You can assist people by choice

One Idiot Savant doesn’t understand. When referring to huge families on welfare he says:

“those children exist, and their need is real… If we want them to have any chance of a decent life (rather than creating or perpetuating multi-generational poverty), they need to be provided for.”

Why do these children exist? Who is primarily responsible for meeting their needs? Why should people who choose not to have children or to have few children be forced to fund a decent life because some parents ARE feckless? Why should people currently on welfare get more welfare if they breed more? Why is the money forcibly taken from others, a right?

However, his lack of imagination, the fundamental failure of morality shared by virtually all on the left is this statement here:

“What exactly are the right proposing here? Denying assistance to those whose need is greatest? Leaving people to starve?”

Who is leaving who to starve? Who denies assistance? Who is stopping anyone from providing assistance? Is Idiot Savant suggesting that if the beloved state doesn’t pilfer taxes from him, pay bureaucrats in the process then hand it out in welfare, that he wouldn’t help people in need?

Why are taxes, a tax collection bureaucracy and a money handout bureaucracy a sign you care, but charity – something you choose to give, through people who want to help – an anathema?

In other words – why do you need to be forced to care?

Furthermore, why is it ok to bash the people who are forced to pay welfare, but not to demand accountability and appreciation from those who get it?

McCarten's usual non-analysis on healthcare

It is pretty damned obvious that more often than not I'm going to disagree with Matt McCarten, this week using smears and distortions to spread the typical leftwing lie of American healthcare bad, socialised healthcare good. Simple concept. I'm sure it's one that the vast majority of New Zealanders agree with. Most have heard the propaganda about Americans dying in the streets without healthcare, turned away from hospitals and being ruined because of the high cost. Most of it is nonsense of course, but it suits the vested interests who profit from a state controlled and taxpayer funded system. What? Profit? Yes. You see that's one of the many points Matt gets very wrong. So what did he say?

"You only have to look at the United States to see what a nightmare it is when you mix profiteering with healthcare" Really Matt? So when healthcare worker unions go on strike demanding more pay from people who are unable to choose whether or not to take their money and go elsewhere, that isn't profiteering? Or is it ok for employees to engage in rent seeking from taxpayers? Perhaps you could look at Singapore, Australia, the Netherlands or others that have significant private sector involvement? Oh no, doesn't fit with your binary view of private sector untrustworthy, bad, rips people off vs public sector, benevolent, efficient, kindly, does it?

"Given that tens of millions of American citizens have no healthcare" Really? Nearly 85% of Americans have health insurance. Of the 15%, over a third live in relatively wealthy households (US$50,000 per annum plus), so prefer to pay for healthcare directly rather than through insurance. Let's bear in mind that all of the elderly and the very poor are covered.

So 10% of Americans have no healthcare. Bear in mind that in New Zealand (and the UK), healthcare is not always available when you need it too. Matt somehow thinks a majority will throw away what they have, but he forgets, a majority of Americans don't trust the government like he does.

"Seemingly ordinary people are mobilising noisily to oppose reform and keep their overpriced, inaccessible, ruthless health system. None of this universal, open-access health coverage for them. Apparently that's socialism" Yes Matt, maybe they know something you don't? Maybe the fact that this high price happens to deliver some of the best health professionals, leading edge procedures and technology in the world? Maybe because there isn't queuing?

Yes Matt, forcing everyone to pay for a monopoly state provider than you cannot demand service from IS socialism. You embrace socialism, are you scared of the word?

He says it is because "they've never known anything else so they can't imagine what it might be like not to live under a fear-based system". Of course Matt hasn't either, ignorant he just assumes the people campaigning are stupid. He also forgets that there is a fear based system in New Zealand as well, such as fearing when you'll get the operation you are queuing up for, when you are in pain or it is life threatening. No, forget that.

Then he completely misrepresents capitalism, describing democracy instead "a good chunk of Congress has been bought and paid for by the interests that stand to lose the most if Americans were to change their system. So it's not madness at all, it's just capitalism doing what it does best - fighting hard, and dirty, to protect its interests" Capitalism doesn't involve using the state to give privilege, no that's rent seekers, moochers, seeking state force to get what they can't get from persuasion.

However, Matt isn't into persuasion, he is into using state force to promote interests. Yes, the greatest corruption of government ARE those who use state force to get their interests - hardly surprising that health providers would do it. They do it in New Zealand, through monopoly associations and unions, but Matt thinks that's just fine.

Now he is right that some claim Obama's socialist ideas are about compulsory abortion or euthanasia, yes there are some wingnuts, but he uses that to smear the lot.

"US is becoming more a negative than a positive role model. And we can learn a lot from it, about things like keeping corporate money out of politics, about defending what we have and opposing the encroachment of the private profit-makers into matters that involve the public good." Well of course it's ok to have union money in politics, and confiscating private money for so called "public good". He loves the public good, but when it fails individuals they should just shut up and stop being selfish - I mean it's only health right?

"There's an argument that another even less savoury element underlies the screaming and yelling in America - racism. The mad-dog "birthers" who deny Obama is a natural-born citizen are its most obvious face, with those who labelled the new Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor a racist." Yes the birthers are mad, but Sotomayer DID make a racist comment, but in the world of leftwing doublespeak a Hispanic woman saying someone of her race can make better decisions than a white man - but if it was the other way round, McCarten would shout racism.

However, in the end Matt offers nothing of substance. Nothing to suggest what is wrong with the US other than it isn't government provided for all - he can't even conceive that it isn't a free market because he thinks businesses rip people off, but unions and governments are benevolent and always give good service to those who pay.

You see there is reason to have concern about costs in the US system, there are enormous distortions that privilege employer provided insurance over individually purchased insurance, costs through litigation that has become increasingly non objectively based, and the government provided medicaid and medicare systems are facing significant inflation. However, Matt has an ideological opposition to private provided healthcare, or insurance based models, even though many universal systems are dominated by private providers and insurance. Have a quick look at wiki, Singapore for example is virtually entirely private, with the government only topping up care for the poor.

Though you wouldn't expect a former Alliance Party President to spread that sort of information would you?

Daniel Hannan talks truth of NHS

Yes, Daniel Hannan is most well known as a Conservative MEP who attacked Gordon Brown in the European Parliament.

However, David Cameron isn't very happy with him now, because he has been telling the truth about the most centralised (and possibly most socialist) state run health system in the developed world - the NHS.

Daniel said that the US should not copy the NHS. He said so on TV and on his Daily Telegraph blog. Quite rightly he pointed out that those claiming it is the greatest British invention are forgetting the abolition of slavery, common law, penicillin and discovering DNA among other things. In short, they are idiots.

He notes that cancer survival rates in the UK are lower than in many developed countries including the US. Think tank "progressive vision" notes that Singapore spends only 4% of GDP on healthcare, but has better life expectancy and infant mortality stats than the UK - partly no doubt due to diet, but it has a private insurance based system.

He concluded by saying:

Imagine that, in 1945, we had created a National Food Service. Suppose that, in the name of “fairness” and “need and not ability to pay”, sustenance had been rationed by the state. Conjecture that every citizen had been allocated one butcher, one baker, one café and so on. We all know where that would have led: to bureaucracy, to duplication, to surpluses in one field and scarcity in another, to racketeering, to hunger.

Exactly. However, David Cameron hasn't the intellectual fortitude or the courage to handle this debate - for he knows Labour will use the old lying incandations that the NHS is sacred, and that any alternative means people dying in the streets without healthcare (apparently better to die of infections in substandard hospitals).

He said "The fact that in this country you can go to a hospital, you can go to a family doctor, and they do not ask you how much money is in your bank account ... is one of our great national institutions".

Such complete nonsense. Why not go to the supermarket and the same? Why not a landlord? Food and shelter are more important than healthcare after all. Besides, the money does come from somewhere - your taxes, by force, with no accountability.

The NHS IS a disaster, it is extraordinarily wasteful, it treats patients as production line items, and doesn't deliver the sort of results it promises, and is too big, too impersonal and full of rent-seekers who know that if they don't get what they want, they can frighten the public (and politicians) to give them more. It is time that UK public discourse started being honest about the NHS, that the socialist lying about how "great" it is be confronted, that the lies about the US system be confronted (it doesn't kick accident victims on the street if people arrive in ambulances without the means to pay) and some honest debate about healthcare occurs.

You see, without it, UK taxpayers will continue to be lumbered by ever growing costs, ever stagnating performance, and ever growing lack of responsibility for one's own healthcare.

In the meantime, the Conservatives are too gutless to take this on - so the debate needs to happen outside the three main (socialist) parties.

UK sex pay gap is not about discrimination

Professor J R Shackleton in the Sunday Times writes that the so called "gender" pay gap is not an issue for public policy concern:

"What accounts for the gender pay gap? Not discrimination. For one thing, you find differences within male and female populations that employer prejudice can’t explain. As an example, although married men earn more than married women, single women earn the same or, as they get older, more than single men."

Don't see too much concern about THOSE variations do we? Furthermore:

"There are differences between ethnic groups. Black Caribbean women earn slightly more per hour than black Caribbean men, while Bangladeshi women earn a quarter more than Bangladeshi men. Or consider sexual orientation: gay men earn more per hour on average than “straight” men, while lesbians earn more than heterosexual females. How does that fit the view that labour markets are riddled with discrimination? These pay differentials arise partly from differences in the jobs people do. Few Bangladeshi women work: those who do are well educated and so have jobs where they earn more than the typical male, a third of whom work in restaurants. Gay men are relatively highly educated and concentrated in a narrow range of well-paying jobs. "

On top of that there are other factors, such as risk:

"Men are 1½ times more likely to be made redundant than women and 2½ times more likely to suffer a serious injury at work."

The UK's pay gap is higher than other European countries, but only because of a higher proportion of women in work. Bahrain, Shackleton notes "has a pay gap of about 40% – in favour of women. Very few women, only the educated members of elite families, are in paid work". I doubt whether leftwing feminists would regard that to be a role model country.

As British "Equality Minister" Harriet Harman said, her new "equality bill" will be about "empowering the resentful". Surely public policy can be on a basis of evidence and rational analysis, not the anger of aging socialist feminist politicians?

Anglican church offers socialists an answer

Surrender your tax cut - voluntarily, according to the NZ Herald.

Yes, you don't HAVE to take a tax cut and save it or spend it on what you want, whilst simultaneously whining about how taxes should be higher - you can actually DO something about it.

Complaining about poverty and how the government isn't doing enough is part and parcel of so many on the left - but when they get a tax cut few ever state that they welcome the chance to spend more of their own money on helping the poor, helping their local school or hospital. I'm unsure why, because surely the most effective way of helping people is to.. actually help them, rather than participate in politics and convince people to vote for politicians to force them to pay more to.. politicians, for bureaucrats to manage to dish out to help people.

In fact, I'd suggest that all those planning to vote for the Greens, for example, who want to increase the size of the state, should declare openly what charities they will support or what individuals they will use their tax cut for.

After all, if you can't convince people to be compassionate, why should you threaten force to do so?

Which is, by the way, another measure by which I determine charities I support. If a charity ever demands more from the state, it is off the list. Ask me for money, convince me I should pay, but don't you dare go trying to get state violence to force me to pay.

World's biggest nationalisation?

According to the Times, The Bush Administration has injected US$200 Billion of US taxpayers' money into the Federal National Mortgage Administration (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), at the same time as it has taken over the companies, replaced the chief executives and suspended dividends to the private shareholders.

Both companies finance more than 80% of the US housing market, what this means is a massive subsidy for US homeowners. Future taxpayers (as the US is in budget deficit) will pay to prop up the property market now.

Reuters reports Barack Obama supports it as being necessary, but welcomingly said "In our market system, investors must not be allowed to believe that they can invest in a "heads they win, tails they don't lose" situation." Which of course, is what has happened.

It also reports John McCain also supports it, but also this:

""The long-term reforms are to scale down Fannie and Freddie so their size is no longer a threat. And then privatize them. Get them off the taxpayer's books entirely," said McCain's chief economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin.".

Meanwhile, according to Bloomberg former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan criticises the bailout saying the companies should have been nationalised, given the shareholders nothing and privatised the two companies into many smaller firms.

These two firms were government creations, as part of the New Deal. It's about time the US economy was no longer dependent on them both. As Not PC said, they should have been allowed to fail. Bailing them out is taking money from those who didn't take those risks, it delays and reduces future tax cuts. The money for the bailout does not come from trees, it comes from people.

As Paul Gigot in the Wall Street Journal writes:

"Even now, after all of their dishonesty and failure, Fannie and Freddie could emerge from this taxpayer rescue more powerful than ever. Campaigning to spare taxpayers from that result would represent genuine "change," not that either presidential candidate seems interested."

As it is a fait accompli, the best that can hoped for is to take Greenspan's solution, fully nationalise the institutions, split them and sell them. Ensure these creations of government are returned to the dustbin of history.

Minto's interdependent fist of statism

John Minto is in the NZ Herald today cheerleading on forcing you to pay for university students to be able to live so they can then pursue their dream jobs.

This economic illiterate assumes its cost wont result in a massive change in behaviour, discouraging students from working and encouraging people to become students, because someone else is forced to pay. He says:

"The cost would be about $700 million per year. It's about the same as Telecom's annual profit or a quarter of the New Zealand profit of our Australian-owned banks. Another reason why the sale of these core assets is such an ongoing disaster."

Yes, because if Telecom had been state owned it would still generate a reasonable profit right John? Because it was bound to be as efficient. Of course you wouldn't want Telecom reinvesting profits in upgrading technology or services, no. The Australian owned banks, except for the BNZ and part of ANZ were never state owned either, but Minto like many socialists doesn't let the facts get in the way of a good myth.

Compulsory student allowances are not the "community working together", it isn't about people caring and choosing to support one another, it is the leviathan state saying "pay us or else" on the one hand and "you get money or you don't" on the other.

Minto has no interest in diving into his own pocket to help students, he wants to get the state to threaten the money out of yours. It isn't interdependent to tax those who don't cost the state very much to pay for those who always do.

$400 million more for the rails

Yes according to the NZ Herald, Ontrack, the state owned company responsible for the railway network, wants another $400 million to upgrade the rail network.

To which I say - fine - once the government owns the rest of the railway operations, let Ontrack borrow the money and repay it from track access charges from the people who will people from it - the rail freight customers.

Let's ignore this pleading from the Ontrack CEO, which is a try on to force YOU to pay for it:

"Compared with some other forms of infrastructure development, the planned investment in rail is modest and will enable rail to grow and take pressure off the roads - saving money, improving safety and benefiting the environment,"

It's modest! $100 for every man woman and child. So go on Cam Moore, start walking around your neighbourhood and ask for the money from every household, per person of course. See if THEY think $100 is modest. If you wont ask the customers, why not ask the people you REALLY want to force to pay for it?

and what is this "compared with other forms". You mean like airports which make a profit and pay dividends? You mean like telcos and power companies that do the same? You mean like the road network which generates enough revenue that it can reinvest in upgrading the network and throw 15% of its money at public transport (including YOUR network)?

How does it "save money", when your network costs more to maintain than the users are prepared to pay, but the road network generates more revenue than it costs to maintain? and safety and the environment? Well go on say how many lives it will save, and the environmental claims are dubious at best.

So good on you Ontrack, get the bucket out and go door to door to do fundraising, because the appropriate answer to the question "can taxpayers pay", should be rather obvious.

Great investment Dr Cullen, yep, economic genius.

Taxpayers don't want to pay more and get nothing either

The PSA, which backs the Labour Party and which consistently supports growth in government spending, growth in the number of bureaucrats and resists competition from the private sector with state provided services, has conducted a survey - which of course is not political, no, never - which according to Stuff says "60 per cent (of those surveyed) did not want tax cuts bigger than those in the May budget if that meant reduced public service spending or increased Government borrowing." So an implied reference to Labour policy, and National, ACT, Libertarianz, United Future and any other policy of higher tax cuts - but it's ok under the Electoral Finance Act isn't it? Of course - because it benefits Labour.

The problem with the survey is obvious in three ways.

First it implies that the government is optimally efficient, that there is no scope at all to cut spending significantly without cutting the "services" people love, which basically means health, education and law and order (how many really give a damn about welfare benefits, or the good part of the bureaucracy dedicated to giving advice or dishing out small subsidies here and there, unless you benefit from it). This of course is nonsense. The government does a fair bit that if cut wouldn't hurt the services people love, just look at the names of so many government agencies to see that we wouldn't miss the Families Commission, Te Mangai Paho, NZ On Air, the Human Rights Commission, Office of the Childrens' Commissioner. All small fry mainly, but they do add up. Beyond that, who can pretend the big government agencies of education and health are all well focused on delivering optimal outcomes for consumers. They don't have the incentives to do so.

The second problem is that the counterfactual isn't placed either. Do people support paying more in tax, over and above inflation, to see no discernible improvement in services? You see I pointed out a month or so ago that had Labour simply increased spending to reflect inflation, the government would be spending NZ$12 billion LESS this year than it currently is. However it has spent far more, and have you noticed it? Maybe you have, maybe your school has had a new building - but would that have happened anyway? What it is hard to say is that increasing spending by double the rate of inflation has generated improvements of the same order. You see you ARE paying more in tax in real terms than you were in 1999, has it been worth it? Would you spend more and get the same improvement in quality? No the PSA wont confront that.

Thirdly and more importantly, the PSA wont ask whether you'd rather have the option of getting some of your taxes back to buy your own health care and education for your family. You see the idea you could opt out of the monopolies it makes you fund is an anathema. I wonder why they are so scared of competition, so scared of consumers putting their money where they want it?

Maybe because the PSA is interested first and foremost in protecting the jobs and wages of its members - if it means taxpayers paying more, their members working less, and being less accountable, they will support it - and that is what's fundamentally wrong with statism. No accountability to individuals for failing to deliver what is promised and what they have been forced to pay for, just moans that "well if you paid more tax then....".

It's quite simply fraud.

A lousy tax cut idea

Idiot Savant at No Right Turn talks of speculation in the Sunday Star Times that Cullen's tax cut might be a "social dividend" flat payout of $1000 per "low income earner" (otherwise known as the Labour core).

He describes this as "a good idea, and certainly far better than anything offered by the "tax cuts for the rich" brigade. It targets support at the needy rather than the greedy,"

Now I'm not one to look a tax cut in the mouth, but he's seriously wrong. He isn't advocating a tax cut after all. A tax cut, you see, means your net income increases as the government takes less of what you earn. You get a steady amount each fortnight or month, can afford to save it, spend it, or do as you wish. It is permanent, sustainable and reduces the size of the state (which I acknowledge isn't important to him, as he sees it as the best way to deliver health, education and social insurance monopolies).

What will happen if people on low incomes get $1000 one off? Well, there will be a lot more big TVs being sold, some fashion trips, a few more new car stereos, some trips to Australia and the rest. In other words, it will be used to buy consumer goods. Now that, in itself, isn't a bad thing, except that this dividend wouldn't be paid to everyone, especially the majority who pay 90% of income tax. Don't forget those on the top tax rates pay the vast majority of income tax, but to argue they don't deserve a dividend is grossly unfair.
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No, Idiot Savant wants you to keep working 2 days a week for the beloved Nanny State and be grateful that with every extra dollar you earn, you only get to keep 61c of it, even before you give up a 12.5% surcharge of what you buy to the state, be damned grateful we let you keep that you rich thieving bastard (the undertone being "you don't fucking deserve what you earn, just wish the revolution would come one day and you'll get yours you bourgeoisie scum").
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Far more generous is the Libertarianz policy announced in the weekend of immediately creating a tax free threshold of $10,000 for everyone, which would mean those lowest earners (and students, children and others earning a bit here and there) would be free of income tax, but would also be a boost to all other income earners.

You see cutting taxes does not "disproportionately" benefit the rich, given it was their money in the first place. That is the fundamental difference between statists and libertarians. Statists think taxes are "society's money" or "government money" and getting a tax cut is "taking it from society". Libertarians believe it is your money that the government has taken, and a tax cut is giving you back your own money. No pure tax cut can be disproportionate by definition.

Of course he goes on to advocate a universal basic income, a concept some libertarians advocate as a transitional step to replacing the welfare state, using Milton Friedman's negative income tax concept with a flat tax. That idea, as a transitional measure, has some merit for debate. However he sees it as basically freeing people from work "It would substantially improve the actual, substantive freedom of people to lead their lives how they wish". Well for people who want to not work. You know those useful productive dynamic people who want to live off of the back of everyone else until they decide not to, while we all pay for them. Of course it would reduce the freedom of people for the rest of us having to pay for everyone else.

So there you have it - the left want people to get an income for doing absolutely nothing - their birthright to have everyone else pay for them to live, and not just survive but to be not uncomfortable. They want everyone else to pay for it, because - well they believe once you get above average you owe it to pay for those below - and not only that, if you ask for a tax cut when you are "rich" (above average income) you're selfish and evil.

It's quite despicable.