The Health Care Monster Returns

“Stern argues that “the most essential change is to get everyone in a system where they have health care,” then work to improve it.”

Terrible argument! In order to be politically possible, any changes to the health care system must not lead to worse coverage for those who are covered already (the vast majority). If we attempt to screw the middle class to help the lower class, it will be a non-starter.

In any case, medical care in the US is expensive here due to very good reasons (e.g., MRI machines cost big bucks as do their operators). We can no more afford to provide the poor with excellent medical care than we can provide them with gourmet food. The trick will be to provide adequate care for the poor, while continuing to provide excellent care for the middle class and upper classes. We need to remember that resources are limited and to robustly support those of us who are paying for the services (or those of us who already have, via Medicare).

I’ve got mine, Jack, the hell with you...........nice philosophy, wolf. But are MRI’s the main reason for the high medical costs ? I’ve had a few myself
over the years but they are not exactly standard procedure. How many
tests and procedures are necessary ? And should insurance companies be making those medical judgments ? The HMO system
itself is socialist, a joint brainscheme of Nixon and Ted Kennedy.
It may be that we need laissez faire here instead of socialism, abolish licensing and the medical guild monopoly over medicine since all monopoly raises prices. While the poor and many middle class people can’t afford gourmet foods it is still possible to get good food on the market, not just adequate. Medicine is a highly government controlled and regulated field and all the braindead libs can do is cry for more government intervention. We can’t be more creative than this ?

pretty much every other industrialized nation provides ALL it’s people quality healthcare for less money than we do, probably the best thing to do is increase resources. in France they spend about 60% what we do as a percentage of GDP and have about twice as many doctors. a for profit healthcare system DOES NOT WORK. just look at the numbers.

A very basic principle in insurance is having a pool of clients large enough in order to spread the risk over a broad area. Having a lot of people paying for insurance with the risk spread out as vast as possible is very efficient and profitable. A system that has EVERYBODY covered (i.e. the largest pool possible) would be the best way to spread that risk. Single-payer is the only real way to get out of our present situation. In addition to eliminating the “middle-man” of private insurers with their smaller risk pools, other savings can be had with a greater focus on preventative care and a reduction in useless (from a societal point of view) coslty cosmetic/elective surgeries that skew valuable resources away from better uses.

The trouble with the system now is that is too socialized with medicare,
HMO’s, etc. The state will decide who can and can’t get surgery because of “society’s” (read: government) resources. People who need serious surgery in Canada come here. We should turn over medicine to
the folks who run the postal service ? And what you consider “cosmetic”
otheres consider necessary and if they can afford it they should get it. Not have some shitass bureaucrat decide for them.

People who need serious surgery in Canada come here.

That’s true as I know someone who, against her doctor’s advice, went to the USA for medical treatment, paid thousands and thousands of dollars for treatment and died regardless of the treatment but at least she died satisfied that she had tried everything.

I have another friend who is a dual citizen and when he got sick while down in the USA he hustled back up here to Canada for medical treatment. What would of cost him a fortune for treatment in the USA didn’t cost him a penny here in Canada except for what he paid by way of taxes which in turn pay for our universal healthcare system.

In other words, there are positive and negative aspects in either system.

“reduction in useless (from a societal point of view) coslty cosmetic/elective surgeries that skew valuable resources away from better uses.”

lams712 - are you saying that people should not be *allowed* to get such procedures? Even if they pay for it with their own resources? If so, that sounds like a big step backwards to me.

David - i have heard that in Canada one cannot get heart bypass surgery after a certain age (60 i think). Is this true? If so, that is a very nasty downside to the Canadian system.

No I’m not saying it that cosmetic surgery should be “banned”. I’m saying that a different system that works toward preventative care and better distribution of resources would be better for all in the short and long run.
The reason why there are so much resources wasted on unnecessary procedures is because there’s $$$$ in it. There is also not much money to be made in preventative under our current perverse sytem. A better distribution would allow preventative care to be “profitiable” and cosmetic things to be less “profitable” relatively speaking.
The bottom line is that we in the United States are not getting enough bang for our buck. We spend such a huge percentage of our GDP on health care but it is so poorly distributed and rife with other problems (over 20% for “administrative” costs, etc.) that we should be getting more for our money.
For all the anecdotal evidence people against national healthcare give (people on long waiting lists for procedures, all these people from Canada coming to the US for treatment, etc.) NO COUNTRY WITH NATIONAL HEALTHCARE WANTS TO GET RID OF IT FOR an “American style” system. Name one. You can’t. There are too many countries out there that are spending less on healthcare than us and getting better coverage than us.
As I said before, single-payer is the best system available because the risk pool is sufficiently large so that each person in the pool would only have to pay a little to get fully covered. Every country with a national health plan has lower administrative and marketing costs than the US.

Your assumption that “resources” are collectively owned is in error. It’s the zero sum mentality of collectivists. I own something when I pay for it.  There are no rights to any services provided by other humans. You only have the right to negotiate for the service or goods or whatever. To say medical care is a right means that the doctor is your slave. He or she is not, it’s like the old stupid feminist phrase Abortion On Demand, no such thing, only abortion on request. Of course, nothing is free, people pay very high taxes in Canada and elsewhere for socialized medicine.  In a free society there is no legislative “single” anything. In fact under the state health plans in Oregon and Hawaii people over 50 have been denied certain operations or transplants because of the specious “society’s resources” nonargument. The East Germans used to ration medical care so people would not live to collect their retirement grants or benefits. The state is not Santa Claus. There is no moral reason why I should be forced to pay for another’s medical care or vice-versa. As far as actual medical treatment goes the US still has the best care in the world. But it is being destroyed by Medicare and the HMO system. Most people will need the greatest medical care in their final years and mostly that is not preventable. As far as that large group means small payments for each I can’t believe people still fall for that line, when the income tax was enacted in 1913 the proponents opposed any caps because they said it would never get that high (5%) !  Yeah, right.

You are mistaken with the “Limbaughesque” crap about the “best health care system in the world”. I’m talking to a wall.
Stop with right wing talking points and expalin to me a better system where the RISK IS SPREAD OUT OVER A LARGE RISK POOL. This isn’t some made up principle, it’s a basic tenet of insurance (whether it be auto, healthcare, etc.). One should ALWAYS try to get the largest risk pool possible.
You still haven’t addressed why we get so little bang for our buck compared to other countries, why NO COUNTRY WITH NATIONAL HEALTHCARE IS SUGGESTING GETTING RID OF THEIR SYSTEM AND GOING TO AN “AMERICAN-STYLE” SYSTEM, and why “administrative costs” is conservatively estimated to be 20% (it’s probably more), much more than any other system.
There are some things in this world that should be paid for by everbody with the costs spread out. Fire, police, national defense, ambulance, and trash collection are all examples of this. Health care is no different. Every other industrialized country in the world seems to be having success with it, WHY CAN’T WE??????????????

I have heard that in Canada one cannot get heart bypass surgery after a certain age (60 i think). Is this true?

Wolf, not true. Sounds like a campfire story meant to scare people away from a universal healthcare system.

David - glad to hear it. There are enough scary stories already with out fake ones.

Oh, and blondemike, I totally agree with you about the income tax thing I greatly appreciate you proving my point. You see, everyone WOULD BE PAYING LOWER RATE RIGHT NOW, if the rich people paid their fair share. You see, the rich do something called “lobbying”, where they get themselves tax break and other LOOPHOLES. The average person doesn’t get these. So instead of a tax code that should fit on one page we have a multi-volume code with THOUSANDS of pages, full of these loopholes. All the revenue lost through these loopholes is made up for by the average person paying through the nose, so to speak.
If all people paid their fair share then the burden would be more equally distrbuted and most people would be paying less!!!!!!

I don’t think in those collective terms, first of all, and second, we get much more for our money than any other country. The government regulations, licensing, legal medical monopoly, Medicare and govt created HMO’s courtesy of Nixon and Ted Kennedy in the early 70s are the reason for the bureaucratization and destruction of American medicine. It is precisely the breakdown of the insurance or pool principle that has caused the massive dissatisfaction with the HMO concept. Rounding it out to full statism would destroy what’s left of our medicine. The fair share concept is crap, prices when left free are determined by the market, not someone’s benevolence or malevolence. See Dr. George Reisman’s Atlas sized 1,000 plus page hardback “Capitalism” for a fully detailed explanation of how a free society would work. David, I’ve been told by Canadians that that IS true and not only for bypass surgery. It’s started to happen here in Oregon and Hawaii with state health systems, it makes perfect economic sense from the view of the state. As far the rich paying their “fair share” they still pay close 1/3rd at the top levels, if we go back to the pre-Reagan era it was 70% and the pre-JFK tax cuts it was 91% in the 50s. I don’t see anything fair about that nor would people work to invest and get rich if it’s going to be stolen at gun point, which is what taxation is, let’s be honest here. These are not club dues as some fatuous Berkeley lib once told me, they are exacted by brute force, the voluntary compliance thing is a sham. And I’m not rich but even making a moderately high five figures I depend on those exemptions from getting wiped out. The few years I did make in the low six figures I paid taxes up the gazoo. I know people in Britain and Canada and New Zealand and India and Australia who’d love to get rid of their socialized medicine but once this is enacted it stays forever, like all other bad laws, which is a good reason for not enacting it in the first place. I loathe Limbaugh and the neocons so I don’t get any rightwing talking points from them, a cheap shot by you. I could just as easily accuse you of leftist talking points. But my main issue here is not the “pragmatic” one of insurance pools but the moral one of opposing the enslavement of medicine by the state. You expect me to debate this issue on your premises but I reject your premises. And any stinking compromise here would involve acceptance of your principle that I’m opposed to. I don’t believe in society or that it has any rights. Individuals get together to voluntarily cooperate but that’s not the same as being forced to at the point of a gun and everything you advocate gets down to your guns. You people think Bush lost because he’s anti-government, just the opposite. It was a vote against the war and Caesarism, not for socialism. Half the newly elected Dems are Blue Dogs. To conclude, I believe we need radical change but in precisely the opposite direction from what you advocate.

David, I’ve been told by Canadians that that IS true and not only for bypass surgery.

Mike, I had never heard of such a practice and would expect an uproar of public disapproval if it was so. I did some quick research and found nothing to substantiate it. I did find some information on the prioritization of patients on waiting lists for some surgeries like organ transplants and bypass surgeries but nothing to indicate that people over a certain age are being prevented from bypass surgery or any other medical treatment. The Canada Health Act mandates that all residents of Canada are entitiled to healthcare so age restrictions for certain procedures would seem to contrary to the law. If you have any references to support these rumours you have heard I would be very interested to read it.

At the moment I can only go on what I’ve heard from people I have reason to believe are reliable. Surgeries from varicose veins to facial makeovers to liver transplants have either been denied or
else people are kept waiting so long that they come down here for them. Your quoting the Canadian statute is touching, I am sure one could have quoted the old Soviet Constitution for their guarantees too.  The complaint I’m hearing is that the health care is very basic and does not address the needs of people with surgical needs, “cosmetic” or otherwise. People could die of old age by the time some of these operations are approved. I’ll try to do further research on this if I can get enough time.

Canada has a good healthcare system by any standards and Canada does boast one of the highest life expectancies (about 80 years) and lowest infant morality rates of industrialized countries.

Do some research if you have the time, that’s fine. Just keep in mind there is a difference between prioritization of waiting lists and denying people treatment.

Someone who dies while waiting on a list in Canada is just as dead as the guy who died because he couldn’t afford the treatment in the USA.

blondmike where do you get your numbers????? “We get much more for our money than any other country”??????
Um, first there’s over 40 million in the US that are NOT INSURED. There are lots of countries that pay LESS per capita and a LOWER percentage of their GDP than the US and still cover EVERYBODY!!!! There are also a great number in the US with really crappy coverage and are classified as “underinsured”.
As for your anecdotal “evidence” of people you know “..in Britain and Canada and New Zealand and India and Australia who’d love to get rid of their socialized medicine...”, that JUST WON’T CUT IT (anecdotal evidence usually doesn’t).  THERE IS NO COUNTRY WANTING TO GET RID OF THEIR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM and this is en extremely important point: and CHANGE IT TO AN “AMERICAN-STYLE” SYSTEM. THERE ARE NONE!!!
I find your libertarian views interesting, but they are, in my opinion, way off the mark. Maybe you’re at the wrong website,there are many other right-wing/libertarian websites out there that you might be interested in.

Here are some links that everyone interested in comparisons between the Canadian and American healthcare systems could take a look at.

The Health of Nations: Oh, Canada! (this one was a good read)

Policy: Oh Canada!

Physicians who have practiced in both the United States and Canada compare the systems.

Canada’s Single Payer Health Care System - It’s Worth a Look

I am blessed with good health and the intervals between visits to my doctor is measured in years and even decades so I don’t have much in the way of personal experience with being a patient in our healthcare system and am forced to rely on the research and testimony of others as I have linked to above. I still have not found any mention of people in Canada being denied bypass surgery or any other medical treatment because of their age.

David, no offense, but how do we know your sites are unbiased ?
Lams, frankly I don’t give a shit what you think. If you want to dismiss what people have told me as anecdotes, then fuck you. I shall pay no further attention to you.I have given refs and that’s all I’m obligated to do.  260 million or more DO have insurance.  And if medicine was deregulated the price would go radically downwards as is the case with all other commodities UNLESS there is a governmental tie-in as in the case of the oil industry, see The Big Ripoff about the collusion between govt and business to ripoff the consumer including in this area. There are many people in many countries wanting to get rid of socialized medicine, you will find them by the droves in the UK alone, that their governments do NOT is hardly a surprise nor does it prove anything more about the merits of it than the FEDGOV monopoly on first class mail “proves” that’s a good thing. I don’t go to many websites for discussions and much of what passes for libertarianism isn’t. I see nothing wrong with bringing up these points here. Who knows, there may be a few intelligent people to debate with. But I’d be the fool to waste further time with you.

Mike, none taken. I read them and found them to be fair and impartial assessments ... mostly.
Read them and tell me if you think they are unbiased and address any items you feel were biased.
But try to keep in mind that you are biased to start with and so am I.

Nice manners blondemike. I knew it was only a matter of time before the right-wing windbag resorted to as hominem attacks (FYI that’s basically a fancy word for name calling). I know that you having recieved such a great intellectual beat-down from me greatly frustrates you. Your refusal to really address any of my points speaks volumes. It’s a typical right-wing/ “libertarian” (yes, to me they are pretty much the same in my book when you boil it all down) tactic to: 1) “dismiss the premise” of the person you disagree with, 2) manufacture evidence, commonly through unprovable and usually unrepresentative anedotal cases, 3) change the subject, and 4) resort to name-calling. It’s a shame that you are not willing to address an very serious political and economic issue where both the “left” and the “right” are at least coming into agreement that THERE IS A PROBLEM.  The US as a whole spends way too much $$$ to get so little in return. Other countries are able to to cover all of their citizens and do it for less money. Despite your “evidence”, there are currently no plans by any country with a national healthcare system to get rid of it and there are defintely NO PLANS TO GO TO AN AMERICAN-STYLE SYSTEM.
If there is collusion between government and business it’s to PREVENT the American people from getting the national healthcare they want. Just “follow the money”. Do a little research and see what special interests are aganist it.  See who is behind the legalized bribery called campaign donations, who is paying for the lobbyists, the “anti” healthcare commericals, and the direct mailings. The collusion is with the private insurance industry, the pharmaceuticals, and the AMA, but of course, you probably don’t care too much about that. To “libertarians” a society controlled by corporate interests is always preferable to a government by the people.
Blondemike, I wish you the BEST of luck in your future endeavors and I sincerely hope you NEVER have to face a healthcare crisis like our millions of uninsured and underinsured fellow Americans do.

“But the more fundamental problem is our reliance on private, for-profit corporations to provide health insurance — the real monster in this saga. They’re the main reason for rising costs (making health insurance in the United States about twice as expensive as in most industrial countries), for the growing number of uninsured, and for the inferior health results for the average American. In 2004, the United States spent $6,100 per capita on health care, compared to $2,250 per capita on average by the countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which have national health insurance programs. Because public expenditures cover 60 percent of American health care costs, U.S. taxpayers are paying more than the cost of national health insurance, but not receiving it.”

This statement is not born out by the facts:

From a recent study by the Institute of Medicine:
To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System (2000)
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=9728

Preventable adverse events are a leading cause of death in the United States. When extrapolated to the over 33.6 million admi ssions to U.S. hospitals in 1997, the results of these two studies imply that at least 44,000 and perhaps as many as 98,000 Americans die in hospitals each year as a result of medical errors.

Total national costs (lost income, lost household production, disability, health care costs) are estimated to be between $37.6 billion and $50 billion for adverse events and between $17 billion and $29 billion for preventable adverse events.* Health care costs account for over one-half of the total costs. Even when using the lower estimates, the total national costs associated with adverse events and preventable adverse events represent approximately 4 percent and 2 percent, respectively, of national health expenditures in 1996.# In 1992, the direct and indirect costs of adverse events were slightly higher than the direct and indirect costs of caring for people with HIV and ADS.**

*Thomas, Eric J.; Studdert, David M.; Newhouse, Joseph P., et al. Costs of Medical Injuries in Utah and Colorado.  Inquiry. 36:255–264, 1999. See also: Leape, et al., 1991. Brennan, et al., 1991.
#Ibid
**Ibid

Perhaps Mr Moberg should stay to analysis of matters anthropological.
His whole article is rife with summaries that lead his reader to take on an inaccurate understanding of the health care industry. In case any one reading this, including Mr. Moberg, is interested the best book on health care reform is:
Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition on Results
by Michael E. Porter, Elizabeth Olmstead Teisberg
ISBN-13: 9781591397786

All players in the field have to change; not just one; in order for health care reform to be an attainable goal, we must stop vilifying players and look to responsibilities that must be redefined.

Health care arguments often divide along lines such as:

Who should pay? We don’t want “socialized medicine.” Our system is already the best in the world, that’s why it costs the most.  Blah, blah, blah.  With the current flap over the military care it is hard to argue for government provided anything. But we WILL pay one way or another.

The accepted idea is that a group of people spreads risk and makes cost bearable for the whole group. Good in theory — poor in practice.

As a one-person business I had only major medical insurance for our family of four. All medical and dental expenses were paid out of pocket until I reached 65. To me Medicare looks great! The problem is that it cannot sustain the demographics — this has been known for a long time and time is running out.

Look around at the insurance companies, especially their home offices. Palatial is the word which comes to mind.

Over the years I occasionally got a call from my insurance agent offering a new cost saving policy. I’m not sure just when that ended, but when I finally had my one and only claim — my premiums soared 547% in the next two years. My letters to representatives in the state legislature and to the state insurance board were cookie cutter, stock replies of how I was in a group which required more care than average. (They had winnowed us down to those who actually needed insurance after giving the enticement to leave to those who did not.

The last time I went to my family doctor for a physical exam I asked if he wasn’t going to do any lab tests. He replied, “Which ones do you want? The insurance companies balk at too many tests.” If this is what a private system has come to — how much better is it than a government one?

If we accept our responsibility as a nation to “provide for the general welfare” of our people and accept the fact that we will pay, then the question is only how to pay. My wife has been active as a volunteer and auxilian at a local hospital for decades — 30% of the average bill is due to treatment of charity cases — often in the emergency room at triple cost.

• Remove the possibility of companies dodging the inevitable serious claims by switching and categorizing.

• Tax ALL forms of income, not just wages and salaries, to cover both Social Security and Medicare.

• Set the standards high for companies competing for the business. Low bidder is seldom best.

My experience at a local VA clinic have all been reasonably good. The people seem competent and caring. I can see the increase in work load is putting a strain on them and the prescriptions keep going up, but a well run facility is possible. So far no one has said, “What tests do you want.”

“The accepted idea is that a group of people spread risk and makes the cost bearable for the whole group. Good in theory--poor in practice.”

That “poor in practice theory” is the ENTIRE BASIS of the INSURANCE INDUSTRY!!! Insurance companies do indeed try to get the largest pool possible to spread their risk, that is insurance 101. A similar theory (and one that WORKS in practice) is behind how police, fire, ambulance, the courts, national defense are done. EVERYONE PAYS for these things through taxes whether they are “needed” or not BY EVERYONE.

Also, the whole Walter Reed scandal is a case in point against PRIVATIZATION. The “government” wasn’t so much the problem in as much as it was the contractor (and a subsidiary of Hallburton to boot!!).

Finally, for all the “socialized medicine” bashers out there, no one has given a adequate reponse to exactly what country wants to get rid of their “socialized medicine” and what country wants to implement an “American-style” system.

Walter Reed is a socialist facility and the government IS the problem, regardless of whom they contract it to because it is government owned and operated. David, that was an inadequate answer because you merely referred us to sites that happen to agree with you here. WTH, we need less taxes and more loopholes, not more taxes and less loopholes. Lams, I already answered your query because no politician wants to give up government power over ANYTHING once they get it.
Hans Herman Hoppe and Murray Rothbard have demonstrated how all
the government activities you list above could be done much better by the market, see For A New Liberty by Rothbard for starters.

Thanks David Moberg for the article and recognizing we have a real window born out of crisis to act on meaningful health care reform

You are correct about the incrementalists trying to stop bold national reform citing potential severe dislocations of a $2 trillion dollar “disease care” economy

I am a physician-forecaster-blogger.

I am convinced that individual and institutional prevention resulting in reduced demand for expensive high tech medical services is our only way out of this mess.

Other nations are discovering this reality also.

My blog since Dec 05 is http://medicalcrises.blogspot.com

Dr. Rick Lippin
Southampton, Pa
ralippin@aol.com

Hey, Tricky Dicky, don’t be using the public ITT board for your private advertisement. Shame on you !

Hi Blonde Mike-

I make zero $ dollars from my writing. I didn’t realize I put up an ad?

Thanks

Dr. Rick Lippin

Imagination needed…

What if instead of constantly attacking/defending socialized medicine or private, we do a combo?

This is in fact what eventually comes to be even where government health care has existed for generations. Our friends in England have resorted to private clinics when National Health moved too slow for their ailments. Canadians who can afford it have come to the US for MRIs, elective surgery, etc. due to overloading or non-availablity.

If insurance companies were required to actually “pool” those in medical need with the well, the numbers would allow a fair profit and make more individuals
able to provide for themselves.

If anyone in need could get examination and treatment without resorting to the Emergency Room at taxpayer expense, we would all save money and they would get preventive care.

That’s a shameful thing to admit, Dr. Rick.
WTH, we need to fully privatize everything so there’s no goldbricking, here in California you can’t get into an emergency room unless your black or illegal. Not PC but the truth.

Mike,

In a totally privitized society where would a black or illegal siick person go for help? A poor person or even just one unwilling to pay the charges if the unregulated health facilities decided to establish very high prices?

With a privitized police department and justice system what would another health provide do if willing to provide cheaper care, but was a very poor shot (or reluctant to defend his busiiness plan)?

I just seems to me that certian aspects call for an agency (even though imperfect) of such a magnitude that private enterprise is impractiical. FDA, Justice, transportation safety, etc.

WTH, it’s impossible to give a real answer to your perfectly legitimate question here but on the Sanders thread I did refer you to For A New Liberty by Dr. Murray N. Rothbard, the father of anarcho-capitalism, he specifically gets in to the nuts and bolts issues on all the questions and functions that you list above. It is a revolutionary philosophy and I do not want to appear glib here which is why I’m avoiding soundbite answers. Just an example, if the state had the shoe monopoly anyone venturing to change that would be accused of wanting the poor to go barefoot. But the principle is the same though the functions can greatly differ. So FYI I’m not analogizing these different industries as industries but I am saying the underlying economic principle is the same. This is an assertion but that is why I’m giving a ref here, I could give several but thought I’d try to keep it simple. Just for clarity’s sake.

WTH- You are absolutely correct. blondemike is wrong.

blondmike doesn’t understand the difference between a business and a profession. Medicine, Law , the Media, the Clergy are professions-not businesses. These are professions who perform important services that transcend the freemarket. As a matter of fact they have been ruined by the excesses of the free market .

The practice of Medicine is a profession which has been almost completely corrupted by trying to transform it into a business.

Human Flesh and human souls are not commodities- period!

blondemike- Get it?

Dr. Rick Lippin
Southampton, Pa

A profession IS a business, doc. People become lawyers and doctors and shrinks and you name it TO MAKE GOOD MONEY. Everything is a commodity, doc. EVERYTHING. You we can’t put a price on everything, we DO every day. Else we would all starve and die. So don’t feel superior to the grubby commercial businessman, you are one of them except you are a failure by your admission. You have been found in the free market by the sovereign consumers, shame on you ! Read The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality by Ludwig Von Mises.

Hey blondemike.

I read Ayn Rand in college and fell in love with free enterprise.

But I know when it is taken to an extreme.

We have corrupted medicine, law, the media and the clergy with excesses of the free-market model

All I can say if you believe that everything has a pricetag is that I feel very sorry for you. What a crass way to go through life.

I am not superior at all to the honest business person. But as a Doc I am not a businessperson

Get it yet?

Dr. Rick Lippin
Southampton, Pa

Everything may be a commodity.
But not all commodities are measured in dollars and cents (or sense).
Some are measured in love.

Mike,

In a sense you are correct — a doctor may need to be a business person. Even if working within an institution he cannot indefinitely give away his services. Either he personally would be overwhelmed with charity patients or the hospital would be.

However, a person can often make occupational choices for reasons other than simply monitary. My mother became a teacher (which did not pay well) because she loved kids. I chose to stay in my home town when I could easily have earned double by moving to a large city. Both my wife and I were only children, all four grandparents were elderly (soon to need our help) and we felt this was a good place for kids to grow up.

Most decisions are largely based on a matter of degree, not absolutes.

Doc, we have not taken capitalism to an extreme because we simply haven’t tried it. The nonsense about the Reagan Revolution notwithstanding, see Rothbard’s Reagan: An Autopsy at the lew rockwell.com website. He wrote it in 1989. In fact we have moved much more towards statism particularly in the medical field but not in that area alone so your positing of our problems as caused by an excess of capitalism is ludicrous. As a doctor you are a businessman or woman offering services on the market UNLESS you are employed by the state. We need to desanctify the idiot god image your “profession” has wrapped around itself, actually Rothbard thought you people were highly paid killers. Thomas Szasz, MD, also has some good stuff on the phony colleageship that goes on in medicine. He has his own website too. Rothbard died in 1995 but all his stuff is available at the von mises and rockwell sites.
WTH, you can’t have relatives WITHOUT absolutes anymore than you can have gray without black and white. I remember the pre-Atlas Shrugged days when pragmatist idiots would proclaim there were no absolutes, oblivious to the fact that they just uttered one !
I never meant to imply all decisions were monetary so I agree with WTH and David here. Sorry for confusion here. I meant to praise all voluntary exchanges which are the essense of market behavior as command and initiation of force are the essense of government or statist behavior.
Law, medicine are very statist areas, Doctor, the clergy is mostly statist-collectivist in philosophical orientation. I work in the media and they are all corrupt whores but it has nothing to do with capitalism, they all follow Big Brother at the New York Times and if we are lucky they will all be out of business in five years. Mostly statist propaganda they push. the alternative is NOT Nimp Chimsky and his boring pack of Commie lies.

blondemike-

Your arguments are devoid of intellectual merit. Your ideologic and obsessional view of free-enterprise is extreme in its inflexibility and ignorance.

Your misperception of what has happenned to the former U.S. professions of medicine, the law, the media and the clergy is uninformed by any measure.

Your attack on the New York Times is way out of line

I am not an “MDiety “ at all.  But , as a Doc, I try to be a values-based professional and not a businessperson

I have always, in over 30 plus years in the practice of medicine, been on a salary.

I will not respond to any more of your ignorance.

Dr. Rick Lippin
Southampton, Pa

What you are really saying is that we disagee, I’ve given brief reasonable arguments and sources for further research. You ARE a businessman and should be honored at the title. The New York Times is establishment dreck and I agree with Alexander Cockburn “Hasten the day of its demise.” Since you have given no specifics as to how I’m wrong but just labeled me with a name I will conclude you have nothing cognitively with which to comment. Best to you, Doctor Dicklicking.

Geez, another ad hominem attack by blondemike. Dr. Lippin, carry it as a badge of honor. You see, when blondemike is confronted by someone with better arguments and VASTLY SUPERIOR intellect he resorts to name calling.

For your information blondmike, WE HAVE TAKEN CAPITALISM TO THE EXTREME!!! and it resulted in THE GREAT DEPRESSION (there were actually many depressions in the late 1800s up on through the 1930s). 

UNREGULATED CAPITALISM DOES NOT WORK!!!! It trends towards “boom-bust” cycles and to market concentration. That is why LIBERTARIANISM ultimately doesn’t work: If capitalism went on unabated eventually the FREE MARKET WOULD NO LONGER BE “FREE” because the largest corporations would get rid of their competition an CONTROL the market for their own benefit (which will probably NOT be in the interests of society) and if “libertarians” had their way then there would be nothing people could do about it because a “government” that would allow people to redress their grievances would not exist.
Unlike libertarians, I prefer to live in a society by the PEOPLE not controlled by corporate interests.

An ad hominem attack is only an attack in place of argument, mine is not in that category. Your ASSertion that unregulated capitalism does not work is not an argument no matter how many exclamation points you make it with. I have provided refs to back up my statements and apparently you & Dr Dick are too lazy or too scared to look them up. Which is not my problem. BTW, people run corporations as well as everything so your last statement is a nonsequitur to most charitably describe it. Even the Marxist Kolko in The Triumph of Conservatism proved that free markets do not lead to monopoly but in fact the “progressive” legislation was sought by capitalist interests to strengthen their control and keep out competitors. Again, read Reisman’s Capitalism and learn something ignorant little lib. Also see Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression for a full refutation of the canard that capitalism caused the depression, govt did via the Fed and HOOVER’s New Deal policies prolonged as did FDR’s and only WW2 got us out. Also, governemt is not necessary for people to improve their lot, in fact it is the main obstacle. Noam lied to you again, but he is a peculiar kind of anarchist who believes in New Deal Statism and Marxism to the core. What a sad, pathetic bony old fraud Chimsky is. Sorry to debunk your hero, check out The Anti-Chomsky Reader.
By the way, please demonstrate how Doctor Dick’s “vastly superior intellect” produced “better arguments” because there is no evidence at all to support your ASSertion here, lame one.

I’d LOVE to try some of that stuff you are SMOKING, blondemike!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Never smoked, dude but I’ll champion your right to the cig of your choice.

blondemike:

I just wanted to address some of the mythology you’ve been spreading. 
Unregulated capitalism DOES NOT WORK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I cited the boom and bust cycles, the penultimate moment being the Great Depression as evidence (the assinine reverse logic that the government intervention actually CAUSED and prolonged the Depression is pure right-wing propaganda). The ASSertion that it leads to an unequal concentration of wealth (and thus political power) is VALID. Regulation of the market and government intervention in the economy did not arise in a vaccum, it arose because PEOPLE WERE SUFFERING and they demanded a change for the better.
You are completely hopeless. Nothing can sway you from your ideological BLINDERS. You need to live in the real world for a while perhaps.
Your “evidence” is nothing more than propaganda and ideological poppycock. I can cherry pick B.S. in multiple areas and say any outlandish thing too. If you look hard enough you can “prove” ANYTHING. Things like the Holocaust never happend, that we never went to the moon, that Jesus never existed, that global warming is real or not real, etc. Or that an unregulated market is best for everyone, the consequences (inequality, skewed outcomes, monopolization, etc.) be DAMNED.
Also,Dr. Lippin IS A FREAKING DOCTOR!!! Maybe because he’s been ACTUALLY DIRECTLY INVOLED IN THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE HE MIGHT BE BETTER QUALIFIED THAN YOU ARE. Your personal attack is not only uncalled for, it demostrates an immature an unintellectual attitude.
I do not wish to further embarass you and your largely discredited ideology. Dr. Lippin and I and several others have already administered an intellectual bitch-slapping on you.
For people like you ignorance is bliss, but people like me will continue to work to make this world a better place for ALL, not just for the wealthy and the corporate interests you hold so dear.

Thanks lams- blondemike is really not worth another single keyboard stroke. He is as rigid as they come.

But I appreciate your post and also for the historical perspective you put forth.

Be Well,

Dr. Rick Lippin

Lame, your ASSertions are not argument and not proof. Your analogizing of the holohoax with the moon landing is absurd and proof of your intellectual bankruptcy. I don’t know about “Jesus”
but everything else in the Unholy Bible or Hebrew Book of Genocide is false so I certainly wouldn’t be the ranch on “Jesus.” I have seen many arguments pro and con on global warming, not committed to a side yet, remember the ice age warnings 30 years ago so I don’t get carried away by pop hysteria. It might even be a good thing. Check into Greenland real estate. If NYC, London and SF get flooded, hey, worse things have happened. I can see you as an old fart with massive nosehairs screaming about socialism in a cafeteria. Maybe you require a govt reg to properly wipe your behind. I promise to keep an open mind here. I have known too many doctors to be impressed by Doctor Dicklicking’s credentials per se and I am even less impressed by the lack of reasoning Doctor Dicklicking has displayed here. Your characterization of the alleged consequences of capitalism is wrong and I have given refs to challenge your views and if you weren’t such a scared little man you’d check them out. You have given NO reasoned arguments, like Doctor Dicklicking you mistake your wild emotions as tools of cognition. You’ll convince no one who is not already in agreement with you. The net result of your political efforts continues to be a much worse world for everyone. While it’s nice of you to pat yourself on the back that gesture fools no one. So multiple exclamation points are NOT proof of your ASSertions. Maybe you and Doctor Dicklicking might want to get together for a 69 session. Cool off, dude, your left lib hysteria is showing. Personally, I think’s funny to watch people like you come apart. And Doctor Dicklicking, you ARE A BUSINESSMAN JUST NOT A VERY GOOD ONE.
PS Lame’s “historical” perspective is identical to yours, Doctor Dicklicking, that is NONE AT ALL AND HYSTERICAL ABUSIVE DENUNCIATION OF ANYONE WHO DISAGREES. If you are as lousy a
“doctor” as you are a thinker, Lame would better “be well” by staying the hell away from you.

blondemike:

Are you saying the Holocaust is UNTRUE??? You must have missed my point. I wasn’t really making an agrument whether or not it’s true.

My point was that we can agrue back and forth all night long and “prove” our assertions, but it is ultimately of no use. The reason for this is because you can “prove” anything. The list I then gave served as EXAMPLES of sometimes contoversial subjects where all sides offer “proof”. I used it as a device to dismiss your propaganda you try to pass off as evidence.

I use CAPITAL LETTERS and multiple exclamation points for EMPHASIS. It’s a very common tool when communicating not through voice but through the written word.

You make the horribly illogical assumption that our problems, that were caused by capitalism can actually be “solved” by more capitalism.  You display a high degree of ignorance of how markets work. A free market system that you hold dear does lead to: (1) boom/bust cycles that involve many painful economic hardships, (2) great inequalities in income and wealth (which in turn leads to unequal political power), (3) greater market concentration as companies that “win” in the marketplace increase their market share (and directly leads to LESS COMPETITION), (4) skewed outcomes and misplaced priorities as the economy shifts more to the priorites of the wealthy (if the market counts dollars as “votes” then the wants of the people with the most “votes” will be taken care of first) .

The historical record is indisputable. The Great Depression DID happen as did many depressions before that. Market concentration exists and many regard it as a problem (this would be a point I agree with you, that LESS COMPETITION is not a good thing). We are indeed a highly unequal society and the gap between rich and poor is getting greater. How can an unregulated market fulfill the needs of society when the market will only cater to the priorities of those with the money???

Regulation (rules to help reduce uncompetitive practices especially)and government intervention in the economy (including government spending and air to the poor) did not sprout up out of nowhere. It was regarded as a necessary evil by many on both the right and the left as a way to avoid economic collapse. Any serious discussion on the economy takes these facts into account. There is a broad range of ideas as to exactly how MUCH government intervention is necessary and exactly what TYPE (for example , more $$$ for defense or education, etc.), but even right-wingers like the late Milton Friedman recogized SOME role for the government.

The society that you desire is some kind of Ayn Rand-esque dystopia. I will ALWAYS prefer to live in a society ruled by THE PEOPLE and not by CORPORATE INTERESTS (as I believe that the consequence of an unregulated market is rule by the wealthy).

Also blondemike, I am 35, married, and with a 5 month old baby. Not that that should matter, but you said you envisioned me as an “old fart”. I also must call you out again for your name-calling to me and Dr. Lippin (and basically anyone that doesn’t agree with you). I understand why you would feel inadequate, especially in light of your being associated with such a rigid and intellectually dishonest ideololgy, but name calling is not the way to go.

I must make the suggestion again, maybe you would be more comfortable in another forum? There are a great many right-wing/libertarian/objectivists website out there. Or maybe you just enjoy the intellectual bitch-slapping you are receiving. Then might I suggest some S & M websites for you.

Lams, the conventional story is false as I have explained many times on other threads here. Obviously the National Socialists were bad and many Jews died but the thesis of a systematic planned extermination, the figure of six million or anywhere near that, the “gas chambers” and
Frank’s “Diary” have all been seriously challenged which is why it’s now illegal in a dozen countries to do so. Rather than even begin to recapitulate all the arguments here, I just direct people to the ihr.org and vho.org websites and they can download galore.  As far as namecalling please spare me the hypocritical lectures. Look at your last sentence in your posting above for an example ! I have
found the libs as well as neocons here very quick to namecall and mislabel. I was having fun with Doc’s name solely because he is such a self-important pompous prick. Corporations solely consist of people so your dichotomy of people versus corporations is wrong but the important point is that I have given references so nobody has to take my word, they can read and learn something, then decide if they agree or not. I don’t receive very much intellectual comeback here but I do like their free speech policy and about 95% of the so-called Objectivist & libertarian sites are NOT. I would be bored just posting with people who agree and on a very few occasions I’ve made social democratic arguments on these websites and the usual response is as stupid as the ones I get from left libs here. But I’m not trying to convert anyone, sometimes one posts just to correct the record, mostly for that reason in my case.  Since I do not agree that our problems are caused by capitalism or solved by interventionism we are at loggerheads on basic premises. I have found that you just repeat your assertions, I do too but I give refs. That’s tough that I don’t fit on your prescribed continuum but so what ?  I’m challenging certain premises and you appear to be taking it very personally when it is not personal at all. Ok, your young enough to be my son so the old fart label was wrong. No problem, one can normally only guess at someone’s age. I never said the Great Depression didn’t happen so your pompous condescension here is most charitably described as a nonsequitur. I said the popular explanation is wrong and referenced America’s Great Depression by Murray Rothbard. If you want to read it and then attempt to refute it I’m all ears. But just pulling your usual bogus authoritarianism such as “everyone knows” and “this has been settled” doesn’t cut it with me.  Nor with any intellectually honest person. So paragraphs four, five, six and seven of your posting above I totally disagree with. You might be right about one thing, that it can’t be empirically settled but then we must have an apriori means, i.e., the best theory which explains the facts. I usually oppose the rational-empirical dichotomy in philosophy but in this rare case I may partially endorse it. I have to say your childish extremely belligerent arrogance is matched by the nutcases on the Right including Randian & Rothbardian circles and I detest it there too.
Chomsky has as much of a cult as Rand or Rothbard. I doubt he would be so belligerent in person because when he started to be on Buckley’s Firing Line in 69 Buckley said he’d punch him in the mouth. Noam was a lamb the rest of the show. Ok, I’ve made the points here in response to yours, let’s move on. We can agree to disagree.

Iams-

Thanks for your continued efforts to reason with a rigid ideologue whose last post ends with an anectote that Buckley threatened to “punch Chomsky in the mouth” on Buckley’s TV show.

Therein is the classic endgame of a trapped and desperate ideologue- violence or the threat of violence

I think we can rest our case.

Dr. Rick Lippin

Most people with any common sense know that universal health insurance through a single payer system is not “socialized medicine” but an idea whose time has come. Society is suffering for the super profits and inflated CEO salaries of corporate health care. Premiums are running way ahead of the increase in health care costs and windfall profits are resulting leaving increasing numbers of people uninsured. It has been stated that the US spends more per capita than most industrial capitalist countries on health care with far fewer insured. This is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is noted that the cost of adding the currently uninsured into the system roughly equals the amount already spend redundantly on administrative costs.  It is also ridiculous that the money already pissed down the drain in Iraq could be used to fund a universal health care program.

About a third of the workforce subsidizes the growing number of rich with their subpoverty wages. Let the federal government tax some of the windfall away to keep the poor healthy while they work to support the rich. BM’s idea of creating a profession of charletans by eliminating medical licensing for doctors as well as what little public care does actually exist for the poor will never work for anyone. The health care mess is one reason that no one will EVER accept the Libertarian Party’s madness in the or any other country. This is especially true at a time of increased wealth and income polarization. I believe that US corporate capitalism will soon be on the ropes. The problem with Libertarian bullshit is that they make stupid and misleading statements that fly in the face of both common sense and the facts. The idea that Corporations are no more that clusters of people and thus are no more powerful obscures the fact that corporations are themselves legal entities beyond the people that they consist of and that they utterly control the economy and the political system in ways ordinary people don’t. Of the 100 largest economies in the world, fifty one are transnational corporations and the rest merely nation-states. BM never acknowledges inequality and the stratification in all modern societies.

One reason is that he is a neo-Nazi. His utter denial of the Holocaust, and his sympathetic defense of Hitler’s conquest of Europe in which he blames Poland for the War, is clear testimony to this fact. You can read his inane ravings on other recent threads on the ITT blogsite. They are pathetic and ignorant. I don’t know why ITT allows him to continue participating in discussions here.

Doctor Dicklicking, you can read no straighter than you can think. I related the Buckley anecdote to point out the obvious fact that people will hurl invectives anonymously in print that they would NEVER say in person. I have rebutted Chicago Cabbie at great length in the Spoils of War thread here on ITT board. He has been reduced to the gutter level of ad hominem attacks. Doctor Dicklicking, you along with Chicago Cabbie and Woozy Woo are the reasons Jewish women are intermarrying at rates from 50 to 80% rejecting the programmatic hysteria of many Jewish males, allowing for the usual exceptions that always exist. Single payer is socialized medicine and the only reason there is a demand for it is in response to the semi-socialist HMO concept conceived by Nixon and Ted Kennedy in 1973. Before that insurance companies were much more limited in deciding treatments. It has destroyed the traditional private practice physician which gave us the best treatment in the world. Even with dubious CEO salaries it is nothing compared to the costs of Medicare, Mediaid, subsidized ER’s overwhelmned with nonpaying illegals and people of color. It is precisely the govt intervention in medicine starting with licensing and the AMA guild monopoly that has brought on the crisis. Also workers are not underpaid as a whole, that would be analogous to bsaying prices are too low since labor is a price too. Read Capitalism by George Reisman to learn about economics, Doctor Dicker and Chicago Crabs. Robbing people to pay for socialized medicine is no different than robbing them to pay for Iraq. That you imbeciles want the folks who run the postal service to take over medicine shows you are simply destroyers. Doctor Dick, as a BUSINESSMAN first and foremost would you please assist Chicago in his hour of need ? His shiksa stuck his pecker in a coke bottle, please fly to Chitown and remove it. 4K would be a reasonable fee unless he wants his dangler intact in which case 7K would be justified. Please tell Chicago he won’t be able to return the coke bottle for a refund.
Finally see Milton Friedman’s chapter on occupational licensing in Capitalism and Freedom.

First,
Thank you Dr. Lippin for your kind words and understanding. We may not agree on all issues, but at least there is a dialogue that does not resort to name calling, etc.

Secondly, cabdriver, I agree with you on what your saying about single payer, corporate power, and the complete CLUELESSNESS of many “libertarian”, “free"-market worshipping extremists. When I was a graduate student in economics I encountered way too many of those types of people. It seems like the field of academic economics is full of them, people who theorize about how the world “should” be, but are completely unable to understand the world as it really is. At least an analysis such as your (or mine) can see the world as it (for instance, extreme and growing gaps of wealth and power and the causes and consequences of such gaps) and try to do something about it. People on the other side tend to start with their basic premise (i.e., the free market is “good") and will then ignore or otherwise obfuscate the reality of the what that a “free” market brings. They will say and do anything to justify their ideology like defending the obscence gap between CEO pay and the average worker, and justify the low wage economy in general. These are not the result of some perfectly competetive market (people did not “choose” to work for low wages, and people did not decide that their CEOs should get hundreds of millions of dollars for mediocre or poor performances), but the inevitable result of a “free” market taken to its logical conclusion (that power and wealth become unequally distributed over time).

Finally, I wish the best of luck to Dr. Lippin and cabdriverinchicago. Thank you for fighting the good fight in your own way. One day, we can move past the dominant ideology that refuses to face reality and tackle the real world problems at hand.

Of all obnoxious things that Libertarians say the little moronic ditty about “wages are the price of labor so they can’t be to low because they are actually a price” is the most ignorant. Wages are not just the “price of labor” they are how the majority of people are able to live. Obviously markets don’t determine their rate and never have. Even in periods of full employment wages have been low. The class power of the capitalists have more of a determining effect on wages than the so called market. The continued expansion of the global working class through institutionaly engineered recessions that destroy independant producers and proletarianize them gaurantee a large, low wage, and docile work force for capital.The FED and the IMF are today’s enclosure movements that allow for the concentration of the global economy at the expense of the middle and working classes.

It has always been my contention that if this is going to be the case the capitalists can at least allow some paltry portion of their wealth to be syphoned off into a national health care program so that the workers can at least be healthy while working overtime to enrich the capitalist class. It would in fact be cheaper than the current system. We spend over $2 trillion as it is and a new single payer system would deliver more at a lower price. HMOs by the way are hardly “socialist” but are the epitome of corporate health care. i live in a metropolitan area where the high visibility of formerly independant hospitals and clinics being taken over and “branded” by three or four large health care corporations makes this phenomenon impossible to either ignore or deny. The effects are ever higher premiums, fewer insured every year, and bloated HMO profits. Sometimes it even means inferior care. Every one believes it is time for reform of the health care system in this country. Every one that is except the fascist BM.

Cabby,

“Wages are not just the “price of labor” they are how the majority of people are able to live. Obviously markets don’t determine their rate and never have.”

Most people are paid wages — agreed.

Markets don’t determine their rate — ?

Sorry, the market ultimately determines the value of everything. Attempts to control markets succeed for a time, but that which people (the market) are willing to pay for goods and services ALWAYS will eventually decide.

I made a very good living from the mid 1950s to the early/mid 1990s as a graphic designer and illustrator. My son now has 20 years experience in the same field and was earning $65,000 to $70,000 in 1990. Now the work pays $15/hr or $30,000 annually.

To try to compete with foreign labor companies will hire a high school kid (I lost one client to his 12 year-old niece.) Stock photography and art on CDs sell 300 images for what I used to get each.

Why do you think laborers from Mexico are hired? The market is able to get them for less than domestic labor and less than it would take to develop machines to do the job.

When one of my sons was in the Soviet Union in 1980 (where the government set wages/prices on everything) There were two economies — the official government one — and the black market. A pair of Levis or an U.S. magazine would buy far more than a handful of rubles.

Hard work without demand is of little or no value.

One of our growing problems is Wal-Mart can demand the lowest price goods — people lose a good job — Wal-Mart becomes all people can afford… and the only job they can get.

As demand for labor falls the price of labor also falls. We are watching the playing field (our standard of living) as it drops to meet the world labor price.

Cabbie,

It is the over supply of world labor which alllows the wealthy to ignore the middle and lower class. It is the oversupply of demand (billions of people comprising the global market) which allows them to ignore domestic demand.

The U.S. consumer (70% of the U.S. economy) is no longer the primary customer for much of the corporate class.

We have no cllout.

Whattheheck:

You are correct that a “market” in a generic sense determines wages, but MAKE NO MISTAKE, the global wage market in NOT the result of some innocuous “invisible hand” manifesting its benevolence, but the result of the power of the wealthy and corporations to rig the game in their favor. You are correct that we as Americans do not have the “clout” we once did, but one has to wonder how that came to be (take a wild guess). Follow the money, see who is benefitting from low wages and third-world impoverishment. Then see who has the political clout to make it so. There shouldn’t be too many surprises there.

WTH,

You are correct about some things. Markets exist as modern institution and supply and demand functions here and there. However, the economy and the distribution of income, wealth and productive assets are very much a product of corporate power and influence. I have seen wages remain stagnant in the midst of a labor shortage. Employers are powerful. They can continually expand the scope of labor markets while workers have only limited bargaining power. Big retail outlets like Walmart can dictate terms even to large suppliers who formally shared major portions of large supply markets for their products. Small producers face many barriers to market entry. Large retailers can determine the fate of a small manufacturer with high “shelf fees” to carry their product or by refusing to carry it at all. The small guy doesn’t have deep pockets and has little negotiating power due to large short term financial obligations. In the end they sell out to the big guys. Sometimes the make out well but many other times not. The risks inhibit innovation, newcomers, and a diversity of producers in the market thus protecting entrenched interests.  In additon, large players can flex their muscle by manipulating markets through monopoly power and all manner of price fixing.

Labor has no ability to determine its wages without collective bargaining. After the 1982 recession reduced the unionized sector to its current low level, most pre-tax union household incomes remained at or below the national median and made very little real gains in the aftermath as costs of living have run well ahead of wage gains for even most unionized households. This is despite higher productivity gains over the past 25 years. The US working class has seen its standard of living deteriorate every year. Real wage deceleration is the norm for many US households. And despite labor shortages in the more than $2.5 trillion US health care industry, most of the newly created jobs are at or below the national median income. The US middle class is going down very quickly. The globalization of the world economy and the corporatization of local economies has given capital the power over labor that negates the normal functioning of markets. It is now an issue of social class power.

lams,

I agree with everything you just wrote and I in no way expect benevolence of any kind in the general market — invisable or otherwise. 

Markets and economies are neither inherently moral nor immoral. Individuals have the ability to be moral or immoral in their personal desisions or as corporate managers within their sphere of influence.

Over my working years I knew some CEOs and owners which were examples of both. I did see a gradual decline in behavior with more greed. less concern for both employees and business ethics as smaller companies were sold to larger ones.

There are still some owners here who have forgone taking any personal income in order to not lay off employees for several years. As the companies get larger they tend toward the impersonal and such caring disappears.

lams

You are very generous with your wisdom and encouragement

Be Well,

Dr. Rick Lippin

“without resort to namecalling” ???????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Lams you really are lame.
You and Chicago and Doctor Dick have been doing nothing BUT namecalling, try to reread your own postings painful as that may be and then if your stomach is strong enough, Chicago’s. Then the good BUSINESSMAN/doctor.
WTH, we often disagree but he has at least made arguments.
Labor doesn’t determine its wages, it never has and never will. Either the market does or the state does. Try to learn some elementary economics, Chicago. Most peoples’ standard of living has risen considerably since 1970. Maybe if you ditch that excrement filled rattletrap cab and get an honest job yours will rise too. Supply and demand functions everywhere at all times unless restricted by the state. Read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and Capitalism by George Reisman, the answers to ALL politico-socio-economic issues are contained therein. Not one of you could refute one line of either book. Globalization has been going on for hundreds of years, it is in the nature of the market. A lot of horsesmiths went out of business but we ALL benefitted. Capitalists do more good without trying than all the halfassed Doctor Lippins and Lamebos combined. The statist-collectivist-eny filled-hatred eaten bitch egalitarians are responsible for ALL our problems. 
Wages ARE the price of labor and no one has any right to live, we earn that right by our exchanges in free exchange every day or at least until we save enough to retire. The market is GOD and the sovereign consumer is our KING. Serve him well and serve him at all times. In the torrential motion of growth and progress which is laissez-faire capitalism there is no room for slacking off, for stagnation. You must work at all times to keep your seat on the Merry-Go-Round of life or you will fall off.  Lams, I’m sorry all those bright econ majors put you down and then stole your girlfriend. Don’t feel bad, they were just better humna beings than you were and are.
Doctor Rick Lippin, BE QUIET.

lams and others

Just keep giving blondemike more and more rope and watch him continue to hang himself publically.

Even though after all his name-calling toward me and others it is still truly painful to witness any public self-annihalation

Thanks and Be Well,

Dr. Rick Lippin

Doctor Dicklicking, I’m doing fine, thank you. So far neither you or your shabby fellow collectivists have come up with any good arguments. I hear PA is getting ready to yank your license. What other BUSINESS will you be going into next ?

The market is GOD and consumer is KING???? It’s that type of eigth-grade thinking that has no basis in reality that plagues libertarian thinking (and actually most of economics). Yes, ON PAPER, the “FREE MARKET” system looks great. Only entreprenuers who make quality products that consumers desire are rewarded. The competitve nature of the market requires innovation or else the entreprenuer faces hard times. People who work hard are rewarded. People who don’t work hard or innovate get their just desserts. The system can go on ad infinitum with the virtuous reaping the goodness that they sow.

Unfortunately, this textbook look at the free market does not exist in the real world. Over time, markets become more and more concentrated. Over time, inequality grows more and more. Products that are dangerous or useless, etc. are brought to market in order to make a quick buck. The labor process becomes more and more controlled by the capitalist. Dangerous workplaces become commonplace. Advertising, trademarking, and branding are employed by producers to create wants and desires for products that may not even be needed. The rich increasingly manipulate and control the levers of government. There is an incentive by producers to dump their toxic waste, etc. The list can go on and on. Basically, A LOT OF BAD BEHAVIOR GETS REWARDED. THESE ARE THE REALITIES OF THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM.

There are a great many people, blinded by their ideology who refuse to face these realities. They will deny that these are problems. They will dismiss and belittle all who challenge them. They will remain rooted in their childlike explanations as to the way the world is. They will justify their greed and uncaring. For them, ignorance is truly bliss.

Iams- Thank you again

blondemikes post about me above is bordering on slander re- “PA is getting ready to yank you license” .

My attorney, who is one of the best in Philadelphia, may be contacting him soon.

Dr. Rick Lippin

The Law assures every living person the right to life. Life and libertay cannot be taken without due process of the law. People are not required to legitimate themselves through the market. No one ever said any such thing. All life is sacred by definition. Modern society believes this truth is self evident. Medieval society never did. That is the difference. BM hasn’t learned this fundamental fact.

Doctor Dicklicking, that’s the last time I believe anything that Woozy Woo tells me. My mouthpiece is a Philly lawyer too. Now to clarify another rumour your new address is not Graterford, PA is it ?
Lams, if the society is free markets do not become concentrated as is shown by the work of the Marxist historian, Gabriel Kolko in The Triumph of Conservatism, all the Progressive era laws were promoted by big biz to rationalize (control) the market precisely because there is no chance of monopoly under laissez-faire, they needed the state in the form of FedGov to foster monopoly, see Kolko and Reisman here.
Chicago, all life is NOT sacred, by “definition” or otherwise. Why promote that medieval nonsense. See The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality by Ludwig Von Mises, like almost 100% of the authors I recommended Mises was a Jew, so be respectful you stinking self-hater. You have no intrinsic value, if you fail in the market, you fail at life. I’m ashamed of you, bro.

Life is sacred. It is not justified by success in the market. Allowing someone to die is illegal and charges of negligance can be brought against the offender. Hospitals must take all sick individuals who enter their emergency rooms and stabilize their conditions or they can be held criminally liable not just sued in a civil case. Our case law makes this clear. Also modern thought clearly holds all existing human life as sacred and worthy of defense by law. All people in US society are legally entitled to equal protection by the police and emergency services regardless of their income and/or contribution to the public’s tax revenues.

cabdriverinchicago

Thanks for your two post above regarding fundamental morality of modern culture which has been indeed been eroded by the excesses of the marketplace. I resonate with “life is sacred” statement - more Docs should.

And thank you and lams for providing the rope to blondemike on which he now hangs ,through his own actions, in public

Dr. Rick Lippin

Doctor Dicklicking, are you thinking of hanging yourself ? Your repeated references here are most disturbing.  If you think Chicago has put up any sort of reasonable debate you are need in keepers on a 24 hour basis. As far as the “fundamental morality” of “modern culture” goes you wanna share some of those drugs your on, Doctor Dick ?
Chicago, your arbitrary ASSertion above means nothing. If there are laws mandating hospitals to take everyone, they need to be repealed. There is NO “right” to medical care OR to any other goods or services produced by man, the doctor is not your slave nor do you have a claim on anyone because of your needs. The type of scum who would serve under socialized medicine is the type I wouldn’t trust in a stockyard. Ever hear of legal abortion ? Ever hear of assisted suicide ? By the way what did you have for dinner last night ? Ever hear of WW1, 2, Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Iraq, et cetera ? No one has any right to services, “emergency” or otherwise. Actully sick people can’t even use an ER in California because of hordes of illegals. Your law is a paper joke here ! There is nothing in nature that holds life “sacred” it’s simply a religious myth without an iota of truth in objective reality. Nor does Israel hold Palestinian life as sacred. And I could multiply these examples ad infinitum from every state in the world and the Disunited Nations fraud in NYC. Your work is who you are and what you are and if you fail to satisfy King Consumer, YOU AREN’T WORTH SHIT.  Read the brilliant speech of Alex Baldwin in GlenGarry, GlenRoss. Police services IF they are tax-supported should be available to all, because they are the result of coercion, taxes. However we suggested that the Police start charging our ghetto neighbors for the many service calls they make in response to their criminal activity and they have agreed to do so. Finally good capitalistic principles emerge in police work ! Shitcago, you have no intrinsic value whatsoever.
Finally there is no such entity as “modern thought” but many different thoughts by many different thinkers. Your Stalinist totalitarianism is showing again, little man in Chicago. And one of the defining characteristics of our age is NOT a regard for all sentient life. What monastery have you been living in ? Doctor Dicklicking, our greatest leftist, Alex Cockburn, has predicted the forthcoming demise of The New York Times and all intellectuals agree with him and say, Hasten The Day !

cabdriverinchicago and lams

The twisted mind of blondemike is revealed with each post he makes.

I regret having to endure his insults but we are revealing to readers the moral depravity of a COMPLETELY INFLEXIBLE ideologue-in this case his diefication of capitalism.

Inflexible ideologues of ANY stripe are the most dangerous people in our or any society. History repeatedly has taught us that.

Dr. Rick Lippin

Doctor Dick, so far your sole contribution here has been ad hominem attacks and spurious psychiatric babblings totally based on politics, not medicine. I don’t know what your specialty is but I would stay clear of you after watching your very unbalanced performance here.
Firm, consistent thinkers are not the cause of the world’s problems but the solution. Pragmatism was endorsed by Hitler and Mussolini, not to mention Stalin, Churchill, FDR and other tyrants. The common core of pragmatism is a militant refusal to acknowledge objective reality and a bizarre belief that no laws of economics or human thought exists. The statist disease that if only we come to a consensus to turn over our money and our lives to the collective (government) all will be well. The only people in the center of the road are dead skunks as Jim Hightower once noted. Doctor Dick gets his civics from the intellectually bankrupt New York Times. Dewey’s social adjustment and anti-intellectualism brought forth a century of Doctor Dicks. Scared, frightened little “men” who hate their betters with a passion. Doctor Dick was intellectually humiliated by his betters going back to high school, they took his girlfriend and put turds in his sandwiches so Doctor Dick decided to get even with them by devoting a lifetime to liberal anti-capitalist causes. Doctor Dick tries to get intellectual nourishment from the Times but the gruel is increasingly thin. Ah, Ricky, you have my most sincere pity. Physician, heal thyself !

Chicgocabdriver and lams

With each passing post blondemike reveals himself. Keep-em coming

He can’t help it. That’s the tragedy

Dr. Rick Lippin

I have to admit I am enjoying the meltdown!!! When you let a right-winger talk long enough, his true colors come through. I love the personal attacks, the name calling, and the hyperbole (FDR a tyrant!!), all tinged with a little anti-Semitism and racism to boot!!!

I don’t want to debate ad infinitum. Some people are too rigid and utterly hopeless. They claim to live in an “objective reality”, but the “reality” is that they are in a fantasyland.

Here is some stuff rooted in REALITY. Poverty SUCKS and it EXISTS, it is REAL (and at its highest levels in 32 years). Our health care crisis is REAL. The wealthy DO have a disporportionate share of POLITICAL POWER (look at the present composition of Congress, look at the economic background of nearly all of the Presidents, look at who makes the large campaign contributions, look at who funds the think tanks). Most corporations DO NOT operate in perfectly competitive markets ( and in fact they work to gain more and more market share). Corporations DO end up doing some BAD THINGS that affect us all. These are all a part of our “OBJECTIVE REALITY”.

However, so-called “objectivists” do not deal with these realities. They either simply ignore it or try to rationalize it ("people who are richer MUST be superior”, or “a corporation would NEVER put rat feces in their hot dogs because they would never be able to sell them at market” or a “corporation would NEVER put a dangerous drug on the market"). They come up with a myriad of excuses as to why things are the way they are because their basic premise of the superiority of the free market must be protected at all costs, even to the point of lunacy.

I’ve encountered enough wealthy people to know that they are NOT inherently superior, and we all know (all of us except objectivists) that there has been rat feces in food, that there have been drug products put on the market that have been dangerous or don’t work at all, etc. I will try to deal with realities, I won’t DENY them like others do.

I do not have all the solutions, nor do I believe there are any easy answers. I do KNOW however, that I will ALWAYS prefer to live in a society rule by THE PEOPLE and NOT ruled by the WEALTHY/CORPORATE INTERESTS.

Thanks lams712

Really appreciate your helping to expose blondemike

I share your views in last post

Dr. Rick Lippin

SEE NYTIMES TODAY- ABOUT DOCS WHO HEAD GOVERNMENT PANALS ON IMPORTANT DISEASES BEING IN POCKETS -BIG TIME -OF DRUG COMPANIES

IS THAT WHAT UNREGULATED CAPITALISM BRINGS US?

IF SO -COUNT ME OUT

Dr. Rick Lippin

Is that the best you two tiny minds can do ? No argumentation, no reasoning, just low grade namecalling and ad hominems. Lams, so you eat rat feces....personally not my choice of nourishment. Of course then I can’t figure out how government panels equal unregulated capitalism....................a psychiatrist friend of mine who took the time to read Doctor Rick’s bizarre postings has diagnosed him as an advanced paranoid schizophrenic with pre-Alzheimers driving the wrong way down the bipolar highway. Apparently Doc fits about eight DSM categories. As a follower of Tom Szasz I have to disavow his findings because I don’t believe in psychiatry, psychoanalysis or 90% of psychology except some cognitive psychology. But apparently Doctor Rick’s fellow professionals have a very low opinion of him.
Finally, Lames, there is no such entity as “The People” we do not have one voice and in fact there is no “we.” Only individuals exist, even corporations are only made up of individuals. I do disagree with the exemption that corporations get on bankruptcy, that is an economic intervention which should not exist.

keep giving blondmike more rope and just watch

We will get him to slander us in writing

Dr. Rick Lippin

Why encourage him/her/it? It is so easy to simply not even read his/her posts, and there is no worry that you will miss anything of value. I only wish that there were filters to i would not even have to bother seeing the posts (hint ITT).

JMHO.