- The other day, I was trying to convince my housemates that we should look to France rather than Canada for a model of socialized medicine, because by the standards of most of the first world, Canada’s health care system isn’t that good. (Although it’s still much better than ours).
By a happy coincidence, Kevin Drum links to an Economist article (available only to subscribers, alas) nutshelling the French system’s results. Here’s the bit Kevin quotes:
Its hospitals gleam. Waiting-lists are non-existent. Doctors still make home visits. Life expectancy is two years longer than average for the western world.….For the patient, the French health system is still a joy. Same-day appointments can be made easily; if one doctor’s advice displeases, you can consult another, a habit known as nomadisme medical. Individual hospital rooms are the norm. Specialists can be consulted without referral. And while the patient pays up front, almost all the money is reimbursed, either through the public insurance system or a top-up private policy.
For family doctors too, liberty prevails. They are self-employed, can set up a practice where they like, prescribe what they like, and are paid per consultation. As the health ministry’s own diagnosis put it recently: “The French system offers more freedom than any other in the world.”
- Lots of good at Julian’s Lounge lately. First, he takes down Jenny Morse’s argument against same-sex marriage (see also Lucia’s post on Morse earlier this week).
- Next, Julian takes on a silly essay by a philosophy professor [joke which some found offensive deleted], which argues that liberals have generally had easy lives in which everything was handed to them on a silver platter, unlike hard-working conservatives who have learned to value labor and so aren’t so willing to give other people’s tax money away. (Apparently the good professor is unfamiliar with the respective biographies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush).
It’s funny reading the Professor’s condescending responses on his blog, both of which assume that Julian is liberal. Actually, Julian is a libertarian; my guess is, Julian was wincing at seeing his own policy preference argued for in such a hamhanded manner.
- Lastly, Julian mentions that he – like me – did parlimentary debate in college. I bet a lot of political bloggers have a parli background; they’re both natural activities for folks with an irrational belief that other people are eager to hear our political opinions.
- An interesting article in Reason about the “tax honesty” movement – you know, those folks who swear up and down that no one is legally required to pay federal income taxes. (Via Julian’s Lounge, yet again).
Not merely Protestant, the tax honesty people are strangely reminiscent of fandom — of the comic book, fantasy, science fiction, role-playing-game variety. They have the same obsession with continuity and coherence within a created fantasy world of words. It’s just that, in this case, that world of words isn’t a multivolume fantasy epic or a long-running TV series — it’s U.S. law. When these people try to reconcile the definition of income in this subsection of Title 26 of the U.S. Code with the definition in a 1918 Supreme Court case, it’s like hearing an argument over the inconsistencies between a supervillain’s origin as first presented in a 1965 issue of The Amazing Spider-Man and the explanation given in a 1981 edition of Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider- Man.
The tax honesty movement’s vision of the world is fantastical in another way. It is not merely obsessed with continuity; it is magical in a traditional sense. It’s devoted to the belief that the secret forces of the universe can be bound by verbal formulas if delivered with the proper ritual. There are numerous formulae in the tax honesty spellbook, with rival mages defending them. Which spell is best: The summoning of the Sovereign Citizen? The incantation of the Constitutional Definition of Income? The banishing spell of No Proper Delegation?
The tax honesty folks similarly believe that their foe the IRS must also be bound by these grimoires of magic…
- If you can’t stand Powerpoint (and who can?), you’ll enjoy this little collection of links from Brett Peters. Via Jim Henley.
- The South Dakota Senate race is actually a heck of a lot more interesting than I would have imagined. Julia tells the story.
-
Controlled studies show that it results in 54% fewer juvenile arrests and 69% fewer juvenile convictions and probation violations. And for every dollar it costs, four dollars are saved in future costs. Why aren’t tough-on-crime conservatives all over it?
Probably because it doesn’t involve more cops or more juvenile detention centers or harsher punishments or religious indoctrination. Instead, it’s all about nurses.
Go to Respectful of Otters for the full story.
- And while you’re there, you must read Rivka’s excellent post on consent and nonconsent.
- Speaking of excellent posts about consent, welcome Wistful Musings and Howling Rage, a new blog by frequent Alas comments-poster JRC. JRC’s comments here are always top-notch, and I feel sure his blog will be as well.
A relevant quote from law professor Amanda Frost: Attitudes towards nationwide injunctions also turn on one’s view of the courts…
Thanks for enlightening us all with the following snobby and completely gratuitous swipe at academia in Texas: “a philosophy professor (from Texas, so that’s like being a high-school teacher in a real state)”. Of course, in point of fact the University of Texas has one of the finest philosophy departments in the nation (the Philosophical Gourmet puts it at #15, right behind Notre Dame and right ahead of Brown), and indeed employs certain highly-regarded philosophy professors who have been cited approvingly in this space before. But hey, why let that get in the way of such an important goal as contributing another “dumb redneck crackers!” joke to liberal political discourse?
There are several good national health systems. The French one isn’t bad, though it has some problems that most bureaucratic systems share, for example rationing by various tactics. This is needed when prices are not allowed to determine usage.
The life-expectancy figures are higher for most west European countries than the U.S. as well as for Japan, Australia and New Zealand, but these are not good measures of the efficacy of the health care system as such.
Most health care technology doesn’t produce mortality reductions, but treats morbidity and offers maintenance and ameliorative care (e.g. nursing homes and hospices). Mortality, if measured by life expectancy, is enormously affected by deaths at younger ages. The U.S. has much higher deaths from violence and car accidents at younger ages than the comparison countries, and these deaths pull the life expectancy figures down considerably.
Even more generally, life expectancy is hard to affect through health care. As an example, if we could suddenly cure all cancer, life expectancy would rise only by a few years. The reason is in the fact that the vast majority of cancer deaths take place late in life when the years saved by cure are not expected to be many.
A better measure would be some sort of a quality of life index, which attributes changes in the quality of life to actual treatments. Some research into this exists, and it has been used for some diagnoses and treatment packages.
Heck, my APDA training is the only thing that allows me to start blogging before I start thinking…
,
-Vardibidian.
It is amazing how often libertarians get mis-classified as something else. My husband observes: Rebuplicans always think I’m a Democrat. Demoncrats always think I’m a Republican.
Hey.. the only way to find out what someone thinks is to ask them– and then listen to the answer!
And… even all libertarian’s aren’t alike. Some really care about civil liberties. Some really care about taxes. There is actually a reason many care about both. But, reading blogs, it sounds like an awful lot of the raving civil libertarians are blogging!
Rad Geek, I apologize for offending you, and I’ve removed the joke from the post.
That said, please don’t criticize me for things I never said.Although you read something about “redneck crackers” into my post, in fact I didn’t say that, didn’t imply that and didn’t mean that.
(Besides, isn’t the “redneck” stereotype someone who’s poor and white? I have no idea if the professor I was making fun of was white, and I’m sure he’s not poor. So even if I would make a “redneck” joke – which I wouldn’t – it wouldn’t have made any sense for me to make a redneck joke in this context.)
Around my house, I make fun of Texans for being horribly right-wing and politically simplistic. That includes rich Texans from the most respected families; just look at George Bush.
* * *
Next question: Isn’t it just as bad to make jokes which stereotype Texans as right-wing and politically simplistic? I don’t think so. I realize it’s not totally accurate – there are some left-wing Texans, most of whom seem to live in Austin (look, another stereotype!) – but there is also some truth in it: Texas politics seem VERY right-wing to me.
More importantly, I don’t think that Texans, as a class, are an oppressed class of people. I subscribe to the idea that you shouldn’t make stereotypes or make fun of oppressed groups, but I’m not convinced that it’s harmful to make jokes about groups that aren’t particularly oppressed.
Nonetheless, I’m sorry to have offended you.
I read about the prof on Matthew Yglesias’s blog. TechCentralStation is one of those sites I just never visit until someone links me to it, then I read an article there, and it leaves me with no desire to read any other articles.
I’ve read some Julian Sanchez from time to time (for my token libertarian blog, I actually read Abiola Lapite more). Sometimes more leftish-y readers wonder how to tell sincere (albeit IMHO misguided) libertarianism from corporate let-us-dump-toxins-in-the-rivers-and-never-pay-taxes corporate stoogism. I’m not quite sure, but I know when I read it, that Julian Sanchez (and, for that matter, Abiola Lapite) is the former and TCS is the latter.
That ‘silly essay'” verged on gibberish in places, and offensive gibberish at that. I’m not “liberal” because I’m rich. I don’t do “symbolic” work because I’m indulged. I work hard to get the money I do, and have a more “liberal” stance than many of my friends who come from richer backgrounds.
Age does not equal maturity. Obviously, experience is important in gaining maturity, but to say that one is right merely because one is older isn’t even a mature argument.
On his class distinctions, has he failed to realise that traditionally, the working class vote left-wing? If you want to attempt to predict voting by social class, “I want a bigger piece of the pie” is a far more realistic simplification of the stance of many left-wing voters (as is “I want to keep my piece of the pie” for right-wing voters).
What kind of political or ethical argument is “You’re all spoiled children, but someday you’ll grow up and see I’m right?”
Mr Amp — re: the idea that it’s not particularly harmful to make fun of a non-oppressed group… Yeah, but isn’t it just kind of, I don’t know… mean? Not that I care particularly about making fun of Texas (hell, my boyfriend is Texan, and he does it all the time), but just in the general interest of making the world a fuzzier friendlier place, making fun of someone because it probably won’t hurt too much doesn’t seem like the classiest thing to do.
Well, yeah, there’s something to be said for civility, but there’s also something to be said for goofing around and being funny. I chuckled at the Texas joke, but then I’m not from Texas, and perhaps I would have taken offense if I were.
Of course, being from California, it’s not as if anyone much makes fun of us.
I mean, come on.
More seriously, I’m of two minds when it comes to the typical stereotyping of the south (which I don’t think Amp was engaging in, but as long as I’m rambling . . .) . On the one hand, I don’t like stereotyping anyone, I think it’s pretty awful that so many leftists think it’s okay to mock southerners, and I believe that the term ‘redneck’ is just plain old-skool class warfare, insulting people who work outside for a living. On the other hand, I must admit that I’m getting pretty damn tired of watching this little psycho-drama every 4 years where every presidential candidate needs to suck-up to the southern vote because the south seems unwilling to even consider voting for anyone from above the Mason-Dixon line.
I mean, fuck, people, if you act like culturally isolated xenophobes, I’m not sure how shocked you get to be when people think you’re culturally isolated xenophobes. And yeah, yeah, I know, that’s not everyone, I know, I know . . .
—Myca
Oh, and thanks for the plug, Amp.
You rock!
I know that the joke was removed from the post, but I don’t see how this: “a philosophy professor (from Texas, so that’s like being a high-school teacher in a real state)” can be represented as a joke about how Texans are generally “right-wing and politically simplistic.” The clear implication is that, in Texas, university professors—and, by implication, the universities at which they teach—are teaching at the educational level expected at high schools in other states. This may not be a joke about poor redneck crackers, but it’s certainly a swipe at the intellectualism of Texans that goes beyond their political tendencies.
Your intention, Amp, may have been to make a political joke, but I think your choice of words outpaced your good intentions. That said, I think you did the right thing by taking the joke out of the post instead of doing what too many bloggers do: tell the offended person to shove off.
I just wanted to say, as a Texan, that I laughed at the joke :)
While Texas is not ALL right wing fundie, obviously,
it certainly deserves it’s reputation and the jokes
aimed at it – if we don’t like it then we need to
clean up our act and have more to be proud of.
Face it – the fact that that article was written
by someone who teaches philosophy would be deeply
embarrassing to most educational institutions.
What I perhaps finds the most frightening about that professor is that he teaches young people, yet his follow-up posts certainly shows that he have no respect for young people.
I’m always a bit surprised to see “left-wing” (if that’s the same thing as “liberal”?) described as the politics of the rich and privileged, while conservative politics favour the poor and hard-working. Maybe because where I come from (UK) it’s historically the other way round, and the more socialist sort of politics tends to be associated with the “working class”.
Of course US history is rather different, and there’s the whole “American Dream” myth, of opportunity and success being attainable for anyone who works hard enough. But still, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Surely liberal policy is most relevant and helpful to the poorest people, the ones who need things like affirmative action, socialised health care etc? If anything, I feel it’s the “conservatives” who sentimentalise the less priveliged by insisting on maintaining the fantasy of brave, independent hard-working pioneers or whatever.
“Left-wing” is not the politics of the rich and privileged. The “left-wing” that you see described as such is not even “left-wing” but more slightly left-leaning center being tarred by the right with the label. “Left-wing” in American politics is indeed more socialistic than the mainstream. And that is a problem in the USA. From the beginning of the 20th century up through the 30’s the Socialist party became a threat to the 2 party system. Then it began to be branded as communist (not wholly false – there were many communists involved as well). The cold war sealed the fate of the word “socialist” in the USA as synonymous with “communist”. These days branding a person or party as “socialist” is a very effective way to hurt their image.
That is a quick summary of the issue. I may be off on some of the facts (it’s been years since I last read American political history) and I’m sure that somebody will correct any oversights or mis-statements that I have made.
I’m not going to read the philosophy professor’s article, because I’m on blood pressure medication as it is. But I will laugh at the notion that “liberals have generally had easy lives in which everything was handed to them on a silver platter, unlike hard-working conservatives who have learned to value labor and so aren’t so willing to give other people’s tax money away.”
On the contrary. Conservatives are often people who’ve made it in life without realizing how much of it was having things handed to them on a platter. They think their success was due entirely to their own efforts, and consequently stigmatize as lazy anyone who hasn’t been as fortunate as they. Poorer conservatives are often people on the next-to-lowest rung of the totem pole, intent on bashing the guys below them because they can’t bash anybody else.
Liberals, on the other hand, have not had more handed to them on a platter, but may seem like it because they realize how much has been handed to them on a platter. Some of the very richest people, like most of the Rockefeller heirs, are liberals because they’d have to be pretty dumb not to realize that they didn’t get all that inherited wealth through their own gumption. George W. Bush is not as rich as a Rockefeller, and he’s also a lot dumber.
As for professors from Texas, data point: both Phil Gramm and Dick Armey started out as economics professors at lesser Texas schools, not UT-Austin, and their lack of grasp of economics I think speaks for itself. Armey was at that powerhouse of higher learning, North Texas State, while Gramm was at Texas A&M, a school whose pretentions to being a real university are a standing joke even in Texas.
But it’s not just Texas. Newt Gingrich fancies himself a historian of wide and broad grasp, but his attempts at being one have been pretty risible. His teaching experience was at a place called West Georgia College, where he never even got tenure. (To be fair, he left after 8 years when he was elected to Congress.)
Teaching at a small college doesn’t mean you’re stupid. But if your work shows that you are stupid, then such credentials are no surprise.
Is this guy for real? His “logic”, as far as I can follow it, goes something along the lines of “I worked hard and am conservative. Obviously, the two things are connected, so anyone who isn’t conservative hasn’t had to work hard.”
I’m going to try it: I work hard and am socialist. Obviously, the two things are connected, so anyone who claims to be a hard-working conservative is lying.
Mmmm, that was therapeutic.
Pingback: scribblingwoman
Pingback: The Curmudgeonly Clerk
Pingback: The Curmudgeonly Clerk