I am a public school teacher. I don't think you've visited schools much.
Pay teachers more, re-train the low-skilled workers, bring them into the 21st century so that they can share in growth, prosperity available to those creating technology. New models are needed. Education is the best hope to significantly improve lives and employment possibilities. We need to attract, support and reward excellent teachers to achieve this goal.
Yes you could allow unlicensed medical practitioners to treat patients and compete with professionals, but the "sink-or-swim" of these businesses isn't whether or not they can sell cars or make a good omelet; it's whether or not they can practise medicine. In order to find out which ones are good and which bad would entail a raft of malpractice suits and almost inevitably lead to poor people receiving worse healthcare than rich.
The invaders are majority corrupt versus not corrupt. Most people get rich transferring value, not creating it (see finance, healthcare, defense etc)
Opening up the fortified towns to corrupt invaders is more likely to corrupt them then make them more efficient.
Also, I think your a missing the giant bubble that represents the slave class, the mass of third world workers that competes with the helpless peasants. If your a native and your IQ isn't high you aren't going to ascend to invader.
Very pessimistic. We need to destroy the fortified towns. Those are lowering the standard of living for everybody. Higher education, for example, wants to be free. As Arnold says in his book, it's not scarce - it's abundant. And abundant stuff should be free. A free college education would benefit the entire economy and make us all richer.
So how can we demolish the fortifications? Arnold has no good suggestions. That's why this is so pessimistic.
Maybe so, Arnold. I've been through the health care system with mixed results. Like life itself, there are no guarantees (that's why we sign disclaimer forms), but the odds can be improved with excellent doctors and nurses. If your mechanisms (whatever they might be) can provide them, I'm with you. It's one thing to offer the solution, another thing for our political system to allow it or get out of the way for it. Of course, it's a lot easier to lay out an idea than to implement it.
Actually, I don't believe that the primary purpose of credentials is to protect the patient. There are other mechanisms that might work better. I think that their primary purpose is to protect the suppliers from competition.
Yes, you're right that my comment about invaders of the health care system was not directly related to jobs. You might be right that people entering the health care field don't need as much classroom instruction as they're getting. Maybe they can skip the electives and concentrate on anatomy and biology. I'm not sure. I do know that I don't want an incompetent nurse, physician assistant, or doctor working on me. Of course, this is the primary intention of credentials and licensing.
On the issue of the invaders in health care, I think they might very well change the fee-for-service model. But what I was focused on here was re-organizing service delivery, so that somebody who is trained as an apprentice deliver medical services, without having gone through years of classroom education. And when it comes to re-organizing medical service delivery, even the "private" sector is hamstrung by regulation.
Thanks for the comments. President Obama's reduction of payroll taxes only for the employee portion means that there is zero incentive effect. The incentive effect would come from reducing the employer portion. (At full employment, there is no economic difference between the employer portion and the employee portion, but with high unemployment, there is a big difference.)
Interesting. He says let the invaders penetrate and thereby improve the "credentialed" sector, which he says are primarily education and health care. I guess he means Medicare and Medicaid, because the rest of health care seems to be private. Would this mean the invaders would substitute the predominantly current fee-for-service system, which has been widely criticized as the main source of rising health care costs? Would the invaders look to the Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic models?
Very enlightening. I'm impressed that Obama is calling for something similar to what you suggest in his jobs speech. Instead of direct wage subsidies, he's calling for tax incentives for creating jobs, which is similar.
I like the metaphor, but it fails to acknowledge that, between raids, the ruthless invaders themselves occupy fortified cities with far more impressive government supplied defences than the fortified towns. Intellectual property law, which has grown ever more favorable to the owners over the years, involves state supplied property rights which enormously enhance the value of the ruthless invaders' scarce skills, cleverness and entrepreneurship. Let's kill all the IP lawyers !
It seems to me that your recommendation of a payroll tax holiday and wage subsidies to the helpless peasants (extension of unemployment benefits?) comes very close to what is expected in the President's speech tonight.
A question: If the ruthless invaders' involvement in mortgage securities was so destructive, how will encouraging their involvement in the fortified towns be productive?
@jgeorgeification The ruthless invaders would be productive in the currently fortified towns in the same ways that they're productive everywhere else: They reduce the costs, improve quality, invent new goods and services, and retire old ones that no longer work well. In the story that the video is telling, they were steered into mortgage securities by government. It's reasonable to expect that government will continue to corrupt the invaders even after the town's walls are breached.
@ehanneken If steering invaders into mortgage securities was the problem, how is reducing regulation in the health care sector anything but the government steering the invaders to enter that fortified town? Wouldn't you consider school vouchers to be the government steering invaders into education? The invaders caused quite a bit of trouble by inventing new goods and services in mortgage securities. I don't understand why their involvement in the fortified towns is expected to be any different.
@jgeorgeification Remember that the "ruthless invaders" we're talking about are entrepreneurs, innovators, and people with technical skills. To dismiss this group as merely troublemakers strikes me as remarkably one-sided, especially since MBSs were encouraged and approved by regulators. I agree that vouchers would be steering. I'm in favor of simply removing the town's fortifications: credential requirements, subsidies to incumbents, compulsory attendance laws, etc.
@jgeorgeification There wouldn't have been any problem with the ruthless invaders invading the mortgage market, if they had been faced with the consequences of their own actions. The trouble was that the government (a) directed their invasion into housing for the poor, maximising the sub prime problem (b) underwrote their risk taking with Fannie and Freddie then (c) bailed them out when it all went bad and (d) has continued to bail them out with cheap money and regulations blocking competition.
@jgeorgeification I also agree that school vouchers would be steering the ruthless invaders into schools, but that's much less likely to be as dangerous as steering them into mortgages or leaving the schools in the hands of the current providers. If the government didn't interfere in education, taxes would be a lot lower, and parents would spend the taxes they save (or more, or less) on educating their own children. The ruthless invaders would sweep into this market carrying away virgins.
@jgeorgeification continuing...but in a world where the government takes parents income in taxes and then provides public education "for free", school vouchers are similiar, for most parents, to just restoring the status quo ante - ie as if they hadn't been taxed so much and were now responsible for educating their children. That doesn't apply for poor parents, where the voucher is a subsidy, nor for rich ones where the voucher doesn't anything like compensate for the extra taxes.
@jgeorgeification continuing - but vouchers are not as good as letting parents keep their money, because they constrain how the schools market operates. There are rules attached to how vouchers can be used. They regulate prices; they can't be used for homeschooling; the schools will still be heavily regulated etc. So vouchers are not the same as allowing a free market for the invaders to attack. But a lot of what the invaders will get out of vouchers they'd still have got in a free market.
@jgeorgeification continuing - but vouchers are not as good as letting parents keep their money, because they constrain how the schools market operates. There are rules attached to how vouchers can be used. They regulate prices; they can't be used for homeschooling; the schools will still be heavily regulated etc. So vouchers are not the same as allowing a free market for the invaders to attack. But a lot of what the invaders will get out of vouchers they'd still have got in a free market.
I am a public school teacher. I don't think you've visited schools much.
Pay teachers more, re-train the low-skilled workers, bring them into the 21st century so that they can share in growth, prosperity available to those creating technology. New models are needed. Education is the best hope to significantly improve lives and employment possibilities. We need to attract, support and reward excellent teachers to achieve this goal.
Badigian 3 months ago
@arnoldsk RE: Credentials in Healthcare.
Yes you could allow unlicensed medical practitioners to treat patients and compete with professionals, but the "sink-or-swim" of these businesses isn't whether or not they can sell cars or make a good omelet; it's whether or not they can practise medicine. In order to find out which ones are good and which bad would entail a raft of malpractice suits and almost inevitably lead to poor people receiving worse healthcare than rich.
tomrollock 4 months ago
The invaders are majority corrupt versus not corrupt. Most people get rich transferring value, not creating it (see finance, healthcare, defense etc)
Opening up the fortified towns to corrupt invaders is more likely to corrupt them then make them more efficient.
Also, I think your a missing the giant bubble that represents the slave class, the mass of third world workers that competes with the helpless peasants. If your a native and your IQ isn't high you aren't going to ascend to invader.
tenthring 5 months ago
Very pessimistic. We need to destroy the fortified towns. Those are lowering the standard of living for everybody. Higher education, for example, wants to be free. As Arnold says in his book, it's not scarce - it's abundant. And abundant stuff should be free. A free college education would benefit the entire economy and make us all richer.
So how can we demolish the fortifications? Arnold has no good suggestions. That's why this is so pessimistic.
physicalchemistry1 5 months ago
You're arguing for a race to the bottom, Kling. A neo-feudalism of sorts.
seabe 5 months ago
@arnoldsk The President's plan would also reduce the employer portion of payroll taxes.
jgeorgeification 5 months ago
Maybe so, Arnold. I've been through the health care system with mixed results. Like life itself, there are no guarantees (that's why we sign disclaimer forms), but the odds can be improved with excellent doctors and nurses. If your mechanisms (whatever they might be) can provide them, I'm with you. It's one thing to offer the solution, another thing for our political system to allow it or get out of the way for it. Of course, it's a lot easier to lay out an idea than to implement it.
jcg563 5 months ago
Actually, I don't believe that the primary purpose of credentials is to protect the patient. There are other mechanisms that might work better. I think that their primary purpose is to protect the suppliers from competition.
arnoldsk 5 months ago
Yes, you're right that my comment about invaders of the health care system was not directly related to jobs. You might be right that people entering the health care field don't need as much classroom instruction as they're getting. Maybe they can skip the electives and concentrate on anatomy and biology. I'm not sure. I do know that I don't want an incompetent nurse, physician assistant, or doctor working on me. Of course, this is the primary intention of credentials and licensing.
jcg563 5 months ago
On the issue of the invaders in health care, I think they might very well change the fee-for-service model. But what I was focused on here was re-organizing service delivery, so that somebody who is trained as an apprentice deliver medical services, without having gone through years of classroom education. And when it comes to re-organizing medical service delivery, even the "private" sector is hamstrung by regulation.
arnoldsk 5 months ago
Thanks for the comments. President Obama's reduction of payroll taxes only for the employee portion means that there is zero incentive effect. The incentive effect would come from reducing the employer portion. (At full employment, there is no economic difference between the employer portion and the employee portion, but with high unemployment, there is a big difference.)
arnoldsk 5 months ago
@arnoldsk the dems gave an employer side payroll tax holiday for new hires, after breaking a republican filibuster.
the reduction of employee side payrol taxes is to give the people more take home pay and hopefully get them to spend it.
joulesbeef 5 months ago
Interesting. He says let the invaders penetrate and thereby improve the "credentialed" sector, which he says are primarily education and health care. I guess he means Medicare and Medicaid, because the rest of health care seems to be private. Would this mean the invaders would substitute the predominantly current fee-for-service system, which has been widely criticized as the main source of rising health care costs? Would the invaders look to the Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic models?
jcg563 5 months ago
Very enlightening. I'm impressed that Obama is calling for something similar to what you suggest in his jobs speech. Instead of direct wage subsidies, he's calling for tax incentives for creating jobs, which is similar.
BrianIHuntington 5 months ago
I like the metaphor, but it fails to acknowledge that, between raids, the ruthless invaders themselves occupy fortified cities with far more impressive government supplied defences than the fortified towns. Intellectual property law, which has grown ever more favorable to the owners over the years, involves state supplied property rights which enormously enhance the value of the ruthless invaders' scarce skills, cleverness and entrepreneurship. Let's kill all the IP lawyers !
2LeeMoore 5 months ago 2
It seems to me that your recommendation of a payroll tax holiday and wage subsidies to the helpless peasants (extension of unemployment benefits?) comes very close to what is expected in the President's speech tonight.
A question: If the ruthless invaders' involvement in mortgage securities was so destructive, how will encouraging their involvement in the fortified towns be productive?
jgeorgeification 5 months ago
@jgeorgeification The ruthless invaders would be productive in the currently fortified towns in the same ways that they're productive everywhere else: They reduce the costs, improve quality, invent new goods and services, and retire old ones that no longer work well. In the story that the video is telling, they were steered into mortgage securities by government. It's reasonable to expect that government will continue to corrupt the invaders even after the town's walls are breached.
ehanneken 5 months ago
@ehanneken If steering invaders into mortgage securities was the problem, how is reducing regulation in the health care sector anything but the government steering the invaders to enter that fortified town? Wouldn't you consider school vouchers to be the government steering invaders into education? The invaders caused quite a bit of trouble by inventing new goods and services in mortgage securities. I don't understand why their involvement in the fortified towns is expected to be any different.
jgeorgeification 5 months ago
@jgeorgeification Remember that the "ruthless invaders" we're talking about are entrepreneurs, innovators, and people with technical skills. To dismiss this group as merely troublemakers strikes me as remarkably one-sided, especially since MBSs were encouraged and approved by regulators. I agree that vouchers would be steering. I'm in favor of simply removing the town's fortifications: credential requirements, subsidies to incumbents, compulsory attendance laws, etc.
ehanneken 5 months ago
@jgeorgeification There wouldn't have been any problem with the ruthless invaders invading the mortgage market, if they had been faced with the consequences of their own actions. The trouble was that the government (a) directed their invasion into housing for the poor, maximising the sub prime problem (b) underwrote their risk taking with Fannie and Freddie then (c) bailed them out when it all went bad and (d) has continued to bail them out with cheap money and regulations blocking competition.
2LeeMoore 5 months ago
@jgeorgeification I also agree that school vouchers would be steering the ruthless invaders into schools, but that's much less likely to be as dangerous as steering them into mortgages or leaving the schools in the hands of the current providers. If the government didn't interfere in education, taxes would be a lot lower, and parents would spend the taxes they save (or more, or less) on educating their own children. The ruthless invaders would sweep into this market carrying away virgins.
2LeeMoore 5 months ago
@jgeorgeification continuing...but in a world where the government takes parents income in taxes and then provides public education "for free", school vouchers are similiar, for most parents, to just restoring the status quo ante - ie as if they hadn't been taxed so much and were now responsible for educating their children. That doesn't apply for poor parents, where the voucher is a subsidy, nor for rich ones where the voucher doesn't anything like compensate for the extra taxes.
2LeeMoore 5 months ago
@jgeorgeification continuing - but vouchers are not as good as letting parents keep their money, because they constrain how the schools market operates. There are rules attached to how vouchers can be used. They regulate prices; they can't be used for homeschooling; the schools will still be heavily regulated etc. So vouchers are not the same as allowing a free market for the invaders to attack. But a lot of what the invaders will get out of vouchers they'd still have got in a free market.
2LeeMoore 5 months ago
@jgeorgeification continuing - but vouchers are not as good as letting parents keep their money, because they constrain how the schools market operates. There are rules attached to how vouchers can be used. They regulate prices; they can't be used for homeschooling; the schools will still be heavily regulated etc. So vouchers are not the same as allowing a free market for the invaders to attack. But a lot of what the invaders will get out of vouchers they'd still have got in a free market.
2LeeMoore 5 months ago