The Partisan Divide

People complain that the US is divided by "partisan politics" and needs to "find a middle ground".  The problem is that the US is split between two views of the governments role.  Now, the way to "fix" this issue is to follow the plan the Founding Fathers had and actually USE the Constitution.  The Constitution explicitly limits the power of the Federal government to a very few areas such as the military, resolving conflicts between the States, international trade, and other aspects of international diplomacy.  The rest of the governmental powers are left to the individual States.  

Currently, there are two main views on the role of government - one view is that the government exists to perform those functions that are either unable or impractical to be performend by individuals / businesses (police, roads, courts, etc) and everything else the government should stay out of.  The other view is that the government should have a large amount of control over your life in essentially all areas ranging from where you get a job, how much you are paid, where / how you receive medical treatment, what words you're allowed to use, etc.  Some people claim that we need to compromise and have a "mixed system" - the problem with compromise is that there are three outcomes - One group loses, the other group loses, or both groups lose.   

If we return to following the idea of most laws being done at the State level, then these conflicting views cease to be an issue.  If you look at most States, they are primarily populated by people who hold one view or the other - it is very rare to see a State that is fairly evenly mixed between the two views.  If you allow these decisions to be made at the State level, then a State such as Ohio, which is primarily populated by people who want very little government interference in their lives and would prefer lower taxes and more personal responsibility, then Ohio could have a very small government with much greater freedoms and let market forces work - if the citizens decide something needs to be changed in the government, they can easily vote to have the change implemented.  On the other hand, a State such as California which prefers big government intervention in your life and lots of rules on how you can behave, where you can work, how you can work, etc can have the type of government programs that they want.  The problem is that we are trying to take what are local issues and forcing them to be Federal issues that are applied to everyone in the country.  If people do not like the way their particular State is, they are free to move to a different State (potentially only a very short distance away) and have the government of their choice.  There is no reason that a primiarly small government State should be forced to live under the rule of a big government, nor for a primarily big government State to be forced to live under a limited government system.  The best solution is neither limited government nor large government, but to allow the citizens of each State to decide which one they want, as the founders of this country planned.

Health Care Reform

After talking to many people recently about government run health care, I decided to make a post about my proposition for reforming health care in the US.  Many people want to say that people against Obamacare or government run health care are against reforming the health care industry - and that's just blatantly untrue.  They see their options of government control of the industry as the only option and if you're opposed to that, you're opposed to making any changes.  So here's my proposal for a way to improve the health care system.

1) Get the government out of healthcare.  Currently, there are many laws preventing insurance companies from operating in all 50 states.  This reduces competition and drives prices up.  There should be made a federal law that explicitly bans the limitation of states or any other government institution on preventing insurance companies from operating on all 50 states (or any potential future states).  There should also be a law that prevents you from being dropped from your insurance as well as requiring you to pay up to a certain percent of your income (as a maximum limit) for any prexisting conditions.  Then, one more law that prevents employers from purchasing health care for employees and instead restricts them to reimbursing employees for insurance costs instead (thus ending the "if you lose your job, you lose your insurance" problem).  Other than those laws and federal standards for medical training for doctors and nurses / acceptable procedures and sanitation requirements for medical facilities, the government should get out and lets people and businesses decide what they want best.

2) End businesses paying for health insurance.  Yes, I know I mentioned the law regarding this in the previous post, but I want to elaborate on it.  With businesses only being allowed to reimburse you for insurance costs, then when you negotiate pay at a job, you can negotiate how much they'll pay.  Also, since everyone will be purchasing insurance on their own now and can shop around, you can choose the type of plan you want - if you want, you can take a low cost plan that is entirely covered by how much the company will reimburse you or you can choose a higher cost plan and pay for part of it out of your own pocket (which you currently do anyways with employer provided health insurance).  The point is that it's up to you.  Once you combine this with the law removing restrictions on insurance company competition, you will have a massive number of options to choose from and if an insurance company doesn't please you, you can easily change companies, so insurance companies will be pressured to lower costs and provide better customer service, just like any other competitive business.  Then insurance companies won't just compete on price, but also on what extras they offer - how long you can keep your children on insurance while they're in college / grad school / medical school would be one factor that they would compete over as well as insurance companies pressuring medical institutions to lower costs so that they can lower their insurance costs and pass those savings on to consumers.

3) Tort reform.  One of the biggest problems in the US today is the massive number of bogus lawsuits.  Everyone wants to sue everyone because it's easy money if you win.  Malpractice insurance (paid for out of doctors own pockets) is incredibly expensive and with the increase in lawsuits, costs have gone up because you're more likely to be sued and need to take money out from the malpractice insurance company.  As long as a doctor did not do anything criminal or negligent, you should not be able to sue.  If a doctor tells you that there's a risk of something bad happening during an operation and you consent to the operation and that bad thing happens, you do not have the right to sue - he did nothing wrong and you were made aware that this was a possibility.  With this gone, doctors won't need to do all of the unnecessary tests they're forced to do for fear of being sued and malpractice insurance will go down, which means that doctors salaries can go down to compensate for the lower cost of malpractice insurance (their after-tax and after-malpractice insurance income will be the same).

When people get to vote with their dollars as opposed to the current system where you have very few options if you're unsatisfied, prices go down and quality goes up - this has been shown millions of times over in the rest of the industries.  I am not saying that my proposal is a perfect plan, there may be things I overlooked or that need to be changed after it is implemented.  However, it's better than the current system and better than government run health care because it makes insurance companies and medical institutions directly accountable to consumers - which means that consumers will be better off.

Collectivism

After reading some posts on other sites recently, I thought I'd write a post about why I'm against Collectivism (Socialism, Communism, Marxism, etc all fall under the broad category of Collectivism).  

1)  To put it short and to the point, it's not fair.  It's not fair to forcefully take money from some people and give it to others.  Frederick Bastiat, a 19th century French Economist / Political Philosopher, had a term for redistribution of wealth (or as Obama calls it, "spreading the wealth around") - his term was "legalized plunder".  I don't think anyone here will disagree that theft is wrong.  Yet some people think that, as long as the  government signs a piece of paper saying it's OK, that it's perfectly fine for one person to steal money from another.  Another economist said "If I do not have the right to do something, what right do I have to petition the government to do it on my behalf?".  When you force one person to give a portion of the profits of their labor to another, it is at best indentured servitude and at worst slavery.  We have people who claim that the rich need to "pay their fair share".  They already do and then some.  Currently, the bottom 50% of the population pays approximately 3% in taxes.  The top 25% pay 87% of all taxes, the top 10% pay 71% of taxes, and the top 1% pay 41% in taxes (these are all rounded off).  It's ridiculous that someone can think that it's "fair" for 10% of the population to pay 71% of the taxes and 50% pays almost zero.  The reason for this imbalance isn't just that lower income people pay no taxes, it's that we have a progressive tax system where the more you earn, the higher percentage of your income you pay in taxes.  A fair share would be everyone pays the same percent (this of course is assuming we stick with an income tax system).  Now, after reading these numbers, most people would be saying "How can people support such an unbalanced system?" - the reason for that is greed.  The people in the lower income brackets are jealous of the success of others and instead of working hard and trying to earn the same lifestyle, they push the government to tax it away from those who make more in hopes of the government giving some of that money to them.

2) Collectivism drags society down.  Instead of each person being encouraged to work hard and improve their lives, they're encouraged to sit back and let someone else do the work.  There's no personal responsibility and no motivation to improve society - those who work hard are punished (and the more you succeed, the more you're punished) while those who slack off are rewarded.  To put it in simpler terms, imagine every time a kid got above a C on a test, you made him pay you money - the higher the grade, the more he had to pay you.  If he got below a C, you paid him money - the lower the grade, the more you paid him.  What do you think the results will be?  People respond to incentives and when the incentives are pushing people to not succeed, you have a serious problem with society and this harms everyone.  Collectivists like to say that they're about "the greater good of society" and that it's ok to harm individuals for the benefit of society.  They are shortsighted and fail to realize that society is nothing but a collection of individuals and when you harm individuals, you harm society.  It has been proven that collectivist economies slow economic growth.  That's also the reason why countries like China are experiencing such rapid economic growth - because they're easing off the government controls and letting people make more decisions for themselves.

3) The people who push most for Collectivism are those who want to be in charge and making the decisions - they want to be the government making the rules.  These people believe that people are too stupid to be able to make their own decisions, so they need a benevolent government to tell them what decisions to make.  The fact that the rulers are also human and, by their own logic, too stupid to make their own decisions is irrelevant.  They believe that only they know what is best and that laws need to be passed to make anyone who disagrees with them a criminal.  One of the reasons why free market economies work better than government run economies is because only you know what's best for you.  Each person has their own needs and desires and no one, no matter how smart, is smart enough to know how best to spend everyone's money to fullfill their needs and desires the best.  Just look at how hard it can be to pick out a good present for a loved one - do you really think that you would be able to make ALL purchasing and financial decisions for them and have it be what they want?  Now try imagining doing that for millions of people.

Before anyone claims that I want a rule-less society with no restrictions, there is nothing at all in capitalist ideology that says that there can't be regulations to prevent abuses.  Economics even openly acknowledges that there are some instances where regulations are needed to acheive the best outcome.  However, Collectivism pushes past the point of necessary regulations and moves into the realm of controling people's behavior to suit the desires of those passing the laws and not what is in societies best interest.

*EDIT* In case anyone wants to ask about the tax numbers, here's a link http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html but you can find those numbers on any site linking to the IRS statistics.

Why I don’t want kids

I’ve had a few discussions lately with people about having kids and everyone always seems so surprised that I don’t want kids, so I figured I’d explain why.

First off, let me say – I don’t hate kids.  I actually enjoy spending time with my niece and nephews (6 years old and 3 year old twins).  However, it’s not something I want to do 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, for (bare minimum) 18 years (if you have multiple kids, you’re looking more at 30 years).

I worked hard for what I have and I’m working hard to have a better life (hence going to grad school).  Why do I work hard?  So that I will be rewarded (better job with a higher salary, thus allowing me to pay for the lifestyle I want).  Having kids pretty much kills that.  Kids cost a fortune, which means not buying the things I want (such as a nice car) or enjoying the hobbies I want.  Kids also cost an insane amount of time.  I’m sorry, but I like being able to have time to do things I enjoy.  I want to be able to sit down and read a book, watch a movie, play video games, or go out with friends if I feel like it.  Oh yea, and did I mention that I enjoy sleeping in on the weekend too?  You can’t do that once you have kids.  Once you have kids, your entire life outside of work becomes about doing whatever the kids want / need. 

I’ve spent almost my entire life NOT doing things I enjoy because I want to make others happy (such as spending time with a girlfriend who doesn’t share my hobbies).  I have no desire to spend the rest of my life (or at least until I’m mid 50’s) not doing the things I enjoy as well.  That’s also why I’ve gotten pickier about who I’ll date (more on that in a later post) – because I’ve spent so much of my life NOT getting to be happy or do the things I enjoy, so I’m not going to do something that I know will keep me from enjoying the rest of my life.

So to the people who want kids and get mad at me for not wanting them, go on, enjoy your life of puke, changing diapers, not getting a good nights sleep, having no free time, and having to worry about paying for all the things your kids want / need.  I’ll enjoy my nice relaxed life where I can buy what I want and do what I want, when I want.

It’s been awhile

It’s been a long time since I updated this.  Life’s been kinda crazy.  I lost my job around Christmas and when my lease was up, I had to move back in with my parents (kind of hard to pay the bills when there’s no money coming in).  I was able to find another job after a few months and now I’m working on paying off the debt I racked up when I was unemployed and save to buy a new car.  The really great news though is that I got into grad school, so starting this fall I’ll be going to school part time to get my MA in Applied Economics…should take me a little over two years going part time.

I actually do have a few posts I’m going to make in the near future….I’ll probably get to those this weekend.