Obama Care - Needs CPR?

So let’s recap. Obamacare has depressed job growth, costs are escalating at a higher rate, barely a dent has been made in the numbers of uninsured, and insurers are either exiting the markets or failing altogether. Under any other circumstances, a program that failed on its promises so badly would have all sides moving quickly to repeal it and work on a replacement.
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2015/12/10/Obamacare-s-Condition-Has-Gone-Critical-Life-Support

"What men imagine they can design."

Chicago Tribune - Stop digging. Start over. Fatal conceit

This article is on target but the authors miss the point - the problem isn't poor implementation or any other engineering issue.  The problem is men are not made to do the work of gods, they are not capable of using coercive force to help their peers have better lives, it is the work of gods not of men to arrange the transactions of men.  Obamacare is just plain hubris.  It is the fatal conceit.
But we won't learn that lesson, the elites will keep arguing about how it was a great idea, and how he should have just implemented it better.
http://my.chicagotribune.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-78189619/

Negative Unintended Consequences

The case against Obamacare is straightforward. For many employers, the cost of providing health insurance to mainly low-income workers would be huge. Logically, many firms would try to evade the expense. There are two ways of doing this. First, businesses with fewer than 50 full-time workers are exempt from the insurance requirement (the “employer mandate”). So, don’t hire that 50th worker. The second way is to make workers part time by cutting their weekly hours to less than 30. That’s Obamacare’s threshold for full-time workers.

Consider an example. A firm has 49 full-time workers. None receives employer-paid health insurance. Each has an annual wage of $30,000. The company adds another worker. Its wage bill totals $1.5 million (50 workers times $30,000). But it must now offer health coverage; in 2011, the average cost of a policy for a single person was about $5,000. For 50 workers, that’s an additional $250,000 (50 workers times $5,000). If the firm had a pretax profit of $250,000, its profits would be wiped out. There’s a powerful incentive to avoid Obamacare, either by not hiring or by pushing full-time workers under the 30-hour cap.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/robert-j-samuelson-is-obamacare-a-job-killer-yes-and-no/2013/10/30/71b4f3d0-416c-11e3-8b74-d89d714ca4dd_story.html

This issue of "what is full time" seems like a no solution problem.  It hurts everyone when businesses can't grow, and it hurts workers to have to work multiple part time jobs.  More meddling, more negative unintended consequences.  This is one of the things humans cannot engineer.

The Weekend Interview with Stanley Druckenmiller: How Washington Really Redistributes Income - WSJ.com

But he adds that "I did not think it would be nutty to tie entitlements to the debt ceiling because there's a massive long-term problem. And this president, despite what he says, has shown time and time again that he needs a gun at his head to negotiate in good faith. All this talk about, 'I won't negotiate with a gun at my head.' OK, you've been president for five years."

His voice rising now, Mr. Druckenmiller pounds his fist on the conference table. "Show me, President Obama, when the period was when you initiated budget discussions without a gun at your head."

Which brings him back to his thieving generation. For three decades until 2010, Mr. Druckenmiller ran the hedge fund he founded, Duquesne Capital. Now retired from managing other people's money, he looks after his own assets, which Forbes magazine recently estimated at $2.9 billion. And he wonders why in five years the massively indebted U.S. government will begin sending him a Social Security check for $3,500 each month. Because he earned it?

"I didn't earn it," he responds, while pointing to a bar chart that is part of his college presentation. Drawing on research by Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff, it shows the generational wealth transfer that benefits oldsters at the expense of the young.

While many seniors believe they are simply drawing out the "savings" they were forced to deposit into Social Security and Medicare, they are actually drawing out much more, especially relative to later generations. That's because politicians have voted to award the seniors ever more generous benefits. As a result, while today's 65-year-olds will receive on average net lifetime benefits of $327,400, children born now will suffer net lifetime losses of $420,600 as they struggle to pay the bills of aging Americans.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303680404579141790296396688
Did you see that headline about how social security robs the young and poor to give to the old and rich?  No?  Wonder why that is ...

“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

― Friedrich von Hayek

"AND ...."

But if Eleanor galvanized Republicans, she did the same thing for Democrats. Her husband's nomination had led to some dissension on the convention floor in Chicago; FDR's insistence on Henry Wallace had soured some delegates even more. The president, still in Washington, asked the first lady to make the trip to Chicago. She agreed, and gave a political speech that unified her party, and which reverberates through the decades.

"You must know that this is the time when all good men and women give every bit of service and strength to their country that they have to give," she said. "This is the time when it is the United States that we fight for, the domestic policies that we have established as a party that we must believe in, that we must carry forward, and in the world we have a position of great responsibility."

Speaking from only a single page of notes, Eleanor Roosevelt continued:

"We cannot tell from day to day what may come. This is no ordinary time. No time for weighing anything except what we can do best for the country as a whole, and that responsibility rests on each and every one of us as individuals."

Carl M. Cannon
Washington Editor
RealClearPolitics
Twitter: @CarlCannon <https://twitter.com/CarlCannon>

What the author kindly omitted, and what Eleanor would not have said, is the "and" part of her formula. "except what we can do best for the country as a whole" is only a partial sentence, the remainder of which is "and let me make you and others do those things which I (speaking on behalf of the President) deem best for the country." The tyrant's intent and actions are clear. A president's job is defined by the need to request consent of the 50% in order to take action backed by the government's monopoly on coercive force.

A paraphrase of Eleanor - "Please let us force you to do what we think is best for all." But do they really know what is best for all?

If they did, they wouldn't have crippled the economy of the US for the last 15 years of the depression. They wouldn't have made the nation appear so weak that it would look vulnerable to the Emperor. If they really knew what was best for all, WWII would not have happened, or we would not have been a part of it. If they really knew what was best, we at least would not have started the war with obsolescent weapons which resulted in the unnecessary death of many.

They don't know what is best for us. But because of their fatal conceit they believe otherwise.

Ever Hear of Centralization? It's the Greatest!

Simply put, the digitization of social interaction, economic transaction, the political process and everything in between is decentralizing the world, moving it in the opposite direction of the massive centralization of Obamacare. But nobody needs a federal bureaucrat to tell him what health insurance to buy when anybody with an Internet connection can simultaneously solicit bids from thousands of competing providers, pay the winner via electronic fund transfers, manage the claims process with a laptop, consult with physicians and other medical specialists via email, and even be operated on remotely by surgeons on the other side of the globe. Rather than imposing a top-down, command-economy, welfare-state health care model with roots in Otto von Bismarck's Germany of 1881, a 21st-century government would ask what is needed to apply to health care access the Internet's boundless capacity to empower individual choice.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/examiner-editorial-obamacare-is-a-19th-century-answer-to-a-21st-century-question/article/2533021

Uh, If It's Hard Fewer Folks Do It?

http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/a/SB10001424127887324798904578527552326836118?mg=reno64-wsj

As an academic, I'm just an amateur capitalist. Still, over the past 15 years I've started small ventures in both the U.S. and the U.K. In the process I've learned something surprising: It's much easier to do in the U.K. There seemed to be much more regulation in the U.S., not least the headache of sorting out health insurance for my few employees. And there were certainly more billable hours from lawyers.

By the Numbers

• 433: Total number of days it takes in the U.S. to start a business, register a property, pay taxes, get an import and export license and enforce a contract
• 368: Total number of days it took to do the same in 2006
• 7: U.S. ranking, out of 144 countries, on the World Economic Forum's 2012-2013 Global Competitiveness Index
• 1: U.S. ranking on the 2008-2009 Global Competitiveness Index
• 33: U.S. ranking for its legal system and property rights in 2010 on the Fraser Institute's Economic Freedom index, out of 144 countries
• 9: U.S. ranking for its legal system and property rights in 2000

Sources: 'Doing Business'; World Economic Forum; Fraser Institute

This set me thinking. We are assured by vociferous economists that economic growth would be higher in the U.S. and unemployment lower if only the government would run even bigger deficits and/or the Fed would print even more money. But what if the difficulty lies elsewhere, in problems that no amount of fiscal or monetary stimulus can overcome?

Nearly all development economists agree that good institutions—legislatures, courts, administrative agencies—are crucial. When poor countries improve their institutions, economic growth soon accelerates. But what about rich countries? If poor countries can get rich by improving their institutions, is it not possible that rich countries can get poor by allowing their institutions to degenerate? I want to suggest that it is.

Von Mises: "Kids, Don't Try This At Home"

Mises explained how the banking system was endowed with the singular ability to expand credit and with it the money supply, and how this was magnified by government intervention. Left alone, interest rates would adjust such that only the amount of credit would be used as is voluntarily supplied and demanded. But when credit is force-fed beyond that (call it a credit gavage), grotesque things start to happen.
Government-imposed expansion of bank credit distorts our "time preferences," or our desire for saving versus consumption. Government-imposed interest rates artificially below rates demanded by savers leads to increased borrowing and capital investment beyond what savers will provide. This causes temporarily higher employment, wages and consumption.
Ordinarily, any random spikes in credit would be quickly absorbed by the system—the pricing errors corrected, the half-baked investments liquidated, like a supple tree yielding to the wind and then returning. But when the government holds rates artificially low in order to feed ever higher capital investment in otherwise unsound, unsustainable businesses, it creates the conditions for a crash. Everyone looks smart for a while, but eventually the whole monstrosity collapses under its own weight through a credit contraction or, worse, a banking collapse.
The system is dramatically susceptible to errors, both on the policy side and on the entrepreneurial side. Government expansion of credit takes a system otherwise capable of adjustment and resilience and transforms it into one with tremendous cyclical volatility.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471504574443600711779692.html

In other words, "you don't know enough to mess around with this stuff."

Or, "You can pay me now you you can pay me later."

Or, "It is not for man to meddle in the affairs of the gods (or the god)."

Keynesianism = Hubris = The Fatal Conceit

Real business nonresidential fixed investment (RBNRFI) was lower in 1Q2012 than it was in 4Q2011, falling at a 2.1% annual rate, quarter to quarter. This continued a decelerating trend. After growing at 15.7% during 3Q2011, RBNRFI slowed to a 5.2% growth rate in 4Q2011 and then fell at a 2.1% rate last quarter.


Why does this matter? It matters because RBNRFI is what actually drives the economy. Both real GDP (RGDP) and employment growth are a direct function of RBNRFI. The notion that “spending” drives the economy is the Keynesian Superstition.

Plans based upon superstition tend not to work very well. Obama’s $831 billion “stimulus” program of early 2009 failed utterly, as did Bush 43’s $152 billion stimulus program a year earlier. The economists in the grip of the Keynesian Superstition (e.g., Paul Krugman) were left sputtering that the stimulus “just wasn’t big enough”.

Because stimulus works in exactly the same way as trying to raise the level of a swimming pool by drawing a bucket of water out of the deep end and pouring it into the shallow end, no stimulus can ever be big enough. In retrospect, it’s unfortunate that Obama didn’t push through a $2 trillion stimulus. It would have been worth wasting another $1.2 trillion to finally bury this deadly superstition.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiswoodhill/2012/05/02/president-obamas-2012-re-election-prospects-suffer-an-ominous-gdp-report/
I think of the Keynesians as some peacock like bird, strutting around with an undue sense of self significance imagining all the great things they can do with power.  They are defined by pretense.  The pretense that men can act as gods, pulling strings, manipulating the world economy as if it was their backyard creation.  Only man's fatal conceit would allow him/her to believe they possessed the depth of understanding and knowledge necessary to try and manipulate such complexity.  Hubris is not something humans are running short on.

Death March of Obamacare

The die is cast: Obamacare will not survive. This is not a prediction of how the Supreme Court will rule on President Obama's health care takeover, mind you. It's the harsh reality that if Obamacare does not die a judicial or political death - or better yet, both - it will die an economic death, and if it does, it will take America down with it.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/mar/28/obamacares-inescapable-death-march/print/

I don't know if the author is right about "taking America down with it", but who could really doubt that this monstrosity will fail on an epic scale? 

Why?  Well, I think Henninger puts it well here:

Mandarins are the intellectuals who design and order legally enforceable public systems within which the rest of the population resides, or tries to. French policy mandarins are the most celebrated in the world. Their most ardent admirers in America are the people who made the Obama health-care law.
The Affordable Care Act is not merely a "law" that the Supreme Court argued over this week. It is a massive Rube Goldberg contraption. Its 2,700 pages include every pipe, whistle and valve that the nation's academic health-care economists and doctors have soldered together from infinite studies of hospital data. The new machine even has its own boiler-room crew, the 15 health-care academics of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, who will monitor and adjust the flow of medicine through the national health-care pipelines.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303816504577309731206715296.html

There are certain realizations that transform ones thinking so much that it nearly divorces one from the popular dialogue.  For example - I can't believe anyone still thinks that mere mortals, of any party, can design a system for coercively extracting the funding for and directing the actions of doctors and pharmaceutical companies and insurance entities and all the thousands of players that must be manipulated to have a "health care system." 

Why would anyone still believe that's even remotely possible?  And yet - most do.

Gold v. The Fed

During his lecture, Chairman Bernake said many things about "the gold standard" as if there was only one possible kind of gold standard, the one that existed after World War I. Many of his assertions were true, as far as they went. However, in focusing on the shortcomings of one monetary regime, he diverted attention from the big picture. Only an automatic, market-based monetary control system can support rapid, stable, crisis-free economic growth in an economy as complex as America's. If it were possible for Fed experts using their discretion to achieve this, we would not have the problems that we have today.  http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2012/03/27/ben_bernankes_shocking_gold_standard_ignorance_99586.html

I think the premise - if The Fed was good enough to manipulate an economy the benefit of all, it would have been done by now - if valid.  How possible or good it would be to go back to a gold standard isn't something I would pretend to know, but frankly - how could it be worse than having one group of mortals do it?  Do they really know what one would need to know to "run" an economy?  Sounds like Fatal Conceit to me.

Or as the author put it:
It is simply not possible for a group of experts, with discretionary power and no rules, to manage, "money" effectively. If anyone had doubts, the Fed has conclusively proved this point over the past 40 years.

What sounds like massive folly is to keep betting the welfare on so many on the President's ability to pick a Fed Chairman - why's that different than roulette?

From The Pill To The Oppressive Welfare State - Who Knew!?!

Myth No. 2: If it weren't for the Catholic Church, no one would be talking about contraception anyway.
It is not only a series of popes but also a number of prominent secular thinkers who believe that the birth-control pill has been one of the major milestones in human history—a diverse group that runs from public intellectuals of a previous generation like Walter Lippmann to such contemporary scholars as Francis Fukuyama and Robert Putnam. As many pundits had occasion to observe in 2010, the 50th anniversary of the pill, it is hard to think of anything else that has changed life so quickly and dramatically for so many.
In other words, this isn't just a Catholic thing. In severing sex from procreation, humankind set into motion forces that have by now shaped and reshaped almost every aspect of life in the Western world. Families are smaller, birthrates have dropped, divorce and out-of-wedlock births have soared. Demography has now even started to work against the modern welfare state, which has become harder to sustain as fewer children have been produced to replace aging parents.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304724404577297422171909202.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

One group I'll bet had no idea was the goons who have expanded the welfare state over the last fifty years, and who would have expanded it more if they had been able.  I'll bet they had no idea that their reproductive revolution would be the end of their "revolution" in forcing others to do the work they were unwilling to do themselves for the "downtrodden" or "disadvantaged."  And now the final complexificator - the folks that wanted birth control and reproductive rights and massive wealth transfers from the young to the old (disguised as social security and medicare) want to limit reproduction to reduce the human footprint, meaning mostly CO2 emissions and urban sprawl (I guess they all just love cities). 

So how do your run a welfare state if you don't have masses of young people to exploit to pay for it? 

At every turn the use of the federal government becomes a manifestation and direct testimony to the folly of the fatal conceit.

And now they think that more government intervention is going to make the health care system better, and more affordable .... well, I'm sure they've got the consequences all figured out.

Productivity Must Exceed Employment Cost

As I think of the language of this post, "We Need Jobs":
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/opinion/yes-we-need-jobs-but-what-kind.html?_r=2&ref=opinion

I think, "we" is meaningless in this term.  Everyone on the planet is in need of the means to make their way in the world, trading their time and expertise and inginuity to get the stuff they want - water, food, housing, and capital goods to expand their ability to create that which they can create better than most others.

The author says "we" meaning "US Citizens", but never offers his structure that would illustrate what influence politicans could have on making it more commonly possible for folks to increase their ability to "get what they need" in exchange for their time (aka, a job). 

He suggests government intervention, and seems to think arbitrary pay floors will have a positive impact.  I suppose he means things like minimum wages, and benefits packages, and he suggests folks need paid time off - ultimately, he is suggesting that coercive interventions can interupt a cycle in which people have to work so hard to get by, they can't get to even, they can't parent their children, and they can't break a cycle of helplessness. 

He seems to assume that the current state is a natural phenomenon, and that the unusual part is how hard it is for the folks he discusses. 

Here's my short mental test for his ideas.  Suppose we do establish a minimum level, a so called living wage, for each person.  Where does that money come from?  How do we know it can be paid for given their productivity and overall expense to pay for their employment?  If we're going to pay a living wage, why not pay enough to buy a big enough house for each person's family, a new and very reliable car, two weeks of vaction, enough to fully fund an IRA, and enough to start saving for the children's college education?  Heck, why stop there - if we can arbitrarily pay "more" than what these people are making now, why not just pay everyone $150,000 a year unless they can make more? 

To me, it is clear that government interventions ignore the complexity of where "jobs" come from, focusing on only those elements of what "jobs" are that can be seen - the need for them and lack of perfection in compensation, especially in an economic down turn.  The author's analysis also skips over the effect of existing interventions - for example, the 15% cost for social security and medical care, that could easily be paid in compensation to the worker at the same overall cost to the employer.  There is a long, long list of government interventions that make it more costly to hire employees, from mandatory time off (if you get 2 weeks vacation, that is the same as saying "I'll pay you less for fifty weeks in order to allow you to have two weeks pay without being here to contribute."  The costs come out in the wash, but don't actually change), to OSHA compliance to excessive costs for transportation due to government regulations and mis-management to an absurd tax system that pretends to tax those that employ "us" but really just makes our stuff cost more at the point of sale (effectively hiding the fact that governments take a lot more of our money than we know). 

In short, anything that makes it more expensive to hire a person makes it less likely that person can be productively employed.  There's no magic hat out of which to pull productivity.  If productivity does not exceed what it costs to employ a worker, the employer won't hire.  Ultimately, any interventions which raises the cost to employ has to have an equal or greater than equal opposite effect - somewhere, somehow, it's going to cost more than the benefit of the employment. 

The solution to the "jobs problem" is only for government to reduce the many ways in which it has made employment more costly. 

Nevermind the impact of the government's monkeying around with the financial systems, the banking industry, home mortgage industry, and the overall profligacy of one generation's politicians taking money from the next generation while promising "the great society." 

We all know that if we could get our lawns mowed for fifty cents, none of us would keep a lawn mower or take the time to mow our own lawns.  If we could get our cars washed for nothing, we'd have them washed daily.  If we could get our furnaces installed for $10, we'd all get new furnaces.  If we could get free health care, we'd be in the doctor's office on a whim, any time we had a moment's anxiety about our health.  Good intentions, sympathy for life's difficulty, sorrow at the ways in which children's lives are impacted by the current, government manipulated economy does not create a magic hat by which we can just increase wages and time off.

But if I'm wrong and in fact the professor has a magic money hat, let's just pay each other $100,000 to get up in the morning and be done with it, enough dorking around on the margins with silly stuff like minimum wages and mandatory time off.

Sowell On Williams About Government And Intentions

These writers, and the topic one reveals in this short article, describe the root of what makes the last 80 years of liberal interventionism in our government a crying shame of hubris, oppression, and human suffering.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/04/26/race_and_economics_109659.html

"Some might find it puzzling that during times of gross racial discrimination, black unemployment was lower and blacks were more active in the labor force than they are today."

The author makes a compelling case that the entitlement programs have, despite their intentions to the contrary, done more to hurt black skinned people than did systemic, government sponsored, illegal, unconstitutional, racial discrimination. 

I cannot write much about race issues.  My grandparents were farmers, merchants and business men.  Their parents were too.  They lived in southern central Alabama.  My private school education was paid for by my parents, as were theirs.  My father's medical school bills were paid by the US Navy.  Everyone involved in these transactions earned what they got.  If I wasn't a great student, I did the work, went to class, and struggled every quarter to be a better student.  I was able to leverage the education my parents gave me to enter a career path that would have been closed to many due to circumstances as out of their control as I was of my good fortune. 

In short, what I am, and where I am in the world, is a mix of incredible good fortune and my being just savvy enough to make something out of my jackpot.  I am not ashamed of drawing the jackpot, and apologize to no one.  I do not believe anyone else has fared more poorly because of whatever success I have had.  I believe in what Steven Covey describes as the abundance mentality - there is more than enough possibility for success for every person to get a share - in theory. 

So I tread lightly because I know there are people with an ENTIRELY different experience than mine.  What troubles me, though, is the idea that these groups of people, identifiable by race, gender or ostensibly some other genetically identifiable characteristic, are doing badly despite government force used on their behalf. 

What I see, what these authors highlight so well, is that these groups of "disadvantaged" people are doing well BECAUSE of the (presumably well intentioned) government force used on their behalf.

We are presented with the horror of tyranny used with good intentions which causes vast, unintended harm in all directions.  Even those who believe heart and soul that the monopoly on coercive force held by the government should be used to "do good" should be frightened by even the possibility that this is true.

There's a Reason

"There have been times when Congress was just as dysfunctional; there have been times where the country was full of vitriol in its politics," he said. "So this isn't unique in our time."

He criticized Republicans for recent "brinkmanship" over raising the nation's debt ceiling but said he "absolutely can do business with them."

Obama said he would push Democrats to find "common ground and compromise."

"And if that's happening on both sides, there's no reason why we can't solve problems," he said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-economy-20110822,0,3923080.story
There's a very good reason why "they" can't solve problems - "they" think that problem solving means that "they", men who would be gods, just need to write smarter laws, implement them better and thereby pull the strings of a world wide economy to "create" jobs and "growth." 

Were they to humbly accept that "they", being men, have no idea what to do to via the coercive power of the state that would result in things getting better for "us", they would be moving in the right direction.  Then they might consider doing things like this.

His Pomposity Is Impressive

Maybe it's possible to raise the level of the discussion. One way is to see that the level of the solution isn't found on the same as the level of the problem. Obama has taken that view as his long-term strategy. His position is that acrimonious divisions in government, the problem, can't be solved by being even more acrimonious. His call for compromise, balance and a reasoned approach to our difficult challenges is a sane adult's way of rising above the level of the problem.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/08/15/obama_strategy_may_work.DTL#ixzz1VDm8ixWs

This poor fool doesn't have the slightest idea what the problem is, he writes like he thinks that if we just execute government with more skill, more courage, more cooperation, less conflict, we can "get it right."  Sure, and one day we'll also extract, as the saying goes, "sunbeams from cucumbers."  Why does this man believe so strongly in the government's monopoly on coercive power as the road to our well being?  Why wouldn't he embrace cooperation among free people instead? 

Enlightenment, liberty, cooperation, responsibility and accountability - this is the reasonable, adult path.  His instinct to tyranny, his fatal conceit, cloud his thinking.

Dysfunctional = Good

Following the lead of the Environmental Protection Agency, Education Secretary Arne Duncan recently used this imagined "dysfunction" as an excuse to try to unilaterally implement comprehensive education "reform" by bypassing law and using a waiver system. Why? "Right now," Duncan explained, "Congress is pretty dysfunctional. They're not getting stuff done."

Hate to break the news to you, Arne; for many Americans, stopping this administration from "getting stuff done" is getting stuff done.

The Founding Fathers rightly feared that the purer the democracy the more susceptible voters would be to the emotion of the moment and the demagogues who take advantage of it. Needless to say, we are democratic enough to get the politicians we deserve.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/08/10/sorry_guys_there_are_no_more_kings_110879.html

Functional would be good only if you think that government can "do good."  Government doing good is government that defends the right of individual citizens.  Since we're all bored with that quaint notion, and want government to right every wrong and cure every ill, which it cannot do, I like the do "dysfunction" just fine.

If You've Played Every Card, What Next

After seeing the recent poor growth data for the United States, he singled out as a possible cause “the drift of so many conservatives away from what used to be the mainstream market-oriented Washington Consensus toward Austrian economics and Ron Paul style hard-money libertarianism.”
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/08/09/terence-corcoran-don’t-blame-the-tea-party/


It's funny - with no apology, the government has taken and spent trillions on ideas that are unproved and unprovable.  The stimulus?  $800 billion up in smoke.  The Great Society - Trillions of dollars to buy .... the same levels of poverty we've had since the early 70s.  Our government has forcefully extracted and blown - well, not blown if you consider the political legacy of so many important senators, congressmen and presidents, because certainly the money that was spent has done a lot to burnish those - more money than you or I could even conceive.  


Now someone comes along and suggests that we try not taking money from our children and grandchildren and letting things play out.  Let's see what happens if we quit fiddling around with things we no longer pretend to understand.  


Radical.  We just can't have that. 


His conclusion:
For nearly five years we’ve had massive and unprecedented run ups in government spending and debt in the United States and around the world. We’ve had vast expansion of government powers over banks, energy policy, financial markets, health care and other sectors. We’ve had staggering and unprecedented monetary policy interventions across Europe and in the United States. All of which have produced no growth and lousy job numbers, with the likelihood that the debts may not be repaid as a result. And the charge is laid that a small cadre of congenitally ineffectual free market libertarians is the cause of it all.

Does He Still Want The Job?

I often wonder when I watch him.  He's learning that in fact, no one knows enough to do what he thought a President should.

The pathetic performance of President Obama in the debt debate is showing the left how incompetent and weak the leader they selected is. Many are wishing they had Hillary Clinton in the White House instead! Once Obama has to move beyond a set teleprompter speech, he is lost. During the BP disaster, he showed what a poor administrator he is and now he has belied any pretensions to legislative skill. He is the un-Lyndon Johnson.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/printpage/?url=http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/08/03/the_left_turns_on_obama_110811.html

Now that Congress is finished displaying its one unquestionable skill — conniving at ideological extortion, with the household budgets of millions of Americans hanging in the balance — the time has come to calculate the damage done to U.S. fiscal policy by the debt ceiling deal reached this week.

The toll can be measured in several categories. One is the way the debate elevated deficit panic, an entirely fabricated issue in terms of today's policy necessities, to legitimacy. Another is how even within its own fantasy universe the agreement targets spending that isn't a significant problem in the federal budget, while ignoring the chief driver of deficit growth: healthcare costs.

The outstanding irony of the entire debate is that, despite the participants' declared intention not to merely "kick the can down the road," that's what they've done.

http://www.latimes.com/health/healthcare/la-fi-hiltzik-20110803,0,2472202,print.column

I love the writer's style, even if I disagree with his assumptions (but of course he's right on the money regarding budget cost drivers).  I am amused that he continues to place his faith in the same buffoons - that he so capably lampoons - to run health care and to run a retirement system and to do all the other things which would be above the heads of any mortal.  I guess if we just keep electing people we'll eventually get the right bunch that is good enough, smart enough, and selfless enough to do the right things for the right reasons and make it all wonderful for the rest of us (in other words he's still suffering from the fatal conceit).  Too bad he's unwilling to examine all the ways our government has made our health care system to unnecessarily costly.