Health Savings Accounts
February 17, 2006
We’re hearing much these days about Health Savings Accounts, as more of us become aware that the present health care system, with its perverse incentives, is self-destructing. This article by economist Arnold Kling helped me to better understand some of the economic undercurrents.
EconLog, Health Savings Accounts, Arnold Kling: Library of Economics and Liberty
Another point that I would make is that the more you make a fetish out of taxing the rich, the more likely you wind up being opposed to anything that might increase private saving. You can preach about progressivity and you can preach about the need for increased saving, but not in the same sermon.
My problems with HSA’s are more that I have a general aversion to programs that are beloved by wonks and operate through the tax system. Maybe that makes them politically clever, but I think you lose a lot in terms of consumer clarity and economic efficiency.
At the “rich” end of the economic spectrum, high deductible catastrophic medical insurance makes good economic sense. At the “poor” end of the economic spectrum, it is clearly the Government’s responsibility to provide a health care safety net. For those of us in the middle, I’m not too sure what is the best answer. It will be interesting (I think) to see what kind of health care system emerges in the U.S., as the old fogey index continues to rise.
Dave, feeling a tad guilty about taking from Medicare, but taking it anyway.
Theology and economics
February 16, 2006
I’m looking forward to Michael Kruse’s series on theology and economics. Haven’t we all puzzled over the place of poverty and prosperity in God’s economy? I know I have.
Kruse Kronicle: Theology and Economics: Introduction
What causes poverty? Countless volumes have been written over the ages in an effort to answer this question. The fact is, it has to be one of the simplest questions of all time. It can be answered in two words: Being born. When we come into the world we have nothing. All that we have comes through the investment of others in us and the investment we have made in ourselves. Poverty is the natural human state. The real economic question is, “What causes prosperity?”
One could make the case that God could care less about economics the way we usually think of economics. Come to think of it, what is economics? I’ll have to look it up. As far as theology and economics goes, my first thought is that it must have something to do with God’s dominion covenant and stewardship, but I’ll gladly let Michael Kruse do the heavy lifting.
Dave, sitting quiet in class with pencil sharpened.
Nineteenth century armed brigs
February 16, 2006
Most of us are used to having generous personal space, and this makes accounts of life aboard the jam-packed armed sailing ships of the 1800s fascinating. Here is an interesting recent email exchange on the subject from the Patrick O’Brian mail list:
On 2/9/06, Ed Barnard wrote:
It seems to me that Richard Henry Dana reported in _Two Years Before the Mast_ that the crew size was only a half dozen men or so.I have the impression that Indiamen of our period carried a rather larger complement; perhaps since they were armed they carried more crew than an unarmed merchantman? Or is it that Dana was sailing a couple of decades later, perhaps with split topsails requiring fewer crew to handle?
—Yes, Dana was writing of a period a few decades later. In addition, the Pilgrim was a small brig, 180 tons. No split topsails, but small enough that just a few crew could handle the sails.
I believe that Indiamen of 800 and 1200 ton carried crews of 100 - 150 during the 18th and early 19th century. Partly to protect against piracy, and partly to offset the high death rate on voyages to the East Indies.
Crew sizes decreased significantly after 1815, perhaps because of decreased threats and better nutrition/health. Nordhoff, sailing on a ‘limejuicer’ (British merchant ship) to the East Indies around 1850, reported a ship’s complement of about 24, mostly Indian lascars with a handful of Europeans in the skilled positions.
Don Seltzer
Dave, landlubber.
Give me joy!
February 16, 2006
This is the glorious day when my two season year turns from bummer into summer and I come out of hibernation. The boys of summer, at least the pitchers and catchers, report today to begin Spring Training at their various camps in Arizona and Florida. It won’t be long until another season of the King of Sports begins. Play ball!
Dave, enjoying the prospect of baseball every day until fall.
Ivan’s war
February 15, 2006
This is a long post, but I think it gives some important insights about ourselves and our nation. What follows was lifted from The Daily Reckoning a free Internet newsletter.
The Daily Reckoning PRESENTS: People, who believe that mankind is on an
upward slope, always marching toward greater good for greater numbers,
have some explaining to do. Bill Bonner explores…
IVAN’S WAR
by Bill Bonner
Was ever there a group of people so hapless, so luckless…so witless?
There they were, up to 30 million of them in the heartland of Eurasia,
some 6,000 years after civilization had begun, 20 centuries after the
birth of Christ, 200 years after the Industrial Revolution had begun, and
during the living memory of many people reading this reflection. They
drove automobiles. They talked on telephones. They listened to Debussy and
Chopin on record players. They tuned into the radio, ate food that came in
tins, used condoms, and enjoyed nearly painless dentistry…at least in
Moscow.
How did these poor Soviet grunts get themselves into such a fix?
And here, we add an aggravating detail. These men thought themselves not
backward, but in the very vanguard of human progress. They were men who
had chosen to follow the prophets Vladimir and Josef into the land of
scientific socialism. Gone were the old traditions. Gone were the old
rules. Thrown out the door were the old religions. Now, the Soviets had a
new religion of collectivism, new rules shaped by the communist party, and
new traditions enforced by the Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (NKVD)
or the People’s Commisariat for Internal Affairs.
Readers may have relaxed by now, like parishioners at a sermon who see the
preacher’s accusing finger pass them by, but not so fast. While the
victims in today’s essay are the Soviets, the protagonists - the dramatis
personae - of our theme include us all. We may not be communists, or
Russians, or soldiers, but we stand on two legs along with them, and
breathe the same air.
When war with Germany began, the Soviet soldier found himself in a no
man’s land. In front of him was the Wehrmacht, which was, at the time, the
best attack force ever put into the field. The German army would most
likely kill him or take him prisoner. If he were taken prisoner, he would
almost certainly die, partly because the Germans wanted him dead, and
partly because they had no way to keep him alive. They had not prepared
for the millions of Soviet troops who would fall into their grasp. They
had no food to give them and no barracks to lock them up in. Instead,
prisoners were often left out in the open, surrounded with barbed wire and
used for target practice until they finally collapsed of hunger and
exposure.
In back of him, his prospects were not much better. Behind him, Stalin’s
police had put up “blocking battalions.” Described as an additional line
of defense, these troops were meant to shoot their own comrades if they
tried to retreat. “Not a step back,” Stalin had said in his secret order
number 227.
Between the Germans and the blocking battalions, there was almost certain
death.
“The rates of loss were …extravagant,” writes Catherine Merridale in
“Ivan’s War.” “By December 1941, six months into the conflict, the Red
Army had lost 4.5 million men. The carnage was beyond imagination.
Eyewitnesses described the battlefields as landscapes of charred steel and
ash. The round shapes of lifeless heads caught the late summer light like
potatoes turned up from new-broken soil. The prisoners were marched off in
their multitudes. Even the Germans did not have the guards, let alone
enough barbed wire, to contain the 2.5 million Red Army troops they
captured in the first five months. One single campaign, the defense of
Kiev, cost the Soviets nearly 700,000 killed or missing in a matter of
weeks. Almost the entire army of the pre-war years…was dead or captured
by the end of 1941.”
Behind these amazing figures is a long story. The Bolsheviks believed they
had the secret recipe for a better world. A mood of confidence, of
positivism, of rationalism, and of world improvement had settled over
Russia. It required destroying the old institutions, relationships,
customs, attitudes, traditions and religion. Naturally, not everyone was
cooperative. Well, said Lenin, “you can’t make an omelette without
breaking some eggs.” So, the shells were cracked with rifle butts.
“Theirs was no ordinary generation,” Merridale continues, referring to the
Soviet troops. “By 1941, the Soviet Union, a state whose existence began
in 1918, had already suffered violence on an unprecedented scale. The
seven years after 1914 were a time of unrelenting crisis: the civil war
between 1918 and 1921 alone would bring cruel fighting, desperate
shortages of everything from heating fuel to bread and blankets, epidemic
disease, and a new scourge that Lenin chose to call class war.
The famine that came in its wake was terrible by any standards, but a
decade later, in 1932-3, when starvation claimed more than 7 million
lives, the great hunger of 1921 would come to seem, as one witness put it,
‘like child’s play.’ By then, too, Soviet society had torn itself apart in
the upheaval of the first of many five-year plans for economic growth,
driving the peasants into collectives, destroying political opponents,
forcing some citizens to work like salves. The men and women who were
called upon to fight in 1941 were the survivors of an era of turmoil that
had cost well over 15 million lives in little more than two decades.”
This campaign to improve the world included getting rid of experienced
military officers who were from the wrong class - as most were. It also
involved such an ambitious program of careful central planning that
nothing worked properly. You’d think that even a government employee could
figure out that soldiers needed rifles, but many went to war without them.
Nor did they have proper food, shelter, sanitation or clothing.
Fortunately, from a central planner’s point of view, without weapons or
training they were usually killed before they starved to death. Little
things were missing, too. The soldiers were ordered to go places, but
there were no maps to show them how to get there. Only the Germans had
maps. Soviet tanks were equipped with radios, but without an adequate code
system, Germans could listen in on their tactical discussions. And the
high command in Moscow could think of no other tactic other than the
frontal assault, and regarded camouflage as cowardly.
By February 1942, three million soviet soldiers had been captured. The Red
Army had also lost 2,663,000 who were killed in action. The math was bad,
even for a country as large as Russia; for every German who was killed, 20
Soviet soldiers died.
And here, we pause and we wonder. We take our man as we find him, but we
cannot quite believe he is the dumb ox he appears to be. There were more
than five million armed men at any given time in the Red Army. They could
have turned on their incompetent and merciless leaders if they had wanted
to. Instead, the lined up and marched to their own slaughter, many of
them, perhaps the majority, believing that it would help make the world a
better place.
Even now, according to Merridale, they sit around shabby old soldiers
homes and congratulate themselves. They beat the fascists! They saved the
Proletarian Revolution! Thus, they lived almost their entire lives under
the heel of an even more delusional and murderous regime, but didn’t seem
to notice.
Here, too, people don’t seem to notice that much of what they take for
granted, future generations will take for absurd. The dollar is worth
something. You can get rich by spending. Debt doesn’t matter. The American
Empire is at war with “insurgents.”
People will believe anything …even if it kills them.
Bill Bonner
The Daily Reckoning
Being Mocked
February 14, 2006
For those of you, like me, rhat have been somewhat puzzled about the various reactions to the Danish cartoons of Muhammad, it’s John Piper to the rescue.
Being Mocked: The Essence of Christ’s Work, Not Muhammad’s
The work of Muhammad is based on being honored and the work of Christ is based on being insulted. This produces two very different reactions to mockery.
I commend to you this article and the website Desiring God
Dave, thankful for John Piper’s teaching.
Ephesians 1:9-14
February 12, 2006
1:9 He did this when he revealed to us the secret of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, 1:10 toward the administration of the fullness of the times, to head up all things in Christ–the things in heaven and the things on earth. 1:11 In Christ we too have been claimed as God’s own possession, since we were predestined according to the one purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to the counsel of his will 1:12 so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, may be to the praise of his glory. 1:13 And when you heard the word of truth (the gospel of your salvation)–when you believed in Christ–you were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit, 1:14 who is the down payment of our inheritance, until the redemption of God’s own possession to the praise of his glory.
The this that Paul refers to is that God “lavished on us all wisdom and insight.” The only sense in which we receive wisdom and insight is through trusting our lives to Jesus Christ. It’s all about Jesus.
This is one of the passages that teaches predestination, meaning that God picked all those who will believe in him long before they were born and before they could try to do anything to earn a right to fellowship with God. For many, this is a sticking point and a barrier to belief. Another sticking point is the work of God through the Holy Spirit to mark believers with enough faith to get them from this life to the next.
Yogi Berra supposedly said that when you come to a fork in the road, take it. Choosing one path at life’s fork in the road leads to growth in understanding and faith. The other path may or may not lead to another fork on down the road and another opportunity to believe. -sdg-
Stop Worrying About the Trade Deficit
February 11, 2006
I’ve read several explanations of the trade deficit, but this is a particularly clear one. I believe it to be accurate.
TCS Daily - Stop Worrying About the Trade Deficit
This accounting convention creates the false impression that an excess of imports over exports — called a “trade deficit” — is an ominous imbalance requiring corrective action. In fact, America’s trade deficit is evidence, not of any imbalance, but of the happy fact that our economy is so strong and stable that foreigners invest here eagerly.
If there is anything “bad” about a trade deficit, it is that it is an indicator of consumerism, the excess of which may say something about our national character and priorities.
Dave, uneasy about his own contribution to the consumer culture.
Whence Pizza?
February 11, 2006
What did we ever do without the Internet? Or pizza? I snared this from the the wispy web of net-space:
“While not yet a bona fide fast food, pizza was soon giving the fast foods run for the consumer’s money. By the mid-1950s, thanks to the popularity of spaghetti and tomato sauce, a taste for a white fainaceous base slathered in thick and salty tomato sauce had become an integral part of the American palate. The country was therefore well primed for the invasion of pizza….In the 1950s…pizza suddenly burst onto center stage. In part this was because it fit so well in the culture of the times. It was regarded as an ideal family food, equally acceptable to all ages and both sexes. Its taste hardly departed from the tried and true, yet its form could be readily
accomodated to the era’s newer, more casual way of eating: children’s parties and snacking in front of the television set. The informal, communal way it was eaten in restaurants made it particularly popular with teenagers, and by the mid-1950s boisterous “pizza parlors” dotted the main streets of Italian neighborhoods, their oversized booths for six or eight crammed with voracious young eaters, while
others lounged by the entrance waiting for take-home orders…Pizza also became the hottest restaurant item of the 1950s because, unlike most pastas, it was not particularly affected by delays between cooking and eating. This made it ideal for the two main growth sectors in the television-battered restaurant industry, drive-ins and take home places. By 1956 it had shunted aside hot dogs as the most popular item in both. By the late 1960s, American were consuming two billion pizzas annually.”—Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America, Harvey Levenstein [University of Californa Press:Berkeley] 2003 (p. 229-30)
I, too, am a product of the fifties. Make of that what you will.
Dave, not liking pizza all that much.
Four Presidents and a Funeral
February 10, 2006
I didn’t pay much attention to the funeral of Coretta Scott King. I wish I had. Peggy Noonan has some great things to say about it. She also has some comments about the Clintons and 2008. Read it.
WSJ.com - Four Presidents and a Funeral
It was a religious service in which no one was afraid to talk about God. “Praise the Lord,” and “Lord, we lift your name on high” and “How we love to sing your praises” rang through the room. Scripture was quoted, stories told. Blacks in America are not afraid to love Jesus the way they want to love him, to use the language and symbols they want to use. I want to kiss their hands for this. I also happen to honor the fact that, by and large, older blacks at least have not given way to 20th-century stoicism in their style of mourning. The Kennedys, who had too much experience with funerals, set the stoic style 40 years ago, and while it was elegant and moving in its own way, it left an entire nation thinking it was in rather poor taste to cry aloud and sob.
Loving Jesus is the name of the game!
Dave, proud of moments like the King funeral.
