TomAiello

They pretty much had to choose something like that. The only real image problem he has is a perception that he's an "elitist" or part of the "elite." Picking a decent beer would have led to all kinds of oddball attacks on the grounds that "Sam Adam is a snob beer" or "he doesn't even drink American beer." I'm actually kind of surprised they went with the Lite. I'd have picked the leaded version, just for the plus "manly" factor. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Yes, I am. Don't worry, I've got plenty of that, too. My dislike for government intervention and wasteful spending is not dependent on which party is perceived as doing the intervention and spending. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I'd actually applaud her for selling the drugs out of the house. At least she's got some entrepeneurial spirit. Other than that, I'd just ignore it. Lots of more important things to worry about, without getting your neighbors mad at you. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

"Doing fine" may be a bit of an overstatement. Did you not follow the news last year, when all of the private colleges were having huge budget problems, at least partially on account of the economy making people choose the cheaper alternatives? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Not true at all! Competition in the marketplace is determined by (chiefly, there are other factors) two things: Price and Quality. If the Quality is the same, but the price is lower, you'll sell more. If the quality is lower, and the price is lower, you might still sell more (and put people with a higher quality, but more expensive product out of business). Which do you want, the free Yugo or the $20k Camry? If you pick the Yugo, that doesn't mean it's better. If I give something away for free, it doesn't have to be better, or even of the same quality, or even of close quality, to compete. It's free. People will take it for just that reason. Even if it's a bit worse than the alternative (which would cost them money). You can't claim that the competition will be based only on quality when one alternative is priced at zero. Not if the reason for the lower cost is a government subsidy. Let's imagine two products, A and B. A and B are of identical quality and identical price. A costs $1000. B costs $1000. They sell about the same. Now the government steps in, and subsidizes B, providing it for $0 to anyone who wants it. Unsurprisingly, company A goes out of business, as they have no sales. Company B is now the monopolist in this marketplace, not because they had a better product, or because they had a cheaper product, but because they had a government subsidy. This is not a result of B being better, or cheaper. It is not a result of fair marketplace interaction. It is purely the result of the government action. The government action has eliminated consumer choice, has cost the taxpayers a load of money, and has driven company A out of business. Now another example: Let's imagine the same two products, A and B. B is priced at $500, but is only about half as good as A. A is still priced at $1000. The two products sell, at some relation to each other determined by consumer preference and choice. Again, the government steps in and subsidizes B, so that it is available for purchase at $0. Again, the balance is shifted, and more people buy B than would have done so at it's original (true) $500 price point. If enough people make that switch, it drives A out of business again. And we can have the same result as in the first example, despite B's obviously lower quality. The government intervention has eliminated consumer choice, cost the taxpayers a load of money and reduced the quality of the product available on the market. All this despite the fact that B could never compete with A on quality--only on price. A third example: This time, we've got the same initial conditions as the second example, above. A costs $1000, B costs $500. A is twice as good as B. The two sell in some quantity determined by consumer choice. Along comes the government again. It wants to make sure that everyone has at least one of this product, either A or B. Instead of subsidizing either product, the government simply hands out vouchers for $500, redeemable on the purchase of either A or B. Now, effectively, the price for B is $0 (so we know everyone will get something), but the price for A is $500. You may or may not drive company A out of business. That depends on consumer preference and choices. The playing field still isn't level and fair, but it's not as steeply sloped as before. But, you've achieved your goal of having one product or the other available to everyone. And you've done it in a way that is less likely to drive company A out of business. Here, you've maintained some consumer choice, you've given company A some chance of staying in business, and you've maintained the quality of product available in the marketplace. But you're still reaching your goal of providing the product to everyone. Personally, I'd prefer that we simply not have the government interfering in the marketplace. But if your goal is to have the product available to everyone, there is absolutely no reason to go with scenario 1 or 2, above. Scenario 3 makes the most sense on many grounds. What's the downside to following the third way? Do you see any? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Stop dissing investment bankers - without them we wouldn't have this recession to discuss. They deserve their huge bonuses. Good thing we gave them all those taxpayer dollars, then. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

It would also be interesting to see the percentages (and change over time) of US doctors who do and don't take medicare and private insurance. I'll see if I can find some. Anecdotally, I'd guess that the number of US doctors who've gone to a purely cash (not taking any insurance) practice has risen steeply in the lat 10 years. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Because there's a level playing field between a private company and one that receives a huge government subsidy? So they each charge relatively similar rates for what you get? How does that work? Imagine that I started giving out Yugos for free. And suddenly, Toyota saw a huge drop in their market share, because all those people buying $20,000 Camry's suddenly realized they could get a (not as nice) Yugo, for free. Would that show, somehow, that the Yugo was a better product than the Camry? You can't claim that your company is "better" or even "more efficient" if the device it uses to "win" in the competitive market is a government subsidy. I realize that you, Kallend, and Rahm Emmanuel (who I heard make the same argument) all realize your argument is fallacious. I just can't believe that people keep making it, over and over. How can the competition be "fair" if one side gets a huge government subsidy and the other doesn't? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

How is your reply relevant? If I start a government insurance company, and give it a huge subsidy, that's not going to put private insurers out of business? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Absolutely agree. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

If you have a chance, try to read The Man Who Was Too Lazy To Fail by Robert Heinlein. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Ah, so clever, I see. Hey, if I start a competing company and give it a trillion dollar subsidy, that's not going to put anyone out of business is it? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Your doctor (and everyone else in the world) is going to be motivated by something. I'd prefer to know what's motivating him, and be able to influence it. Just saying "I don't want him motivated" isn't going to work very well. If that's the case, why should he show up to work at all? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Are you familiar with the "spending multiplier" concept in economics? Just a bit. And that's not an understatement. In short (and oversimplified) form, it goes like this: When I spend a dollar, the guy I spend it with has an extra dollar. He goes out and spends 50 cents of it. The guy he spent that 50 cents with goes out and spends 25 cents. So, my dollar of spending actually ends up generating $1.75 worth of spending in the economy. That extra 75 cents is the "multiplier." Normally, it's expresses as a percentage, so we can say that the "multiplier" of my spending is 175%--in other words, when I spend a dollar, a buck seventy five actually gets spent in the economy. The weird thing is that different people's spending has different multiplier rates. That's largely because they spend on different things. Even stranger, government spending appears to have a different multiplier than private spending. And tax cuts (if you think of them as spending) have a different multiplier yet. The conundrum is this: private spending appears to have the largest multiplier, government spending has a substantially smaller multiplier, and tax cuts have the smallest of all. The real debate (and this relates back to your point) is whether the multiplier on government spending is actually more or less than 1 (or 100%). Meaning, do we actually get out back more than we put in, or not? Most of the economists who've examined this have estimated the multiplier on government spending at around .8 (because the government spending crowds out private spending, this reducing the multiplier below 1). Private spending in the US, on the other hand, tends to get measured (remember that we're talking about a ton of different economists doing different studies) at something around 1.5. And that's the crux of the "stimulus" debate. Do we really get back more than we put in? According to the Obama economic team, the answer is yes. They've estimated the "stimulus" multiplier at about 1.5 (which has to be overly generous, given that that is about where private spending falls). Other economists have estimated it at less than 1 (more like the traditional government .8). Who's right? We don't actually know. There's an interesting article here that goes into some of the numbers, but I'd definitely look around and find other articles--like I said the opinions of various economists (and their numbers) are all over the map. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I've always thought of Obama as "Bush plus." -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

And certain people will say they should give that drug away because the people it will save. Those greedy bastards design a drug to save lives and then have the balls to actually charge for it! What's worse is that they'll probably use the profits to research new life saving medications! Pure Evil! -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

The .pdf file is 112k, so it just exceeds the attachment size limit here. If you PM me an email address, I'll send you the file. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Are you familiar with the "spending multiplier" concept in economics? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I do, quite honestly, believe that the news available to the average person is both of higher quality and greater content than 20 years ago, or 40 years ago. The problem there is the huge number of laws on the books that criminalize non-violent and victimless behavior. That's not a conspiracy by corporations who want to run for-profit prisons. It's a problem with people pushing their morality on others. Sure. Don't you want to give him an incentive to do that? The best way to incentivize people is to offer them a personal reward. I'd like to have an effective tool for motivating my doctor to do the job. The best tool for that is my ability to pay him (or not) based on his doing the job. If I'm free to see another doctor, then I can pick the one who I think is doing the best job. If I don't have that freedom, what incentive does he have to do a good job for me (aside from personal feelings, which can be a powerful motivator for him)? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

http://webreprints.djreprints.com/2017630549095.pdf http://webreprints.djreprints.com/2017630549095.pdf Is that working? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Not really. I'm always free to go see another doctor. Or at least, I am at the moment. Better than just 3 channels, all saying the same thing? I'll say the current system is better. You have hundreds of different sources, and you can read various (often conflicting) views of the same things. That give you the ability to form your own opinions, instead of just taking what someone else is saying for truth, because there's no other view available. Would it work better if we just had one news source, handing out government approved news? What would we call it? Maybe The Truth? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Doesn't the same rationale apply to your quip about Brittany Spears haircut? If you don't like it, get your news somewhere else. I haven't read a story about Brittany's hair in any of my regular news sources. It wasn't on the BBC, wasn't in the WSJ, didn't notice it in the Economist. By the way, did you ever read the WSJ article about non-profit medicine that I keep linking for you? (the one here)? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Dude, profit is not the devil. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Still wondering if you had any thoughts on CanuckinUSA's experience? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

That's not really the issue. The question is where the "rich" line is drawn. At what income will people be able to purchase care to their satisfaction? The concern is that currently that line is drawn somewhere around the bottom of the middle class, and that some plans being considered might move it up much further, so that it really would be only the truly wealthy who could purchase the care they wanted. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com