuous, how can that be relevant?

Awesome, Muir. World is so simple. Some people need to pay taxes for "government services", so that few of us can be billionaires and receive Nobel piece prizes. That's all there is to the world. Taxes make the world go around. Taxes created the world. World will be much better place if they will make us both billionaires.

Love you.
Mmmmmmwwwwwaaaaahhhhhhh

Zimbabwe spends less on food than America does. Does that mean it has a better food care system? Some things are more complex than they appear.

I guess I don't get the comparison. People in Zimbabwe may go hungry or starve so no they don't have a better food care system simply because it is cheaper. It is in our country which spends way more on health care that people "starve" from lack of access to health care.

45,000 deaths per year do to lack of access to care in America.

http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/...

46.2 percent of bankruptcies were attributable to a major medical reason.

http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/fu...

This is very serious stuff Russ. Economist are pushing policy even when they suggest no policy may be best. Policy or lack of policy effects the economy. Policy or lack of policy determines who dies and who doesn't. Sometimes obfuscating the need for policy with the complexity of the economy is a dangerous thing.

I have concern here with your premise because like the climate change debate the libertarian fall back position when evidence seems contrary to ideology is to claim things are just too complex to make accurate policy decisions.

There is nothing complicated about the health care policy debate. The facts are as I stated above. People are dying and loosing their homes over ideology while others use the cover of that ideology formed into policy to amass billions of additional dollars to their family fortunes. It's wrong and I don't need science to tell me that.

Hey, muirgeo, when we have a health care-gate and it turns out European health care statistics were massaged and understated and that they actually spend twice as much on health care than we do, are you still going to maintain your position?

I guess I don't get the comparison. People in Zimbabwe may go hungry or starve so no they don't have a better food care system simply because it is cheaper.

Oops. I expected better from you partner. That was precisely Russ's point.

I'm surprised nobody else pointed out that every single person in the USA has access to healthcare. EVERY SINGLE PERSON. That means the 45,000 number is a blatant lie. The correct number is zero.

God damn... that's so ignorant. Why don't you just find the highest point and scream from it to the world just how very ignorant you are.

I'm sorry but I have no tolerance for brain damage Dittohjead and Glenn Beckian numbskulls. Grow up!

Ignorance klike this is really what is destroying the country.

There are 2 types of Republicans... those that lie and those that believe... yetanotherbeliever.

Murigeo, why is it you see anybody that disagrees with you as some kind of partisan hack?

"I'm a democrat, and since you disagree with me, you must be republican."

Please, viewpoints are not limited to Sean Hannity and Keith Olbermann. In fact, the more intelligent and better informed you are, the less likely you will end up in either "camp."

Nice fact-filled, content rich response, you really showed me! I especially like the way you avoided ad hominem and went right to a solid argument just like you do on other topics like AGW.
/sarc

I don't know what you mean by "brain damage Dittohjead and Glenn Beckian numbskulls" in this context. Have Rush and Glenn discussed this? I don't know because I don't listen to them.

The simple fact is that anybody in the USA can go to a hospital and get care without being turned away. It matters not one whit if they have any money or insurance. Do you deny this? Your precious 45,000 number is a lie. You should pick on real problems we have, not bogus numbers (there are plenty of them). You make yourself look like an idiot when you do things klike that.

BTW, I'm not defending the health care "system" we have; it needs improvement (but my solutions are very different from yours). I'm just pointing out that your claim is completely (and obviously) false.

One more thing - I'm definitely not a republican. Why are you unable to see anything outside of your only-2-possibilities thinking?

God damn?

Isn't that a religious command? I thought religion was the opiate of the masses to you.

Republicans are liars. We democrats are awesome. Look at us, we have got Madoff, Crook Dodd, Blagejovich on our team.

Sandre, I'm getting a callus from clicking the Like button so often.

:-D

Wow, you're really fired up...

"I guess I don't get the comparison. People in Zimbabwe may go hungry or starve so no they don't have a better food care system simply because it is cheaper. It is in our country which spends way more on health care that people "starve" from lack of access to health care."

...and nobody "starves to death" in Canada on their waiting list?

"The facts are as I stated above."

Except that you only showed "facts" from one side.

"...and nobody "starves to death" in Canada on their waiting list?"
MWG

No they don't. That is just your braining spewing what has been repeatedly washed into it... it's non sense. But that's not something a group thinker would be able to understand...As You Were/ Are!

"No they don't."

Nobody has ever died in Canada waiting for medical treatment? That's just might be true. Instead of waiting to death, many come to the US instead. I wonder what poor Canadians do...

http://reason.tv/video/show/a-true-tale-of-cana...

Again, I see your dubious numbers, published by a group of doctors with an agenda - they are open advocates for single-payer - and raise you with the fact that nearly 200,000 die every year from medical mistakes and hospital acquired infections.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-secon...

And Dr. Roberts' above asked the pertinent questions. How do you think that on balance more people will be saved by the move to "free" healthcare?

"How do you think that on balance more people will be saved by the move to "free" healthcare?" crawdad


Cause I'm a fact based, real world pragmatist and a numbers guy all rolled into one...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_...

http://www.badmouth.net/content/uploads/2009/08...



It's all funny because I am the guy arguing for LESS government spending.

So true. We live in the real world were all forbes 400 are on our side. They all support our humanitarian schemes. Love you.

"It's all funny because I am the guy arguing for LESS government spending."

You keep telling yourself that, muirfool. The way you put faith in the government estimates is laughable.

Muir has an agenda and an incentive for HCR. It's no wonder why he constantly pushes it. Like ALGORE and AGW, they are Rent Seekers.

Yeah... not having 45,000 of my fellow countryman per year die for the sake of 400 with unthinkable greed.

You like kings go find yourself a kingdom. Here ... as I recall we don't put up with that bull shit!

Those 400 Are very smart. They are all on our side, championing our cause. Mmmmmwwwaaaahhh. These libertarians have nothing going for them in terms of number of billionaires who support their schemes. We have got Al gore, David Blood, George Soros, Ted Turner and 396 others. Love ya

I wish I were as certain as you are.

Do you believe the 45,000 number? The bankruptcy number? Certainly the
fact that not everyone gets free medical care In America takes a toll on
people. Why are you so confident that increasing the number of people
who think medical care is free will improve matters?

But the real point I was making was much more simple. The fact that we
spend a lot on medical care in and of itself proves nothing.

"I wish I were as certain as you are.

Do you believe the 45,000 number?" RR


Yes I believe that number. IT IS scientific and peer reviewed. I also believe the number that Fortune magazine or is it Forbes puts out for the accumulated wealth of the top 400 people in this country.

The stark contrast between 400 people with 1.5 trillion dollars between them and even 10,000 dying needlessly much less 40,000 is abominable.
It's uncivilized!!

Russ there is an organization that used to provide free health clinics in 3rd world countries that now finds plenty of business right here in the US. I forget their name and need to go see patients myself but there have been specials on this group. It's all wrong.

Bill Moyers did a special on it. I'll get it to you later if you're interested.

Here it is. RAM... Remote Area Medical

http://www.ramusa.org/

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07312009/prof...

The health care "system" we have now doesn't look like the system that libertarians and fiscal conservatives have espoused for decades:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240529702...

... so most people here would agree with you that our "system" sucks. There are three basic options on the table: current, nationalized, Mackeyan. You are sure that the best way to get the best health care system is to nationalize it. The Mackeyan plan is most similar to the way that the rest of our economy runs and your ~plan is least similar. Since you're sure that nationalizing leads to the best outcomes in health care, why not just nationalize every other aspect of society? If Bob Mackey's ideas are so obviously flawed in health care, why isn't that the case with provision of everything else?

An organization you actively are involved with no doubt since you couldn't remember the name and are very supportive of "free healthcare"... or are you a "for profit" doctor?

Yes I am all for for-profit-doctoring. And I am against free clinics.

The idea that charity should take care of the worlds poor is BS. All the people of conscious will do all the charity while the greed mongers will accumulate wealth and power requiring even more of the charitable.

So true. Hotdog! We are a team! The wealth accumulators are all on our side. Our buddy, Al "carbon trader" Gore is one of those magnanimous people. Love you. Mmmmwwwwaaahhh

Yes I believe that number. IT IS scientific and peer reviewed. I also believe the number that Fortune magazine or is it Forbes puts out for the accumulated wealth of the top 400 people in this country.

Awsome point muir. All those 400 are overwhelmingly on our side, and libertarians have almost no one on their side. We are winning......

mmmwwwwaaahhhhh

Those bankruptcies are a choice. You can just do what the state will do - deny your loved one treatment and prevent yourself from going bankrupt.

But the state doesn't do that. Outcomes in other countries are basically the same.

I don't think those bankruptcies or deaths from lack of care occur in our Medicare , Medicaid , VA or Military public health plans.

Here methinks you forward the Republican plan for health care reform...

1) Don't get sick
2) If you do die fast

Good plan!!

Why is it you think no one else works in this country besides yourselves? Even with 10% unemployment 90% of people are working and contributing. They deserve to be able to afford basic heathcare. If not through fair wages then off the tops of the privledged class that this country has allowed to have way more then they could possibly earn, be worth or need.


"Utilitarian economists, skeletons of schoolmasters, Commissioners of Fact, genteel and usedup infidels, gabblers of many little dog’s-eared creeds, the poor you will have always with you. Cultivate in them, while there is yet time, the utmost graces of the fancies and affections, to adorn their lives so much in need of ornament; or, in the day of your triumph, when romance is utterly driven out of their souls, and they and a bare existence stand face to face, Reality will take a wolfish turn, and make an end of you."


Charles Dickens

"...90% of people are working and contributing."

Not true. Only about half the population has a "job", and of those, roughly half are paid from the pool of rent payments exploited from the other half. In other words, about a quarter of the population is creating 100% of the wealth. Its why I think a strike would be so effective - ala Karl Marx and Ayn Rand.

"I don't think those bankruptcies or deaths from lack of care occur in our Medicare , Medicaid , VA or Military public health plans."

Oh yeah?! Then how do you explain the fact that over 99% of the first recipients of Medicare are dead? Maybe you could if you were really a doctor?

Matt,
Believe me, he's really a MD. I used advise MD's in financial matters. Some of them are the most pompous a-holes you'll ever meet. Some of them actually believe their press and think they were born with a extra helping of virtue that the rest of us knuckle-dragging neanderthals aren't worthy of. Believe me he reminds of these very types. Just ignore him. That really pisses them off.

Scary. Shouldn't he then have some basic grammer and spelling skills?

Just remember, half the doctors are below average...

"Utilitarian economists,

playing devil's advocate here buddy. Utilitarian economists are mostly on our side. Boneheaded libertarians are so freedom minded they can't see the "utility" in our schemes.

that's an excellent point, muir. Do you have some stats on what the Federal government spends on 65+ versus what the other "developed" nations spend on the same demographic? I think that will put an end to this debate. If you can show that our government is already spending less than others on the small part of the population that is already on 100% socialized medicine, then they will do an excellent job of transferring taxes to government health contractors ( which includes doctors like you ) for other age groups as well.

Let our next venture be a health venture to smooch off healthcare payments from government. you are awesome. You come up with all these schemes. mmmmwwwwaaaahhhhh

I envy your ability to so roundly destroy an argument in so few words.

I envy your ability to be lead by thouights of others and be happy about it. Freethinking is fun too.. you should try it. See below...or maybeit will be above?

??? Don't really get what you mean. I was praising Russ's ability to communicate in simple terms... his argument isn't groundbreaking at all.

Also, by 'freethinking' are you referring to your views on AGW? Just a question.

Below you quote a democratic demagogue and C. Dickens (who you like to quote often). You don't seem to have very many original thoughts. Just democratic talking points and twisted logic.

Explain the twisted logic of wanting a health care system that covers EVERYONE for LESS and has as good of results as any. It takes twisted logic to bend those facts into a bad thing. Those people in those countries almost universally do not want a system such as ours.

The twisting comes from those denying the obvious advantage 30+ other developed countries have over us as far as health care policy goes.


But your thinking is confined to the realm of what falls under Libertarian group think. The mear thought of publically provided health care is illogical when stuck insie the box you choose to hide rather then looking onto the real world pragmatics of the issue.

Covers everyone for less...Isn't that what's called "magic"? A new system might cover everyone--might--but it won't do so for less. And if it does cover everyone, it will do so over a much more extended period of time, i.e., longer waiting times for procedures, which in effect means it won't cover everyone, at least not those who died because of the extra waiting time relative to our system. But if you really believe it will cover everyone for less, I have some ocean-front property in Arizona...And just because Europeans want a socialist system instead of the socialist/fascist system that we have, doesn't mean that socialism is a good idea.

"Explain the twisted logic of wanting a health care system that covers EVERYONE for LESS and has as good of results as any."

First of all, I was speaking in general terms to 99% of your "understanding" of economics, but since we're talking about healthcare... There's nothing wrong with the above logic as I, and most here, probably would agree with it. YOUR twisted logic is that because the "cost" (as defined by you - % of GDP) is lower in Canada there "system" is better. Unfortunately healthcare costs are more than a simple % spent relative to GDP. In Canada it includes longer lines, higher death rates from cancer and any other measure where Canada performs worse than the US.

"Those people in those countries almost universally do not want a system such as ours."

Yes, and many of those people who love Canada's healthcare system have never had cancer or had to have major surgery. As someone whose sister works at a hospital in Seattle, I can assure you there are many, MANY Canadians who LOVE healthcare in the US.

You confuse opposition from libertarians to current bills in congress to to support for the status quo... what you call "free market" healthcare.

Yeah, of course the healthy people "love" socialized medicine because they rarely if ever have to use it, and it SEEMS free because they use it for inexpensive checkups and the like, but when it comes to the real dreadful stuff, they sure as hell ain't gonna want socialism. And MWG's right, a simple GDP percentage statistic is one-dimensional and ultimately meaningless, for a variety of reasons, but not least among these is what non-health care related issues contribute to these costs? Can we really point at France and say they spend less on health care when their national diet is way healthier than ours or when that country doesn't have millions of troops facing the health-damaging effects of combat from constant needless wars? Muirgeo, save yourself some embarrassment and stop being a simpleton.

If you could provide numbers on how much our beloved government transfers to medical contractors in the name of providing care to 65+, we can compare that number to what other countries spend on the same group.

On our way to first billion.

BTW, sitting firmly in our thinking box, Could you suggest a few major areas of the economy where drastically less government would help. Just checking into see if we are falling into group think.

mmmmwwwwaaahhhhh.

Looks like you have more time then me. How bout you find those stats and we have an adult dscussion over them?

half of every health care dollar transfered to medical contractors like us, are transfered from the tax payer. 8% of the GDP. What % of the population is taken care of by this spending?

In year 2000 there were 35 million people over the age of 65, that would be about 11.6% of the population.

There you go, I fired the first shot of kisses and numbers. Your turn, show me your analysis of those numbers.

Love you man! Mmmmwwwaaahhhhhh

If you think you've made a good point you might want to do a little research on health insurance actuarial charts. Medicare takes care of the oldest and sickest and biggest consumers of health care. No one gets turned away or denied.

What's much more amazing is how much it cost private health insurance to cover their young cherry picked population. There is NO WAY they could or would want to compete with Medicare for the over 65 population. That's why they have weaseled into the Medicare supplement market. Adding nothing in care but increasing cost by 12%.

Muirg, my awesome future billionaire. Our side's argument has always been that 8-11 percentage of that damn lie called GDP is what other elitist economies spend on their gun point healthcare. We already spent that much money to just cover a small fraction of the population. Can you imagine how many easy billions we can transfer from proles if we can "provide" gunpoint healthcare to the other 85% of the proles?

Mmmmwwwwaaaahhhhh

I grew up in a third world country, my mother was a housewife. my father used to earn about $100 a month ( the last I remember). we were 5 sibilings. We had plenty to eat, my dad had a beat up 1973 car. we lived in a 1500 sq ft. home. We went to school.. Now, my brother is a Bank Manager, one of my sister is a teacher, another is a civil engineer, one of them is an orthopedic surgeon and I'm a computer engineer. So when you hear somebody say $1..50/day, that doesn't say anything about how much it buys in that country.

Yeah, it's very misleading since all those "dollar a day" statistics invariably are at current exchange rates and not at purchasing power parity (and probably at an exchange rate from ten or twenty years ago when it was more favorable to the dollar), and I hate the disingenuous hacks who tout such statistics and then blame then on capitalist imperialism (even though imperialism is impossible without government doing it).

The US government has so many price control measures in place already, Sugar subsidies, Milk subsidies, etc...that the US price is meaningless. It's not the real market price at all. Here in Arkansas, we have a huge rice subsidy going on, and now they want even more or a tariff on asian rice.
All the while the consumer is getting the shaft, so Blanch Lincoln -->(D) <-- (Emphasis the D as much as possible) can get bribe money for her re-election effort.

Oh and did I mention the new Food Safety Bill that can make it illegal to grow your own garden veggies?

I used to work at an ice cream parlor while still in college and one of the managers told us on one occasion how the government "in its wisdom" (and the sarcasm was evident) had reduced subsidies on milk so that milk costs, and thus ice cream product costs, had increased as a result. In other words, he actually believed that it was stupid not to subsidize milk, to let a freer market exist, because it ran contrary to the special interests of the company! Nevermind the unseen.

Not to mention that any comparisons, even at purchasing power parity, are skewed because even the purchasing power parity is based on a basket of goods that includes items that aren't essential to survival, like electronics or aquariums, when the real emphasis should be on cost of LIVING: food, shelter, clothing, essentials, etc., not also what is deemed "essential" to an American way of life.

"They tell us that the test of an economic theory is its success in predicting the future, but betray themselves every time they get up to go to work in the morning, like the rest of us. For, if they could really predict the future, and with mathematical precision, wouldn’t they all be stock market millionaires?

Economics is not a predictive but explanatory science. Demand going down as price goes up, all other things constant, does not mean that it will necessarily go down as price goes up, for all other things are not constant."

See http:/www.econotrashtalk.org/A Declaration of Economics.htm