Aside from the principle of not forcing people to give their money up, is there anything economically unsustainable with socialized healthcare?
Socialized anything is unsustainable. It inherently puts resources where no one demands them. It misallocates resources.
Its quite inefficient and wastes resources. The Economic calculation problem is basically that without economic freedom, no prices can form, and there is no rational means of planning, thus massive inefficiency in both the initial plan and in adapting to an evolving with the unfolding of an uncertain future.
Inflation hurts people (indirect taxation), especially the poor and those on fixed incomes, like the elderly. Big G means inflation, i.e. printing money (its hard for G to directly tax to fund all of their endeavors without unrest).
The problem with poverty is people are poor and don’t have enough stuff. Why engage in policies that make scarcity more of an issue?
It’s like you didn’t even read what I said! Of course there is help for them. We are proposing better help than government help. Please reread what I said:
And then go get yourself an economics textbook and start finding out if what I’m saying is true or not.
That idea isn’t really relevant. The problem is that these programs destroy wealth and reduce the supply of many goods and services, often (but not always) including the particular good or service they are trying to provide for people.
Did you ever study supply and demand curves? What happens to the price of a good if its supply curve shifts to the left (goes down)? What happens to the quantity produced of that good?
Regardless of any disincentive to work, this wealth-destroying effect is going to reduce the supply of some good or service, somewhere. The economy will be able to produce less of it. Build program upon program, and soon, even if you overallocate resources and provide the world’s best healthcare system such that people never even get toenail fungus, you will have destroyed the economy’s capacity to produce education. Or gasoline. Or food. (And this’ll be true even if you don’t overallocate: produce a healthcare program that’s “adequate” by government force, and you still destroyed wealth somewhere along the way, reducing the supply of some other basic good or service that people need.)
I’m telling you, get an economics textbook and start seeing if what I’m saying is true.
Unless you’re just here to talk and not listen.
By the way, a disincentive to work doesn’t mean that nobody works. It just means that less people work; people are affected “on the margins,” i.e., people who are barely making it find it is more worthwhile for them to stop working. It doesn’t mean everybody quits working wholesale or that all incentive to work is removed. But again, that’s not the issue here. What is the issue is that free exchanges produce wealth (and therefore increase the supply of goods and services in the economy, including the basic services that you believe everyone should have) and government interventions (including programs and regulations) destroy wealth, reducing the supply of goods and services in the economy, again including the basic services that you believe everyone should have.
Give people a free market and more people will have access to healthcare and adequate food, clothing, housing, education, insurance, jobs. Try to provide these essential things by a government program or regulation and less people will have this access. It’s as simple as that, and its provable from economics if you are willing to start looking through the materials on this site.
Would you like some pointers for good books and articles to read? I’m sure lots of people can help find you some reading material about these wealth creating/wealth destroying effects by handing you some articles about voluntary exchange and the “double inequality,” or Google may help you if you punch that term in. 
Some books/articles on that would be helpful.
I have a lot of friends from Europe and their system seems so good to me. Everyone is getting what they need and it seems sustainable. But, maybe with some articles about wealth creation I might change my mind. Something more visual happening to those programs there would be the best way to convice, but I’ll take what I can get.
Start with “Economics in One Lesson” by Henry Hazlitt. It’s brilliant, it will only take a few days to read. I believe it will reveal a new world to you.
If you then get really serious, then you can move on to some serious stuff like Rothbard’s “Man, Economy, and State” or “Human action” by Mises.
Which system - the one where workers with a monopoly on public services can shut down an entire nation for weeks on end in order to preserve benefits that will undoubtedly destroy the country’s economy?
I’m lookin’ at you, France.
While in theory the state is obliged to give everyone what they need, in practice there are shantytowns in Europe because the state cannot fulfill its obligations. Of course the shantytowns are cleared out at the first opportunity by the police.
I have a lot of friends from Europe and their system seems so good to me. Everyone is getting what they need and it seems sustainable.
There are a lot of downsides to the European economy.
http://townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2006/11/22/should_we_copy_europe
there is no “the people”. there never was. it’s always just been an excuse, like “for the children” is for censorship. And just like in that case, it’s not really abou tthe children, because the real issue is that parents want to socialize the costs of being a good parent.
It’s lamentable that you want to know about wealth creation, while bypassing the moral argument against stealing from Peter to feed Paul, and if Peter resists, using deadly force against him in order to feed Paul, but anyway..
http://www.ronpaullibrary.org/document.php?id=947
http://www.ronpaullibrary.org/document.php?id=454
http://www.ronpaullibrary.org/document.php?id=650
http://www.ronpaullibrary.org/document.php?id=707
You really need to read the articles Wombatron posted earlier.
You’re ecognorant, which is something we can help you with, but you have to be sincere, and invest yourself in taking advantage of our willingness to help you find your way to answers.
You’re probably young. Wait until you start making some real money. Wait until you start paying big chunks of your wages in taxes. Right now, I’m relatively certain you’re a net tax consumer, not a net tax producer. Life is grand when you get free stuff and never have to face the person who was forced to give it up for you.
Socialism is only sustainable 1 way in the long term. If everyone constantly revises their standard of living downward.
To be blunt, if you’re ok with stealing and violence, then we can’t do much to help you. If you oppose those actions, then your only rational course is to embrace laissez-faire capitalism. And the good news is, laissez-faire works quite well.
But you trust them to vote for the right managers?
LOLOLOLOLOLOL
Where is all the money going to come from to tax, and repay in debt? The productive masses. So you don’t trust ordinary people to provide ‘basic’ needs for themselves, but you trust them to cooperate peacefully and productively so the state has plenty to tax and borrow from.
LOLOLOLOLOL
Excellent suggestion; here it is:
It used to be here, too, but that account seems to be suspended.
Those last two are pretty stout reading. If you’d like something a little simpler to introduce you to the concepts involved, try Economics for Real People by Gene Callahan.
“Need” is a very vague and dilatable criterion:
Do you need dental care? In Germany, despite universal health care, you have to pay for it yourself, at least in part, precisely because it had become too expensive to be sustainably covered by public health care programs.
Do you need fast treatment? It’s common to wait for months and months until a not-absolutely-vital surgery can be performed. If it’s about life and death, then maybe you’ll get instant treatment, but by doctors who may not have slept for days (!) because the public hospital demands extra shifts and being on call most of the time.
Do you think the market process can sort out bad insurers and leave customers with the best choices? As soon as public money enters the picture, lobbying power and not customer preference are what counts. This leads to very bad bureaucratic excesses that constantly need to be manually weeded out by other bureaucrats to keep the system running.
I’m in the very lucky position of not being dependent on public health care, I have a private insurer. I (my insurance) pay(s) 60 euros for a 5 minute chat with a doctor. Why? Because it’s private sector money which keeps the capital structure running and the doctor’s offices open. My family pays high insurance rates because with a completely public system, it wouldn’t be too profitable anymore to become a doctor or run a hospital; and since politicians are unable to figure that out, the last vestiges of the market need to fill the gap. The upside is that we get fast and good treatment by doctors of our choice. Should this system ever be transformed into a completely public one (which seems likely at the moment), it’ll crash under its own weight soon. Once there are no more market troughs to feed the public system, it’s bound to go down. Talk about sustainability.
Europe looks nice from the outside. It’s like an elderly movie star that can still cover the signs of aging with sufficient makeup. But liberals should see her in the morning for once to figure out that social democracy ain’t as sexy as they imagine it to be.
Okay, you got some books now. How about some articles?
http://economics.gmu.edu/wew/articles/fee/entrepreneur.htm
Socialised medicine may not work because it assumes tax revenue will remain constant and costs as well. But, costs will always go up, where as wages probably not as much. This would lead to th eneed for higher taxation, thus less money is left for the earner to spend (disposable.) Less money to spend would lead to lower production, etc (many of the things were seeing now)
Is this true or false?
I didnt read this stuff anywhere, I havent began the reading suggested yet (Sorry, Im a little sick.)
“It seems to me, when I think of it, universal healthcare and social programs (welfare, unemployment, etc) are better than the free market when it comes to providing for the people.”
Since you’re in college, I assume you have a family that has been providing for you, even after all the taxes they’ve paid and the money they’ve earned that has been depreciated by the FRB. Compare that with growing up in an orphanage funded by the state. Which would you think was better, neglecting love.
Have you read or heard the stories from Canadians and British about their health care. Many have died waiting in line - literally. During my working years my health care was provided by one of several HMO’s on my employers list. Have you ever been to one of those. At one the doctor I saw was so rushed he ran from one patient to the next and had little time to speak to me. At another I didn’t even get an M.D. That is the result of the HMO management decisions. Do you really think the gov’t management would be different. I can remember as a child having measles and our family doctor coming to my grandmother’s house often to check on me and visit.
My response to welfare is work. My response to unemployment is save. etc.
I’m going to guess “True, but for the wrong reasons,” or “True, but there’s more to it than that.”
The statement “costs will always go up” is not justified. Costs do not always rise. In fact, in a free economy, each provider wants to be as profitable as possible, so he looks for and finds ways to be more and more efficient. As they become more efficient, the providers attempt to outcompete each other by cutting the fees they charge for their services. In this way, efficiencies are pursued and the gains are passed on to the consumer. Health care costs under these circumstances would decrease!
Now, consider the world of government-provided healthcare. In this situation, healthcare is subsidized. And now you see costs going up: when something is subsidized, it costs the consumers less to obtain it. So, their demand for it rises. Visualize your supply and demand curves for a minute, and see what rising demand does to cost!
Then, yes, I think the things you say after that hold true. The costs are higher than predicted, so the government has to address it somehow. They might raise taxes, as you say. Or they might cut services, hence the dire predictions about being on waiting lists forever, etc. Either way, it’s the very subsidization of the service that makes the service unsustainable: subsidize the service, demand rises, costs rise, and now the plan doesn’t work.
One other option other than raising taxes or lowering the supply/quality of the service would be to take the money to pay for the higher costs away from something else. Another state service could have less money allocated to it, so your roads or your education get worse, but your health care system appears to be wonderful. Raising taxes is exactly the same thing; it just affects a private-sector provided service instead of a publicly-provided one.
I think your statement about the assumption that tax revenue and costs will remain constant is right on, but could lead to a misunderstanding: yes, this assumption is a problem. But there’s no way around it. Even if you realize this assumption is a mistake, it’s still not possible compensate by computing what the real costs will be. Without a free market setting prices, there is no way to figure out what the costs are. This is one of the fundamental revelations of Ludwig von Mises and the Austrian school, and it’s the reason that socialism and communism will never work. You can read more about this by Googling for the “Economic Calculation Problem,” which is the name for this phenomenon. I also love this little calculator that brings the point home.
Socialized medicine does not work because it is impossible to plan the needs of millions of independent patients, their diseases and circumstances/resources/means to maximize the existing medical capital, and to decide where to allocate future medical capital (human capital and capital goods/equipment/infrastructure)
The entire notion of socialized planning/central planning/command economy is based on the notion that the future can be predicted (or inversely that the expectations and needs of the masses can be limited).
This is only true under socialism. Costs go up because there are no competitive efficiencies in the system. On the contrary, a public/political/social system institutionalizes failure. I experienced this working for the YMCA managing a small budget years ago. If I came in under budget (efficiency) my budget shrank. If I came in over budget, my budget next year grew. You can see this with government. Failed programs and agencies get more resources. Education gets more money and more rules, as the results drop off. The military gets more money and more power, and can’t beat Afghan goat farmers with 30 year old weapons. The incentive to produce results is subverted for the incentive to increase funding. In the free market, you have to succeed at making clients happy to profit. In government, you have to make politicians and lobbyists happy, not the voters.
Taxation is a disincentive to work. If you basically grasp praxeology and understand we structure our needs ordinally (in sequence) then as each dollar you earn is taxed more, the less inclined you will be to choose work over some other activity. You will reorder your needs and wants to reflect that working the 41st hour doesn’t yield the same quality of result as the 10th hour of work.
This is false. It’s based on the notion that demand drives production which is a very popular and widespread misconception.
Production drives demand. This is Say’s Law. You have to produce before you can consume. The higher taxes will lower production, because there is less incentive to produce (you get to keep less of your profit) rather than because demand will fall. Demand is (for all intents and purpose) infinite. I demand a trip to the moon. I demand a steak for lunch. I demand a $200 bottle of wine for this evening. I demand all sorts of things. But unless I create the production to pay for them, my demands are nothing more than fantasy.
You’re moving in a good direction. Keep it up. And I hope you feel better soon.
I saw the following today and thought of this thread:
crosscntryrunner, are you still with us and following? Feeling any better?