Good morning.
- Austrian economics.
- The importance of one Mr Brentano.
- Is that martyrdom of or and the intellectual?
- Looking at the left and the politics of healthcare.
- From where I sit, the description includes “handsome” the picture … not so much.
- Big “O” Orthodoxy, Not just an intellectual exercise.
- Well, I linked this yesterday and was told it was deceptive. Try try again.
- What’s “wrong” with capitalism.
- Considering church and state.
- Where the wild things really are … and what it’s like over there.
- Logical fallacy and the budget.
- In Mr Obama’s military.
- Singing … Skopjans?
- Cost and Afghanistan.
Econonmics of Time and Ignorance….I’ll try to catch it at the library.
Have a good Thanksgiving Mark & the numerous fans of my comments out there (JA I think, maybe one or two others).!
Logical fallacy and the budget.
Actually I don’t think most of them are fallacies. Those carping the loudest about budgets don’t have much credibility for the most part. McArdle’s answer is so what? So what indeed? Is credibility of any importance? If so then where would it be important?
Likewise what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If the Iraq war shouldn’t be considered when talking about deficits then why should the stimulus and bailout bills? Like the wars, they should be temporary (but then the wars are going on a decade now, maybe they are temporary but they are much, much longer than the stimulus program or bailouts) Back them out as well as the tax revenue loss due to the recession and you’re at a budget that’s not in horrible shape at the current moment.
More importantly, though, the health care bill has been scored by the CBO to be deficit neutral, even slightly helpful to the deficit. The primary criticism of this scoring is a ‘what if’ game. ‘What if’ congress decides to reverse or suspend Medicare cuts in the future? Well so what again? Here’s a thought experiment. Imagine someone proposed a bill to abolish Medicare. That would score, via the CBO, as saving hundreds of billions a year. But ‘what if’ some future Congress voted to re-establish Medicare? Well that would get rid of those savings but that’s not an argument for asserting the bill to abolish Medicare will actually cost money because we guess some future congress will just bring it back. When and if a future Congress votes to re-establish Medicare, that bill will be scored by the CBO as costing billions.
Aside from that, most of the critics of the health care bill are attacking it in a direction that cuts against deficit reduction. Don’t cut Medicare they cry! Don’t tax high-end health plans as income (which they are)! Don’t tax those who don’t cover themselves with health insurance! All these criticisms are things are attacking things that reduce the deficit. Abolish them and you make the deficit worse. Which, of course, reinforces the first ‘fallacy’ that most of the new debt hawks suffer a terminal lack of credibility.
Boonton,
On the Medicare cuts, the what if question is a little more pointed. The criticism is that it is highly unlikely that the cuts will stand, which in turn means that the deficit neutral character of the bill depends on a number of unlikely circumstances. Which is another way of saying it is not really deficit neutral.
That’s a naive way of putting it. A choice is being offered, cut Medicare and install this “new plan”, or not have the new plan and keep Medicare.
Well, the latter is just about an order of magnitude larger (as single year expenditures). That might be a reason it is more relevant.
Actually no it doesn’t. If a bill passes that makes Medicare cuts that reduces the deficit. If in the future another bill is introduced to undo cuts that makes that new bill deficit increasing.
Think about the absurdity of what you’re saying. A bill that does a lot for the deficit would be considered bad for the deficit because the more it does the more there is that could be undone in the future.
That’s a naive way of putting it. A choice is being offered, cut Medicare and install this “new plan”, or not have the new plan and keep Medicare.
Yea, the GOP has taken the stance that Medicare is untouchable. That therefore makes them non-credible in terms of deficits and debt. I do remember, though, Republicans demanding massive Medicare rationing during the stimulus debate as their ‘alternative’. So their lack of credibility flies in both directions. You can’t trust them not to cut Medicare, you can’t trust them to preserve Medicare.
Well, the latter is just about an order of magnitude larger (as single year expenditures). That might be a reason it is more relevant.
Why? A $700B stimulus bill in 2009 does not spawn a 2010 stimulus bill of $700B. In fact, it makes it a bit less likely even though it should be a good idea. An invasion of a country in 2009, though, all but gurantees massive costs in 2010, 2011 and so on. The latest rule of thumb is that a single soldier in Afghanistan costs $1M a year, 40,000 additional then would be $40B a year. The idea that a war is just a ‘temporary’ expenditure is highly questionable. In our recent history we might be able to consider Gulf War I as an example but most other wars seem to go against that grain. Looking at other wars like Vietnam, Korea, WWII, the Iraq invasion….it seems that on average a modern war is either a long term expense in terms of occupation or a medium term expense.
That’s a naive way of putting it. A choice is being offered, cut Medicare and install this “new plan”, or not have the new plan and keep Medicare.
So this assumes then the cuts are real, otherwise why argue against the plan on the grounds that it will cut Medicare? But if Medicare is really getting cut, then the plan is deficit neutral. Long story short, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. If Republicans want to be taken seriously they need to decide what they want to see as actual policy rather than simply wanting Obama to fail no matter what the costs to everyone else.