Yes it is in PowerPoint…I hate PowerPoint, but I was told to learn the new version, so…

However, in the long-term, they did the wrong something.

In the long-term, Europe has created a worse moral-hazard than the bank bailouts in the United States caused with its financial bailouts: a clear signal has been sent that politicians can bargain their way to political power by writing blank checks to public unions and other rent-seeking interests, and there will be no day of reckoning. Worse, the signal has been sent that, if you are a responsible, Prussian government that controls wage inflation, you will be forced to pay for the spend-thrift irresponsibility of your over-mortgaged southern neighbors. The lesson is clear: savers are suckers.

Europe should have looked at how the United States handles bad local governments…let them go bankrupt. By letting bad local governments go under, local governments in the United States can get out from under the bad decisions of previous governments and restart under firmer footing. Indeed, as Alabama has shown in recent years at the county-level, the threat of a bankruptcy by a local government is usually enough to bring creditors to debt restructuring, saving the county from needing to file.

By contrast, Greece’s government now lacks the power to force its creditors, particularly its government unions, to renegotiate its debts, since Germany and France stand ready with an open checkbook to bail them out.

The responsible course of action would be to let Greece default, or partially default, while protecting the somewhat more tenable positions of Portugal and Italy. Germany could have credibly said, “Greece lied; Portugal did not; we will protect honest governments.” Given the fungibility of the term, “honest government”, this would have been a position that would have made an example out of Greece while preventing a, “spread of the debt contagion”.

Europe has traded the long-term future of the Euro for short-term financial stability, and punted a much-greater day of reckoning some five to ten years down the road. Proponents will (mis)quote Keynes and say, “In the long-run, we are all dead.” I once heard Prof. Garrison quote another economist, “Keynes is dead, and we are stuck in his long-run.”

If I could have a cell phone that had a laser projected keyboard and a Pocket Projector, so that I could sit the cell phone down on an empty desk, type on a full-sized virtual keyboard, and see the interface displayed on the desk behind the phone or on an 8 1/2 by 11 piece of paper I taped on the wall.

That would be really cool.

The Less Well Known

“Monster Mash”, “Thriller”, and any cover done by Marilyn Manson of course top the list, but here are some, “lesser knowns” that are still very appropriate to round out your two hours:

1. “Dear Clarice” from the Hannibal soundtrack: The entire soundtrack is great for a more “sophisticated” party feel, but this track, with Anthony Hopkin’s voice-over, is downright chilling. “Ta-ta… -H”.
2. “Vampires, Mummies, and the Holy Ghost” by Jimmy Buffett: A very funny, and strangely perfect song for parties, especially in warmer-weather states. “No aliens, psychopaths, or MTV hosts scare me like Vampires, Mummies, and the Holy Ghost.”
3. “The Simpsons Halloween Special End Credits Theme” from the album Songs in the Key of Springfield: Most people hear the Addams Family theme over and over again during Halloween, so here is a little twist. Just so you know, the James Earl Jones reading of Poe’s “The Raven” on the Simpsons ruined that poem forever for me, so please do not put it on there.
4. “Witchy Woman” by the Eagles: Why is this not on everyone’s list?
5. “Pain [Slayer Mix]” and “Strong” from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer album: Rasputina’s “Transylvanian Concubine” makes the iTunes cut, but I think these two deserve an honorable mention.
6. “Paint it Black” and “Sympathy for the Devil” from Symphonic: The London Symphony Orchestra plays the Rolling Stones: Everyone knows the words; the originals will be played; play the twist.
7. “We Only Come Out at Night” by the Smashing Pumpkins: It should be obvious, but it is one that does not make it on many playlists.

My Top Ten Halloween Songs

Of course, the above songs do not top the list, but are the ones people forget or do not know about. Here is my top ten, just in case you care:

1. “Warewolves of London” – Warren Zevon
2. “Tocacata and Fugue in D Minor” – Back
3. “Monster Mash” – Bobby “Boris” Pickett
4. “I Put a Spell on You” – Marilyn Manson version and Nina Simone version
5. “Love Potion No. 9″ – Joey Gaynor
6. “Transylvanian Concubine” – Rasputina
7. “Thriller” – Michael Jackson
8. “Witchy Woman” – Eagles
9. “Vampires, Mummies, and the Holy Ghost” – Jimmy Buffett
10. “Bad Moon Rising” – Creedence Clearwater Revival

In case I am missing anything good, please comment.

Let us assume the following policy goals:

• Everyone has coverage
• Lowering costs

Now, given those goals, let us design a system with the following additional goals in mind:

• Preserve the information embedded in market prices, as much as possible
• Have the fewest perverse incentives possible
• Make all costs explicit instead of hidden
• Make the system sustainable politically

In order to do this, I propose we create a health-care “baseline” for people that are uninsurable at their risk-level and income-level, and then have everyone else purchase health care.  This is what I propose:

1. Pass a law requiring everyone have some form of health coverage that meets some minimal standard – I would favor a formula that takes a several baskets of common diseases and say that the total cost of treating each of these baskets cannot exceed some dollar amount ($15K with ongoing CPI adjusters), but what the standard is a “less important” issue that can be debated forever.
2. Eliminate all of the government incentives (tax or otherwise) that encourages employers to provide health insurance for employees as a “benefit” – if employers still provide insurance for employees, than it is because of a market judgment, not a political one.  Regulation that needs to be eliminated includes:
   • Eliminate laws prohibiting employers from passing higher costs for health-related issues to employees – if you choose to smoke or be overweight, the employer should be able to charge you more (or pay you less) for your health insurance.
3. Set up a government-run health insurance scheme as an insurer of last resort, that has a premium of 10% of a participant’s income, plus an extra 5% per dependent.
   • People that have private insurance don’t pay the premium.
   • This insurer has all of the things you expect from a government health insurance scheme: long lines, bureaucratic gate-keepers, group of gray-beards deciding what to cover, etc.
   • Subsidize the government-run health-care system explicitly from general revenues.
   • Allow the government to regulate the personal lives of people on the system as it wants to (make them pay extra for smoking, or coerce them to stop; forbid them from eating a fast food, stop them from using recreational drugs, etc.), but only allow these regulations on people in the federal system.
4. Fold Medicaid into the new federal program, consolidating state and federal bureaucracy into the new system.
   • Relieve the states of that burden.
5. Fold Medicare into the new federal program.
   • Eliminate the Medicare payroll tax.
   • Allow those that are 65 or older to still purchase private insurance if that is less expensive than the 10% tax.
   • Allow those that are 65 or older, with no dependents, to opt-out of insurance altogether (by signing some form at the court house), and let them spend their money (or pass it on) as they wish instead of spending it on health care. The kicker is, they make an explicit choice, and we don’t care if they die early because of no access to health care.
6. Fold the VA hospital system into the new program, giving veterans without war injuries a defined monthly monetary health benefit (say $100 for retirees) that they can spend on private insurance, or deduct from their public plan premiums.
   • For veterans with war injuries, you can leave the VA hospitals open, give them some additional defined benefit, give them a reduced-cost or no-cost public plan, pay for private or army treatment, or have some other scheme to have them treated at public expense.
7. Force the states to pay for any of their regulatory tomfoolery that affects the cost of the public program.
   • For example, if the State of California passes a regulation forbidding insurance companies from treating HIV as a pre-existing condition, raising the cost of private insurance, causing people to choose the public program over private insurance, the additional cost will be paid by the state to the Federal Government.
   • Alternatively, if California chooses instead to subsidize people with HIV that purchase private insurance, and that reduces the burden of the Federal program, then the Federal Government would make a transfer payment to the State of California.

The proposed system is not perfect, but it preserves most of the pricing signals for medicine.  However, it would destroy incentives to reduce costs for “catastrophic care”, since the patient never bears those costs directly (but at least the insurance companies have some incentives to lower costs).

The slides are in both OpenOffice.org Impress format, and in PDF.

OpenOffice.org Impress Format

PDF Format

Creating an Online Image by Scott Grizzard is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

This letter is a response to the Tampa-Orlando high-speed rail project, which you can read about here.

The Tampa-Orlando Train Will Not Work – Even for Me

I live in South Tampa, and my girlfriend is in school at UCF.  Almost every weekend, one of us makes the one hundred five mile drive on Friday afternoon, to return Saturday night or Sunday morning.  Even if there was high-speed rail, neither of us would use it for the trip, because the rail cannot be priced low enough for either of us to ride it.

The cost of driving one way from my place to her place is roughly $100, taking the IRS’s fifty cents a mile (high for my car), adding two hours of my time valued at $20/hour, finishing with the tolls on SR417 and SR408.

The closest termination point in Tampa is downtown for me, and the Orlando Airport for her.  I live eight miles from the Amtrack station downtown, which means that trip is $4 plus fifteen minutes of my time ($5).  UCF is twenty-three miles from the airport ($11.50) plus thirty minutes ($10), plus tolls ($2.50).  But remember, someone must drop me off at the train station in Tampa, and my girlfriend must pick me up from the station at the airport, so those two trips must be made both ways, giving a total of $66.

For the train to be worth it for me, the journey would have to be Star Trek transporter instant, and cost less than $34, with no waiting time on either end.  If you assume that the waiting time and travel time together is two hours, then the public must pay me six dollars to take the train instead of driving.

All of that assumes that I have no value for the flexibility that driving gives me, being able to leave and arrive when I want instead of when the train schedule dictates.  It also assumes I have no value for having a car in Orlando, or have any value for the extra cargo-capacity of my car.

If the two cities in question are New York and Boston, or London and Paris, then the train makes sense.  However, you will have to point a gun to my head for me pay for a train between Tampa and UCF instead of driving, which is exactly what the government is doing to build the thing.  Once the thing is built, and no one rides it, what’s next?  Higher car taxes and massive tolls on I-4 to force us to ride it?… high taxes to build public transportation in Orlando and Tampa to make the train usable?… or simply high ongoing taxes to pay for a train no one rides?

Even if the high-speed rail is built with Federal dollars, and even if it brings jobs to the state, it would be much better to take the money and pay construction workers to tear down half of Westshore and rebuild it, exactly as it is now.  At least then, our tax dollars would not be perpetually drained to pay the ongoing maintenance on a train no one rides.  Or, if you must do something useful with the money, widen I-75 to eight lanes from Naples to the Georgia border.

I wrote it to remove all of the “properties” changes and filter out the output files, so all that was left was the code changes and a list of binary files that were modified.

Just pipe the output of svn diff to the script, after you set the parameters at the top of the script. I put the filters in the script instead of parameters because I always run the same filters.

It is released under the GPLv2 (the licensing details is longer than the script itself).

clean_svn_diff.bash

This software is licensed under the CC-GNU GPL version 2.0 or later.

Truman once said he wanted a one-arm economist, “so he couldn’t say ‘on the other hand’.” I have an MA in economics, so I should hedge, but on the other hand, I only have an MA, so I should “half-hedge” (that “hedging my hedging” bit should earn me a PhD on its own). I am also an Episcopalian, which means that on the one hand, I am Anglican and hedging is that most Anglican of instincts, but on the other hand, the Episcopal Church will take up some principles as long as they aren’t in the Bible, so I’ll half hedge from that.

On the other hand (and if the Hindus are right, I will be coming back as an octopus: eight hands and no backbone), I’m not going to hedge as much as present some “gradient alternatives”, especially when I talk about policy. I’ll call this the “better sex-education” argument – you should be abstinent until marriage, but if your aren’t going to be, condoms are better than birth control pills, which are in turn better than nothing. Since we could replace the public school system with a million better alternatives, and still be screwed by the system, I think this is the perfect analogy.