I just wanted to let everyone know that starting today I will be blogging at the American Catholic and Southern Appeal. I’ve really valued my time as a contributor at Vox Nova, and have profited hugely from our discussions here. I wish everyone the best.
Is Sotomayor Pro-Life?
May 28, 2009Some pro-abortion groups are concerned that she might be:
President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court has provoked concern from abortion rights advocates, who say they have seen no evidence that she supports upholding Roe vs. Wade.
In 2002, Sotomayor rejected a challenge to President George W. Bush’s so-called Mexico City policy, which required foreign groups receiving U.S. funds to pledge that they would not support or promote abortion.
16 Comments | 
Abortion, Blackadder, Law, Supreme Court | 
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Posted by Blackadder
Where Did Belloc Go Wrong?
May 27, 2009In my last post, I noted that the major thesis of Belloc’s The Servile State – that modern capitalism was inevitably tending towards the reemergence of legalized slavery – has been proven wrong by history. Belloc’s prediction, however, was supported by what at the time would have seemed like quite probable arguments. Why, then, has the servile state failed to materialize?
To see where Belloc’s chain of reasoning went wrong, we need to look closer at his account of how exactly the condition of legally compelled labor was supposed to reassert itself. As noted previously, Belloc considered the two main devices that would lead to the re-enslavement of the masses to be 1) unemployment insurance, and 2) the minimum wage. Read the rest of this entry »
5 Comments | 
Blackadder, Capitalism, Distributism, Labor, Living Wage | 
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Vox Nova at the Library: The Servile State
May 25, 2009The thesis of Hilaire Belloc’s The Servile State is summed up by a prediction offered by Mr. Belloc in the first paragraph of the book’s introduction (emphasis in original):
This book is written to maintain and prove the following truth: That our free modern society in which the means of production are owned by a few being necessarily in unstable equilibrium, it is tending to reach a condition of stable equilibrium by the establishment o compulsory labor legally enforceable upon those who do not own the means of production for the advantage of those who do.
Most everything appearing in the book is dedicated, directly or indirectly, to supporting this prediction. Read the rest of this entry »
25 Comments | 
Blackadder, Books, Capitalism, Distributism | 
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Credit Confusion
May 20, 2009As I write this, the Congress is preparing to pass a bill that would place restrictions on the ability of people to get credit. Personally, I have mixed feelings about the bill. On the one hand, when you make it harder for (mainly poor) people to get credit cards, you encourage them to turn to less savory means of obtaining credit. On the other hand, it’s at least arguable that some of the common irrationalities demonstrated by behavioral economics are present in the credit card market (whether the bill will actually address these problems is another story). And then there’s this.
But I don’t really want to argue about the credit card bill. Rather, I wanted to note an odd premise that both the pro and anti credit bill folks seem to be relying on in making their respective cases. Read the rest of this entry »
5 Comments | Blackadder, Economics, Seeing | Permalink
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Israel and Laissez Faire
May 18, 2009In the course of one of his magnificently twisted rambling posts, Mencius Moldbug* addresses the Israel/Palestinian conflict, and specifically the claim that U.S. foreign policy is unduly influenced by the “Israel lobby”:
Which side of the Arab-Israeli conflict does the US support? Obviously, both are “special interests,” and an easy way to tell whose pull is stronger is to see whose side USG favors.
There’s a wrong way to answer this question and a right way. The wrong way is to start by asking: what should US foreign policy in the Middle East be?
Having answered this question, we can define the answer as the “center,” and then compare what USG’s policies are to what they should be. Ie, if USG’s policies are more pro-Israeli than the center, the pole is tilted to the right, and the Israel lobby must be stronger. If USG’s policies are more pro-Arab than the center, the pole is tilted to the left, etc, etc.
This procedure is not useful because, to answer the question, we must first judge the dispute . . .But this judgment is not relevant to the problem at hand, namely, ascertaining objectively which lobby is stronger.
12 Comments | Blackadder, Foreign Affairs, Israel | Permalink
Posted by Blackadder
Sola Scriptura and the Constitution
May 17, 2009Conservatives who advocate originalism or textualism when in comes to interpreting the Constitution are sometimes accused of advocating a “sola scriptura” view of the Constitution. Since such charges are typically made by Catholics to Catholics, the allegation has a certain sting to it, as if holding a particular theory of constitutional interpretation someone made one a bad Catholic.
Yet there needn’t be anything inconsistent about interpreting the Constitution in one way and the Bible in another. The Bible is the inspired Word of God, given to us for the salvation of souls; the Constitution is a legal document. What’s sauce for the goose ain’t necessarily sauce for the gander in such a context. Read the rest of this entry »
37 Comments | Blackadder, Interpretation, Law | Permalink
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Stagnant Thinking III: Where to Begin
May 16, 2009Previous in Series: The Price of Progress?
In my last post I noted that while the real median income for all workers in up more than 30% over the last 35 years, the real median income of White men isn’t much higher than it was in the early 1970s. In describing this phenomenon, I have spoken of wages being “flat” or “stagnant.” This is the common way of speaking about the matter, but it is inaccurate. To say that wages for a given group were “flat” or “stagnant” during a given period implies that they remained largely unchanged throughout that period. But the fact that wages are more or less the same at the end of a given period as at the beginning doesn’t mean that they have remained unchanged throughout that period, anymore than a roller coaster must be flat because you start and stop at the same point. Read the rest of this entry »
1 Comment | Blackadder, Progress, Statistics | Permalink
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Stagnant Thinking II: The Price of Progress?
May 14, 2009Previous in Series: Introduction.
As I noted last time, the claim that real wages have been stagnant over the last several decades is a common place among certain groups. But is it true?
A look at the Census Bureau’s Historical Income Tables shows that the median income for individuals was more than 30% higher in real terms in 2007 than in 1974 (from $20,230 to $26,625 in 2007 dollars). Of course, the fact that real median income for society as a whole is up 30% over the last 35 years doesn’t mean that real median income was up that much for all groups within American society. Breaking down data based on race and sex, what one finds is that while real median income for women roughly doubled in the period between 1974 and 2007 (from $11,687 to $20,922 in 2007 dollars) and real median income for blacks increased by nearly fifty percent (from $14,338 to $21,888 in 2007 dollars) the real median income for White and Hispanic men was virtually the same in 2007 as in 1974 (from $33,575 to $35,141 in 2007 dollars for Whites, $24,432 to $24,451 in 2007 dollars for Hispanics). No doubt if one was to focus on even more specific subcategories, one could find groups that where real median wages were doing even better or even worse than the above, but of course as a simply matter of statistics any subgroup you found doing worse would have to be more than balanced by other groups doing better (since real median wages overall are up 30+%). Read the rest of this entry »
11 Comments | Blackadder, Economy, Equality, Progress, Statistics | Permalink
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Stagnant Thinking: An Introduction
May 13, 2009The recently canceled television series Life on Mars featured a somewhat unusual premise. The show’s protagonist, Sam Tyler, is a cop in present day New York City who, after being hit by a car, finds himself mysteriously transported back to the year 1973. The show was a strange blend of police drama and science fiction, as Tyler sought to undercover how he had ended up in the past, and whether anything that was happening to him was even real.
The premise of the show was, as I said, somewhat odd. But equally odd is that, according to plenty of pundits and commentators across the political spectrum, Tyler may actually have lucked out in being sent back in time. The reason for this, according to these commentators, is that once you account for inflation the material condition (or at least the wages) of the typical American are no better, and may in fact be considerably worse, than in the early in 1970s. The following snippet from a recent Bob Herbert column in the New York Times is typical:
As hard as it may be to believe, the peak income year for the bottom 90 percent of Americans was way back in 1973, when the average income per taxpayer, adjusted for inflation, was $33,000. That was nearly $4,000 higher . . . than in 2005.
Men have done particularly poorly. Men who are now in their 30s — the prime age for raising families — earn less money than members of their fathers’ generation did at the same age.
8 Comments | Blackadder, Economy, Equality, Progress, Statistics | Permalink
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Stop the Presses: Vatican Gives Positive Review for Angels and Demons
May 8, 2009Well, sort of. If you read past the title of this Huffington Post piece on the subject, the review (from L’Osservatore Romano) doesn’t sound all that positive (I guess calling it “harmless” is kind of positive).
My understanding is that in Brown’s previous book, the Catholic Church was accused of murdering millions of women and of perpetrating the greatest conspiracy of all time in furtherance of its anti-women agenda. Whereas in Angels and Demons, the Church is the victim of a giant conspiracy, and is accused of having killed a few thousand people in furtherance of its anti-science agenda. So I suppose that’s progress. Read the rest of this entry »
4 Comments | Blackadder, Church History, Film, Vatican | Permalink
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Reading Marx on the Crisis
May 7, 2009It is common knowledge that the patron saint of Vox Nova is Karl Marx (after all, he *is* on our banner, along with such notorious commies as Adam Smith and Bono; also, if you play this video backwards you can hear the words “Policraticus is dead” in the background, but I digress). So it’s only natural that I spend a few moments surveying the recent bloom of commentary relating Marx to the current financial crisis.
The CPUSA is, of course, opposed to the bailouts. But as the SSPX of communism, they are perhaps not the best guide here (don’t they realize that all that class conflict stuff went out with Vatican II?).
But while the leaders of actual Communist Countries don’t seem to care much for Marx these days, a renewed appreciation for the man does seem to be spreading in other places. Writing in the Atlantic and Foreign Policy respectively, Christopher Hitchens and Leo Panitch write that Marx was one of the first to note the periodic financial crises that beset capitalist countries. Also writing at Foreign Policy, Matt Yglesias writes that this is a silly reason to read Marx, as the idea that the business cycle is inherent in capitalism is an insight broadly shared across the theoretical spectrum. Yglesias still thinks that reading Marx is important, however, on account of his unique insight that “wealth and power have a tremendous ability to gin up self-justifying narratives.”
Probably the most helpful analysis of the question (of the one’s I’m linking to, anyway) comes from this recent lecture by Brad DeLong:
Marx the economist was among the very first to recognize that the fever-fits of financial crisis and depression that afflict modern market economies were not a passing phase or something that could easily be cured, but rather a deep disability of the system – as we are being reminded once again right now, this time with Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, and Larry Summers in the Hot Seats. Marx pointed the spotlight in the right direction here. However, I don’t think that his theory of business cycles and financial crises holds up. Marx thought that business cycles and financial crises were evidence of the long-term unsustainability of the system. We modern neoliberal economists view it not as a fatal lymphoma but rather like malaria: Keynesianism – or monetarism, if you prefer – gives us the tools to transform the business cycle from a life-threatening economic yellow fever of the society into the occasional night sweats and fevers: that with economic policy quinine we can manage if not banish the disease.
Actually the whole DeLong lecture is probably worth your time.
4 Comments | Blackadder, Economy, Finances, Marxism | Permalink
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The Rich Have More
May 6, 2009There is an article in the New York Times Magazine by an American expat living in Holland about how having the government take more than half your paycheck isn’t as bad as it seems. It’s a pretty good article, and if America is headed in a more social democratic direction (as I fear we may be) then we would do well to look more towards the sensible policies of some more socially democratic countries, rather than the sort of populist demagoguery that is sometimes popular on the American left.
Anyway, what caught my eye in this piece in particular was the following bit:
The Dutch are free-marketers, but they also have a keen sense of fairness. As Hoogervorst noted, “The average Dutch person finds it completely unacceptable that people with more money would get better health care.” The solution to balancing these opposing tendencies was to have one guaranteed base level of coverage in the new health scheme, to which people can add supplemental coverage that they pay extra for.
Note that the third sentence contradicts the second. The Dutch find it totally unacceptable that the rich should get better health care than everyone else; that’s why they designed their system so that the rich could get better health care than everyone else. Read the rest of this entry »
8 Comments | Blackadder, Capitalism, Equality, Europe, Health Care | Permalink
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Better Than Taxes
May 4, 2009In the course of a recent post on Warren Buffett and the Efficient Market Hypothesis, Scott Sumner made the following aside:
Bill Gates essentially taxed middle class consumers all over the developed world, and is giving almost all of the money to the disadvantged in poor countries. That’s something governments don’t do, and yet for his “monopoly profits” he is despised by many on the left.
This prompted a hearty Amen from Arnold Kling, who added:
There is a huge contest going on between politicians and rich people over who should get to spend their money. Most of us have no direct stake in the outcome–as neither politicians nor rich people, we will not have the choice.
But I think we really ought to be rooting for the rich people. That is, we should root for lower taxes and less government spending. Government is one of the worst charities in the world. It advertises that it is going to give money to worthy causes, but very little money goes to programs that are aimed at people in need, and not many of those programs hit their targets. All of the bleeding hearts who are thrilled by the idea of government closing tax loopholes and taking more money from rich people should do an empirical analysis of who benefits from government spending and who benefits from the spending of rich people.
11 Comments | Blackadder, Charity, Politics, Taxing | Permalink
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When Have You Changed Your Mind?
May 2, 2009There is a famous quote, often misattributed to Churchill, that if you’re not a liberal at 20 you have no heart, but if you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 40 you have no brain. Given my political history, I’ve already shown myself to be heartless. Whether I shall prove myself to be brainless as well remains to be seen. To quote an magic eight ball: outlook not good. It did occur to me the other day, however, that despite not following the trajectory set forth above, I have changed my mind on a lot of political issues over the years. To give a very non-exhaustive list, at one time or another I have supported each of the following: Read the rest of this entry »
13 Comments | Blackadder, Politics | Permalink
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Economics for People Who Hate Capitalism
April 30, 2009So if you’re like me, you’ve spent a lot of time (probably too much time) searching for the perfect introductory guide to economics, something to recommend to people who are interested in learning more about the subject or who, in your own arrogant opinion, would benefit from learning more about the subject. Such a book, to be ideal, would have to meet two criteria:
1) It would have to set forth the sometimes difficult and/or counter-intuitive ideas of economics in a way that is compelling and easy to understand (yet not overly simplistic); and
2) It must be a book that people will actually read.
Sadly, finding a book that meets these criteria is harder than it might appear. I’ve looked at plenty of contenders, but virtually every book I’ve come across has had some major drawback or flaw. Either it’s too technical, or too dated, or it leaves too much out, or most of it is excellent, but there is one part that will turn off anyone who reads it so thoroughly as to nullify any effect the rest of the book might have.
After viewing this episode of Bloggingheads, I’m considering making Filthy Lucre: Economics for People Who Hate Capitalism my standard recommendation, at least for people who are broadly speaking left-of-center. The book’s author, Joseph Heath, is a philosophy professor at the University of Toronto, student of Charles Taylor, expert on Habermas, and author of The Efficient Society: Why Canada is as Close to Utopia as it Gets and The Rebel Sell: How the Counter Culture Became Consumer Culture. Heath is no one’s idea of a right-winger, but he also acknowledges that a lot of arguments made by the left are premised on a faulty understanding of how the economy can and does work. Read the rest of this entry »
6 Comments | Blackadder, Books, Capitalism, Economics | Permalink
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Quote of the Week: Elizabeth Anscombe
April 25, 2009Principles that are mistakenly high and strict are a trap; they may easily lead in the end directly or indirectly to the justification of monstrous things. Thus if the evangelical counsel about poverty were turned into a precept forbidding property owning, people would pay lip service to it as the ideal, while in practice they went in for swindling. “Absolute honesty!” it would be said: “I can respect that – but of course that means having no property; and while I respect those who follow that course, I have to compromise with the sordid world myself.” If then one must “compromise with evil” by owning property and engaging in trade then the amount of swindling one does will depend on convenience. This imaginary case is paralleled by what is so commonly said: absolute pacifism is an ideal; unable to follow that, and committed to “compromise with evil,” one must go whole hog and wage war a outrance…. Read the rest of this entry »
6 Comments | Blackadder, Quotes, War and Peace | Permalink
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If Only We Were More Like Europe
April 24, 2009Another Scott Sumner gem:
Let’s say the center of power in America is in the center. In that case neither liberals nor conservatives will be able to construct the sort of society that they dream about. In frustration, they will demonize the other side, and take some extreme; and perhaps unrealistic positions. In particular, liberals will be able to indulge in the very satisfying sport of capitalism–bashing.
Now let’s assume that in Northwestern Europe (especially the Nordic countries (including Holland), but to a lesser extent the other countries north of the Alps and west of Poland) the center of the political spectrum is “liberal” as the term is defined in America. So they are successful in erecting a large welfare state. Once they achieve this success, however, they start running into problems. The heavy tax and subsidy burden starts slowing growth in the 1970s and 1980s. Unemployment rises sharply. In response they frantically cut away at all sorts of non-essential statist interventions, anti-market policies that don’t seem to have much egalitarian benefit. In particular, they do the following:
15 Comments | Blackadder, Europe, Liberalism | Permalink
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The Weak Case for Torture
April 23, 2009I am probably in the minority at this blog in that I watch a fair amount of Fox News, frequent conservative blogs, etc. Most days this isn’t a problem as the slanted noise machine talking points mislabeled as news one gets from these sources are in line with my own Radical Individualist Calvinist Capitalist Stooge beliefs. Occasionally, however, the experience can be a painful one, and the last couple of days, with all the renewed attention on the use of waterboarding and other forms of tor- er, “enhanced interrogation” have been some of the most painful in recent memory.
The latest meme running through these sites is that while it may be honorable to be opposed to torture on principle, we ought to be reasonable and just admit that torture works. Here, for example, is Jonah Goldberg:
I have no objection to the moral argument against torture — if you honestly believe something amounts to torture. But the “it doesn’t work” line remains a cop out, no matter how confidently you bluster otherwise.
48 Comments | Blackadder, Torture | Permalink
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Vox Nova at the Movies: The End of the Affair
April 22, 2009
This is an awful movie based on a fabulous book. Don’t see it. Read the rest of this entry »
12 Comments | Blackadder, Books, Film | Permalink
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Vox Nova at the Library: Human Smoke
April 19, 2009Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke: The Beginnings of WWII and the End of Civilization is a haunting and sometimes horrifying revisionist look at the lead up to and early years of the Second World War. The book is composed entirely of small vignettes (ranging in length from a paragraph to a few pages) drawn from newspaper accounts, diaries, memoirs, official documents, and other largely contemporary sources. While this style leaves little room for direct argumentation, the main theses of the book are fairly clear and may be summarized as follows:
1. The Allies during WWII (particularly Britain) engaged in numerous atrocities, violations of civil liberties, etc. during the war, and in some cases did so before the Germans.
2. The leaders of the Allied powers (particularly FDR and Churchill) wanted war, and in the case of FDR did everything in his power to provoke an attack.
3. That the Allied powers didn’t particularly care about the Jews, and that the Holocaust could have been averted had the United States and Britain allowed Jews to immigrate as refugees (something which was considered but rejected).
4. That Hitler was a madman in the literal sense of the term. Read the rest of this entry »
3 Comments | Blackadder, Books, History, War and Peace | Permalink
Posted by Blackadder
Our Regressive Welfare State
April 17, 2009Let’s start with what I would expect is an uncontroversial sounding principle (call it the progressive principle): if the government is going to run a social assistance program, the average income of the people paying for the program should be higher than the average income of the people benefiting from the program.
The justification for this principle is, as I say, common sensical. Most people support the idea of redistribution, but it’s usually redistribution from the rich to the poor that they have in mind. Redistribution from the poor to the rich (or from the poor to the poor) would, I think, strike most people as perverse.
Yet the odd thing is that quite a large portion of the modern “social assistance state” violates this very principle. Both Medicare and Social Security, for example, involve redistribution not to the poor, but to the old, who are statistically speaking much wealthier than the average American (here is one analysis of the question regarding Social Security; I’m confident that if you ran the numbers for Medicare you’d get the same result). Not only that, but the funding for Social Security and Medicare comes mainly from taxes that are highly regressive. Read the rest of this entry »
6 Comments | Blackadder, Education, Health Care, Poverty, Progress, Public Policy, Social Security, Taxing | Permalink
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On the Tyranny of Standing in Line
April 16, 2009Stuart Buck has a post up about political consistency. People say they object on principle to X, and make quite a stink about it, yet they show comparatively little concern for Y, which is arguably just as bad. His examples: people object loudly to the use of torture in interrogation, but are fairly quite when it comes to the use of solitary confinement (which many claim is as psychologically damaging as torture) or sexual abuse in prisons; they object to the government finding out which books people have checked out of the library under the Patriot Act, but not the much more intrusive information a person has to give to the government when paying his taxes.
Stuart blames this inconsistency on partisanship. No doubt there is a lot of that, but I think that the examples he gives illustrate a deeper and even more puzzling phenomenon. When it comes to the question of how to balance the protection of civil liberties against the needs and interests of society, it seems to me that there are three coherent approaches:
1. Protecting civil liberties should always trump the needs of society;
2. The needs of society should always trump civil liberties; or
3. Civil liberties should receive less protection where the needs of society are weighty, and greater protection as they become less weighty.
So, for example, one might rationally give less protection to civil liberties in cases involving, say, threats to national security than in cases involving traffic safety. Read the rest of this entry »
3 Comments | Blackadder, Dissent | Permalink
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The Tax Man Cometh
April 15, 2009
A couple of things here.
First, note the lyrics “There’s one for you/Nineteen for me,” and “Should five percent/Appear too small/Be thankful I don’t/Take it all.” Unbelievable as it may now seem, the marginal tax rate in Britain at the time was 95% (and the American rate wasn’t much lower). Today no country has marginal rates anywhere near that high (so quit yer complainin’ – things could be a lot worse!) Read the rest of this entry »
10 Comments | Blackadder, Taxing | Permalink
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Quote of the Week: John Updike
April 14, 2009Make no mistake: if he rose at all
It was as His body;
If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit,
The amino acids rekindle,
The Church will fall.
It was not as the flowers,
Each soft spring recurrent;
It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the
Eleven apostles;
It was as His flesh; ours.
The same hinged thumbs and toes
The same valved heart
That–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then regathered
Out of enduring Might
New strength to enclose. Read the rest of this entry »
3 Comments | Blackadder, Church History, Literature, Quotes | Permalink
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Of Bootleggers and Baptists
April 13, 2009Last week I was accused of being a stooge for the powerful. It wasn’t the first time, and it probably won’t be the last. What did I say that caused this charge? I suggested that the market should be given a greater role in the provision of health care.
Well, then, you might say, what more need have we of witnesses. Everybody knows that free markets are in the interests of the powerful. That’s why big businesses are so opposed to government intervention in the economy.
Changing the subject completely, I was reading an article in the DC Examiner only a few hours later when my eyes fell upon the following sentence:
Philip Morris, openly and without qualification, backs Kennedy’s and Waxman’s bills to heighten regulation of tobacco.
23 Comments | Blackadder, Capitalism, Politics | Permalink
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Here Comes Everybody
April 9, 2009The other day I was reading Pope Benedict’s book Jesus of Nazareth and was struck by a particular passage. In describing the calling of the apostles, Benedict notes that they represented a wide cross section of Jewish society at the time, from peasant fishermen to Hellenized Jews, from members of what we might today call a terrorist organization opposed to foreign occupation, to what we might call a collaborator with that occupier. Pope Benedict then goes on to state:
We may presume that all of the Twelve were believing and observant Jews who awaited the salvation of Israel. But in terms of their actual opinions, of their thinking about the way Israel was to be saved, they were an extremely varied group.
As a member of a Church that includes both Father Sirico and Mark and Louise Zwick, I can certainly relate. Sometimes in seems that no matter the political fight, you are likely to find Catholics on both sides of the issue (even if they tend more towards one side or another in a given case). Often these fights can be quite acrimonious. Lord knows I’ve contributed my fair share to such acrimony. But especially as it is Holy Week, we need to remember that Christ died for all of us, whatever political disagreements we might have.
1 Comment | Blackadder, Church History, Politics, Pope Benedict XVI | Permalink
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Obama Open to Geoengineering As a Solution to Climate Change
April 8, 2009The president’s new science adviser said Wednesday that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth’s air.
John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed. One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays. Holdren said such an experimental measure would only be used as a last resort.
7 Comments | Blackadder, Climate Change, Global Warming, Science | Permalink
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Like Breadlines, But For Healthcare
April 7, 2009In the LA Times, Ezra Klein extols the advantages of Britain and Canada’s healthcare systems as against the American system:
Britain and Canada control costs in a very specific fashion: The government sets a budget for how much will be spent on healthcare that year, and the system figures out how to spend that much and no more. One of the ways the British and Canadians save money is to punt elective surgeries to a lower priority level. A 2001 survey by the policy journal “Health Affairs” found that 38% of Britons and 27% of Canadians reported waiting four months or more for elective surgery. Among Americans, that number was only 5%. Score one of us!
Well, sort of. American healthcare controls costs in another way. Rather than deciding as a society how much will be spent in the coming year and then figuring out how best to spend it, we abdicate collective responsibility and let individuals fend for themselves.
Writing at Econlog, Arnold Kling takes issue with the claim that Americans are left to fend for themselves when it comes to health care. But whether or not this is how America deals with healthcare costs, it is how we control the costs of lots of other things. Like food. Read the rest of this entry »
37 Comments | Blackadder, Capitalism, Communism, Food, Health Care | Permalink
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Vox Nova at the Library: The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath
April 6, 2009Robert Samuelson’s The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath tells the story of America’s battle with double digit inflation in the 1970s. As Samuelson tells the story, in the post-WWII period economists and politicians began to think that they could use the insights of Keynesian economics to fine tune the economy. According to Keynes, there was a fundamental economic trade off between inflation and unemployment. By using its control over the money supply, then, the government could induce a small amount of inflation, which would lead to lower unemployment and hence higher overall output.
The problem was that while inflation did in fact lead to a drop in unemployment, the effect was only temporary. At first an infusion of cash into an economy would boost demand for goods and services and lower interest rates (as people mistook the increase in dollars with an increase in wealth). Eventually, however, people would begin to catch on to what was happening, at which point a higher level of inflation would be needed to achieve the same effect. By the early 1970s, the United States was facing both high unemployment, high interest rates, and high levels of inflation, something which according to standard Keynesian theory should have been impossible. Read the rest of this entry »
2 Comments | Blackadder, Books, Capitalism, Economics, Economy, History | Permalink
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Vox Nova at the Library: The White Man’s Burden
April 3, 2009In the sixty plus years since the end of WWII, Western governments and aid agencies have dolled out more than $2 trillion dollars in economic assistance to the world’s poorer nations as a means of economic development. The results of all this assistance, to put it mildly, have been far from stunning. Numerous studies have found no positive effect of foreign aid on economic growth, and there is even some evidence that the impact may be negative.
And while some countries have seen spectacular growth in recent years (to the point where the standard of living in these formerly “Third World” countries now exceeds that of many places in the West), this growth has tended to be in countries that have received little in aid. Read the rest of this entry »
5 Comments | Africa, Blackadder, Books, Charity, Economics, Foreign Affairs, Globalization, Latin America, Postcolonialsim, Poverty, Progress | Permalink
Posted by Blackadder
“Cheap coal” and the logic of sacrifice
April 2, 2009They charge us [Christians] on two points: that we do not sacrifice and that we do not believe in the same gods as the State.
- Athenagoras, A Plea Regarding Christians 13, c. A.D. 177
It is because other so-called gods do not right the wrongs of this world that they expose themselves as not gods.
- George Pixley
I’m honestly growing weary of Blackadder’s constant capitalist faith statements here at Vox Nova which blatantly ignore the real lives of actual people. His latest involves astonishingly absurd statements about the costs of coal, given to us through his parroting of quotes from the apparently equally ignorant physicist Freeman Dyson. Having just returned from my second annual Appalachian Studies Association conference — a gathering of activists, academics, educators, musicians and artists — and having heard first hand the stories of real people involved in the issues Blackadder dares to pontificate about, I feel the need to comment.
The New York Times Magazine article BA quotes says of Dyson, “Dyson has great affection for coal and for one big reason: It is so inexpensive that most of the world can afford it.” No where, apparently, do Dyson or BA consider why coal is “inexpensive” or what the true, hidden costs of coal mining might be for human persons and the ecosystems in which it takes place.
49 Comments | America, Appalachia, Blackadder, Capitalism, Catholic Social Teaching, Consequentialism, Culture of Death, Economics, Energy, Environmentalism, Global Warming, Human Person, Lent, Lies, Michael Iafrate, Politics, Pro-Life, Progress, Solidarity, Violence | Permalink
Posted by Michael J. Iafrate
Dysonism or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Coal
April 2, 2009Last week’s New York Times Magazine contained a very interesting profile of Freeman Dyson. Dyson is a famed physicist, anti-war and anti-nuclear activist, and Obama supporter. He is also a global warming skeptic.
Actually, ‘global warming skeptic’ is a bit of a misnomer. From from I could glean from the article, Dyson agrees that the Earth is getting warmer and that human activity is probably responsible. His disagreements with the “consensus” touted by Al Gore et al. focus on what should be done about it. According to Dyson, the potential negative consequences of global warming have been overblown, and are partly offset by some positive consequences that a warmer earth might bring. In addition, what negative consequences global warming does bring can be ameliorated much lower cost than what would be required to stop climate change simply by controlling emissions (Dyson’s own preferred solution is to use massive carbon sequestration, possibly with plants genetically engineered to eat up large amounts of carbon).
Here is a taste: Read the rest of this entry »
58 Comments | Blackadder, Climate Change, Energy, Environmentalism, Global Warming, Poverty | Permalink
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Eccumenical Economics
April 1, 2009Two stories. First up, from our brothers and sisters to the East, comes a baptismal incentivized baby boom:
Two years after having one of the lowest birth rates in the world, Georgia is enjoying something of a baby boom, following an intervention from the country’s most senior cleric.
At the end of 2007, in a move to reverse the Caucasian country’s dwindling birth figures, the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Ilia II, came up with an incentive. He promised to personally baptise any baby born to parents of more than two children.
There was only one catch: the baby had to be born after the initiative was launched.
The results are, in the words of the Georgian Orthodox Church, “a miracle”.
The country’s birth rate increased by nearly 20% during 2008 – a rate four times faster than the previous year.
Many parents say they took the decision to have another child on the basis of the Patriarch’s incentive.
Comments Off | Blackadder, Economics, Theology | Permalink
Posted by Blackadder
The Other Other Emanuel
March 31, 2009Presumably most Vox Nova readers are familiar with Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s chief of staff (he of the Chicago Way). Some of you may also know that Mr. Emanuel’s brother, Ari, is reportedly the basis for the character Ari Gold from the T.V. series Entourage.
It turns out there is also a third brother, Ezekiel Emanuel. He is to all appearances a bit more low key than the other two. Having obtained an MD and PhD in political philosophy and a degree in chemistry from Oxford, Mr. Emanuel spends his time penning books and articles opposing assisted suicide and explaining how to use vouchers to achieve universal health care.
Oh, and he’s also just been appointed an advisor to President Obama on health care policy. The whole thing is like something out of a Wes Anderson movie, absent the dysfunction.
1 Comment | Blackadder, Euthanasia, Health Care, Obama | Permalink
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Vox Nova at the Movies: My Night at Maud’s
March 30, 2009
The third installment of Eric Rohmer’s famed Six Moral Tales series, Ma nuit chez Maud begins when Jean-Louis, a Catholic engineer recently returned from abroad, runs into Vidal, an old school friend turned Marxist philosophy professor. After attending midnight mass on Christmas Eve, the pair retire to the home of Maud, a beautiful divorcee and sometime paramore of Vidal. The evening begins with a discussion on the merits of Pascal (Catholic Jean-Louis is opposed, Marxist Vidal is in favor). But when a snowstorm leaves Jean-Louis alone and trapped with the enticing Maud, his moral principles are put to the test.
The film is rather talk-centric (which is a feature not a bug as far as I’m concerned, but reasonable minds may differ). Ultimately, though, I found the film to be a rather profound meditation on the nature of temptation, as well as love, and I found the blend of French new wave cinema with religious themes to be quite intriguing. Some might also find appealing the repeated use of “Jansenist” as an epithet. Recommended.
7 Comments | Blackadder, Film, Love | Permalink
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Earth Hour and Beyond
March 29, 2009So last night was “Earth Hour,” an attempt to avoid the utter destruction of the planet by having everyone turn off their lights for an hour. Attempts to quantify the actual impact of this action on energy use range from nil to negative, but then I suspect that this isn’t really the point. The whole affair reminds me of the following bit from Tim Harford’s book The Undercover Economist:
“How did you travel here today?”
“I’m sorry?” I’m puzzled. Here I am, going to a panel discussion organized by an environmental charity, and a very earnest young member of staff is grilling me before I even get past the door of the lecture hall.
“How did you travel here today? We need to know for our carbon offset program.”
“What’s a carbon offset program?”
“We want all our meetings to be carbon-neutral. We ask everyone who attends to let us know how far they came and on what mode of transportation, and then we work out how much carbon dioxide was emitted and plant trees to offset the emissions.”
“I see. In that case, I came here in an anthracite powered steamship from Australia.” Read the rest of this entry »
5 Comments | Blackadder, Climate Change, Economics, Environmentalism, Global Warming | Permalink
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Four Commencements and a Video
March 28, 2009So people keep writing me asking what I think about the whole Obama commencement thing. I’m flattered. My opinion, in brief, is that I think Notre Dame’s having him was a mistake, basically for the reasons Rick has laid out here, but I think that the reaction to the invite has been over the top and out of proportion to the issue involved. The sheer passion on both sides of the debate suggests, to me at least, that the controversy is really a proxy for some deeper political disagreements among Catholics. And as Forrest Gump was wont to say, that’s all I have to say about that.
Anyway, the whole matter got me reminiscing about the various commencements I’ve attended over the years.
Leaving aside minor events, the first commencement I attended was my graduation from college. Nobel Prize winning physicist Steven Weinberg was the chosen speaker, and chose to make the focus of his remarks the need for additional research funding for his department, and the advisability of the state adopting an income tax in order to make that happen. The speech also contained the line “When you tell people you went to Texas, no one will care how the football team is doing . . . at least not if they are an adult.” This got a sizable boo from the audience. Read the rest of this entry »
16 Comments | Blackadder | Permalink
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First Do No Harm, Redux
March 27, 2009The state is trying to shut down a New York City doctor’s ambitious plan to treat uninsured patients for around $1,000 a year.
Dr. John Muney offers his patients everything from mammograms to mole removal at his AMG Medical Group clinics, which operate in all five boroughs.
His patients agree to pay $79 a month for a year in return for unlimited office visits with a $10 co-pay.
But his plan landed him in the crosshairs of the state Insurance Department, which ordered him to drop his fixed-rate plan – which it claims is equivalent to an insurance policy.
Muney insists it is not insurance because it doesn’t cover anything that he can’t do in his offices, like complicated surgery. He points out his offices do not operate 24/7 so they can’t function like emergency rooms.
More. Dr. Muney’s idea is reminiscent of the minor health clinics Wal-Mart and CVS having been opening, though on a different scale. Read the rest of this entry »
35 Comments | Blackadder, Capitalism, Health Care | Permalink
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Oh Ye of Little Faith
March 26, 2009RNC chairman Michael Steele has come in for a lot of criticism for a number of seemingly boneheaded comments on everything from abortion to the environment to the Republican Party generally. What people fail to realize, however, is that all these statements were actually part of a cunning plan by Steele to see who his true friends were:
7 Comments | Blackadder, Politics | Permalink
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