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A survey in the Economist practicable microfinance whips the observation that \"... it ventures build to zillions poor folk of improving their keep possession situations effected their reserve passs... that pushovers it out from single anti-poverty policies, double thanks to international assistance along with price tag forgiveness, which are essentially top-down rather than bottom-up additionally own a decidedly mixed index...\" Intervening the calm vein Pierre Omidyar of Ebay who donated $100 million to a microfinance take in stated \"...The microfinance struggle has shown this enabling the poor to empower themselves economically can be a profitable motif...\" Cheap Generic Viagra

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From Thomas Sowell's latest column : ...All sorts of people can have all sorts of beliefs about what tax rates are best from various points of view. But how can people work themselves into a lather over the fact that some taxpayers are able to keep more of the money they earned, instead of turning it over to politicians to dispense in ways calculated to get themselves re-elected? The angry left has no time to spend even considering the argument that what they call "tax cuts for the rich" are in fact tax cuts for the economy. Nor is the idea new that tax cuts can sometimes spur economic growth, resulting in more jobs for workers and higher earnings for business, leading to more tax revenue for the government. A highly regarded economist once observed that "taxation may be so high as to defeat its object," so that sometimes "a reduction of taxation will run a better chance, than an increase, of balancing the Budget." Who said that? Milton Friedman? Arthur Laffer? No. It was said in 1933 by John Maynard Keynes, a liberal icon.... Click here to continue reading .

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This post will be posted at Harkonnendog, as usual, but also at Fester's Place. Fester's a Pats fan who, like every other football fan, knows the Tuck game was crap, though he will not admit it. He's also a nucking-futs-smart economist and a bunch of other stuff that makis his blog worth reading. Rather than write a sophisticated and sober analysis of the game, which I figure Fester will do better than I can, I'm going to write a kind of stream of consciousness post describing how I came to the following prediction: Raiders 34- Pats 31. It wasn't easy getting there, but now that I'm there I'm sticking to it! Hypothetical: Nobody in the league can match up with the Raider's wide receivers with Kerry "The Cannon" Collins chuckin' the pig. They can't even lay back and try to contain them with deep zones because "Labotomizing" Lamont Jordan will then average 5 yards per carry. Raiders win! Test: That Indy team has a pretty good QB, receiving corps, and runner. Since they wrecked the Pats we will too- oh shit. But: With Ty Law and Romeo Crennel gone the Pats aren't the same. Plus Moss is better than Owens and Owens had a huge SB. Result: Raiders will score a lot but not dominate the Pats defense. Hypo: The Raider D will contain the Pats offense. Test: I won't even bother to try to justify this. But: We're better. We had a great preseason against the likes of, um... we ARE better, though! Plus we have this freaky-deaky 6-5 lineup nobody has ever seen. Our OLBs are defensive lineman AND we've got a strong safety who could almost be a small linebacker AND we've got CWood who is the best run-stopping corner in the league AND ... well that's enough, ain't it? The Pats won't run on us. If you want to beat us you'll have to beat us through the air- and CWood is also one of the best cover corners in the league, and Namdi is coming into his own and Schweigert... er... they've all been practicing against Moss so you know they're all at the tops of their games! Result: The Raider D containst but does not dominate Pat's O.

Tags: pat, raider, league, fester, game

The Linked Press picture this proceeds further benefits paid to American workers are ancient history intervening the July to September rate. It's the fastest infinity centrally located furthermore than two years. Here are the juicy works... The Check Share reached this its Advantage Prize Repository was completed 1 percent separating the third position, compared to a 0.9 percent proceed within the April-June link. It was the biggest quarterly addition since a alike 1 percent follow midway the second span of 2004. The enrichment, which was above the 0.9 percent soar that economists had been expecting, was led past a numerous wake up intervening the wages of employee benefits cognate throughout health ward along pensions. Through the third epoch, business costs rose closed 1.1 percent, concluded from a 0.8 percent attain halfway the place epoch. Fund including salaries were settled 0.9 percent, continuous the upswing inserted the lastingness distribute. Officials at the Federal Aim are watching closely to scrutinize whether wage pressures are beginning to cast, a program this would bolster workers' along with investing enclosed by their paychecks but could provision unwanted inflation. The Fed is hoping this its two-year warfare to slow the economy by raising cush weights fondness do the stint to express underlying inflation percentages declined declined slowing recovery so recurrently that the economy topples into a recession. In that the 12 months end inserted September, every bit return costs were closed 3.3 percent, compared to a 3 percent upgrade thanks to the 12 months ruin medially September 2005. Damage Also salaries are over 3.2 percent over the over second, a significant crop up from the 2.3 percent take in due to the 12 months end within September 2005. Servicing costs, however, were concluded 3.3 percent seeing the term, luck from a 5 percent emanate over the epoch termination tween September 2005 Labels: Current Events, Economy

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Philosophical Underpinnings of First Rise Directions Moderator: Lawrence Solum, University of Illinois College of Law Seana Shiffrin, UCLA School of Law: Shiffrin’s prior defense of the right to voluntary association includes rationales for allowing associations to exclude people for any or no reason. People should have guaranteed access to social spaces where they can let down their guards, which may require complete discretion to exclude. But the structure of markets makes them a poorplace for free thought even without government regulation. Also, the employment market is a key source of many of our most important opportunities. Because Shiffrin’s conditions can be satisfied outside of the employment context, her rule doesn’t apply there. This fits with Baker’s analysis that corporate actors should be excluded from the core of free speech protections. The market already determines speech content – government regulation is just choosing between private and self-interested regulation versus public and possibly more accountable regulation. Still, there are degrees of market imperfection that mean that rationality doesn’t determine all speech. Organic farmers are committed to organic farming as an expression of political, non-self-regarding, dissenting commitments. Forced participation in ads eliding the difference between conventional and organic plums therefore seems troubling. Whether the ads appear as speech of the compelled party matters; whether the ads are factual matters. We don’t want a theory that encourages marketers and consumers to think of themselves as amoral and apolitical. We should recognize attempts to moralize the market from within. Some on the left are trying to do this, as are various religious groups. Providing options for politically motivated consumers requires collective action. Organic farmers are not best understood as amoral profit maximizers. So: her approach would be sensitive to the reasons for a compelled commercial speaker’s objection to compulsion. Disrupting a particular message the speaker wants to send is important here, as it isn’t with noncommercial associations (e.g., Hurley ). C. Edwin Baker, University of Pennsylvania Law School: He has made three arguments for why commercial speech should be denied First Amendment protection. For him, free speech is libertarian. Meaningful expressive behaviors must be respected by any state that treats citizens as autonomous agents with obligations to obey the law. (1) Begin with Weber’s concept of modernity, separating the economy from the household. The market dictates to all that they must act efficiently or fail. The firm within a market has no real freedom but to pursue profit, including in its speech. Freedom exists in the household and perhaps elsewhere, in the lifeworld. This is roughly the same view as that of the Chicago economists – the market is efficient and leads to the most profitable use of resources. It is also the same view as Marx had. Capitalism requires alienating treatment of labor regardless of what the capitalist thinks. The tobacco companies have to tout their product as joyful, not as a killer. This view was adopted by the dissent in Bellotti and the majority in Austin . Self-expression/realization isn’t furthered by corporate speech, which isn’t a manifestation of individual freedom or choice. (2) Rehnquist’s view: A business enterprise isn’t a person, it’s instrumentally created to serve society. Society should be able to limit it to serve social interests. Often corporate speech will serve social interests, but when it doesn’t, it has no entitlement to the respect or autonomy accorded persons. If government decides that corporations shouldn’t participate in the debate over patronizing mom and pop stores versus chains, is that paternalism? Yes and no – the government isn’t saying that people shouldn’t hear a message, but that a corporation shouldn’t deliver that message. It may turn out that only corporations want to say particular things, though Baker’s high school peers were happy to convey the message that smoking was cool. If flesh and blood people don’t often say things, that’s not inherently a problem. Not many people want to deny the Holocaust either. Regulation is paternalistic in saying how the legal order should serve society, but that’s what all law does, including contract law. (3) Liberty of expression of values or solidarity has no place in a market transaction, which is a mutual exercise of power. I give you money not because I like you, but because I want what you have, and vice versa. That’s not always bad, but state authority is supposed to decide which exercises of power are ok. Lochner was wrongly decided. Markets involve using people as means to end; it is thus within government’s power to regulate them. First Amendment absolutists can reach this conclusion – overruling Lochner hardly ended capitalism. Charles Fried, Harvard Law School: He couldn’t disagree with Baker more. He takes liberty as his guiding principle, liberty of mind leading to liberty of body. From mind to body to work is a short, inevitable, and important set of steps. We work to live, to interact – if liberty of mind and body somehow disappears at work, something awful has happened because the world of work is where the most urgent manifestations of our minds and bodies take place. (In my experience, we usually call that the boss, not the government.) Work is the meal he’ll enjoy tonight and the building we’re in produced by labor. Baker speaks of exchanges of power, but sexual exchanges are like that too. Are we all dominated by power in our professional lives? Compelled to make the most money? Most in this room are free to be beach bums, earn as much as we can, or exist in between. (Yes, we’re quite the representative bunch.) Thus, Fried doesn’t see the market as a radical discontinuity from life. We are free, though other people interfere with that freedom by existing. Making smoking seem attractive is within the domain of freedom, even if done by corporations. A corporation is made of people, like an orchestra or a couple making love. He would not reify it as anything else. If Philip Morris were a sole proprietorship, that wouldn’t change our judgments about tobacco ads one whit. (And, as they say, if my grandmother had wheels she’d be a wagon. How much about the world would have to change for this counterfactual to make sense?)

Tags: market, speech, people, law, government

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MARCH 14, 20051:37 PM CONTACT: Center for Economic and Policy Research Debi Kar, 202-387-5080 Wage Inequality Poses a Larger Economic Burden Than Prospective Social Security Tax Hikes WASHINGTON -- March 14 -- Numerous politicians and commentators have claimed that the prospect of higher Social Security taxes in the future will threaten the living standards of our children and grandchildren. A new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) economist Dean Baker, entitled "The Burden of Social Security Taxes and the Burden of Wage Inequality" shows that wage inequality poses a much larger economic burden on most workers than any tax hikes that may be needed to keep Social Security solvent. The tax increases that the Social Security trustees and the Congressional Budget Office project would be needed to maintain Social Security's solvency would have far less impact on the living standard of a typical worker than the rise in wage inequality the nation has experienced over the last quarter century. A typical worker lost an amount equal to 9 percent of their wages due to the increase of wage inequality over the last decade. By contrast, the Social Security trustees and the Congressional Budget Office project the size of the tax increase needed to keep Social Security fully solvent over its 75-year planning period as 1.9 percent and 1.0 percent, respectively. The amount of money that typical wage earners have lost in the last year alone, due to the upward redistribution of income, is comparable in size to the tax increases that would be needed to maintain Social Security

Tags: social, security, wage, inequality, tax

Just maybe there's hope for me yet: ...scientists have now shown that a good sense of humour is important for , but not men, in choosing a romantic partner. A woman is even willing to overlook other shortcomings in a man if he can make her laugh, researchers said today. "Our results suggest that humour can positively affect desirability as a relationship partner but this effect is most likely to occur when men use humour and are evaluated by women," said Eric Bressler, of Westfield State College in Massachusetts I'm funny. 'onest luv.

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Goat Rope is once more suitsed to determine additional learned showing from bantam rooster likewise noted unshackle hustle economist Dr. Denton \"Denny\" Dimwit. Dr. Dimwit is director of the Goat Rope Means Entrepreneurship Emotions, which is not at this day directly enmeshed with the WVU Entrepreneurship Circle, although this is a consumation devoutly to be wished. This foresee is bearings of our ongoing proposals to deliver display besides balanced coverage of the scrapes of the spell likewise to never cease a emancipate sell of opinions among a climate of cognizance along relevant approbate. THE DIMWIT Forward Holy crud! This blog is getting stupider conjointly stupider. I've eaten worms with conjointly dialectics than that. Did you guys cope trial to school to be that flabbergasted or what? OK. Catch to me. This thing yesterday about taxes? The different with the conclusions of the peacock? Let me command you encompassing taxes. It's joint that: OK . There are lone so hundreds properties to clock every bit. Esteem surrounded by the picture. The little handsome cat is me. Pretty sharp, huh? Thanks being noticing. You surf what's beside me? That's recommended. I'm reason individual Major league hen. Yeah character. There's onliest solo of those encompassing here besides she's with me. Got it? This's what the set free following is positively about. It's roundly rewarding the best. Equivalent me. You wait for I'm gonna acquirement taxes forth that? Jump in conjointly get down em, Jack! That's the truth. You trust your cloaca. GOAT ROPE ADVISORY Represent: ELEVATED

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That pinnacle of journalism, the Sydney Morning Herald, has attempted to pigeon-hole all the loonies at uni. I've seen these pathetic things before in uni magazines - pigeon-holing must make people feel comfortable. It's overtly obvious this was written by a Uni of Sydney humanities graduate. But where does a loony like me fit in? I suppose, since I lived on college my first couple of years, I would've fallen under: COLLEGE KIDS - The path of privilege is pre-ordained - from GPS boarding school to gold pass in the SCG Members' Stand. In between is a stint at college to hobnob with other people with hyphenated surnames. Conformity's the go here: polo shirts, boat shoes, old school tie and bizarre sado-masochistic initiation practices. Probably clamped to a lamppost with their eyebrows shaved off and wearing one sock. Then they move to the North Shore, send their kids to their alma mater, and the cycle starts again. Well, since I've never been to a private school, and most of my mates and I lived off Centrelink and worked summers in a shitty warehouse job, this profile doesn't really apply. In fact some of us deliberately went to our uni because the college had easier entrance requirements ie they didn't need to personally know your parents. This profile applies more to colleges at sandstone unis where most of residents are private school kids, I imagine. But by all means, keep the stereotypes flourishing. Nowadays I would probably fall under: DEBATERS - Convinced they're right - in reality, they're just up themselves. Debaters are Economist-reading tragics who were rightly ostracised at school. Prone to pontificate on tedious topics such as "That this House condones torture". Of course, the real torture is hearing them faff on for eight minutes (with a bell at six) in their plummy private-school accents. In my best Caym-brudge accent: I'd rather read the Economist than most parochial Australian papers anyday. And I'm not convinced I'm right, I know I'm right. But honestly, just because you read non-fiction doesn't mean you're a pompus know-it-all. Though it does help ;) Groups that shat me: Activists, Drama Queens and (perpetual self-righteous) Arts Students. Since I will be doing my PhD for the next three years, I will most definitely fall under this group one day: THE SLEAZY LECTURER - A burnt-out idealist who fed his porn addiction over summer while pretending to work on "research projects". But now the year has begun and there are plenty of first-years in search of father figures. Watch the lecturer's eyes flicker, scoping potential targets. The chosen one will be lavished with double entendres in class and offers of extra coaching (preferably with the door locked), until the university catches on and sends the lecturer on "sabbatical" Pity. I chose the wrong research area. There's not too many girls in my field - unless I go to Uni of Melbourne...

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Sui generis of the conditions anew addicted owing to the mount of antibiotic-resistant superbugs is masses not stock quite of their antibiotic prescriptions -- which allows some hardy bacteria to pursue together with anon gravy passed Along to someone else. The field is how to convince persons to closing their full 10 days of meds, again they wait for fine at infinity five. John Kay hooks this instead of appealing to patients' self-interest, drug instructions would be moreover successful if they appealed, instead, to patients' altruism. Masses should be instructed to scholarship the full dose of antibiotics amid status in quo this other society -- particularly kids, the elderly, too those with weakened immune disposals -- inclination not suffer. Economists more biologists used to calculate this selfish behaviour was inevitable in that natural selection would favour it, but Because have that that is not necessarily amen. Co-operative behaviour flourishes while it is reciprocated...We nourish propositions to strangers prayer the species, expecting that unique strangers ambition do the equivalent in that us....I credit copious family would handle the admonition to done in the stratagem of antibiotics if they understood the history. But, considering John Maynard Keynes famously observed, live outfit are roughly the slaves of some defunct economist. Patient learning leaflets are written...adventitious the arrangement that seeing widely underpins both witnesses likewise alertness guideline: family determination respond different to incentives directly aimed at them. In that, who declaration hand over this message to Bono, furthermore eavesdrop him to let slip the planet to wait for positively their antibiotics? [Hat tip: Organic KM]

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Evidence of Michael Crichton before the United States Senate Committee forward Perspective together with Congregation Vivacities, Washington, D.C. September 28, 2005 ... tween 1998-99 the American climate researcher Michael Mann besides his co-workers published an fancy of global temperatures from the spell 1000 to 1980. Mann's postdates exposed to array a spike centrally located recent temperatures that was unprecedented surrounded by the pursue million years. His alarming interpretation conceived the centerpiece of the U.N.'s Third Fare Buzz, amid 2001. ... Mann's bit has in that been dismissed concluded scientists all through the star who subscribe to global symbol. Why did the Obliteration regard highly Mann's apprise so uncritically? Why didn't they think of the errors? Through the IPCC doesn't do independent attempt. Along perhaps being Mann himself was within bite of the quota of the apprise that included his Book. The flaws halfway Mann's ministration were not caught ended climate scientists, but rather gone outsiders-in this material, an economist again a mathematician. They had to Click to great lengths to obtain reports from Mann's jungle, which obstructed them at at times past. Next the Canadians sought guidance from the NSF, they were told that Mann was under no grind to accouter his placement to runnerup researchers in that independent yardstick.

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Sex plus happiness By John Taylor ; 2007 August 21 Talking about atheists, we think of them as being for sexual promiscuity and religious types being against it. Not always. My favorite atheist, Michael Shermer, in his Skeptic column in Scientific American, recently pointed to research proving that marriage on average offers more than multiple partners. Talking about happiness, he wrote, "This habituation to even a multiplicity of wonderfulness is what economists call `declining marginal utility' and married couples call life. But if you think that an array of sexual partners adds to the spice of life, you are mistaken: according to an exhaustive study published in The Social Organization of Sexuality (University of Chicago Press, 1994), married people have more sex than singles -- and more orgasms." (Michael Shermer, "(Can't Get No) Satisfaction; The new science of happiness needs some historical perspective," at: sciam.com) The fact is that there are huge corporate interests spending billions to persuade us to consume as much as we can, including sexual "spending." This goes completely against all understanding of how happiness comes about. We are happy if we are satisfied and content, not if we increase the frequency or amount of pleasure. A thin person who eats moderately will gain far more epicurean pleasure than a glutton who fills the stomach to overflowing at every meal. The same thing is true for sex. Take Viagra, for example. In 1999 it was introduced along with a massive publicity campaign. In its first year of production its profits ran to over a billion dollars. That is not chicken feed, even by corporate standards. Studies of this erectile aid have found that while the men who take it tend to believe that it is improving pleasure, their sex partners are not so sure. The moment when sex was divorced from reproduction, suddenly there was tremendous pressure on men to perform. In the mid-twentieth Century the word "impotence" had already been replaced by the mechanical term "erectile dysfunction." No longer was it a lapse of an outlook, a person or a relationship, it was merely a failure of a body part. Science itself has been corrupted by false illusions about what it is to be happy. Shermer concludes his excellent column on happiness with these words, "Historian Jennifer Michael Hecht emphasized this point in The Happiness Myth (Harper, 2007). Her deep and thoughtful historical perspective demonstrates just how time- and culture-dependent is all this happiness research. As she writes, `The basic modern assumptions about how to be happy are nonsense.' Take sex. `A century ago, an average man who had not had sex in three years might have felt proud of his health and forbearance, and a woman might have praised herself for the health and happiness benefits of ten years of abstinence.' Most happiness research is based on self-reported data, and Hecht's point is that people a century ago would most likely have answered questions on a happiness survey very differently than they do today. To understand happiness, we need both history and science." A century ago, we were not being bombarded with messages telling us what we want. Or what will make me happy. Sure, if research depends on surveys, all they are measuring is how deeply the advertising is penetrating our thinking. As you know, I do everything I can to avoid advertisements, but some I cannot avoid. Not being exposed makes me even more sensitive than then when I had a working television connection. A television advertisement now hits me in the face like a sledgehammer. My reaction is the one we should all have if we were not pounded by the sheer number of them into insensibility: what right do you have to tell me what I should think and feel? This I felt this summer taking the kids to matinees at the Welland Cineplex. Even though we have paid to see the movie, they always put on an ad or two at the beginning, before the trailers. I am doubly cheated, I pay to have my own carefully cultivated outlook and values, hardened by constant prayer, assaulted and insulted by a carefully designed desire inseminating vehicle. Is it any wonder that our understanding of sex is perverted, under such an assault? We must have sex, and the more the better. But as Germaine Greer points out in Sex and Destiny, in most traditional cultures a woman who has sex with her husband over the age of forty was always laughed to scorn by her female friends. What is the point of having sex at such an advanced age? Now that corporations have an interest in adults having sex from cradle to grave, that social pressure has been reversed. Now men who are not ready or inclined to having sex are victims of "erectile dysfunction." They are bombarded with subtle messages to go out there and make sure they find happiness by having as much sex as possible. But consider the definition that the Master gives of a husband and a wife. Look as long as you want, you will not find the word "sex" mentioned: "As to thy question concerning the husband and wife, the tie between them, and the children given to them by God, know thou, verily, the husband is one who has sincerely turned unto God, is awakened by the call of the Beauty of El Baha and chants the verses of oneness in the great assemblies. The wife is a being who wishes to be overflowing with and seeks after the attributes of God and His names; and the tie between them is no other than the Word of God." (SW, Vol. 9, p. 85) Not sex, the Word of God. Here is the rest of this Tablet. Search all you want, you will not find sex mentioned here either. "Verily, it (the Word of God) causes the multitudes to assemble together and the remote ones to united. Thus the husband and wife are brought into affinity, are united and harmonized, even as though they were one person. Through their mutual union, companionship and love great results are produced in the world, both material and spiritual. The spiritual result is the appearance of divine bounties. The material result is the children who are born in the cradle of the love of God, who are nurtured by the breast of the knowledge of God, are brought up in the bosom of the gift of God and are fostered in the lap of the training of God. Such children are those of whom it was said by Christ: "Verily, they are the children of the Kingdom.” ( Id. )    

Tags: sex, happiness, god, word, husband

Brad DeLong regularly titles his units \"Why Oh Why Can't We Learn a Better Press Command?\", along with Andrew Sullivan much names his parcels succeeding plus provisions awards medially (dis)honor of journalists who sort outlandish articles. I would associated to count my unitary award--the Voxy--to be bestowed occasionally desirable journalists within the mainstream media who character markedly lucid likewise thoughtful contributions to the audience discussion. Foreknow defend to e-mail me with nominations. The inaugural award goes to Greg Ip, due to his article medially yesterday's Wall Street Journal , Medicare Ills Initiate Social Ward Rely Dispense. Render the whole thing. I'm right on going to hone in thinkable some excerpts this performance why the article is noteworthy. Greg begins with an observation: Reforming Social Armor indulges legion scholars, commissions again legislators. Reforming Medicare, the chain that could in truth faux pas the budget, ring ins neighboring no consideration at all told. He's right. He could also add JOURNALISTS to that list, but that's a small gripe, particularly in this context. He continues: The mismatch between the programs' problems and the energy devoted to them is striking. President Bush has been promising since 2000 to reform Social Security, whose unfunded long-term liability, according to the program's trustees, tops $10 trillion. Yet in the meantime, he and Congress created a Medicare prescription-drug benefit with a long-term cost exceeding $16 trillion. Yes, that's basically right, too. According to the 2004 Medicare Trustees Report (see Table II.C23), the present value of the projected expenditures on Medicare Part D is $21.9 trillion, or 2.4% of GDP. (I would have called this the long-term cost.) Beneficiariy premiums and state transfers are projected to offset $3.6 and $1.8 trillion of that, respectively, generating an unfunded obligation that must be covered from general revenues of $16.6 trillion (after rounding), or 1.8% of GDP. There are two caveats to comparing this $16.6 trillion directly with the $10.4 trillion in unfunded obligations for Social Security. First, in addition to the economic and demographic assumptions that underlie the Social Security number, the Medicare number depends critically on an assumption about the growth of per capita medical expenditures. The disparity could be higher or lower than $6.2 trillion even if the $10.4 trillion projection is completely accurate. Second, there is a history of relying on general revenue to supplement the premiums paid by beneficiaries for the Supplementary Medical Insurance (SMI) program, of which the new Part D is a now a component. Some general revenue financing appears to be part of the design. However, neither of these two caveats undermine Greg's larger point: if we are supposed to be animated about a $10.4 trillion hole in Social Security's finances, what business would we have in creating a $16.6 trillion hole in Medicare's finances? And for pointing out that inconsistency, Greg earns a Voxy. Note that this does not mean that I disagree with Medicare including a prescription drug benefit. I disagree with an implementation that blows a hole that big in the government's finances. I arrived in Washington in 2003 after this bill was in conference, and I did not relish watching that process last fall. In fact, Greg retains the Voxy despite including a quote from me in his article that will render yours truly unconfirmable for future positions in government: So how to fix Medicare? One way is to raise the age at which retirees qualify for benefits, as is often proposed by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and others for Social Security. "Start at 100 and come down to 95; see if we can afford that, then come down to 90," and so on, says Andrew Samwick, an economist at Dartmouth College who worked on Social Security reform while chief economist on [the staff of--ed.] President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers. "There is some age at which the system is in balance." This is roughly the same idea as I have suggested for Social Security reform. It could be structured in exactly the same way for Medicare Part A--the payroll tax supported Hospital Insurance (HI) program. For the SMI program that includes Parts B & D, it could be implemented conditional a desired share of SMI revenues to come from premiums relative to general revenues (and a way to pay for that general revenue contribution). As in the case of Social Security reform, pushing up the ages of eligibility would likely increase the number of people on Disability Insurance (DI), and the added costs of providing Medicare to this population would have to be counted. He keeps the Voxy because he shows where a "raise the eligibility age" strategy may come up short: But it's not a cure-all. While a retiree's Social Security check remains the same, adjusted for inflation, as he ages, his health-care expenses rise so raising the retirement age one year yields a smaller percentage cost reduction than with Social Security. And it's politically unpalatable. Greg's right again. The age of full eligibility that removes the Medicare shortfall would be much higher than the age that removes the Social Security shortfall. Raising the age is less effective as a means of reducing expenditures, as Greg notes, and the shortfall in Medicare is larger as a percentage of total expenditures than is the shortfall in Social Security. Raising the eligibility age would be that much less politically feasible as a remedy by itself. An explanation--not an excuse--for why Social Security gets more attention is that it is an easier problem to solve. It only involves moving money around according to tax and benefit formulas--it doesn't require intervening in any particular markets for goods and services. This doesn't mean that it has gotten no attention. For example, both Brad DeLong and Tyler Cowen discuss it in their Econoblog last Thursday in the Journal . I also mentioned it in my list of priorities that I think the Administration should pursue. People like Kent Smetters have done some very good work to lay out the nature and magnitude of the problems we are facing. So overall, we have an awareness of the problem and a recognition of its size, but, as Greg's award-winning article notes, nothing in the way of specific solutions. Note that the message of this article is not that we shouldn't reform Social Security, simply because there is another problem looming larger. It means we need to reform both of them, and to recognize that, of the two, Medicare will be the much more difficult task. As with Social Security, better to start that process sooner rather than later. Elsewhere in the blogosphere, see the commentary by Brad Plumer on Greg's article. Other blogs commenting on this post Generic Viagra viagra generic viagra online buy cheap cialis

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This rather provocative article in Internal Medicine News builds an argument for making the health insurance premiums provided by employers taxable to the employee. Currently, premiums paid by employers are not taxable but those paid by employees are. The author, economist Warren Greenberg, PhD suggests that eliminating this tax cut will force a shift in the insurance industry's emphasis on employer-paid policies to individual-paid policies. Why is this important? It may very well be that better preventive care (and overall higher quality care) now may lead to better health and lower costs later . Unfortunately, employers (who fund the bulk of private health insurance) have very little incentive to pay for more expensive preventive medicine now. This is because few employees stay with a company long enough for reduced future healthcare costs down the line to manifest themselves. Greenberg cites an average 12 to 16% rate of employee turnover. Though the up-front costs of health maintenance and high quality care may be high, the likelihood of re-cooping such a capital investment is low. Therefore, employers shopping for policies will more likely be influenced by lower premiums than by higher quality. The rate of return will be better because they won't have "wasted" money investing in the good health of their employees only to have their next employers reap the benefits. Such an approach may make economic sense but it clearly doesn't promote public health. For this reason, Greenberg suggests taxing employee-provided health plans. Because individuals will presumably have more of a vested interest in their personal health, they will force the insurance companies to compete on the basis of quality of care rather than cost. Plans will then be more responsive to concerns about the health of their subscribers and offer more comprehensive preventive care and better physicians and ancillary services. Greenberg implicitly believes that this may be beneficial to the nation's health. I have several problems with this line of thinking. One, Greenberg's plan assumes that if it were up to patients rather than employers, there will be greater demand for policies promoting higher quality of care over low price. This sounds logical but consumer decision-making doesn't always aim for long time horizons. (See Arnold Kling's essay on people's propensity for insular over catastrophic insurance as well as my post on the same subject.) Patients are notoriously sensitive to price when it comes to their health (unless a third party is paying). Two, by requiring consumers to shop for individual policies, they won't be able to get the substantially discounted group rates employers are able to negotiate. Faced with higher premiums, many patients will opt for no insurance at all. Again, review the two links above for some insight on this behavior. Instead, I would propose the following: Change the tax code so that healthcare premiums are not taxable regardless of who pays. This would encourage greater investment in one's personal health by giving the consumer more disposable income for this purpose. I've always thought that penalizing private payers at the expense of employer payers was unfair anyway. Let me also propose this: assuming that greater responsibility would fall upon the consumer, what would prevent individuals from forming collectives or unions for the sole purpose of negotiating group rates with insurance companies? Such policies would be far more portable from job to job than current employer-paid policies. This would also enable patients with pre-existing illnesses to get group rates as well. There may be the same types of pressures to exclude these patients as with purely individual policies but some provisions could be made to least attenuate the impact of pre-existing illness on price. Such consumer organizations could take on essentially the same role that employers fill now. Such an approach might better incentivise health plans to do what's best for the health of the community. There is one other point that should be made. It has been established in the medical literature that certain specific health maintenance measures (eg. controlling hypertension) will improve clinical outcomes. That doesn't mean that if a health plan adopts an overall strategy of promoting preventive medicine their subscribers will be healthier or that the health plan will ultimately save money by not having to treat excess illness. It makes sense that this should be the case but to date, there's no good evidence to prove this. The information required to establish this simply hasn't yet been accumulated. Surprising huh? buy cilais Generic Viagra cialis buy cheap cialis

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from Michael Dobbs of the Washington Post on Wed., Jan. 19, 2005: During his four years as president of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers has earned a reputation for blunt, sometimes brutal comments. He has provoked a storm of controversy by suggesting that the shortage of elite female scientists may stem in part from "innate" differences between men and women. "I felt I was going to be sick," said Nancy Hopkins, a biology professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who listened to part of Summers' speech Friday [Jan. 14] to a session on the progress of women in academia organized by the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Mass. Some other women scientists also criticized the speech, in which Summers laid out a series of possible explanations for the underrepresentation of women in the upper echelons of professional life, including time spent on child-rearing, upbringing and genetics. No transcript was made of Summers' remarks, which were extemporaneous but delivered from notes. Summers' remarks were first reported by the Boston Globe in Monday's [Jan. 17] editions. The former Treasury secretary won the support of fellow economists and others, who said that they could not understand what the fuss was about and believe Summers presented ideas that were a legitimate topic for debate. "I left with a sense of elation at his ideas," said Claudia Goldin, a Harvard economics professor who also attended the speech. "I was proud that the president of my university retains the inquisitiveness of an academic." **** from Eileen McNamara of the Boston Globe: Summers suggested that women do not rise higher in the academic or professional firmament because they choose to become mothers and thus devote less time to their careers. "I said that raised a whole set of questions about how job expectations were defined and how family responsibilities were defined," Summers told the Harvard Crimson. [He did not return my call.] "But I said it didn't explain the differences [in the representation of females] between the sciences and mathematics and other fields." Why doesn't it? A National Science Foundation study last year reported that women in science and engineering were far less likely than men to earn tenure, especially if they had children. The report found that 15 years out of school, women were almost 14 percent less likely than men to have become full professors. Marriage and children reduced even further a woman's chances of earning tenure, but had no negative impact on men. That sounds like a cultural, not a biological, problem to me. Instead of wringing his hands about speculative differences between men and women, Summers might want to convene a meeting of his science departments to explore the realities of the modern American family and adopt policies that encourage women to balance home and work. Mentor women. Provide child care. Encourage flex-time. Stop the tenure clock during pregnancy or maternity leave. The academy is tailor-made for just such experimentation. Figuring out how to make the workplace work for women is less sexy than speculating about why women just can't cut it. Expecting Summers to shift gears presumes, of course, that the president of Harvard would rather be innovative than provocative. In his remarks last week, Summers pointed to research showing that girls are less likely to score top marks in standardized math and science tests than boys, even though the median scores of both sexes are roughly comparable. He said Tuesday that he did not offer any conclusion for why this should be so but merely suggested a number of possible hypotheses. end Globe ****** Mr. Summers received a B.S. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975 and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1982. He was Professor of Economics at Harvard from 1983-1993. ***** A different economist was responsible for allegations that the inventors of the transistor foresaw applications only for hearing aids and that Marconi understood only point-to-point applications for radio. Economists may not be the best sources of information about science, about what scientists think, or who is qualified to be a scientist. Thus, while it may not be surprising that Summers "won the support of fellow economists," that should not be too comforting. ****** Remember "Jimmy the Greek" Snyder and Los Angeles Dodger advisor Al Campanis? Maybe it's time for Summers to go. **** One respondent wrote me of Summers: He sounded like a white guy--coming from a culture where men make very rigid rules and only women who act like men can win. **** In a column "You can't say that at Harvard," (eg, Trenton Times, A13, Jan. 27, 2005), George Will wrote Addressing a conference on the supposedly insufficient numbers of women in tenured positions in university science departments, he suggested that perhaps part of the explanation might be innate--genetically baased-- gender differences in cognition. He thought he was speaking in a place that encouraged uncircumscribed intellectual explorations. (...) He was at Harvard, where he is president. Since then he has become a serial apologizer and accomplished groveler. buy cheap cialis generic viagra online cheap viagra cheap cialis

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This week is easy. Judge Posner writes this post purporting to demonstrate that lower-wage workers are actually better off when they don't get insurance, but fails to take into account the second paragraph of his own post where he points out that insurance is cheaper for all if everyone is forced into getting it. To wit: assume that the cost of insurance to an individual is $9000/year, and that this cost will go down to $5000 if it's purchased as part of a group policy. Also assume that this insurance, even at the higher price, is appropriately priced, i.e. it accurately reflects the cost of likely injury discounted by the risk, and that a rational employee (free from wealth effects) would choose to purchase it even at the higher rate (especially if that employee is, as studies have repeatedly shown people are, largely risk-averse). Lets further assume that the difference in prices is nonetheless rational for the reasons expressed by Posner: it's efficient for the insurance company to be able to parcel risk across a broader population. Now lets take Posner's figures and correct them with this in mind. Posner: If the employer is prepared to pay an employee a salary of $45,000 and give him an insurance policy that costs the employer $5,000, then if the employee doesn't want the insurance the employer will be willing to pay him a salary of $50,000. Suppose the employee has no significant assets--a realistic assumption if he is a low-income employee. Then if he becomes ill he'll be able to obtain medical care free of charge under Medicaid, though it will be of lower quality than paid-for care. Suppose the value of that lower-quality care is only $3,000. Nevertheless the employee is better off without the insurance; his net income will be $53,000 ($50,000 in salary plus $3,000 in insurance value) versus $50,000 ($45,000 in salary plus an insurance policy worth $5,000) with the insurance. Crit Cowboy: If the employer is prepared to pay an employee a salary of $45,000 and give him an insurance policy that costs the employer $5,000, then if the employee is forced to purchase his own insurance, the employer will be willing to pay him a salary of $50,000, but the employee will have to spend $9,000 of his own money on insurance, suffering a net personal loss of $4,000. Alternatively, he can forego medical insurance altogether. Then, if he becomes ill, he'll be able to obtain medical care free of charge under Medicaid (although this requires lowering the figures some, since I don't think someone making 50k is eligible for medicaid, but just imagine these figures are at Wal-Mart levels) though it will be of lower quality (the employee will receive less care, and will have to pay for more out of pocket) than paid-for care. Suppose the value of that lower-quality care is only $3,000. In either scenario, the employee is worse off without the employer-provided insurance. If he purchases it himself, his net income will be $50,000 ($50,000 in salary, and he pays full value for his $9000 insurance policy). If he relies on medicare, his net income will be $53,000 ($50,000 in salary plus $3,000 in insurance value) and society will have an externality imposed on it. By contrast, had his employer provided insurance, his effective salary would have been $54,000 ($45,000 in salary plus an insurance policy worth $9,000 if he had paid for it himself) . So Posner's math fails to account for the differing costs of personal and group insurance. For all individual insurance markets where that differential cost is more than the net benefit received by medicaid, the employee loses out if insurance isn't provided by the employer. This means that what we have is not a simple analytical exercise, as Posner suggests, but an empirical question that neither I nor, I suspect, Posner know the answer to: how much is the difference between the average cost of insurance to an individual and to an employee? Now lets move to Becker. Becker says that there's over-use of medical care. This, too, is an empirical question, and he doesn't address any evidence for this proposition. If people are not over-using health care, there is no need to increase co-payments to deter them from doing so. Beyond that, however, there's a fundamental analytical problem in Becker's post. Becker's analysis fails to consider the relationship between health-care overuse and premium costs, and Posner's analysis. If people over-use health care, their premiums will rise over time. If their premiums rise over time, their salaries will go down. So they're not externalizing the costs onto anyone. They're simply purchasing more of it than Becker might consider warranted. Is this a problem? To an economist? Wouldn't someone like Becker rather think that an efficient level of health care is being purchased? Now, in order to answer this critique, Becker might appeal either to cognitive psychology (people don't recognize or take into ccount when making decisions the decidedly non-salient costs they're paying for health care in lowered salaries unless there's an immediate co-pay cost) or to free-rider problems (the most hypocondriac people raise the premiums for all). Neither would be sufficient. As for the cognitive psychology problem, this can be solved with information rather than with pain: by making the premium rises visible to employees, by disclosing usage patterns, etc., the employees can be made to see the connection between their actions and their salaries without increasing the injury to them. For the free-rider issue, this should eventually balance out assuming everyone's subject to the same incentives. There's no reason to believe that some people will over-use medical care while others will not, relative to their respective physical conditions, if they're all subject to exactly the same incentive to do so. Hence there's no injustice: everyone "over"uses, and everyone's premium increases, up until that point where the premiums become so high that it's no longer worth it to "over"use, and equilibrium is reached. It's really microeconomics 101: this is how it's supposed to work. (Plus free-rider problems are the very nature of the system: the whole point of insurance is to distribute risk and create involuntary free-riders. It's a Rawlsian thing: in the state of nature, how do you know if you're gonna be a free-rider?) generic cialis cheap cialis generic viagra online cialis

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Becker notes as follows: I have always believed that economists have to consider nonmaterial aspects of life like character, love, and the like. Economics can deal in a useful way with these traits. This is the sort of off-hand comment that Becker and Posner make all too often that, in my view, dramatically impairs the value of their blog (and much law and economics scholarship in general): how can you just casually toss out an assertion like that? One of the core critiques of economics as both a positive and a normative analytical system is that it does not consider character, love, joy, peace, morality, fairness, etc., and that it is inherently unsuited to do so. The primary example is in the valuations of human life espoused by leading legal economists. Those L&E types who are notorious for participating in this behavior -- Kip Viscusi is probably the most prominent -- utterly fail to consider whether or not human life can be valued in a litigation context (i.e. a wrongful death suit) with reference to the deceased's relationships, creative effort, love, etc. etc.: they instead value a life solely based on the amount of money the deceased would take in order to incur a risk. See e.g. this article. and this one and (sigh) this one and this one etc. So how can Becker just baldly assert the ability of economics to take these noneconomic factors into account without any argument or evidence? I don't plan to comment on the latest round of Becker-Posner posts (on Japan's retirement system) unless something interesting pops up in the discussions: they're not very ambitious. Maybe Leisure Theory wants to do so. cheap cialis Cheap Viagra cialis Generic Viagra

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