I shouldn’t get sucked in — I mean, I’ve got a ton of work to get done before the next semester brings its apocalypse with it. Dealing with Megan McArdle is just a poor investment of scarce time and attention…and yet….Oh the temptation!
Perhaps there is a middle way.
I’ll try. I just won’t let myself go all John Foster Dulles on McArdle’s recent attempt to show that she knows more about journalism than an actual journalist, and more about constitutional law than a constitutional law professor. Suffice it to say that hilarity ensues.*
Here I’m just going to look at a single little paragraph that contains one of McArdle’s standard party tricks. She asks:
…surely we can agree that it’s an open moral and political question as to whether it’s acceptable to respond to moral hazard problems with coercive comprehensive regimes? Maybe before you answer that, you’ll want to contemplate the gnarly moral hazard problems attached to many social insurance schemes.
__
Look at the skeleton of her “reasoning” (sic — ed.):
(a) There are moral hazards associated with social insurance
(b) Some of those moral hazards are “gnarly” — i.e. too complex to confront. (I think that’s what she means.)
(c) Coercive comprehensive regimes are the tool used to respond to such moral hazards.
(d) That’s a bad thing.
__
There are a couple of problems here.
__
First, yes, there are indeed moral hazard issues associated with social insurance schemes.** (Moral hazard, by the way, as defined by one of McArdle’s favorite people, Paul Krugman, is “…any situation in which one person makes the decision about how much risk to take, while someone else bears the cost if things go badly.”)
__
Unfortunately, the paper to whose abstract she links is not primarily concerned with what most people think of as the core moral hazard associated with providing pensions to old folk. It does address an important phenomenon. Published in 2005 by three University of Minnesota economists, Michelle Boldrin, Mariacristina De Nardi and Larry E. Jones, it argues that a bit more than half of the drop in fertility observed in Europe and America from the 1920s forward can be attributed to the emergence of old-age pension systems.
__
A couple of things here: first of all, this change in fertility is not exactly an unintended outcome. Because large families are associated with poverty (especially in recent studies of developing nations), fertility reduction can be seen not as a tangled trap for pension systems but as a sought-after policy result.
Still, there are consequences to reductions in family size. Dependency ratios change — how many active workers are available to support each retiree. So pension schemes could be said to suffer a burden of moral hazard, if in fact you treat fertility decisions as an unanticipated externality that unfairly shifts the costs of aging onto society, (as opposed to understanding them as a goal, or at least a useful secondary outcome of the policy). But in the real world, the fact that competing social (and economic) goods come into play is not exactly a shock. We do or as a society can choose to care about poverty, population, and old – age security all at once. That responses to such various concerns interact is not particularly surprising, and if there are externalities involved it is hardly “gnarly,” as in intractable. There is, after all, a difference between complicated and impossible.
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But the real point is that this sonorous utterance of a scary sounding term — ooooh, “moral hazard” — and this very authoritative seeming invocation of the economics literature have little or nothing to do with what McArdle’s is talking about here, the “coercive” individual mandate in health care reform. Here’s how an economist friend of mine explains the matter:
There are two sorts of asymmetric information problems that undermine social insurance – moral hazard (if you can’t tell whether being poor is the result of bad luck or of lack of effort then insuring against it will reduce the effort people put into avoiding it) and adverse selection (if you can’t distinguish those who have higher and lower risk of falling into poverty then the greater attraction of voluntary insurance to those at highest risk drives costs up and undermines efficient design of insurance schemes). I bring this up because compulsion is usually thought of as a response necessitated by the latter problem not the former.
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In the context of health care reform, this translates into having to find a way to keep people from gaming the system — waiting until they are sick, or at least until they’ve hit a high-risk stage of their lives, before forking over their ducats. The response, and it’s not gnarly, nor complicated, nor a mystery to most folks who lack the extra sophistication of the Business and Economics Editor of the Atlantic, is to make people pay for insurance before they “need” it.
__
So again, why thunder on about moral hazard or invoke a paper on fertility and pensions as a prop to a complaint about a government mandate? Most likely, IMHO, is that McArdle is just trying to overawe her audience into ignoring the flaws in her argument. I believe the technical term for this is “baffle them with bullshit.” (Heaven forfend! Could such a thing be?–ed.) (Yes — TL)
__
The moral of this story: McArdle employs her grand platform to one end, and one only: to comfort the comfortable. In her long running campaign to return to the status quo ante for health care in the US, she’s willing to sacrifice economic advantage, fiscal prudence, and any other inconvenient facts that get in her way. Her success is predicated on presenting the appearance of authority while spamming out so much economics-sounding stuff that it is weary work to catch up to all the errors more subtle than her inability to catch order-of-magnitude mistakes in her arithmetic. That’s how she rolls…and it’s why, tedious as it is, she needs to be called out on such stuff as often as possible.
*I have to say I feel for James Fallows, whose post sparked McArdle into verbiage. You know how Click and Clack have this running gag about how Scott Simon (or whoever) spits their soup when they hear the Tappet Brothers say “this is NPR.” That’s how I’d feel in Fallow’s shoes were I to hear McArdle refer to me as “my colleague.”
**For example, old age pensions — social security — shifts some of the risk of old age from the individual to society as a whole. In that case, some people may choose to work and save less than they otherwise would have, because they would know that they no longer need to pay for their entire retirement.
If/when people make that choice, the total output of an economy/society would go down—and that would increase the relative cost of the social insurance scheme, a cost which would be born by others than those who alter their behavior in this way. (Of course, enabling folks not to work till they drop is not necessarily an undesirable example of moral hazard at work. It could, just maybe, form a desired goal, a policy-outcome explicitly sought with benefits both moral/social and economic that devolve not just on individuals, but on any society that gets to see its older members as anything other than failing members of the labor force.)
Either way, of course, this is not all that “gnarly” a concept, pace McArdle.
There are well-known policy responses to this particular concern. For example, you address the incentives to slack-off created by social welfare programs by making sure that the benefits they provide are floors, not ceilings: keep the benefits low enough so that they serve as insurance, and not a total income replacement — which is exactly what Social Security does. As of the November 2010 monthly report, the average benefit for retired workers was $1,079. I don’t care where you live in this greatest country evah of ours, $13K a year is not going to lard your table with T-bones and caviar.
Contrast that with what we’ve come to know and love through our experience of recent events — for example — in which the banksters shifted the risk of highly leveraged bets on real estate from themselves to the taxpayer. Crucially, risks that ultimately fell to the taxpayers under a “too big to fail” notion were concealed in various ways, so that we (unknowing) ended up bearing the weight of the collapse of 2008 et seq. Now that’s how you do moral hazard.
Images: John Singer Sargent, The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, 1882, with a shout out to my hometown Museum of Fine Arts, in which I look at this several times a year.
Vincent van Gogh, Ward in the Hospital in Arles, 1889.
arguingwithsignposts
Moar calculators!
ETA: She also defends Greg Mankiw, who is an asshat of the highest order.
Trentrunner
Your essay is interesting and all, but that first painting–wow! The sense of depth and the use of light and shadow…You can chiaro my scuro anytime!
Tom Levenson
@Trentrunner: It is a great painting. The reproduction does not begin to do it justice.
barneyG2000
My own study shows a higher correlation between the increase in automobile ownership and fertility rates, or maybe it was indoor plumbing?
AAA Bonds
Poor Megan. She’s really running the risk of the end of her tenure becoming a referendum on whether the Atlantic properly vets its hires – with McArdle as the likely scapegoat.
Were I her, I’d “gig” my way out of the post as gracefully as possible and set up shop with the Kochs or someone else more consistently friendly to her “like, whatever” style.
licensed to kill time
Gnarly Moral Hazards deserves a rotating sub-title, methinks.
different church-lady
Leaving aside McArdle for a second, I think we should all be grateful that we’ll never reach a point where Garnett Epps is the only thing standing between HCR repeal lawsuit and a court. Because a guy like Scalia will simply rip his argument-based-on-circular-definitions a new one.
different church-lady
@Tom Levenson: This Sargent is now the highlight of the new Art of the Americas wing of the Boston Museum of Fine arts. You get to see it from the new atrium. To stand before it is simply amazing.
http://museumpublicity.com/2010/11/14/mfa-opening-new-art-of-the-americas-wing/
Martin
The moral hazard and information asymmetry problems are so gnarly that several nobels have been handed out to people that have tackled the problem. The general conclusion is that only a heavily regulated (eg. coercive comprehensive) solution will work – particularly for hospitalization coverage. Fuck, even our barely functional US Congress came to that conclusion 45 years ago.
MattF
@Trentrunner
By John Singer Sargent– certainly the greatest portrait painter of the 19th century–even if only for Madame X.
When I go to the Metropolitan Museum, I always pay her a visit (in the American Wing).
Makewi
Everyone, or just those that it has been decided can afford to? For the purposes of this question it can be assumed that children (under 18) would and should be exempt.
David Brooks (not that one)
@licensed to kill time:
It’s already the name of my next band.
Tom Levenson
@MattF: Man, oh man, Madame X is a great one. Memo to Tom Ford: that’s fashion.
licensed to kill time
@David Brooks (not that one): Dude, that’s gnarly!
suzanne
I adore John Singer Sargent. His portrait of T.R. is, IMHO, far and away the best of the presidential portraits.
Shrub’s is an embarrassment.
Martin
@barneyG2000: Decline of pirates. Somalia has one of the highest birthrates on Earth and has a lot of pirates.
suzanne
I just want to tell Tom again that I friggin’ ADORE all the art he throws up on this blog. More art threads, pleez. LUV.
El Cid
Why isn’t the “mandate” like the tax deduction available for, say, mortgage interests, in which those with insurance get tax breaks and those who could but do not buy it do not get those tax deductions?
I rent. Obviously, the fedrul gubmit isn’t requiring me to buy a house, but (and I know this is only the vaguest of ‘mandate’ parallels) people who do own a home get tax deductions I can’t. Even though I may have a similar income.
Could the law have been written as a tax deduction for those with private insurance? If so, why wasn’t this done?
SteveinSC
I love the art and our guide makes great selections.
General Stuck
OT
Sometimes the parody just writes itself
BonnyAnne
wasn’t generally familiar with Sargent besides that One Painting of that One Lady And Her Shoulder, but this is just lovely. Are those the girls’ maids standing in the background, looking on?
Shame there aren’t any of his in Seattle, AFAIK.
(…and I have just realized that I think I like him because the quality of light her reminds me of Vermeer. That figures.)
Martin
@Makewi: Since Congress has required that hospitals treat patients, you’re just arguing between compulsory insurance and compulsory crippling financial obligation. Which do you think is going to be more manageable for people?
freelancer
@licensed to kill time:
Either that or make a Sad Keanu.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin:You are assuming that Makewi cares. An error, I think.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Ah, yes, a stupendous error.
Rick Massimo
The fact that Megan McArdle titles a post “What Is Truth?,” includes
and actually expects me to sit down and read it, is a more illustrative example of white privilege than anything I could ever hope to produce if I lived to be 100.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: Understandable though. One tends not to presume that the person with whom one is interacting is a vicious sociopath. Unfortunately, one is occasionally incorrect.
BGinCHI
@Martin: We need more pirates (the campy ones).
SiubhanDuinne
Quit exaggerating. It’s only 200 pounds of work.
(Edited to make it snarkier.)
Brachiator
This is all kinds of dumb. “Moral question,” relating to religion or ethics is not the same thing as “moral hazard” as an economic concept.
It’s also tiresome to see people like McArdle act as though people have some special responsibility to act against their own self-interest if it apparently violates somebody’s idea of an economic principle.
It’s weird that some conservatives have this notion of the free market as a demanding deity whose “commandments” must be followed. This is especially funny when you have banksters and other crooks screwing people out of their money and then shouting “Moral hazard! Moral hazard!” when people seek a redress of their grievances.
freelancer
@SiubhanDuinne:
Lol, the decimal thing never gets old.
ABL
I loved your essay (I love your use of language “lard,” “ducats,” “hilarity”), but all that brilliance aside, that is one gorgeous painting.
burnspbesq
Someone needs to politely remind Ms. McArdle that moral hazard and adverse selection are not the same thing, and that workable solutions to both were devised a very long time ago.
If that doesn’t work, I would suggest painting it on a two-by-four and smacking her upside the head with it.
SiubhanDuinne
@freelancer:
It just never does. The hardest thing to decide was, which is funnier, 200 pounds or 20,000 pounds?
geg6
Tom, you give the best McArglebargle smackdowns on the whole Intertoobz. And fine art as the cherry on top. Bravo!
Francis
…surely we can agree that it’s an open moral and political question as to whether it’s acceptable to respond to moral hazard problems with coercive comprehensive regimes?
Well, with regard to health care, no, we can’t agree. The current President made the establishment of a coercive comprehensive regime a key element of his campaign. As the people have spoken, the question has been answered.
El Cid
@Brachiator:
No, that is what they say when it helps them stop government from aiding ordinary people.
When the policies which they want are those which use whatever form of deep, intense non-market government intervention and investment in order to make money for their benefactors and associates and the super-upper-classes with which they identify, free market assumptions are to be damned.
bobbo
I, for one, spit my soup when I hear Scott Simon say “this is NPR.”
sgrAstar
Fantastic, entertaining, and eviscerating takedown of Ms. Argle McBargle. Absolutely love your contributions here, Tom.
Quaker in a Basement
So the conclusion is that all us self-absorbed boomers shoulda had more babies so they could work to support us in our dotage?
Mudge
I submit that moral hazard means different things to different economic groups. For the poor, it means, as you note, a loss of work ethic due to social programs. Any work ethic will provide assets greatly in excess of the dole, and many realize that. Within it all is a fair amount of misery.
For the moneyed classes moral hazard results in not losing otherwise excessive assets. It is privatize the gains, socialize the losses. Within it all is no misery and much mirth for those retaining their wealth at our expense.
Cat Lady
I’m so glad you read McArglebargle so I don’t have to.
This is my must see. The light on the folds of the velvet, and not a brush stroke in sight!
different church-lady
@bobbo: Heh: http://www.theonion.com/articles/corey-flintoff-unleashes-sonorous-pleasantly-modul,3157/
WereBear
What do they care about “moral hazard” any way? They want to get rid of jobs; an unnecessary drain on profits, don’t you know. They don’t care if anyone actually works.
mclaren
Wasting this much brainpower on an airhead like McArdle is like using a thermonuclear bomb to get rid of mice in your kitchen.
Tim F.
Glad to see other Sargent fans here. My favorite American painter bar none.
sven
@El Cid: I see you have discovered the unconstitutional federal homebuyer’s mandate. I assume the dreaded Homeless Panels aren’t far away!
different church-lady
@mclaren: I’ve had mice in my kitchen. Trust me, the red button is tempting…
Martin
@Mudge:
Is there any evidence that this happens broadly, however? I see evidence that people double-dip, but not broad evidence that they trade off work for welfare.
Brachiator
@El Cid:
Yep. Great point.
This reminds me of a dumb ass rule which is still an IRS regulation. The Bush/Cheney regime let the drug companies write the IRS regulation which prohibits people from taking an itemized deduction for drugs they bought or had shipped from another country. So, no deduction for drugs from a Canadian pharmacy even though the drugs are legal, safe and cheaper than those obtained from a US pharmacy.
The idea is that an individual here cannot interfere with the ability of US based drug companies to make a profit or take advantage of Canada’s ability to negotiate deals with drug companies.
So, here, the drug companies can use the government to coerce consumers from freely looking for the best deal. So much for the free market.
Brachiator
I got comment moderated. Wha happened?
different church-lady
@El Cid:
I’m guessing that it could have been done that way, but would have been a lot more complicated: you would have to raise all tax rates a smidge and then make it so that nearly everyone could claim the credit. But then to make it all balance out there’d have to be a bigger credit for higher incomes within the same bracket.
Mudge
@Martin I made no quantitative comments. Certainly it happens somewhat, my sense is far less than a Republican may charge. But this is the aspect that provides any measure of moral hazard. Being on social programs because you are sick, or unlucky, or undereducated, or just plain incompetent fails to provide the alternative which characterizes a moral hazard. Those circumstances largely preclude working as an option.
jl
McArdle (and others) put too many angels on the head of a pin, IMHO.
State and federal laws require hospitals to provide care to sick people that is needed to prevent death and severe irreversible damage to health.
So, as long as those laws are in effect, no one is sure that they can choose to be ‘inactive’, unless a person can somehow make a commitment that they will never drage themselves to an emergency room when they are hurt or sick, or that a relative friend or public safety worker will drag them.
Some states have laws that allow people to enroll in individual insurance (if they can afford a policy) without regard to existing health status (not quite the same as ‘no pre-existing conditions, but close).
So, that has consequences for adverse selection in enrollment in insurance, and if we are to allow insurance companies to operate in multiple states, seems to me you have an open and shut case for universal coverage, or mandate with penalty for no coverage under even strict interpretations of the commerce clause.
different church-lady
@Brachiator: look up “moderation (your comment is awaiting) in the lexicon.
El Cid
@different church-lady: Wouldn’t you just raise the tax rates by the amount the standard non-mandate deduction would be? And if it were a standard deduction (based on family or other basic, non-income qualifiers), why would it have to be increased for higher incomes?
kay
@El Cid:
I think they didn’t write it like that because the mandate is less a penalty or tax provision but a mechanism to get people enrolled.
That’s how the current health insurance mandate we have in all 50 states works, as it turns out, in practice.
Beginning in 2007, the unmarried parents of children were required to make some provision for health care costs for those children. They’re called Medical Support Orders (varies by state) and they work like child support. Ohio’s looks just like the federal law, except it’s more generous (5% of gross is reasonable, 150% of poverty level are excepted), but of course there are no subsidies, so in that it’s less generous. The feds forced states to write enabling legislation, so it’s state law, but that’s a bit of a fiction. It was a federal mandate that they write it.
People use it like this: they slot into whatever public or private insurance their children qualify for.
States wanted kids enrolled. They didn’t want to collect penalties for kids not being enrolled. That wasn’t the objective. They wanted everyone covered. It’s a mandate. It applies only to the children of unmarried parents, but it can (and does) force purchase of private health insurance.
Mnemosyne
@Mudge:
Not exactly. If you look strictly at dollar for dollar, it may appear that way, but you’re leaving out the fact that earning too much money means that someone on welfare loses their (and usually their children’s) health insurance, any subsidy that they were receiving for child care or rent, and food stamps.
Add it all up, and a lot of people end up with less money for things like food and rent than they would have if they stayed on welfare. The moral hazard is created because the system penalizes people for earning “too much” but offers no way to bridge the gap, so people make the rational decision to stay on welfare rather than go without food, housing and medical care.
This is the problem with the punitive attitude towards social welfare: you end up getting the opposite effect from what you claim you want because the system is set up to punish the person on welfare and not to give them the help they need to get off it permanently.
Jager
Oh, really?
I’d bet that more than half of the drop was caused by people who grew up with 5-6-7-8-9-10 siblings and just said ‘no”! My childhood nieghbors had 11 kids, not one of them has had more than 2 kids themselves. One of the girls told me a few years ago, “Mom told us to keep our legs together”!
Dollared
Hi Tom,
Great post and paintings.
I keep seeing this in Glibertarians and other “conservatives:” they really, really don’t understand “insurance.”
It’s odd, because it’s really a great financial business. But I’m supposing they hate it because 1. it’s a form of social cooperation, even when it’s Allstate, and 2. it really offends their sense that life should be unfair, and all goodies should go to the lucky by birth or or the lucky by fate.
It really is a deep and recurring theme – it applies to the health care debate, social security, the FDIC fund, a financial transaction tax with a sinking fund for bailouts, accountability for personal injury, etc.
I have a job and two small children, but if I could write an essay (after I’m done with my 20 year old unfinished work on the meaning of Big Hair), I would consider why Conservatives hate something as simple and businesslike as insurance.
Anybody else see this pattern?
Brachiator
@El Cid:
Yep. Great point.
This reminds me of a dumb ass rule which is still an IRS regulation. The Bush/Cheney regime let the drug companies write the IRS regulation which prohibits people from taking an itemized deduction for drugs they bought or had shipped from another country. So, no deduction for drugs from a Canadian company even though the drugs are legal, safe and cheaper than those obtained from a US company.
The idea is that an individual here cannot interfere with the ability of US based drug companies to make a profit or take advantage of Canada’s ability to negotiate deals with drug companies.
So, here, the drug companies can use the government to coerce consumers from freely looking for the best deal. So much for the free market.
@different church-lady:
You have got to be shitting me. I had to do a grand tour into the bowels of WrdPrss to determine that the likely offender was the correct spelling of the word “f@rm@cie.”
Jeez
...now I try to be amused
@Jager:
I know a woman who is the eldest of a dozen children. She wound up raising half of her siblings herself. She didn’t have any kids of her own because she’d already raised enough for a lifetime.
Martin
@Mudge: That assumes that the social programs are equivalent to a reasonably earned alternative. That’s quite simply never the case. Social programs are always inferior to any minimal alternative.
That results in a lessening of the moral hazard, but not an elimination of it. There’s still risk there, just not a catastrophic risk.
My problem with these arguments is that they always focus on individual rather than collective behavior. It’s the ‘young buck’ problem all over again. Social programs are beneficial if they raise GDP to a degree that covers the cost of the social programs. And that is the root of the problem Republicans have here – social programs *do* increase GDP enough to pay for themselves, regardless of what anecdotal behavior they can point to in order to demonize the effort.
different church-lady
@El Cid: I hadn’t thought of that.
one clarification would be that not everyone takes the standard deduction, but I’m pretty sure everyone gets the standard exemption. So yes, I guess it would have been possible to drop the amount of the standard exemption by some amount and then give it back.
But maybe that would still run into a bracket problem? Both the exemption and the deduction reduce the amount of income you need to pay taxes ON, not the amount of taxes you pay. So the difference would still depend on what bracket you were in. Which (unless I have this backwards) would be kind of regressive — the credit would be worth more the higher the bracket you were in.
oondioline
Megan doesn’t mention in her post whether it’s proper to finish with sea salt, or cook with it, so I doubt it’s actually her posting. Probably an assistant.
Dollared
@Mnemosyne: Yes. And the big gaps are loss of rent subsidy and child care. Child care for one child and the rent subsidy often exceed $1000/month in metro areas. That means that it takes a minimum of $15.00/hour, full time with benefits, to do better than welfare.
It really is a ridiculous situation. Unless of course, you think that maybe, just maybe, some people think poor women should be punished for having children….?
Brachiator
@different church-lady:
Huh? Everyone gets the standard deduction and personal exemption. People can use itemized deductions if this is higher than the standard deduction for their filing status.
Recently, some taxpayers had been able to take an increased higher deduction for stuff like sales taxes on a new vehicle, property taxes and other amounts. I suppose that you could do something similar for medical insurance costs. Or allow them as an adjustment to income before the standard deduction (take a look at the lower section of page 1 of Form 1040).
Yep. Tax credits can be worth more than deductions.
Massachusetts, which has a state health plan, has been tinkering with how the mandate is handled. Those interested can take a look at the state web site and news stories.
Keith G
What I find telling about Megan is that she has a degree in English Literature and still trashes her prose with hackneyed and sophomoric devises as:
I can not fathom that any intelligent person who takes pride in their work would use such drivel.
Tom, your work here is a joy . I am so glad you are now a part of my day.
Bill Murray
@different church-lady: If i were to walk to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, well, first I’d go to the room where they keep the Cezanne
Dollared
@Bill Murray: Well turned!
matoko_chan
/sigh
you dont need this many words, Dr. Levenson.
Capn America
Hey Tom, what are you doing for IAP?
liberal
@Brachiator:
Fixt for accuracy.
liberal
@General Stuck:
It’s OK if they didn’t read that part aloud, right?
gizmo
Nice painting. Those are the children of Edwin Darley Boit, painted by Sargent. If you find one like it, call me– it’s worth about $30 million.
Tom Levenson
Thanks to all the kind words above, not to mention the Sargent love. I had to be (relished being) offline for the last few hours, so my Pologies for my absence from the thread. Not that there was anything in particular I could have added.
@Capn America: Not much. Rrewriting a course and trying to complete a book proposal. Also, heading to NC for the ScienceOnline11 meeting.
You?
Mike G
@AAA Bonds:
I’m starting to suspect that Villager magazines like The Atlantic are similar to Formula 1 racing — you have some real talents in the front rows who proved their worth over the years, but the back of the grid is filled with crash-prone egotistical assclowns who only scored a ride because their families brought a lot of money or connections.
Capn America
@Tom Levenson: back in school now (MIT Alum ’08), but not at MIT. It still feels weird not having 4 weeks of January off to just hang around the ‘tute.
What’s your book about? Also, for some reason I think you’ll like this:
http://encyclopediadramatica.com/File:1250174309582.jpg
Tom Levenson
@Capn America: I could tell you what I’m writing next, but then I’d have to ….
I.e. ‘taint ready for prime time.
Jebediah
@Bill Murray:
Yay!
I saw him play a (way too short) set at Royce Hall a little while back. It was wicked lovely.
asiangrrlMN
Man, I am glad others read MM2 so I don’t have to. And, I am definitely trusting the shorter. Anyone who says, “surely, we can agree” gets no clicks from me. Dumbass.
P.S. Count me as one who is loving the art, Tom. I love seeing how you match your posts with paintings.
Dollared
@Mike G: I like it. BTW, it’s yet another way we are more and more like a banana republic – in Latin America, “journalists” are good careers for extra children of the rich to see and be seen at parties.
matoko_chan
@Tom Levenson: iiight.
lets try this again.
the REASON McArdle is a “conservative” is that she cannot cut it on the other side.
YOU! give her credibility by linking her and mocking her.
THE CONSERVATIVE BASE are uniformly low IQ jesus-humpers that would burn the world before admitting their ideology is FAIL.
THEY DONT UNDERSTAND ANYTHING SHE WRITES.
she’s a retard, and she would utterly fail on the left.
retr2327
Great post.
One quibble. You write “But the real point is that this sonorous utterance of a scary sounding term—ooooh, “moral hazard”— and this very authoritative seeming invocation of the economics literature have little or nothing to do with what McArdle’s is talking about here, the “coercive” individual mandate in health care reform.”
But if I’m following you correctly, the real point should be that the individual mandate has everthing to do with moral hazard: it’s the necessary response to avoid (or minimize) the moral hazard that the healthy will choose to defer purchasing insurance until they get sick, thereby triggering the adverse selection problem.
In other words (big surprise), McArdle’s got it exactly backwards.
Paris
She really is just a sociopath, isn’t she?
I got Matt Yglesias to engage in his comments once when, after 50 comments on how stupid McCardle is, I commented that she made my dick wilt. Apparently that was way out of bounds. (I forgot I wasn’t commenting at Wonkette). My point was that stupidity is unattractive but I guess he took it personally.
stillnotking
A person who does not favor using coercion to address moral-hazard problems is an anarchist. Either McArdle is an anarchist, which seems very unlikely given her past history and the premises of her arguments, or she is being deliberately obfuscatory & disingenuous. Baffle them with bullshit, indeed.