I happened to stumble on this Yale Law Journal Online article yesterday. I hadn’t realized what the court cases about the individual mandate were (at least in part) arguing. Credits and penalties The individual mandate is structured as a tax penalty (i.e. an extra tax hike) if you don’t have health insurance. Those of us […]
In the past I complained about “libertarianism” and “socialism” melodrama in US politics. There’s a broken pattern of thought, where people speak as if the only two economic ideologies are “government good, everyone must have equal everything” or “government bad, night watchman state.” Moderates and centrists are seen as compromising — mixing the two extreme perspectives, […]
If you’re against big government, it’s time to be specific. You can see the budget pie chart at Wikipedia. Over the next decades, remember that Social Security and especially Medicare become ever-larger slices of the pie. As an against-big-government activist, how many of the following will you have the integrity to advocate dropping: 21%: Social […]
I’ve been wondering for a while why nobody contrasts Obama’s health care proposal with some of the past Democratic proposals. It’s a market-based, incremental proposal, that makes use of existing programs and existing insurance companies. Today Obama’s campaign has a new ad making this point, so I guess I’m on their wavelength. After my What […]
Nice, factual, 1-chart explanation of the competing tax proposals. (Thanks Luis.) Barack Obama’s policy proposals. (This post was originally found at http://log.ometer.com/2008-09.html#14)
McCain was always the respectable Republican, who opposed tax cuts without spending cuts, did not deny environmental threats, had a reasonable approach to immigration, and was against the scorched-earth Rove-style politics. Somehow he has reversed himself on all of these things while running for president. It’s not even clear he still opposes torture (see this […]