I have a question for anyone who believes that a single-payer health-care system (where the single payer is government) will reduce the quality-adjusted cost of health-care: will a single-payer pet-food system (where the single-payer for pet food is government) reduce the quality-adjusted cost of pet food? That is, under a single-payer pet-food system (with government as the single payer) will consumers be better supplied, at a lower cost, with pet food than consumers are supplied today with a free market, myriad-payer system for the provision of pet food?
If not, why would a single-payer system for health-care reduce the quality-adjusted cost of health-care? But if so, why not socialize the entire American economy given that a single-payer system (with government as the single payer) would clearly deserve the presumption of being a superior method of economic organization than myriad-payer free markets?
….
Although I’ve not seen such a question asked before, I have little doubt that I’m not the first person to ask it.
At his blog today, Mr. Paul Krugman writes that
you don’t find people like Christy Romer or, well, me taking positions on policy issues that are directly at odds with what they’ve said in their professional writings.
Well now.
In his June 27, 2005 New York Times column, Mr. Krugman objected to the Bush administration’s approval of Chinese bids to buy the American companies Maytag and Unocal. He began that column defensively:
Fifteen years ago, when Japanese companies were busily buying up chunks of corporate America, I was one of those urging Americans not to panic. You might therefore expect me to offer similar soothing words now that the Chinese are doing the same thing. But the Chinese challenge – highlighted by the bids for Maytag and Unocal – looks a lot more serious than the Japanese challenge ever did.
So surely the reason Mr. Krugman offered in that column for why Chinese purchases of U.S. companies differ fundamentally from similar purchases earlier by the Japanese is compelling and consistent with his earlier writings. You judge:
One difference is that, judging from early indications, the Chinese won’t squander their money as badly as the Japanese did. The Japanese, back in the day, tended to go for prestige investments – Rockefeller Center, movie studios – that transferred lots of money to the American sellers, but never generated much return for the buyers. The result was, in effect, a subsidy to the United States. The Chinese seem shrewder than that.
Overlook the obvious question of how is it that investors who use assets in ways that prove to be unproductive (that is, “never generated much return”) provide “a subsidy to the United States.” Focus instead on Mr. Krugman’s explanation that he approved of Japanese investments in the U.S. because Japanese investors are dumb, and he disapproves of Chinese investments in the U.S. in part because Chinese investors are smart.
I’ve read many of Dr. Krugman’s academic books and papers and nowhere in these do I find even the faintest hint that a nation is enriched by dumb investors and impoverished by smart ones. True, here I’m only speculating, but I’m quite confident that had Dr. Krugman been asked in, say, 1990 if a nation’s prosperity is put at greater risk the smarter are the people who invest there – or, alternatively, if a nation’s prosperity is more surely promoted the dumber are the people who invest there – he would have answered, unlike Mr. Krugman, with a resounding “No!” After all, Dr. Krugman did serious economics.
….
In the same June 27, 2005 NYT column (linked above), Mr. Krugman offers a second reason (in addition to the one I mention above) for why he objects to the Chinese buying Maytag and (I gather especially) Unocal. Here’s that second reason:
The more important difference from Japan’s investment is that China, unlike Japan, really does seem to be emerging as America’s strategic rival and a competitor for scarce resources….
I leave to the reader to decide if this second reason is at odds with Dr. Krugman’s justly famous warnings against the pop-internationalism notion that nations compete economically against each other, and against his (rather common for a sensible economist) counselling skepiticism of those who raise national-defense concerns as alleged justifications for (as Dr. Krugman writes on page 101 of Pop Internationalism) “a more nationalistic trade policy.”
I leave also to the reader the task of explaining how Uncle Sam stopping the Chinese from purchasing U.S. firms prevents, in any way that benefits Americans economically, the Chinese from competing for scarce resources.
CATE TAKES THE GLOVER CHALLENGE
Tim Blair – Tuesday, June 07, 11 (05:30 am)
Semi-serious Sydney Morning Herald jokester Richard Glover:
Surely it’s time for climate-change deniers to have their opinions forcibly tattooed on their bodies …
On second thoughts, maybe the tattooing along the arm is a bit Nazi-creepy. So how about they are forced to buy property on low-lying islands, the sort of property that will become worthless with a few more centimetres of ocean rise, so they are bankrupted by their own bloody-mindedness?
Great idea, Richard! And guess which bloody-minded climate-change denier has just bought island property on low-lying Vanuatu:
For Cate Blanchett, climate change is an issue that is very close to home – literally …
Blanchett is thought to have bought some waterfront property in or around the luxury area ofHavannah Harbour during a visit last year.
The Daily Telegraph understands she is yet to build on the property …
Professor Barry Brook, from the University of Adelaide, has calculated sea levels at Vanuatu are rising 2.5mm every year.
But the locals don’t seem particularly fazed by this and say Blanchett’s property ought to be safe from being swallowed up.
“We’re not low-lying enough to worry about that,” one local said. “All we have to worry about is the strong Australian dollar.”
But Cate will be bankrupted soon, once those property-eating waters complete their moist millimetre march. Won’t she, Richard?
ORANGE POLES
Tim Blair – Tuesday, June 07, 11 (05:03 am)
Brunswick-area mayor Oscar Yildiz can’t believe that his own council has spent $7000 on art that is indistinguishable from standard safety material:
“A bit of mesh that utility companies use to cordon off areas – to call that art is a load of rubbish,” he said.
“I’ve got a seven-year-old daughter and she could have done this for free and done a better job.”
The art-disputing mayor questioned artist Tim Craker’s fee:
Cr Yildiz asked why $7000 was paid to Mr Craker when the materials would have cost a few hundred dollars.
“Surely this guy didn’t spend $6500 on labour for sticking a couple of things around a couple of poles?”
His deputy, however, defends the works:
Deputy mayor Cr Alice Pryor said the Permeable Barrier series by artist Tim Craker was deliberately installed alongside council roadworks at the Snell Grove shopping centre.
“Public art installations create public discussion, raise questions, and engage passers-by in the new works being done,” she said.
And the artist himself is defiant:
Mr Craker, in Turkey on a self-financed arts residency, said he wanted to create confusion about “what’s art and what’s function – to make people think about something that we would see and not look at. But some might say ‘Hang on, that’s not normal safety fencing, that’s had something done to it, and what’s it doing up on a wall on a building?’ So that sort of controversy is good from one point of view.”
Here is the art:
393 DAYS UNTIL LABOR’S MONEY-FOR-ALL TAX O’ PLENTY
Tim Blair – Tuesday, June 07, 11 (05:00 am)
Back in February, climate change minister Greg Combet came up with a bunch of ideas that might help people survive the behaviour-altering carbon tax:
Mr Combet has urged householders to act now by installing energy-efficient light bulbs and turning appliances off at the wall …
“Maybe think about how often you use the airconditioner. Using a cheaper-to-run hot water system. Changing the light bulbs. Have you got insulation?”
Can’t afford insulation here. Using freeze-dried cats. All part of our carbon austerity drive. But now treasurer Wayne Swan promises a golden era of carbon tax megawealth for all:
Wayne Swan will today move to reinvigorate the government’s carbon tax sales pitch, unveiling Treasury modelling that predicts Australia’s income will be $8000 a person higher by 2020, even with a $20 a tonne carbon price.
The Treasurer – in a major speech aimed at boosting the government’s carbon tax plans and cutting down Tony Abbott’s cost-of-living attacks – will release modelling that shows average annual growth in real national income per capita will be 1.1 per cent until 2050.
The Treasurer will declare that national income will continue to increase under a carbon tax …
So we don’t need to install energy-efficient light bulbs or turn appliances off at the wall or think about how often we use air-conditioners or use a cheaper-to-run hot water system or put all those dead cats in the ceiling. What was the point of this carbon tax again?
JULIA GILLARD: There will be price impacts. The whole point of pricing carbon is to say that goods that have got a lot of carbon pollution in them get relatively more expensive …
Yet every single one of us will be $8000 richer under the carbon tax and therefore able to afford that much more Gaia-smashing. LET’S ALL GO BUY V8s! Meanwhile, Combet is losing it:
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet cited weekend rallies in favour of carbon pricing, support from senior economists, eminent Australians and climate change adviser Ross Garnaut as evidence of support for carbon pricing.
You just keep believing that, Greg. And remember to always turn off your appliances at the wall.
TALIBAN DIPPED
Tim Blair – Tuesday, June 07, 11 (03:39 am)
Check out this guy:
Queen Elizabeth II on Wednesday awarded Britain’s second-highest award for bravery, the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross, to Acting Sgt. Dipprasad Pun of the Royal Gurkha Rifles.
While stationed as a lone sentry at a checkpoint in Afghanistan’s Helmand province on September 17, Pun fended off an attack by up to 30 Taliban fighters.
“There were many Taliban around me,” Pun said in an interview with British Forces News. “I thought they are definitely going to kill me ... I thought before they kill me I have to kill some of them.”
It’s highly likely that Dip did:
During the 15-minute battle, Pun fired more than 400 rounds of ammunition, detonated 17 grenadesand a mine and even threw his gun tripod at a Taliban fighter climbing toward his position, according to British Forces News.
Dip, as the medal citation names him, saved the lives of three fellow soldiers and avoided any injury himself:
“That he survived unscathed is simply incredible,” his medal citation says. “Throughout Dip’s actions he was under almost constant intense fire. Dip’s courage and gallantry were simply astonishing.”
Australia has a significant Nepalese population. Let’s get this Taliban-smashing Nepali hero out here for a celebration tour.
(Via Martin C., whose email was simply headed: “How’s this for balls?")
MAYBE THEY THINK IT’S MULTICULTURAL
Tim Blair – Tuesday, June 07, 11 (03:20 am)
David G. asks: “Why does the smiley face have a Hitler moustache?”
OF CATE AND HATE
Tim Blair – Monday, June 06, 11 (01:42 pm)
AN email arrived last week from a PhD student at the University of Western Sydney who wanted to write a “climate change for dummies” opinion piece for the Daily Telegraph.
Basically, our correspondent explained, her article would translate climate change “into a simple picture” that people working outside of climate change research could comprehend.
“I’m targeting this paper,” she continued, “because, no offence intended, the readership may be in need of some simple material to assist them in understanding better the debate.”
This is the latest position of the climate change lobby. Unable to convince people of the urgent threat presented by global warming and the need for a carbon dioxide tax, they’ve decided that the problem is you, because you’re stupid.
WHERE THE ELITE MEET TO EAT
Tim Blair – Monday, June 06, 11 (01:39 pm)
Wise words from Gavin Atkins: “If you ever go to the Dolphin Hotel in Surry Hills, ensure that you order the sirloin.”
ONCE INFLUENTIAL, NOW OUT OF HIS MIND
Tim Blair – Monday, June 06, 11 (12:16 pm)
What on earth will Charles Johnson say next?
A feeble government, a police force in chaos
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, June 07, 11 (06:39 am)
This government does not seem competent or courageous:
With his government mired in crisis over the turmoil at the top of the police force, Mr Baillieu yesterday defended his chief of staff Michael Kapel, saying his decision to meet with Sir Ken in February was appropriate and ‘’what we expect’’.
But Deputy Premier and Police Minister Peter Ryan said the two-hour meeting was inappropriate and should never have taken place.’’I would have preferred that [Mr Kapel] did not do that,’’ Mr Ryan told ABC Radio.
Mr Ryan also revealed he had declined a similar offer to meet with Sir Ken.
Mr Baillieu said he had been unaware of the meeting between Mr Kapel and Sir Ken until he was informed by Mr Ryan, who found out only after being told by the Police Association the next day.
I’m also struggling to understand the refusal of Ryan to meet the Deputy Commissioner of Police.
Sir Ken had extremely serious concerns about the running of the force under its present leader. Was Ryan too scared to listen? Too indifferent?
I don’t know what the legal dangers were in meeting Ryan, but the I do know where the public interest lies. If Sir Ken, in the end, was speaking out of turn or being disloyal, that could be dealt with later. If the issues he wanted to raise were indeed deeply serious, they had to be dealt with immediately.
Instead, those issues are still festering, and the leadership of Victoria Police seems dysfunctional, deeply paranoid and unlikely to attract either public confidence or the forces’ loyalty.
Won’t richer people emit more?
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, June 07, 11 (06:31 am)
With all that money, won’t people buy more cars, air-conditioners, electronic gadgets and overseas flights?
WAYNE Swan will today move to reinvigorate the government’s carbon tax sales pitch, unveiling Treasury modelling that predicts Australia’s income will be $8000 a person higher by 2020, even with a $20 a tonne carbon price.
It’s only art if you’re angry that it’s not
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, June 07, 11 (06:21 am)
The art lies in persuading people it is art. Or, rather, in persuading someone in charge of the public’s cash:
Moreland mayor Cr Oscar Yildiz said he couldn’t believe that so much was spent putting the orange mesh on buildings, power poles, and around trees in an Oak Park shopping strip.
“A bit of mesh that utility companies use to cordon off areas - to call that art is a load of rubbish,” he said.
“I’ve got a seven-year-old daughter and she could have done this for free and done a better job.”
A bit harsh. Not obvious from the picture is that the mesh has pictures cut out of it of birds and leaves.
But the excuse for art that seems artless to many? That familiar one of the late 20th century and taxpayer-funded bohemian - that if you outrage people by your lack of manners, talent or insight, you have succeeded:
But deputy mayor Cr Alice Pryor said the Permeable Barrier series by artist Tim Craker was deliberately installed alongside council roadworks at the Snell Grove shopping centre.
“Public art installations create public discussion, raise questions, and engage passers-by in the new works being done,” she said.
Mr Craker, in Turkey on a self-financed arts residency, said he wanted to create confusion about “what’s art and what’s function - to make people think about something that we would see and not look at. But some might say ‘Hang on, that’s not normal safety fencing, that’s had something done to it, and what’s it doing up on a wall on a building?’ So that sort of controversy is good from one point of view.”
By this standard, turning the side of the shopping centre into a vast public urinal would work just as well.
Labor in agony, thanks to its “compassion”
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, June 07, 11 (05:57 am)
Labor should remember how it painted John Howard as a monster for stopping the boats, and how it lured back those boats with its prideful “compassion”.
And now?
THE asylum-seeker issue is threatening to divide the Labor Party, with the Right rejecting a left-wing demand for special arrangements for children by warning the government will not be re-elected if it does not stop people-smugglers…Several MPs from the party’s Right faction countered that exempting children from deportation to Malaysia would encourage the people-smugglers to focus on children and do nothing to stop the stream of boats arriving off northern Australia.
“If we can’t demonstrate by the next election that we have stopped the boats, we’re gone,” one senior right-wing source said yesterday…
(Labor MP and former UN lawyer Melissa ) Parke, who holds the West Australian seat of Fremantle, said yesterday she understood the need for a regional solution, but Australia had international legal obligations under the Refugee Convention, the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights, the Convention Against Torture and the Convention on the Right of the Child.
“We have an obligation to act in the best interests of the children, and I would question whether sending them to Malaysia, regardless of what system is put in place, is in their best interests,” Ms Parke told The Australian yesterday…
“I don’t think we can make them sacrificial lambs basically,” she said.
Labor is not just hurting itself:
ALEXANDER Downer has accused Julia Gillard of jeopardising Australia’s dealings with Malaysiaby dumping the controversial issue of asylum-seekers “front and centre” in what has been one of Canberra’s most difficult regional relationships.
As the government of Nauru declared itself ready and willing to discuss reopening its immigration detention centre, the former Howard government foreign minister rounded on the Gillard government over its handling of the relationship with Malaysia.
Mr Downer said much work had been done rehabilitating Australia’s relationship with Malaysia after the retirement of Malaysia’s long-serving prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, who was famously antagonistic towards Canberra. “We managed to get the relationship with Malaysia into a good place, which led to them agreeing to Australian membership of the East Asia summit in 2006,” Mr Downer told The Australian.
“Now all there is of the relationship is this incredibly controversial issue of asylum-seekers, which has the potential to derail the whole relations. It creates the impression in Malaysia that Australia is very difficult to deal with.”
Niki Savva says Julia Gillard’s “mulish” pride is causing Labor’s agony:
Finally, at least some sections of the Left are stirring against the government’s repugnant live people trade with Malaysia that sacrifices - that is the word used by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay - 800 people. Federal Labor MPs have in large part lost their conscience or their voice. They have, apart from a couple of honourable exceptions, including Melissa Parke, lost their courage. Members of the Right mutter darkly to Liberal Party MPs about Gillard’s performance and suggest a timetable for her removal if she does not improve, while the Left writhes in private agony.
For the sake of those 800 people, or 801 if you include Chris Bowen, one of the more talented frontbenchers who is being slowly destroyed in that portfolio, it is long past time for Gillard to abandon her pride, reopen Nauru and reintroduce temporary protection visas, and if she doesn’t then her party should tell her to do it.
If they can rise up over the fate of cattle, they can do it for men, women and children who also cannot speak for themselves.
The pain of any backdown will pass if the boats stop...
A sign of faith in Julia’s tax
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, June 07, 11 (12:18 am)
In another universe, far away
Andrew Bolt – Monday, June 06, 11 (08:05 pm)
This man has taught in universities:
Dr Steven Middleton is a digital native and almost retired Melbourne artist, academic and filmmaker.... A recently retired University researcher and lecturer, Steve has directed television drama, animated 3D television programs and commercials, written articles about art theory, managed broadcasters, and contributed to national communications policy debate and change.
He now reviews my first Bolt Report:
When he appeared on the Bolt Report’s first episode Federal Opposition and Liberal Party LeaderTony Abbot wasn’t asked a single question about climate change, even though he is (in Boltspeak) a “warmist”. “I believe”, Abbot told anyone who would listen earlier this year, “that climate change is real and that human activity is at least partly responsible for it”. Australia’s alternative leader has, in fact, budgeted to take twelve billion dollars from government expenditure for programs to mitigate climate change over four years, a fairly activist putting-yer-money-where-yer-mouth-is political position. The Bolt Report’s host might have questioned Abbot’s wisdom, given a golden opportunity to, for Andrew Bolt is on the record as believing Global Warming is a great fraud perpetrated by scheming scientists and green enterprises grasping for wads of government money like the twelve billion dollars Tony Abbott proposes to hand out.
Now check the review against the actual interview:
After a week of Cate’s help…
Andrew Bolt – Monday, June 06, 11 (03:33 pm)
Essential Research has a new poll with the same old bad news for Labor:
Labor 47
Coalition 53
Save the planet! Kill a camel
Andrew Bolt – Monday, June 06, 11 (01:05 pm)
Being considered by the Gillard Government is a plan to tackle global warming by killing camels:
The methodology involves the removal of feral camels with the emissions reduction benefit based on the difference between the estimated age of the animal at removal and the predicted average age of natural mortality. There are four main activities of feral camel removal that will result in emissions reductions under the methodology.
Er, exactly who or what are these extremists saving the planet for? Is everything that farts now facing a bullet?
(Thanks to reader Craig.)
When the warmists start selling, I’ll start buying
Andrew Bolt – Monday, June 06, 11 (12:20 pm)
ABC warmist Richard Glover unleashes his inner totalitarian, before making an offer I’m almost inclined to accept:
Surely it’s time for climate-change deniers to have their opinions forcibly tattooed on their bodies.
Not necessarily on the forehead; I’m a reasonable man. Just something along their arm or across their chest so their grandchildren could say, ‘’Really? You were one of the ones who tried to stop the world doing something? And why exactly was that, granddad?’’
On second thoughts, maybe the tattooing along the arm is a bit Nazi-creepy. So how about they are forced to buy property on low-lying islands, the sort of property that will become worthless with a few more centimetres of ocean rise, so they are bankrupted by their own bloody-mindedness?
Works for me, provided the deal cuts both ways. How about forcing the global warmists to sell their property on low-lying beach-front, the sort of property they claim will be worthless with a few more centimetres of ocean rise?
UPDATE
It’s the new class war, notes Tim Blair. The sneering of the warmists is a dead giveaway, which suggests that for most it’s a question not of science but identity politics.
Pay to preach
Andrew Bolt – Monday, June 06, 11 (12:11 pm)
2006 - Bono protests that the Howard Government isn’t paying its fair share to help the less fortunate:
IRISH rock star Bono has praised John Howard’s management of the domestic economy, but accused him of taking Australia to the bottom of the global league in engagement with the world’s poor… And he criticised the Howard Government for failing to meet an international commitment to increase the overseas aid budget to 0.7per cent of GDP…
“I would encourage Australia to lead us, because we look up to you.”
2011 - Activists protest that Bono isn’t paying his fair share to help the less fortunate:
CAMPAIGNERS in Britain are planning to target U2 during the band’s set at the upcoming Glastonbury festival as part of a protest over the band’s tax issues…
Britain’s The Guardian quoted a spokesman for Art Uncut as saying: “Bono claims to care about the developing world, but U2 greedily indulges in the very kind of tax avoidance which is crippling the poor nations of this world. We will be showing the very real impact of U2’s tax avoidance on hospitals and schools in Ireland.
Best audience yet, so thank you
Andrew Bolt – Monday, June 06, 11 (11:26 am)
Thank you, because let me tell you - worrying from one ratings figure to the next is not pleasant. But the total audience of The Bolt Report this week - the 10am and 4.30pm figures combined - is our highest yet: 322,000.
That’s up 21,000 on our previous best, our second episode with Peter Costello and Michael Costa. This week’s figures:
The Bolt Report at 10am: 152.000
The Bolt Report at 4.30pm: 170,000.
Whew.
UPDATE
Clip replaced. Sound fixed.
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