http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-the-real-problem-for-facebooks-stock-valuation-2012-2FB HAS LOST ITS HALO
Source date (UTC): 2012-02-02 23:25:00 UTC
Category: Economics, Finance, and Political Economy
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but we all KNOW that healthcare costs are the long term problem with the US budg
http://www.multiplier-effect.org/?p=3351Yes, but we all KNOW that healthcare costs are the long term problem with the US budget.
We also know WHY healthcare costs are the problem:
1) extending the last year of life.
2) experimental procedures.
We also know why it’s a difficult problem to fix healthcare costs:
3) Because there is no market system by which doctors can choose to deny coverage for experimental procedures and extending the last year of life. Because it is expressly against medical ethics. Because it is profitable for businesses to deliver services. Because it is bad for business to reject a customer, who will just go elsewhere for the service.
4) Because there is no market system for controlling extension of the last year of life and experimental procedures, we must create a non-market system (a bureaucratic system) or “DEATH PANELS” to deny coverage for experimental procedures and extending the last year of life, in order to contain costs.
We also know why bureaucratization of experimental procedures is dangerous:
5) Because experimental work is expensive, research and development conducted by trial and error – most of which fails to produce beneficial results.
We also know why conservatives (republicans) dislike the bureaucratic method:
6) Because it is impossible to work harder, apply more discipline, and use one’s own initiative and resources, in order to secure access to the best doctors, facilities, and experimental treatments.
And it’s disingenuous to argue that this is a financial problem. It is in fact, a series of moral hazards – in the broadest sense of the term.
(The technical, mixed-economy solution, would be to transfer the costs that were rejected by the Death Panels for experimental procedures and extension of life to those poor people in need of health care. I’m not advocating that. I’m just suggesting that it’s the only known solution that avoids perverse incentives for all parties, while maintaining a closed healthcare ecosystem.)
We already solve the problem of transfers by subsidizing insurance companies for automobile drivers. There is no reason that we cannot sponsor (insure) non-profit, insurance companies that specialize in coverage for the underclasses, and make use of the visa/mc network to manage payments for services. We insure banks. Why can’t we insure insurance companies as a proxy for serving the disadvantaged?
Source date (UTC): 2012-01-20 14:35:00 UTC
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APPLE GIVE DIVIDENDS? ARE YOU NUTS? 🙂
http://modeledbehavior.com/2012/01/06/open-letter-to-apple-shareholder/WHAT? APPLE GIVE DIVIDENDS? ARE YOU NUTS? 🙂
Source date (UTC): 2012-01-06 18:05:00 UTC
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Boettke Quoting Evans: Priceless “Whether we “blame” central bankers or not is r
Boettke Quoting Evans: Priceless
“Whether we “blame” central bankers or not is really a secondary consideration to our attempts to understand what happened and why. By assigning blame we suggest that the Fed should have done better. … But the problem isn’t that individuals focused on the wrong targets, and the solution isn’t to work out how they can improve. The lesson should be that the nature of central banking – the attempt to centrally plan the monetary system – imposes an epistemic burden on policymakers that they cannot possibly ever fulfill. “
Yep. Priceless.
We should not attempt to find or train humans to suit our ideal concept of government. We should make a government that will tolerate the existence of the limits and frailty of humans.
And that is to say, the least government that is possible.
I don’t mean to say that we should eschew development of public services by private means. I simply mean to say that government is outside of the information system of the market, and as such, it is as blind as the statue of Justice was ever imagined to be.
While my libertarian friends do not agree, men do not hate government per se. They hate the abuse of it that is endemic to any bureaucracy, and in particular a monopolistic bureaucracy that exists outside of the market.
Source date (UTC): 2012-01-05 15:27:00 UTC
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Defining ‘Rich’. It’s Easy: Whomever Can Exit Participation In The Market
On Economix at the NYT, Bruce Bartlett writes that it’s difficult to count who’s ‘rich’.
The first thing to know is that there is no formal definition of who is rich, middle class or poor. Of course, there is an official definition for the poverty rate, but that figure is just a back of the envelope calculation that has simply been increased by the inflation rate since the 1960s. There are many other ways of calculating the poverty rate that could either raise the poverty threshold or reduce it. Another problem is that one’s social class is a function of both income and wealth. There are many among the elderly who have little income but may have fairly substantial wealth by, for example, owning a home free and clear. At the other end, there are those with high incomes who are, nevertheless, deeply in debt, perhaps even having a negative net worth.
It is certainly possible to calculate who is ‘rich’. The goal of every individual is to exit the market. Whether that individual studies hard to get a good (protected) job in big company, or works for the government which by definition is extra-market (and protected), or seeks a (protected) union job, or whether that person does none of that rent-seeking, and instead, exits the market through saving or investment. “Rich” means ‘exiting the market’. To exit the market one needs roughly on hundred times the median income, or about 4.5-5M today. It used to be that a million dollars meant something meaningful, but it doesn’t. You can easily burn through it if you’re the kind of person that can make it in the first place. Rich is a balance sheet calculation, not an income calculation. If a person’s balance sheet exceeds about one hundred times the median income (which is by definition, the 1%) then realistically, it doesn’t matter how much of their income you tax. I suspect that the various means of calculating maximum utility taxation is closer to 60 or 65% based upon what I can find. But if you tax the income of a small business person who is trying to exit the market, then we certainly have the right to wipe out social security, wipe out pension programs, fire federal workers and wipe out their savings. Because unless those assets are counted, the definition of ‘rich’ is asymmetrically used to punish people who participate in the market.
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Defining ‘Rich’. It’s Easy: Whomever Can Exit Participation In The Market
On Economix at the NYT, Bruce Bartlett writes that it’s difficult to count who’s ‘rich’.
The first thing to know is that there is no formal definition of who is rich, middle class or poor. Of course, there is an official definition for the poverty rate, but that figure is just a back of the envelope calculation that has simply been increased by the inflation rate since the 1960s. There are many other ways of calculating the poverty rate that could either raise the poverty threshold or reduce it. Another problem is that one’s social class is a function of both income and wealth. There are many among the elderly who have little income but may have fairly substantial wealth by, for example, owning a home free and clear. At the other end, there are those with high incomes who are, nevertheless, deeply in debt, perhaps even having a negative net worth.
It is certainly possible to calculate who is ‘rich’. The goal of every individual is to exit the market. Whether that individual studies hard to get a good (protected) job in big company, or works for the government which by definition is extra-market (and protected), or seeks a (protected) union job, or whether that person does none of that rent-seeking, and instead, exits the market through saving or investment. “Rich” means ‘exiting the market’. To exit the market one needs roughly on hundred times the median income, or about 4.5-5M today. It used to be that a million dollars meant something meaningful, but it doesn’t. You can easily burn through it if you’re the kind of person that can make it in the first place. Rich is a balance sheet calculation, not an income calculation. If a person’s balance sheet exceeds about one hundred times the median income (which is by definition, the 1%) then realistically, it doesn’t matter how much of their income you tax. I suspect that the various means of calculating maximum utility taxation is closer to 60 or 65% based upon what I can find. But if you tax the income of a small business person who is trying to exit the market, then we certainly have the right to wipe out social security, wipe out pension programs, fire federal workers and wipe out their savings. Because unless those assets are counted, the definition of ‘rich’ is asymmetrically used to punish people who participate in the market.
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Rich
http://www.capitalismv3.com/index.php/2011/12/defining-rich-its-easy-whomever-can-exit-participation-in-the-market/Defining Rich
Source date (UTC): 2011-12-25 20:28:00 UTC
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CRASH I’d originally predicted that the China bubble would pop over Christmas of
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/19/opinion/krugman-will-china-break.htmlCHINA CRASH
I’d originally predicted that the China bubble would pop over Christmas of 2010 — a year ago now — based upon the relationship between prices, inventory and incomes. I’m not sure I was wrong about when it popped, even if it’s taking a long time to become visible. But It’s certainly happening right now. In 50 of 70 Cities prices are in free fall. What I don’t know, is how their economy will ‘recalculate’ prices and actions. Totalitarians are great at spending money, but now people are schooled, trained, invested, and habituated to a future that can’t exist. Recalculating a new future is going to be expensive and likely painful for them, as much as it has been for us.
2012 will be a very, very, interesting year. It’s the 1870’s and the 1930’s all over again. And we’re finally seeing the big guns in economics calling this a DEPRESSION. Finally.
Source date (UTC): 2011-12-19 08:58:00 UTC
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AS THE ACOLYTES OF TOTALITARIANISM “Once people decided that they wanted to make
http://www.capitalismv3.com/index.php/glossary/#schumpeterian%20intellectualsECONOMISTS AS THE ACOLYTES OF TOTALITARIANISM
“Once people decided that they wanted to make a living from giving economic advice, they needed customers. The government was the obvious target. The new class of professional economists said that politicians could spend the taxpayer’s money willy-nilly, even on total waste. And, that all their remaining economic problems could be solved, without cost or effort, by monetary manipulation, in time for the next election. This proved to be a big seller, and it remains so today.” (- Courtesy of Forbes)
See: Schumpeterian Intellectuals in my Glossary of Political Economy
Source date (UTC): 2011-12-19 08:30:00 UTC
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WORTH READING: DEFINE ‘RICH’. What is rich? Is ‘Rich’ something we can define or
WORTH READING: DEFINE ‘RICH’.
What is rich? Is ‘Rich’ something we can define or calculate? And how much can we tax them?
It is certainly possible to calculate who is ‘rich’. The goal of every individual is to exit the market. Whether that individual studies hard to get a good (protected) job in big company, or works for the government which by definition is extra-market (and protected), or seeks a (protected) union job, or whether that person does none of that rent-seeking, and instead, exits the market through saving or investment.
“Rich” means ‘exiting the market’. To exit the market one needs roughly on hundred times the median income, or about 4.5-5M today. It used to be that a million dollars meant something meaningful, but it doesn’t. You can easily burn through it if you’re the kind of person that can make it in the first place.
Rich is a balance sheet calculation, not an income calculation. If a person’s balance sheet exceeds about one hundred times the median income (which is by definition, the 1%) then realistically, it doesn’t matter how much of their income you tax.
I suspect that the various means of calculating maximum utility taxation is closer to 60 or 65% based upon what I can find.
But if you tax the income of a small business person who is trying to exit the market, then we certainly have the right to wipe out social security, wipe out pension programs, fire federal workers and wipe out their savings. Because unless those assets are counted, the definition of ‘rich’ is asymmetrically used to punish people who participate in the market.
Source date (UTC): 2011-12-13 20:38:00 UTC