John Ashcroft is apparently a Bad Man
Arnold Kling writes about the economics of health insurance, and specifically why it is not technically insurance.#
An equivalent plan for restaurant meals would be that instead of paying for your meal, you would pay an annual premium to "Blue Eats," which would in turn reimburse restaurants for their costs, plus a profit margin. Every individual member of "Blue Eats" would have an incentive to eat out a lot and order the most expensive items on the menu, because the cost is shared among all of the members of "Blue Eats."
For insurance to work, your expenses have to be unpredictable, so that you contribute to the insurance fund most of the time. With predictable expenses, you would always be drawing from the insurance fund and never contributing to it, so that insurance is not possible. The only way to pay for predictable medical expenses is out of savings.
Insurance is possible when there are unpredictable expenses, not when there are predictable expenses. Again, there are plenty of ways that our society can arrange for other people to pay for your predictable expenses, but those arrangements are "split the check" or "pass the buck." They are not insurance.
Razib: "Recently I was flipping around channels and saw Bill Maher refer to Arabs keeping "half their population dressed like beekeepers." I found that hilarious. Now, as Stanely Kurtz has noted Westerners should be really cautious about fiddling with Muslim modes of dress. I'm taking that off the table, rather, I want to focus on the importation of Muslim attire into the West."#
A note: Razib links Stanley Kurtz's article that calls it a burka. This means "mud puddle" and sounds like burqa when spoken by an English speaker.
Aaron Swartz calls the LaRouchies "pretty normal liberals."#
My reverie is interrupted by the gang of LaRouchies which has formed on our campus. I try to understand what they stand for, but it's tough to get a straight answer out of them. Still they seem nice enough, and they're certainly dedicated and hardworking — by the time I get to my room they have distributed a pamphlet or four to every room (presumably in every dorm). They sell books like "Spawn of Satan II: The People Running the Bush Administration", which make them sound a little crazy, but from what I've read they sound like pretty normal liberals.
Philip Greenspun on why reading the news is unimportant.#
I've been without Internet, email, or telephone (brought the phone; forgot the charger) for two weeks here in Greece and therefore have missed out on the news. Checking today from Santorini it appears that absolutely nothing actually new has been reported. Hurricanes and typhoons have struck various places that get hurricanes and typhoons every year. People who have hated each other for a long time continue to skirmish. Politicians have given speeches and interviews where all questions are answered vaguely and blandly. I've long thought that it is much better to invest time in books and magazine articles rather than the newspaper and every time that I'm away from the news this belief is deepened. Yet most people can't resist reading the newspaper in the morning or clicking the "News" icon in the Google toolbar. Could this be a source of economic and intellectual stagnation?
Cynthia Rockwell quotes Woody Allen on politics:#
Spiegel: Why have you, as a chronolist of Manhattan, not included September 11th in your films?
Allen: I don't find politics profound enough to deal with it as an artist. The story of human beings is composed of murder, only the cosmetics and the decorations change: 2001 some fanatics killed Americans, and now the Americans kill Iraqis. And when I was a kid, Nazis murdered Jews. Now, Jews and Palestinians are butchering each other. Politics has been volatile for thousands of years, and meaningless, because everything repeats itself. But, as a citizen I vote, or course.
Chip Gibbons on why homosexuality is considered evil in religious systems:#
Christianity and most other religions find homosexuality especially evil because homosexual sex doesn't increase the number of believers. Religion survives because little children are brainwashed from the time they are little babies. People who are brought up in secular homes tend to see religion as ridiculous. Most children, however, don't question the beliefs of their parents or the people that their parents teach them to respect.
Homosexuals are useless in "God's plan" to convert the entire world to one particular belief system.
10 Ways to Please Your Undead Man#
Chris Coyne writes Games Economists Play, volume 10.#
The minimum wage benefits those workers who keep their job at the higher salary while hurting the least skilled workers who are priced out of the market. That's about to change. Your challenge, the next time there is an increase in the minimum wage, is to keep the same number of workers despite the increase in wages. This will take some creativity but here are some suggestions to get the ball rolling in your quest to reduce the real wage to the market rate:
1. Shut off the AC in the summer and the heat in the winter. In fact shut off the electricity all together - employees must bring candles or a flashlight from home. Hang a sign on the out-of-order elevator that reads: "The only thing going up are my labor costs so the only thing going down is your real wage - take the stairs."
Activist Holds Anti-Nader Hunger Strike. Nader: "We're sending him some carrot juice."#