VAT -- VALUE ADDED TAX

For a very brief explanation and history of the VAT in Europe, where it is almost universally applied, the WSJ of this article today.  It goes without saying that the Dems and all other socialists love, and will vigorously push, this approach.  It is also obvious that it is also at least partly to blame for europe's sclerotic economies.  Debt to GDP ratios are much higher than the US, job creation is much less, socialism and collectivism is much more advanced.  It's nothing more than a sleight-of-hand way to raise taxes and increase the size and scope of government.  A good guess is that it's coming here and will arrive say during the second Obama term.  We can only hope he doesn't get a 2d term.

Education Reform -- is it possible?

This article from New Yorker Magazine is at once encouraging and discouraging.  It is encouraging because it describes some pretty sincere reformers who are desperately trying to minimize the damage done to the students in New York by the unions and their Democrat Party supporters..  It is sad that generations of children in the public school system in New york have been sacrificed to the economic well being of teachers above all other considerations. This article is a clarion call for privatizing the education system which is now captive of the regressive, and anti progressive unions and the Democrat Party.


ADDED:  5/25.10.  Steve Brill reports here for the NYT on the reform movement now proceeding in the education world.  It's all about breaking the back and control of the two unions who control the teachers.  No competition means monopoly, means no progress, means more and more failing schools.  This tragedy is so unecessary.  At least there seems to be a sincere attempt to effect reforms tha mean something for the future of the children and the country.  This is a worthwhile read.

Professor sees financial meltdown coming in 2002

In 2002 Prof Wilmuth saw the problems in the banking industry and delivered this paper as a warning.

A comprehensive solution to the rising costs of healthcare

Because we live in a country with millions of educated and brilliant people, one is bound to run into an explanation and proposed solution to the healthcare quandary that solves that particular rubix cube.  Stumbling onto a blog called "A Goy and his Blog" produced a lot of answers to mostly inchoate question and ideas rattling around in my brain since this whole healthcare discussion started, whenever that was.  To be sure this post here is a rather lengthy explanation and discussion of solutions, but very worth the time and effort to understand the various issues involved.  Goy identifies the main culprit in all the problems of costs and healthcare (and departure from free market discipline) to the introduction of the third party payer concept (which started during WWII) and the government intrusion into the marketplace via medicare in the '60's.  Obviously any system that has been in play for nearly 50-60 years now is not going to be easy to reform.  But as Goy points out, we either reform the system or turn it over to the government and watch the superior (but way too expensive} care we now enjoy go down the tubes like it has everywhere else medicine has been nationalized or socialized, take your pick. This is truly a thought provoking post.

Why Obamacare will fail and lead to a socialist USA

This column in the American Thinker herel, represents thinking of an individual who has worked within medicine on several different levels.  John Dale Dunn, MD, has operated a not-for-profit HMO, practiced medicine in ERs and is a consultant to a large clinic in the midwest.  He recognizes all the faults in the current system, and there are many but all drivebn by the third party payer nature of the system, but he warns us not to be fooled by the various promises of the planners of Ocare.  They have all been tried and have failed in other iterations.  This obomination cannot stand, or we are well on the way to full socialism in this country, and does anyone believe that system works?

ADDED: 5/26/10.   Dr Berwick, O's nominee to oversee the socialist Obamacare program, is profiled here in this article describing his talk before the NHIS of GB recently.  Clearly Dr Berwick is a socialist who would be quite at home in the British healthcare system, which he holds to be the model for the US system about to take root here.  A proponent of state planning in healthcare delivery, et al, Dr Berwick describes the need for rationing (by bureaucrats, of course) but nowhere describes the benefits of innovation and new discoveries of drugs and the like as produced by our capitalist system and the profit motive.  Wonder where he thinks penicillan, MRIs, antibiotics and the like, which have all made life better for everyone, are going to come from in the future?

ADDED: 8/1/10.  Here is the simple answer why Obamacare must be defeated.  Otherwise Americans will become as helpless as the average Brit locked into a medical system that does not work and cannot work because the incentives are simply not there.

Healthcare and Mitt Romney

Rich Lowry discusses the Massachussets healthcare experiment here.  Mitt Romney was the architect of this fiasco and perhaps the best thing that can be said about it is that it only exists in one state......until Obamacare was passed and kicks in, that is!  It will be interesting to see how Obama deals with this issue in the primaries to come before the 2012  POTUS election.  Right now all the things critics have warned about Obamacare, escalating costs, higher taxes, higher insurance premiums and no improvement in access (i.e., not enough docs to accommodate increased patient load), are all happening in Massachussets.  So far Roomney appears to be taking the position that the experiment needs more time and tweaking, and that there were a few things in the plan he didn't like but had to go along with to get it passed.  It may be the only chance he has to survive the dilemma he not finds himself in is to do a mea culpa and hope for the best.  It's hard to see how he can overcome this problem in the face of all the primary candidates who are going to raise the issue at every opportunity.