Economic freedom has not been a "necessary component" for political freedom. The Nazis privatized many industries and opened up trade, there was not an increase in political freedom. Economic freedom is now booming in China, and there is not a vast amount of "freedom" there either.
Privatization alone does not equate to a free society when the government regulates prices, wages, and production quotas, as the Nazis did.
Monopolies and oligopolies took over the various industries. Economic freedom, political freedom, social freedom, all require that the government, for the most part, keep its hands out of the economy and stick to its job of national defense, enforcing contracts and the law, etc...regulation is needed here and there, but for the most part, government should stay out of the economy.
Remember, for an economy to be truly a free-market and capitalist, the rationing of resources must be done by the natural fluctuations of the price system.
Shifting power into the hands of private tyrannies is not freedom, although this is another matter.
Neither is shifting it into the hands of a government tyranny, only the difference with the government is, there is nothing you can do to stop them. With a company, you can stop buying their products, and if you don't like your employer, the worst they can do is stop paying you. That's a heck of a lot more lenient compared to a bureaucrat with the force of the government backing them up.
And "private tyrannies" do not form in free markets. Go read about all the "big businesses" such as store chains, supermarket chains, etc...that were huge in the 1920s and 1930s and 1940s. Most of them are either gone or much smaller than they used to be, because markets change, companies rise and fall. One can only create a monopoly, for the most part, through government regulation.
You look at all the industries with monopolies or near monopolies and they are highly regulated, such as farming, airlines, pharmaceuticals, health insurance, etc...
This isn't always the case, sometimes a private monopoly forms anyhow, and if that is the case, occasionally you must have government intervene and force this private monopoly not to gouge prices. It depends. Sometimes one must choose between a private monopoly or a public monopoly. Both are bureaucracy, both become very corrupt.
As for heatlh care, the US already spends more per capita than most other industrialized nations. The profits, however, are indeed privatized, making the industry more geared towards selling drugs and other profiteering shenanigans than prevention. The US could save a lot on prevention alone.
You are correct, the U.S. system spends about twice as much per capita on healthcare I believe. But the drug industry, the health insurance industry, etc...are all dominated by a few very large, very powerful companies because those industries are so heavily regulated.
The "market solution" has already failed and is disaterous,
No it didn't. It worked pretty fine until the government started getting more and more involved in healthcare. Remember, around 45% of current healthcare in the U.S. comes from Medicare and Medicaid. The other 55% is privately-controlled, but not really a free-market.
so indeed I think it is time for someone else to come up with a new solution, even if it is a weird collusion between the insurance industry and the government (not true UHC).
They can try, and I believe they will fail.
I suggest you go learn some history. We already had a privatized firefighter system, and it completely flopped. The firefighters would fight over who gets to put out the fire while the building burns.
Exactly; that's why I said "one could maybe try" having privatization for things like firefighters, but it likely would be a lot simpler for the government to control it, and as you have stated, that was proven correct (I am thinking "Gangs of New York").
Nothing in economics is absolute; some things, the government is better at. But healthcare, in my opinion, is not one of them.
We now have a privatized healthcare system which is sucking pretty bad.
It is privatized, but it is not really a free-market because of the heavy regulation. I'm not advocating no regulation or oversight, but too much regulation hampers any industry. It isn't as if we have a free-market healthcare system that for some reason isn't working right.
The aspects of healthcare that are subject to the free-market, such as laser eye surgery, are decreasing in price while increasing in quality. Health insurance, drugs, etc...are not.
Imagine what the computer industry would look like if it was as regulated as the healthcare industry. We'd still be using vacuum tube computers most likely.
Trying to make it government controlled could be beneficial. At least if we try it we'll know for sure which was better.
I do not think it would be; but on another aspect, what if it wasn't? What do we do then? You really think the government will give up 16% control of the economy. They aren't joking when they said that there are two things infinite: the universe and a government agency/program.
I would say we know which are better simply by looking at the healthcare systems of foreign countries, or Canada, or Massachusettes even. Far more people then expected ended up signing up for that universal healthcare plan (Massachusettes), thus overloading it and driving up costs:
http://www.boston.com/business/heal...urers_businesses_seek_to_limit_costs_in_mass/
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/05/us/05doctors.html
There is only a limited number of doctors. Canada has experienced a shortfall of doctors and nurses as of late because of the strain on the system there.
One is supposed to be able to pay for healthcare with their own money or buy health insurance, but buying health insurance is nothing like buying car insurance or homeowner's insurance.
Remember also, California, the 7th largest economy in the world, wanted to implement a universal healthcare program, but axed it, concluding that it would bankrupt the state. If California cannot do it, how would it be done for the entire United States of America?
More "voodoo economics." The government would not be controlling 17% of the economy, first of all, and they really would be no more involved in the health care system than they are now with this corporate system we have in place (for health care, or any other system).
If we eventually moved to a full nationalized healthcare system, yes they would. And if they aren't going to be anymore involved under Obama's plan than now, than how would the system be any different? Much of the system now rations in much the same way as a government would, accept that it uses corporate bureaucracies, rather than a government bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is bureaucracy, except in a free-market, corporate bureaucracies are subject to market forces, which they are not right now.
According to health care econonomists like Jonathan Gruber at MIT, it could be paid for by rolling back Bush tax cuts on the wealthy, and the savings generated by improvements in chronic disease management, prevention, and electric record keeping. This would generate about half the income for the "UHC" plans. This is not a "tax increase" because without congressional action the cuts are set to expire in January, 2011.
From my understanding, Bush did not cut taxes solely for the wealthy.
The tax rates pre-Bush were:
10% (income of $0 to $7,550), 15% ($7550 to $30650), 28% ($30,650 to $74,200), 31% ($74,200 to $154,800), 36% ($154,800 to $336,550), and 39.6% ($336,550 and up)
Here is what they went down to after Bush cut taxes:
10% (income of $0 to $7,550), 15% ($7550 to $30650), 25% ($30,650 to $74,200), 28% ($74,200 to $154,800), 33% ($154,800 to $336,550), and 35% ($336,550 and up).
The only reason the majority of the benefits of the Bush tax cuts went to the highest-earning 1% of the population is because the highest-earning 1% pay the majority of the tax revenue. The bottom-earning 50% pay virtually nothing.
If you cut taxes by 3% for someone earning $30,000 a year and someone earning $300,000 a year, the person earning $300,000 a year saves more money.
Once one makes over $100,000 a year, they are in the highest-earning portion of the population, however, there is still a large amount of hardworking professionals who make $100K, $150K, $200K, etc...who are far from wealthy, especially if they live in one of the expensive areas of New York or California. If you live in Manhattan for example, $300K a year is solidly middle-class.
I also do not believe it is morally right for the government to take so much of a person's money under the pre-Bush tax rate. Pre-Bush, if you are a hardworking lawyer making say $150K a year, 39% of your income alone goes to the Federal government; then you throw in state and local taxes, and you are talking about 50% or more of your income going to the government, and that's without sales taxes for things purchased to.
It's important to note that governors like Schwarzenegger etc. have already talked about doing things like this, and Massachusetts already has a mandated insurance plan and they were able to manage it.
As I said, California axed theirs and Massachusettes is experiencing an overload on their system right now.
So which health economist says that it is "unrealistic" and it amounts to the US controlling 16% of the economy by requiring children to be covered?
You have to remember that many of these economists function in the world of theory. While economists views are to be considered, one has to be careful; for example, during the Dot Com boom, I believe two Nobel Prize winning economists said it was a "new economy" and that stock prices would not go down; I also read, in a defense of people who thought that housing prices during the housing bubble would keep going up, that there were economists who did sound analysis and concluded that housing was not in a bubble; so I mean, take what economists write with a grain of salt and remember the basic laws, like supply/demand. If you have a limited supply, but an increase in demand (and when something is "free", people demand more of it, in particular if the "wealthy" are mostly paying for it), you will have to ration resources one way or another.
Is there a single serious study or a single reputed economist that calculates the effect of such announcements on the price of oil? Our own DoE says there is not going to be any noticeable change in price for several years.
Not totally sure; one reason I say prices should drop that is because when President Bush lifted the moratorium on drilling, the price began to drop, and the price increased a good deal for a while as well due to speculation, but I could be wrong; one another thing, is the DoE a reputable source, as aren't they mostly bureaucrats...?
One other thing though: even if drilling would not decrease oil prices for say ten years, why not start now? And at the same time, work on alternative energy? If we had started say in 1998, it would likely be helping right about now, for example. Ten years seems far out, until it arrives.