Digitalelf wrote:
GentleGiant wrote:
Can you point out where the right has done that?
The right wanted to reform social security so that one could open a "retirement account" in their name and with the ability to manage it themselves, or they could choose the system currently used (this was during the Bush Administration), but the left wanted nothing to do with it...
In large part because:
1) It was a subsidy in disguise. It would essentially be a trillion dollar investment into the US stock market. If you want the savings rate to change there are better ways of doing it...for one changing domestic credit markets.
2) It doesn't solve any problems.
The first problem is that US citizens, in aggregate, do not save. Offering retirement accounts is a sham policy. What is the difference between that and what people already have...e.g. access to tax deferred IRA accounts, for anyone who is saving less than 15k per worker per year (i.e. most of us)? The answer is nothing. Thus one might infer the purpose is not to increase savings/investment but rather to cut Social Security.
Two, a major goal of Social Security is to ensure some manner of income floor for people who become too old to work (or disabled...). Risk has its place within the market and the ability to determine and allocate risk is one of the things a market is damned good at. Allocating risk such that people who choose stocks poorly cannot pay their bills as they become too old to work is foolish. The point of Social Security is to make sure that people who lose the capacity to earn money have income sufficient to meet basic needs. Private accounts don't do that. What do you do if people end up with nothing or too little to pay their bills. For many going back to work is not an option.
On the other hand, balancing the budget ought to be significant policy concern, not only on free market grounds but also on the basis of global peace and security.
A lot of "leftist" social programs can be defended as public goods though and I think the right refuses to acknowledge them.
One anecdote:
I worked in an alternative to prison agency through a local government. I also worked in a non-profit that received government contracts. In both the government spending was efficient for pretty much the same reasons.
In the first our budgetary rational took about 1/2 a page. You discount the lifetime cost of a single child born with birth defects because of his mother's drug use (1 million dollars give or take) by rate of change in the likelihood of women having such a child while in the program and you will always come out with a value greater than the annual budget of that agency. That isn't fuzzy math. That is the facts showing that compassionate care is a better economic choice than prison.
In the second, the calculation was similar. The cost to the city for institutionalizing people into mental hospitals is exceedingly expensive. Jail is pretty similar. That is without counting social or human costs. Turns out that the cost of housing homeless people and providing services is cheaper.
I think we may find that the same is true for healthcare. The compassionate and humane way of treating people may very well prove to be cost effective as well.
For one, there are considerable losses associated with out system. One it is very bureaucratic. Private firms spend more on suits than do Medicaid or the VA. Two, government benefits CAN be CLEARER and have lower information costs than private health care. The VA in particular is very easy to work with and answers questions about care way better than my private insurance ever has. Three, people are often wary to seek treatment because of costs which ends up increasing costs when they become more ill. If people know the rules or the system is accessible (like the VA) they will cut those costs. Four, those same people who get very sick and do not have adequate health care often cannot work. That is a loss two ways, one you cannot work, two society pays for you. Five, economies of scale and the manner in which drug research is funded may work better when the same entity funds research and pays for pills. Drug companies are great at R&D but there are good reasons to believe that their profits may be a result of rent seeking. Their research is often heavily federally funded because health is a public good. But then they privatize that knowledge.
The above could be wrong. It could be inefficient. That is the risk we run. But most of the world has pretty good care. I sincerely doubt it will be a disaster.