Archive for July, 2009
“Regulation kept this treatment from me”
Posted by The Marginalist in Links on July 31st, 2009
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Myrna Ulfik writes of her experiences battling cancer:
I took a different path, seeking a cancer vaccine. One had been developed at Stanford University 12 years earlier that had given 90% of patients very long remissions and cured some entirely. Unlike chemotherapy, there were no severe side effects.
But I couldn’t get the vaccine because the Food and Drug Administration required another trial that would take nine more years. Over-regulation has kept this treatment from patients for 21 years, as some 24,000 lymphoma patients died each year.
Richest 1% Pay More than 40% of Taxes
Posted by The Marginalist in Uncategorized on July 30th, 2009
Or, “Excuse for Me to Make a Graph”
HT Greg Mankiw: According to the Tax Foundation, the richest 1% pay more than 40% of taxes — the largest proportion paid by them in history, and more than the bottom 95%.
This is due, of course, to changing tax rates and increased income inequality over the past decades. I don’t think this graph tells the whole story, so I made my own. Statistics are from here, who got them from here.
The only thing useful I learned in high school physics was how to make graphs in Excel. Anywho, take from this graph what you will. But before I go, I’ll throw in one last very important graph that explains increasing income inequality over the past decades:
No, the rich aren’t richer because of a vast conspiracy to funnel all the money to the top 5%. It’s because our economy has shifted to a point where unskilled labor isn’t that useful anymore.
My Letter to the Editor
Posted by The Marginalist in Personal on July 27th, 2009
I managed to get my letter published on the Seattle Times’ website. My letter is here, third from the bottom. Or you could read it here:
Want competition? Government is already preventing it
President Obama is right: We need more competition in the health-care industry. Many areas of the country lack adequate competition in health-care plans.
But what puzzles me is why he believes we need the government to provide competition — after all, it’s government itself that is preventing competition.
Currently, many states bar individuals from buying out-of-state insurance plans that don’t meet state regulations. If the president is really serious about increasing competition, why doesn’t he call for allowing individuals to buy health-insurance plans out-of-state?
This would surely increase the number of plans available to people while forcing insurance companies to reduce their prices to compete.
– Preston Mui, Sammamish
My letter is, of course, above the person advocating single-payer health care.
“It’s Time to Make Some Tough Choices. Or We’re Doomed.”
Posted by The Marginalist in Links on July 25th, 2009
Cross-posted at Young Americans for Liberty
President Obama has promised that the health care bill will be “deficit neutral.” Regardless of whether you believe that or not (I don’t), that’s not going to be enough.
A few days ago, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released something called the “Long-Term Budget Outlook.” According to the CBO, the following will happen if we don’t change our ways:
A Reader Responds to Health Care
Posted by The Marginalist in Uncategorized on July 22nd, 2009
So Sam L responded to my 9 health care proposals, pointing out what he thought were some flaws in my health care package. I usually don’t respond to user comments, but this one was rather well thought-out. And I don’t know what to write about next, besides finding an article in the Wall Street Journal and writing some snarky comment about government.
So here’s how it’ll be: Sam managed to write a comment that was well organized, point-by-point, so I’ll quote each point and respond to it. However, I do not want to turn this blog into something where I’m debating commenters, so from now on the policy is that I will respond to comments once, but no more. So if Sam writes something else, I’ll let him have the last word.
Bold emphasis is added by me. After the jump, of course.
Fun Tax Lesson of the Day
Posted by The Marginalist in Microeconomic Muses on July 20th, 2009
So, as many of you might know, I busk on the side to make a little cash when I have the time (I’m currently not employed). I’ve been out three times and I’ve made a couple hundred dollars, which means I’m getting close to having to legally pay income taxes. From the IRS site:
You must pay SE [self employment]tax and file Schedule SE (Form 1040) if either of the following applies.
- Your net earnings from self-employment (excluding church employee income ) were $400 or more.
- You had church employee income of $108.28 or more.
One wonders, of course, how they came up with the number “$108.28 for church employees. But I’m not a church employee, so let’s ignore that for now.
If I make $399, I don’t have to pay income taxes. I pay income taxes when someone drops that extra dollar into my violin case.
Let’s say I made $400. I’d pay income taxes of 15.3%, or $61.20. Which means that extra dollar would actually reduce my income by $60.20. It wouldn’t make any sense for me to keep playing after that. If I made $471, taxes would take away enough money to leave me with $399.
I earn about $45/hour busking at farmer’s markets. $399 takes me about 9 hours to make. $471 takes me about 10.5 hours. So apparently working 9 hours and 10.5 hours leave me with the same amount of money. Fun. Which one do you think I’d choose?
For fun, let’s throw in a poorly-made (Graphmatica + Paint) graph of self-employment.
Notice: If I receive $450 in tips, I end up with less money than if I received $399 in tips.
OK, OK, most people are making more than $400 a year and don’t have to worry about this kind of stuff (of course, yours truly has to worry about it!). It’s not likely that many people are going to be hit by this aspect of self employment tax policy. But it just goes to show: taxes discourage work.
Work is production — I produce a service (music) that improves the well-being of the people who I give it to (no, I’m not being arrogant about my music. I know this because people give me money when I play, so they obviously either have immense pity or immense admiration, and I’d like to believe the latter).
Ergo, taxes discourage production. If you want less of something, you tax it.
My 9 Policy Proposals to Improve Health Care
Posted by The Marginalist in Uncategorized on July 19th, 2009
I guess it’s pretty easy for me to criticize other peoples’ health care proposals. So, in the endless boredom of a summer with nothing to do, I’ll offer my take on how to deal with our health care problem. Here we go.
Yeah, I know this is long. Bear with me.
Read the rest of this entry »
The President’s July 17th Healthcare Reform Speech: My Response
Posted by The Marginalist in Politics on July 18th, 2009
Yesterday, July 17th, President Obama gave a press conference on health reform, probably in response to the recent CBO report that pointed out that health care reform would cost over $1 trillion in the next ten years. Moderate Democrats are getting antsy about the immense cost and how to pay for it, worried that a rise in taxes will threaten their political careers in 2010.
I only have the CNBC footage, not the text of his remarks, so these are my own ad verbatim transcriptions of key parts of his speech I want to talk about. I hope I’ve copied his remarks as close as I could to what they really are. Any bold emphasis is added by me. Here we go: Read the rest of this entry »
My Glasses Broke
Posted by The Marginalist in Personal on July 15th, 2009
I’ve been using an old pair of glasses, but they’re not all that comfortable and the prescription isn’t perfect. They work, but not as well as I’d want them to. So I went to the glasses store to get my nosepad replaced, and they told me the thing holding the screw in was broken. I’d have to get a new pair of glasses.
Now, my insurance — yeah, you knew I’d get to economics — doesn’t cover a new pair of glasses for me, at least not all of the cost. The new frame would cost me hundreds of dollars, and I’m just not willing to pay that right now. Even if it cost me $50, I wouldn’t buy them.
That’s not a bad thing.
You see, as much as I’d like to have that new pair of glasses, I didn’t need it. So, as an individual consumer facing both the benefit and the cost of my consumption, I made the tradeoff between the resources needed for glasses and the benefit of new glasses. the benefit was simply so low that it wasn’t worth the cost.
But you see, if I was insured in the normal way health insurance works, someone else would bear that cost for me. I’d get the glasses no matter how much they cost or how many resources they used, as long as someone else was paying for it. And I’d get all the bells and whistles for it, too, no matter whether I really had a need for them or not.
That’s the way most health insurance works in the U.S. today, and it’s part of why health care is so damn expensive. Health insurance today involves a third party — the government or an HMO — paying for all your medical treatment, even routine checkups. As a result, no one pays attention to what the doctor is charging, or whether they really need the treatments they’re getting.
We overconsume, prices go up, people without health insurance (rightfully) complain, and here we are today.
Anyways, I’ve been talking a lot about health care lately (well, it’s in the news…) and in the next few days I’m going to lay out my plan for health insurance.
An End to the Era of Lobbyi — Oops. Scratch That.
Posted by The Marginalist in Links on July 13th, 2009
Paul over at Power Line writes:
I am reliably informed that Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office sent an email to a number of lobbyists for corporations asking their companies to pay for “thank you” ads for ten Democrats who voted for the House cap-and-trade legislation. The ten Democratic members presumably are those most vulnerable in 2010 by virtue of their vote. They are:
John Boccierri (D-OH-16)
Zach Space (D-OH-18)
Mary Jo Kilroy (D-OH-15)
Steve Driehaus (D-OH-1)
Frank Kratovil (D-MD-1)
Mark Schauer (D-MI-7)
Martin Heinrich (D-NM-1)
Baron Hill (D-IN-9)
Leonard Boswell (D-IA-3)
Scott Murphy (D-NY-20)One can only imagine what the reaction would have been to a comparable attempt at strong-arming by Tom DeLay.