no third solution » Archive
No Justice for Marcia Powell
Marcia Powell was probably not the most sympathetic figure; a middle-aged schizophrenic with no living relatives, and a repeat offender whose most offensive “crime” seems to have been prostitution, she was executed without trial, judge, or jury last May by employees of the State of Arizona corrections department. And after reviewing a 3,000 page report produced internally, prosecutors have declined to press any criminal charges against anyone in connection with Powell’s execution. Despite the fact that the county medical examiner cited heat exposure as the cause of Marcia Powell’s death, and despite the gruesome evidence (Powell had burns and blisters all over her body) and despite the fact that she had been kept in a cage in an Arizona desert for (allegedly not more than) … Read entire article »
Filed under: Police State
Consumption Spending is NOT “The Economy”
We are daily bombarded with variants of the “Consumption is 7/10 of the economy” argument. Governments constantly monitor spending, and they encourage people to spend rather than save or invest, because consumption spending is a necessity for debt-based currency. They know that the only way the system can continue is if people continue spending, mindlessly. But that doesn’t make a people rich (OK, it might make some people rich, but you are not one of them), it makes them slaves to their possessions. The only thing that can make people rich is production. An “economy” is not “spending”. An “economy” is a system of production and exchange in order to allocate scarce resources towards the alleviation of wants, needs and discomforts. When he wrote the General Theory, did Keynes know what … Read entire article »
Filed under: Economic Theory
Why Does the U.S. Spend More on Health Care?
The fact that the US spends more on health care is not particularly alarming. The NYT points out that, for the last 50 years the US has always spent more (as a % of GDP) on health care than the rest of the developed world. The problem is the velocity of change: health care expenditures are rising considerably faster in the US. If you want to make something more affordable, you cannot continue to spend more money on it, nor can you continue policies which encourage bloat and bureaucracy. To be quite fair, there are dozens if not hundreds of factors that have contributed to the price increases. The $100B/year tax subsidy given to corporations is pretty pervasive. Anyone who doesn’t work for a large corporation is at a … Read entire article »
Filed under: American Politics, Health Care, Rent Seeking