Is there anything that vouchers aren’t the answer for? I mean that on two different levels: (1) is there any question that conservatives don’t think vouchers are the answer for and (2) is it conceivable that, given any question, it really is possible to come up with a reasonable answer involving vouchers.
I’m not saying that Feldstein’s voucher health care solution is crazy. I’m just curious.
Update. Ezekiel Emanuel wrote a paper in support of health care vouchers a few years ago. (h/t Rob from Denver). My point is not to mock vouchers, more to encourage a provocative discussion with interesting points, an intellectual exercise if you will.
General Winfield Stuck
Vouchers are nothing more than pitiful attempts at selling cheap tickets to the pining dream of Oligarchy.
Guster
Q: Is there anything that vouchers aren’t the answer for?
A: Vouchers.
freelancer
@Guster:
meta-FTW
kommrade reproductive vigor
Teh Ghey.
Incertus
1). I don’t think conservatives have worked up a voucher system to protect marriage from teh ghey yet, but they probably will now.
2). Trick question–today’s conservatives aren’t reasonable about anything.
Napoleon
No is the answer and the reason is by there very nature vouchers destroy the ability for government to act collectively for the population, and that is all conservatives care about.
henqiguai
Yes, education. For example, when the “cheap” private schools in the region start at $10,000/yr and the vouchers are only $2,500, plus “uniforms” plus books plus transportation, they ain’t no good.
Oh, and health care vouchers are just stupid. Though apparently government housing rent vouchers did seem to work out in Minneapolis; at least, it seemed to when I lived out there.
But that’s just my opinion.
Rob in Denver
Health care vouchers aren’t necessarily the brainchild of conservatives or Republicans. Before he took a job with his brother’s boss, Ezekiel Emanuel was big on these. See here and here.
Zifnab
Vouchers = Tax Cuts. That’s all you really need to know.
And it completely neglects the main issue (so it’s a perfect GOP talking point). Insurance companies aren’t he solution, they’re the problem. You’ve got a private industry that’s making obscene profits while hiking rates year after year with no end in sight.
Giving everyone vouchers is logically akin to mortgaging your capital buildings to pay a few bills. Sure, it might balance the checkbook today, but now you’ve got a bigger debt on the state and another big set of bills coming down the pipe next year too.
Ash Can
Governing is hard. Vouchers provide conservative lawmakers with a way to foist problems off on other people (viz. the voucher recipients).
General Winfield Stuck
@Napoleon:
This
Sentient Puddle
@Zifnab:
I’d rejigger that to say that vouchers are an obfuscated phrase for “punt this problem to the marketplace.” If vouchers were tax cuts, Republicans would just call them tax cuts because that phrase sells better.
smiley
Well, vouchers are a means to shovel public money to private interests so, yes, they are the answer to everything for republicans. That’s a known known. The unknown known is the degree to which rank and file republicans realize that they are being played by the moneyed.
Mark S.
If I’m reading this correctly, 15% of your income will go to the insurance companies and you’ll still have a high deductible (the example he uses has a $5,000 one). Jesus, that’s even worse than the Baucus Bill.
Now I’m not a professor of economics at Harvard, but isn’t there an advantage to eliminating the middle man?
Zifnab
Also:
Makes my head explode.
1.) Private insurance is the problem!
2.) ???
3.) Give everyone private insurance!
Never mind the fact that he’s just invented a private insurance policy that doesn’t actually exist.
Fuck it, let’s offer vouchers for flying ponies and leprechaun gold while we’re at it.
General Winfield Stuck
Right arm man. Long as I don’t sweat none.
Bubblegum Tate
I have long had the same two questions, only about supply-side economics instead of vouchers.
blahblahblah
RE: your update:
Na… you’re just looking for another excuse to bash Republicans. Which, lately, they’ve deserved. Continue on!
Incertus
@Mark S.:
Yes. In fact, that’s what’s driving SAFRA, assuming we can punch enough Senators in the throat to get it through reconciliation.
Leelee for Obama
If we enacted a Living Wage Law, there would be no need for vouchers, at all. Each family would receive enough funding to live in their area, housing, health care, education, the whole enchilada. It would lead some to be happy enough with their lives to do no more than needed to earn said living wage. However, the go-getters would still go get, and while the Dow wouldn’t ever hit 36,000, the investor class would make a decent return on their discretionary ducats.
Vouchers are the liars’ way to show the undeserving that they are giving them control over their lives. If the voucher doesn’t buy what is needed to get ahead, the undeserving obviously don’t deserve.
It is no exaggeration to say these voucher proponents are snake-oil salesmen of enormous balls. They regularly make me feel like losing my lunch.
cbear
I dunno, but based on recent news reports I’d have to say that sex with prostitutes, Argentinians, and other guy’s wives didn’t make the list.
KG
speaking as a libertarian, I think the voucher idea is a solidly glibertarian idea. It doesn’t really address the problem but looks like it does while pimping the free market.
DougJ
Na… you’re just looking for another excuse to bash Republicans.
Actually, I’m not.
But the stuff about the “intellectual exercise” was obscure anti-Sully snark, to clarify.
handy
WaPo has been abysmal in covering this whole issue. This paragraph in particular is typical in its egregious wankery:
Health-care decisions are already being taken away from patients and physicians by the very insurance companies this ass clown wants us not to deregulate. And what exactly are the treatments and tests he has in mind that “countries that provide health care to all” can’t give to their patients? He won’t say. Gee, I wonder why.
And, oh speaking of prohibitively expensive systems, how about that fact that in the U.S. the average person spends twice as much on health care costs as the second highest nation. Not finding it here. Again, I wonder why.
General Winfield Stuck
@Leelee for Obama:
Hi Leelee! Hope you are doing well.
HI Leelee!@DougJ: ,
But the stuff about the “intellectual exercise” was obscure anti-Sully snark, to clarify.
General Winfield Stuck
Well that comment went through the transporter in many pieces.
General Winfield Stuck
I bet Chairman Mao gave out shit-pots full of vouchers back in the day.
Da Bomb
Quick Pop Quiz: How many Republicans does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer: None, because they would figure ways to not change the light bulb for fear it would cause the person who needs said light bulb change to become a dependent upon handouts from the government. Therefore they institute that any one who needs a lightbulb change shall accept tax cuts and vouchers as a solution.
WOLVERINES!!!!
Zifnab
@handy: And the logic is equally absurd. Have the government decide which procedures to cover and which not to cover. Then the patient can choose which procedure to have an not have.
If you can pay for everything out of pocket, there’s no rationing! Hurray!
It comes back to a very cynical root claim – there is only so much health care to go around in America. If 50 million extra people can see doctors, there won’t be enough doctors to fill the demand. If there are 100k new dialysis patients with coverage, someone is still going to go without treatment.
And it’s bullshit. I guarantee you that if you add more patients to the health care system in America, it will do what it’s done when demand has gone up in every other industry – produce more.
One of the most fundamental aspects of service industry capitalism – demand drives supply – and the conservatives want to deny it exists.
So. Much. Bullshit.
AhabTRuler
@DougJ: I’ll forgive you, assuming that you were simply posting fast.
smiley
OT but this is very cool. I’m going to send it to all the racists I know.
Leelee for Obama
@General Winfield Stuck: Yes, but it was fun, so it’s all good!
Thanks, Stuck. Things are beginning to settle a bit-I’m starting to sleep deeper-so that really helps. I’ve been sleeping like a new Mom for a few years, so being able to really drop off the earth for a few hours is great. My Daughter and I are wending our way though my apartment so I can live in all the rooms instead of just the LR and Kitchen. New and different!
I have to start looking into a job-what I’m gonna find in a recession I have no idea, but I should be able to muddle for a bit. Maybe there’s some Customer Service phone-call centers around like there used to be? Thinking of getting some training to be a CNA or Intake Clerk. Looks like health care is the only growth industry besides banking-heh!
Also thinking about making and selling some crafty cards and gifts for Christmas, so maybe I’ll pick Laura’s brain for that kind of info.
srv
Gave me a great idea.
Gun Replacement Vouchers. Stimulus for gun manufacturers, win some gun-lover love, but of course standard with trigger locks to placate the namby-pambies.
We could call it the Second Ammendment Protection program.
lutton
defense/military
Although outsourcing supply/infrastructure compenents is just fine, and hiring para-military outfits to do the jobs the military used to do like protecting embassies/consulates and other political assets is a given in the ‘privatize it’ era, the nutters would never let someone sublet the role of uniformed warfare.
Leelee for Obama
This!
I am always confuzzled by these Free-Markets Worshippers who don’t want to let the free market work. Could it be their rich friends/contributors would find themselves short of precious ducats, I wonder?
Bastards!
Mike G
Giant meteor heading for the earth?
Repig solution = vouchers and tax cuts. And Jesus.
BDeevDad
Aren’t food stamps essentially a “voucher” for the poor to get food and I assume Conservatives are against those.
Jasper
The effect of a voucher tied to 15% of income is (I believe) to impose a marginal tax of that amount on the taxable income of working families.
Payroll tax of 15.3%
Voucher “tax” of 15%
Not to mention sales tax/excise taxes/income taxes…
That’s a very heavy tax on the first dollar of each working person’s wages. All the while Rubin and Paulson are struggling along paying 15% or so on their dividends and capital gains…. Life is tough when you’re in the top 1/10th of 1%.
Just Some Fuckhead
Vouchers, tax cuts and deregulation will fix anything. And if they won’t, I got a gun here on my hip that sez they will.
Leelee for Obama
@BDeevDad: Ding, ding, ding! Give that man a Prize!
This is exactly true, and therefore, obviously, liberal.
Brandon
“provoke discussion”, “intellectual exercise”? I am busting a gut. DougJ, the new Andrew Sullivan.
mclaren
On a serious note, vouchers in education are nothing but a stealth method of getting racist or anti-gay or fundamentalist institutions state funding by evading the establishment clause of the constitution.
The day after a national educational voucher system passed, you’d have 10,000 local White Power Klan schools spring up, Dominionist Christian schools, Death To Gays schools, and so on. All funded by the government, conveniently. So-called “conservatives” have no problem with Big Government as long as it helps their agenda — Big Government sticking its snout between womens’ legs to forbid them from having abortion, Big Government funding their private hate groups disguised as schools, Big Government funneling lots of cash to faith-based fundamentalist groups, Big Government funding local defense contractors… Conservatives love Big Government — as long as it funds their hatemongering and warmongering and religious intolerance.
Vouchers are all about privatizing government services, which essentially boils down to legalizing hatemongering. The day after a national health care voucher system got passed, thousands of private non-federally-funded hospitals would appear which refused to treat gays, lesbians, out-of-wedlock pregnant women, Jews, Buddhists, Moslems, non-Christians, anyone with STDs, etc. At present, hospitals get lots of federal money so they’re subject to federal mandates which require non-discrimination, etc. Totally private hospitals with no federal funding would offer conservatives a convenient way to start a eugenics campaign of covert mass murder against sick gays, lesbians, blacks, etc. Vouchers in health care are only tangentially related to the actual problems of the health care system. The true goal is to ban abortions, let gays with STDs die on the streets, turn away unwed pregnant women so they can die in an alley giving birth, and so on. In short, it’s an effort to extend a Third Reich-style Holocaust not just to Jews but to all minorities hated by the rich white fundamentalist Christian 27 percenters who now make up the base of the Republican party.
Conservatives themselves don’t like the idea of vouchers in many areas. Consider wiping out the U.S. military as a federally funded institution and replacing it with a private voucher-funded system — Republicans wouldn’t like that. That would give us something like the tiny underfunded national militia we had back in the 1920s. Or imagine shutting down tax breaks for religious organizations and funding them with vouchers as private institutions subject to all the taxes and regulations of private institutions: conservatives definitely wouldn’t like that. How about a private fire department or a private police force funded by vouchers? The fire department shows up at the rich guy’s business but stops putting the fire out halfway through. “Sorry, your voucher doesn’t cover any more than this.” You don’t hear conservatives agitating for that. Instead of multi-billion dollar agribusiness federal subsidies, imagine giant agribusinesses only getting a voucher — conservatives surely wouldn’t like that.
Vouchers are really nothing more than a stalking horse for hatemongering in very selective areas of public policy. Vouchers in education to funnel public monies to White Supremacy Klan schools and Dominionist fundamentalist Christian schools, vouchers in health care to make sure gays with STDs and blacks and other minorities disliked by conservatives die in an alley somewhere to further the Aryan Nation racist fantasies of southern conservatives — but where else do conservatives advocate vouchers? Not in agribusiness, not in defense spending, not in oil subsidies, not in telecommunications subsidies, not in Intellectual Property ownership giveaways to giant media monopolies. Imagine telling Disney they’ll get a voucher equal to 1/Xth value of the copyright of Mickey Mouse and then they can slug it out in the private domain along with everybody else without the benefit of federal copyright protection. Haven’t heard any conservatives bellowing for that kind of voucher.
Bubblegum Tate
@smiley:
I watched that interview last night and was blown away. What a great, inspiring story.
Polish the Guillotines
/Palin
BDeevDad
@smiley: His TEDTalk was really good.
Brachiator
@Leelee for Obama:
I was about to write something about vouchers, but this adds a new wrinkle, since I don’t understand the rationale of either vouchers or a living wage law.
Vouchers assume incorrectly that government knows the exact price of something, like health care or education. This is kinda nuts. Worse, even if a voucher’s value were high enough to meet the typical education or health care cost in a particular area, sellers could simply raise the price. They might even have an incentive to do so, since they see that the voucher is in effect a subsidy.
Biggest handicap to vouchers: Companies with lots of employees presumably have some leverage to negotiate with an insurance company for a plan’s cost. In theory, consumers with vouchers could band together to try to negotiate costs, but in practice this would be impractical.
A minimum wage is a necessary economic compromise. A living wage falsely assumes that every employer is somehow responsible for making sure that all of his employees can have all of his needs met, from food and housing to education. But an employer obviously is first looking to see what he or she needs to pay to get some job done.
Would someone getting a “living wage” be automatically entitled to a wage increase if he or she has a child or gets married to a non-working spouse?
mclaren — On a serious note, vouchers in education are nothing but a stealth method of getting racist or anti-gay or fundamentalist institutions state funding by evading the establishment clause of the constitution.
This is a great point, although here I think vouchers are used more to support religion, especially evangelical groups, than to discriminate. In fact the issue of using government money to fund any faith-based institutions for any reason needs to be re-assessed.
r€nato
I started reading Feldstein’s column and stopped cold at, ‘tied to 15% of income.’
This proposed voucher system goes right back to the conservative goal of keeping the wealthy wealthy and keeping everyone else poor.
They are for killing any government activity (or aborting it before it begins) which ‘redistributes income’. In this case, they don’t want a government health care reform which distributes benefits with little to no regard for how much the beneficiaries paid in.
So if you make $20,000 a year, you get a voucher for $3,000 a year. If you make $200,000 a year, you get a voucher for $30,000 a year. Do you know any wealthy people who need medical insurance that costs $30,000 a year in premiums? I don’t. Because, you know, if you’re only making $20,000 a year it must be because you’re a lazy slob and you need the fear of losing everything to illness to give you the incentive to get off your ass and get that six figure job.
This is just another chorus of ‘fuck you, I got mine’ from Republicans.
Dave D
Has anyone bothered to tell conservatives that, by offering vouchers, they are still advocating government-subsidized healthcare in America?
r€nato
these 15% vouchers would also have the convenient and not-coincidental effect of guaranteeing 15% of most people’s income to the health insurance lobby. If I was a health insurance exec, I’d love that deal.
Meanwhile, socialist France only spends 10% of GDP on health insurance.
Leelee for Obama
This type of system would need government subsidies-perhaps a basic amount to each citizen, to be complemented by the employer, up to the necessary “Living Wage”. I know it’s s o c i a l i s m, but I don’t see another way to implement a program that makes it possible to live where you work. Unless and until we can implement transporter a la Star Trek? Since we already know there are citizens who will hover at the margins all their lives, what else is there?
Blue Raven
And vouchers are not the solution for abortion, either, since they’d have to issue vouchers for things like pre-natal care and funeral services to make up for the abortions, and that’d be soshulist.
Makewi
Vouchers should be used as an emergency rescue measure. It’s the choice between make everyone wait while we try to fix the whole system, vs save some now while we try to fix the whole system.
KG
@Leelee for Obama: should all jobs really afford a living wage? what about starter jobs for younger people who only need to work part time?
But more importantly, what is to stop employers from increasing the prices they charge for goods and services to make up the difference in lost overhead? My biggest concern with the living wage is that, it seems to me anyway, that it would do nothing but cause hyper-inflation. Nothing short of price controls or limiting income for employers would prevent this. And limiting income for employers, would likely result in there being many fewer employers (why take the risk if there is no reward?).
Mike G
Scalia is a Supremely Clueless (Theocratic) Jerk
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/10/supreme_court_justice_scalia_i.php
Davis X. Machina
Vouchers per se are only a tool.
Assume a good, X, that’s already extant, and already widely delivered by the private sector, in a competitive market, that the state more-or-less suddenly decides should be more widely available, but is not interested in, or incapable of, providing directly itself. The voucher is a way to use the power of the state to tax to provide that good when the major or only obstacle between the good and a class of citizens is cost. Once you decide to provide the good, but that the state’s going to pay for it, and not provide it directly, the question becomes “Do you put the check into the hands of the vendor or the consumer?”
The risk that a voucher becomes a subsidy to the vendor is minimized if the voucher is scaled so that any price increase the vendor imposes costs him one sale from a non-recipient for each sale to a voucher recipient the voucher makes possible.
Vouchers in a oligopoly won’t work, of course, or when the existing market isn’t transparent, and there are risks the vendors will capture the system, etc. but that’s all there when you pay the vendor to provide the good — cf. General Dynamcs, Raytheon, and any other defense contractor you care to name.
Does it require the right good, a high degree of price transparency and a lot of fiddling around? Yes. But that might be less than the cost of creating a public infrastructure to deliver the same good. If there are net savings all around, then the money saved can go to things the state can only deliver directly or deliver best directly.
inkadu
@Mark S.: If I’m reading this correctly, 15% of your income will go to the insurance companies and you’ll still have a high deductible (the example he uses has a $5,000 one). Jesus, that’s even worse than the Baucus Bill.
Plus the plan intends to pay for itself by taxing your employer-provided health plan. This glorious policy proposal is a shell game.
maus
@handy
Some people are hypochondriacs, let’s never pursue a public option.
Thanks, WaPo!
freelancer
@Mike G:
The Pope poops in the woods. Also.
Rob C.
At best, vouchers are just window dressing – another way of maintaining the status quo. At worst, they are schemes that will somehow profit whoever is already exploiting an unfair situation.
Leelee for Obama
@KG: While I see your point, and am not sure what the answer is, I still wonder how, as a civilized nation, we address the needs of our citizens who are not able, under almost any circumstances, to survive in the nation of their birth. It seems to me we cannot, and should not, accept that a portion of our native-born population will live in poverty, or near it, no matter what they do to alleviate it. There has to be an answer that makes sense-hell, even that wanker Charles Murray was talking about this a few years back, and Richard Nixon was considering something like it too. Since it’s a given that equal education is the only way out, and that can best be accomplished by a healthy, well-nourished, well-housed family-it is in the best interests of all of us to figure this out, no?
Brachiator
@Leelee for Obama:
Re: Would someone getting a “living wage” be automatically entitled to a wage increase if he or she has a child or gets married to a non-working spouse?
I guess this is the peculiar American take on socc al izm, which is not concerned about jobs or economic productivity being utilized for the benefit of society, but which seeks to use the government to directly or indirectly provide income to all its citizens.
So, under your plan, an employer could pay sub-minimum wage and the government would make up the difference? Could a Mormon have 10 kids and still be qualified for a mandated living wage? And what level of housing and health care would be guaranteed? Would people also be entitled to cable and a laptop?
By the way, I am not being flippant here. I don’t know how the government can reasonably determine what the living standard of everyone should be and then try to mandate it and subsidize it.
By the way, the current Earned Income Credit tries to do a little of this, and is overall a good idea, and yet too many taxpayers use it to simply get a nice little bump in their tax refund at the end of the year instead of using it to help them get better paying jobs.
In short, I think that some of these living wage schemes actually do more to create and maintain a permanent underclass than help people to achieve a good standard of living which includes high wages and income mobility.
By the way, a while back, The Economist had a good series on the importance of the middle class (and middle class jobs) to an economy.
http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13063298
soonergrunt
Military Service–vouchers are not good for military service.
Oh, wait–they don’t do that anyway, so it’s not an issue.
Zifnab25
You know what would solve the who mess right quick? Universal Medicare. Good reembursement. Full coverage. Everyone likes it. Win win win.
Makewi
@Leelee for Obama:
This issue is compounded by the fact that the world is far more interconnected than it used to be. Attempts to “level the playing field”, as it were, can be affected greatly by actions taken by other nations to capitalize on that situation.
For my money, the only real solution is an improved education system which focuses on fostering innovative thinking coupled with a massive push towards societal valuation of education at all levels. It needs to be affordable, flexible and not limited to only the young. People who are working hard to better themselves need to be seen as cool.
But even then some will make the wrong choices, be caught up in bad luck and decide that they would rather just not bother with the effort. In addition, different capabilities pretty much assure different outcomes at least at some level.
Leelee for Obama
@Brachiator: I agree that hand-outs without any effort expended are a huge mistake. That’s not what I’m thinking of. What I’m talking about is a hand-up.
Back in the day when “what is good for America is good for GM” wasn’t just words, but practically Holy Writ, the building and nurturing of a middle class was considered a moral imperative. If we are going to stay on the current path, where the middle class is eminently expendable, do we simply let the people who used to be the backbone of our Country slip away to the margins, where they will be as easily forgotten as the poor are and have almost always been? While there are programs to help some, too many cannot qualify and struggle endlessly-many, if not all, through accidents of birth. We have no caste system here, at least that’s the CW.
I do not say you’re wrong, I just want to know what people who work their asses off for pittances and no hope for a better future are, perhaps, entitled to. We are Americans, all of us. What are we to do to make ourselves a better, more humane nation?
blahblahblah
In reference to the question of whether this post attempts to bash Republicans, Doug wrote:
@Dougj:
I think I mentioned that I preferred it if you were.
Oh, that Sully. What a bear!
Leelee for Obama
@Makewi: Well said- Makewi; a rare occasion that you and I agree.
The Other Steve
15%, eh?
But only those costs over 7.5% of your AGI are deductible on a Schedule A.
So this looks to me like a big tax hike on the middle class.
kay
I don’t think he knows anything about how people without health insurance actually operate, now, today.
They don’t go to the doctor until they’re really sick. They’re not going to pay 15% of net out of pocket for preventative or regular care. If they were likely to do that, they’d be doing it right now, nothing is stopping anyone from allocating this mythical allocated 15% of net to ordinary health care expenses, and they’re not.
They’re just not going to go to the doctor.
When they do go the doctor, on a stretcher, they’re going to exceed the high deductible really quickly, though, so that part works, although perhaps not in the sense that he planned.
I think this hard truth dawns on him toward the end of the piece, because he says (with certainty!) that employers will raise wages when they stop providing health insurance ( the author had to find the missing 15% of net somewhere, and that’s where he finds it, problem solved!) but I don’t know why employers would do that. I think employers probably just put any savings on health insurance towards profits.
blahblahblah
Makewi:
MIT OpenCourseWare. It’s not large enough yet, nor is it accredited… but I think online learning is the future of cheap education.
I think our society desperately needs a new ethical core. There are always freeriders who will take advantage of a system. But our society has degraded to the point where freeriderism is now exalted above all other economic activities. Parasitism is not a necessary evil of society, it has become the dominant factor of society. That is not sustainable.
I think we should teach the classics from antiquity through to the present once again. Make reading the classics a required course as it used to be on most campuses. We should once again teach moral reasoning based on classical, religious, and secular thinkers and philosophers. The hard sciences don’t deal with these issues, yet they’re still critical to what it means to be human and to live in a society.
kay
Then he has sort of a back-up to the “employers will raise wages” pipe-dream, and it’s a CREDIT CARD.
So, basically, you put 15% of net on your government issued credit card, and the government can then collect the 15%, on a priority lien, with interest. He helpfully suggests they garnish your wages.
Which will make health care providers very happy, because your medical debt used to be unsecured, and dischargable in bankruptcy, and now it will be guaranteed.
It’s yet another creditor-protection plan! Why, it’s not a health care plan at all!
Michael Gass
You’ll excuse me for not reading prior comments.
Vouchers are simply the governments way of helping middle-lower class people to send their children to a religious school.
You see, these schools have priced out the “lower classes”, and they feel slighted. “Why can’t MY child go to one too?”
It is, truly, simply an exercise to divert money FROM the public system to enhance the private schools all so that the public system fails.
Then these idiots can go, “see, everyone should learn about God!”
That is it in a nutshell
Svensker
@blahblahblah:
Hallelujah.
Brachiator
@Leelee for Obama:
We are largely on the same page here. And while I think that the government must provide a safety net, and can help in emergencies, I am not sure that mandated living wages are a good ongoing solution.
I’m with you here, and this also reminded me of some pointlessly elitist and dismissive language which I ran across in the middle of an opinion piece in the purportedly liberal Los Angeles Times. I am still bristling over the nastiness of this unnecessary commentary.
The column is about efforts in Congress to keep in operation a Long Beach plant which manufactures the C-17 cargo plane (“Billions are spent to defend 5,000 jobs at Boeing C-17 plant”). In discussing whether the money could be better spent elsewhere, columnist Michael Hiltzik makes the following snotty comment about the Boeing workers:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik8-2009oct08,0,5007140.column
Hiltzik, who graduated from college in 1973, has got to be in his mid to late 50s himself, so maybe he’s not in the wave of our journalistic future.
But more than this, some of my mentors have been people who went on to productive second careers after retiring from aerospace and other industries. To discount their experience borders on the obscene.
Jeffro
Everyone here seems to have a pretty good grasp on the whole “vouchers = defunding the government and sending dough to fundamentalists/big business/etc”. (I think the Dems would do well to point out this voucher farce over and over; it is one of the few things we all seem to agree on!)
But here’s a fun thought for you: if vouchers are always the answer for the right wing, why not call their bluff and jump on the voucher bandwagon 110%? Only, let’s make it for everything – ESPECIALLY defense.
I mean, if government just wastes money and screws everything up, why can’t I have my tax dollars back from DoD and try to protect my own self from North Korea, Hugo Chavez, and the Taliban? I hear that people from ACORN need work, and Van Jones could probably help out if I paid him enough.
Or would they not quite be for vouchers and the market and free choice then?? Inquiring minds want to know.
Makewi
@blahblahblah:
I smile at the thought of requiring the texting, twittering youth to read Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. I’m pretty sure the UN considers the forced reading of Leviathan a war crime.
I agree completely with what you said.
General Winfield Stuck
OT
And FakeArtGate is launched.
smiley
Directly related to the BJ lexicon.
Brachiator
@blahblahblah:
Are you referring to the freeriders in industry and government who prospered during the Bush/Cheney “Cronyism First!” regime?
I love classical literature. But I don’t see it as a magical fount of moral reasoning. And I think there is a considerable amount of ethical wisdom to be found in watching all the episodes of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer and Hiroshi Inagaki’s Musashi Myamoto film trilogy.
JK
@Brachiator:
Speaking of the Los Angeles Times, a few nights ago my local PBS station aired a very informative documentary titled Inventing LA: The Chandlers and Their Times. If you haven’t already seen it, you should check it out. It’s a moving story of how a bad newspaper became a great newspaper and later a gutted newspaper.
http://www.pbs.org/kcet/inventing-la
Fulcanelli
@blahblahblah:
Scream this from the rooftops of the Intertubes, night and day. Bravo!
ellaesther
I am amused by the fact that a) you had to say “this is not a smart ass question” and b) you then had to spend half the post saying “no, I really mean it!”
I am amused, is what I’m saying. And that makes me happy!
Sadly, I know nothing about vouchers. But I do know this: VOTE FOR BITSY!
OT over-and-out.
Makewi
@Brachiator:
What if we could get Sarah Michelle Geller to read lines from “Spirit of Laws” while offing demonic hordes?
Jack
Hat tip to McClaren. Vouchers are a conservative way to appropriate tax dollars for private institutions without conservatives openly violating their signature meme – that gubmint should not redistribute teh monnehs.
Brachiator
@JK:
Absolutely great documentary. I came home in the middle of it, and missed part of it, but will watch it when it is repeated.
I wasn’t sure whether it was broadcast nationally or was only on Southern California’s local public station, KCET.
One of the things I loved was learning how much of Nixon’s “won’t have me to kick around anymore” venom was personally directed at the Chandlers. And it was chilling and fun to hear the segment from the Watergate tapes where Nixon directs his people to go after Otis Chandler, from the family’s tax returns to their hiring of “wetbacks.”
In the interest of full disclosure, I note that I used to work for the Times, as a high school and college kid and later as an adult, and think that they got a lot of the last years stuff right.
By the way, since I missed part of it, I’m not sure if the documentary had time to note how Hearst and the Chandler’s divided up the morning and evening paper delivery market (to hell with anti-trust) in the 50s and 60s.
Aunt Moe
With the LA Times as their weapon, the Chandlers made Nixon. Absolutely made him. And how ironic that the third generation became his greatest enemy.
It was a terrific show. Just terrific.
Chuck Butcher
If that wasn’t a smart ass question then I’d have to assume that it was a dumbass question. Let’s try this, vouchers are a simple way for the government to transfer people’s income to cronies through tax dollars. Try to find some example that doesn’t fit.
JK
@Brachiator:
I don’t recall this element of the story being part of the documentary.
I’ve been a newspaper junkie all my life and I’m grateful that my local PBS station, which is in New York, chose to air this program. There used to be a few newsstands in Manhattan where I could buy the Los Angeles Times. I love the Internet, but I regret some of its unintended consequences. I still miss a certain Manhattan store that used to sell newspapers from around the world. I know that all of these newspapers have web sites, but there’s no newspaper website that completely duplicates the content of the print edition.
SiubhanDuinne
O/T but there hasn’t been any sign of an open thread tonight:
(1) This promises a rich lode (or load, if you prefer) of nonstop fun for the next few months: Media Matters for America (www.mediamatters.com) says — citing Grunta van Slushteran’s blog — that Rush Limpballs is going to be a judge in the Miss America 2010 pageant. That makes me shudder and laugh uproariously, both at once.
(2) And this just pisses me off, out of all proportion to its actual importance: for the first time in, literally, months, I watched a bit of the NBC Nightly News tonight. The last story was the widely-reported (and fascinating, to me) new genealogical evidence about Michelle Obama’s roots. All fine and good EXCEPT that Brian Williams (who makes something north of $10 million a year) introduced the piece by talking about Michelle Obama’s 19th-century *descendents.* Seriously, if the highly-paid anchor of a network news program doesn’t know the difference between a descendent and an ancestor, I don’t see any reason to watch his damn show.
It wasn’t a slip of the tongue, BTW. I can understand people making that kind of mistake in casual discourse, no problem. But this was scripted, and presumably edited, and presumably rehearsed. No excuses.
Not very important in the Great Scheme of Things, but it just infuriated me. Thanks for letting me go off-topic (of this really interesting thread) to vent.
Brachiator
@Aunt Moe:
Great point. I’m always amazed at people who scream about the media’s liberal bias either don’t know or can’t understand how narrow, right-wing and frankly anti-middle class papers like the LA Times used to be. Hell, during the 40s a Times henchman used to walk a couple of blocks up Spring St to City Hall to deliver marching orders to the mayor. The Times wasn’t simply defending the status quo, but were defending narrow upper class privilege, and actually got wealthier when they became less rigidly protective of their privilege.
In a related way, I see some of the conservative mania for vouchers as throwing a crumb to the middle class while manipulating the rules for the benefit of a narrow band of oligarchs.
PhoenixRising
I don’t know why employers would do that. I think employers probably just put any savings on health insurance towards profits.
Speaking as an employer of fewer than 50 people: I’d put any savings toward staying solvent. This is not a minor expense and it’s putting a lot of small businesses out of business.
We are very fortunate to have a public teaching hospital (without the trauma unit of which, I would not personally be here to brag about, but that’s another story) offering a generously means-tested (400% federal poverty) HMO option to local residents. It’s a transfer from state coffers to the hospital, because the members pay premiums that cover them as long as no one is seriously ill or hurt–and without it, I could not in good conscience employ the spouses and parents who lift heavy stuff at my shop. Because if your major job skill is lifting heavy stuff, you’re going to need health care. Not insurance, not coverage–care.
LoveMonkey
Is there a voucher plan that covers a medical emergency that leads to immediate hospitalization and a $200k bill for services?
Just wondering, since this happened to me, and can happen to anyone at any time. Just like that. Ba da bing.
karmakin
Re: The wage discussion above, if you’re going to leave it in the hands of the market, to see better wages and working conditions, you need to create an environment where employers compete for employees, and not vice versa (as exists right now)
In that way, accessible education in the long-term would actually drive down wages, as there would be more workers with the given skillset competing for a fairly static number of jobs. People do say..well..educated jobs provide more value, so the employer can pay more. Ummm…not really. At least that’s not always the case. Wages are designated by market forces and tradition. That’s all. And we’re seeing a trend now where the tradition is changing, as again, there’s more educated folks than are needed for most professions.
Brachiator
@karmakin:
Are you serious? I think this is the first time that I have ever read anyone argue against education.
I don’t think this is true at all. The more educated your workers are, the more likely they are to create new jobs and to be able to move up the economic ladder in the companies they work for.
That’s not nearly all. Interesting economic theory, though.
This is true, but this just creates opportunity in the long run.
BDeevDad
I call BS on this as the unemployment figures when broken down by education level shows a different story. For Sept 2009
Less than a high school diploma 15.0%
High school graduates, no college 10.8%
Some college or associate degree 8.5%
Bachelor’s degree and higher 4.9%
Makewi
@karmakin:
In a closed system your point about education might have some merit, but the US market is anything but closed. There are literally billions of Indians and Chinese who will gladly put themselves into the mix. The only hope for this country given this situation is to keep the innovation coming, and the only way to do that is through education and creative thinking.
Brett
Vouchers, per se, aren’t a bad idea (they’re basically an indirect form of subsidy), and they worked fairly well when introduced as a way to help low-income families find housing (although it hurt that they then got mostly shit-canned due to the Low Income Housing Tax Credit).
The main issue is that you have to ensure that the voucher actually has buying power – it doesn’t get corroded by inflation, or simply added on to existing costs for health insurance.
mclaren
Makewi claimed:
EPIC FAIL.
America already produces far too many highly educated people. Unless you’re in a licensed profession that operates like a medieval guild (lawyer, doctor, plumber, electrician, airline pilot, some profession with huge barriers to entry in which the government makes it illegal to practice unless you get an expensive and very hard-to-obtain license), if you’re highly educated in America today, your job is either superfluous or will soon be outsourced to the third world.
Getting a postgraduate education in America is for fools and masochists. Too many Americans go to college already. Computer science? Forget it, your job is already going to India or China. Robotics? What a laugh, your job has already been outsourced to Hyderabad. Programming? Don’t even bother, your job left long ago to India or Russia. Biotechnology? Ludicrous, your job left for Europe and China long ago.
Name any highly credentialed field other than “lawyer” or “doctor,” and the job is already gone, it’s history, it’s overseas. Why would any corporation pay sky-high American labor prices for a PhD in materials science when they can get a smarter PhD who’ll work harder for 1/10 the cost in China or India?
Getting a masters or doctorate means destroying your marriage, most likely not getting tenure, and winding up broke, alone, and probably underpaid in another profession than the one you your degree in. That’s not a smart career move in today’s economy.
Why would any corporation hire Americans to do any skilled job? American health care costs are absurd, American cost of living makes American brainpower uncompetitive. And best of all, since 60% of all the masters and doctoral candidates in the hard sciences are now foreign-born, that brand spanking new PhD in molecular biology got her education right here in the U.S. of A. at MIT or Cornell or Stanford or Harvard.
Corporations like IBM are detaching themselves from the United States, which is corporate-speak for “hiring third world PhDs for a fraction of the cost of highly educated American knowledge workers.”
“IBM — like nearly all its competitors — is shipping-in workers from India to staff many new projects. The work could be done as well — perhaps better — by the U.S. workers who were not long ago laid-off. There is something really wrong when a company will lay off its U.S. workers and then import Indian workers to do the same work on-shore.
“Now some of IBM’s American workers are being asked to consider taking jobs in Bangalore and other foreign outposts. This program creates new expatriots, giving each a one-way plane ticket. Pay will be in local currency, possibly at local pay scales. IBM is being very elusive about these details. But it is clear that the transported workers will be off U.S. benefits.”
More details here.
Get with the program, folks. Wake up and smell the latte. Education used to be the way to get ahead. Today, becoming a highly educated knowledge worker in America just gets you deep deep into debt and makes you unemployable. The hot new professions for America are: prostitute and drug dealer and phone scam boiler room operator. Instead of taking out a loan to send your daughter to college, give her the money to set up an online brothel. Instead of sending your son to Cornell or Stanford, loan him the money to start a 1-900 phone scam operation. Chances are they won’t get caught, and if they do, they’ll get a slap on the wrist, and they’ll make a great living.
If your children make the fatal mistake of getting a masters or a doctorate at a presitigious American university nowadays, they’re just wind up crushed under a $150,000 debt burden and they’ll end up working part-time at McDonalds anyway while Chinese PhDs eat their lunch for a fraction of the pay.
georgia pig
Voucher=bypass democracy. Most republican approaches are schemes to appease the popular will while subverting it’s goal for private purposes. Let’s say there is popular will to provide universal healthcare. Vouchers enable private actors to more easily coopt such a program for their own purposes, because their is little or no accountability for the use of the vouchers and, if the vouchers get abused, you can turn around and blame the principles that underpinned the program, rather than the shitty implementation using vouchers. Republicans essentially did this with welfare in the 60’s, by forcing AFDC to be a direct payment system rather than a more comprehensive program. AFDC turned into a mess and became a political tool for Reagan-era Republicans. Clinton kind of fixed this by “reforming” welfare and creating earned income tax credits for the working poor, admittedly a less than optimal solution. An example of coopting for private gain is Food Stamps, which are mostly a subsidy for big agriculture. This will be the next tack on health care, since the Republicans now can’t stop the bill from happening. Watch for the “big pivot,” wherein they will start “cooperating” but only to the point of pushing vouchers or similar schemes. The dems will likely fall for it because of the blue dogs and the Baucus/Lincoln types that are worried about protecting their cushy seats.
Karmakin
@BDeevDad: That’s actually the stat listing that I’m going by.
4.9% for those with an advanced degree. To me, that strikes me as fairly high even still. And that’s not counting the people who are unable to find a job at that level, and as such are underemployed.
Education is a good thing for society, and on an individual basis. It’s not the solution for economic woes when speaking about the collective. For the example that Brac gave above, ok, so one person moves up the food chain in their company because of their education. What about the people who don’t? (The direct competitors for that promotion).
Unfortunately, we’re talking about something that’s nearing a zero-sum game.
Ken
Dave D @48: “Has anyone bothered to tell conservatives that, by offering vouchers, they are still advocating government-subsidized healthcare in America?”
I too am curious about what distinguishes vouchers from taxing people to spread the wealth around. The mechanisms certainly look the same, so I’m left suspecting it’s a version of Declensions – that game where you define a word in the first, second, and third persons.
replicnt6
@r€nato:
I’m pretty sure we’re getting confused here about the 15%. The article is not saying that you get a voucher for 15% of your income. Instead you get a voucher for the cost of buying insurance that would cover your health care needs that exceed 15% of your income. i.e., they give you a voucher to go out and buy health insurance with a deductable of 15% of your income. So the more you make, the cheaper your voucher would be, and the higher your liability for your own health care.
A plan like this would have the perverse (to us bleeding-heart libruls) effect of encouraging people to forgo routine medical care, since there would be no insurance coverage. Which is approximately the Republican plan that Grayson described, except that you don’t necessarily have to “die quickly” because the costs of dying would probably exceed 15% of your income.