The New Strategy

Believe it or not, prof bug hasn't fallen off the face of the earth and ended up in some godforsaken limbo in outer space with no means of accessing the Internet, never mind the buggy site.  On the contrary, he's been busy posting at various other web sites . . . all economic ones, and mainly libertarian ones to boot. 

Not that they have always welcomed his non-libertarian take on their posts --- among which disgruntled happened to be one called EconLog, run by two professors of economics at George Mason University.  Nothing wrong with their posts there.  The two profs are pretty bright . . . only, well to put it mildly, they're fairly narrowly specialized and it was easy for the buggy prof to bug them: meaning, more precisely, to show up the limits of their knowledge and theoretical arbiter dicta.   They obviously grew piqued.  Who could blame them?. 

Not that they banned prof bug from their web site directly.  No,no; that would contradict their libertarian values, right?  So they did it indirectly --- by the intermediary of their web manager, a fellow who insisted that prof bug not post any arguments longer than 500 words . . . a limit, alas, that hardly adds up to most of prof bug's wind-up prefatory comments. 

Buggy Purgatory

Today's Buggy Topic

. . . Is captured faithfully by the subject-title.  The topic itself was raised in a thread at Economist's View, and prof bug's lengthy reply follows here

 IS CRIME RELATED TO INEQUALITY?

Lafayette Said:

"Of course, some Americans will be proud of the above number. We're not sissies, are we? No Creeping Socialism in the US, right?Right, just a lot of misery if you are locked into poverty, that shows up in the crime/delinquency stats. Want to have a comparative look at those numbers for the countries cited above? Go for it! Put them up here in this forum!" --- Lafayette

1) Alas, Very Wrong, Mon Vieux

There are essentially four sources of crime-data within countries:

* Officially reported crimes to the police and investigated by them.  In the USA, the FBI collects the data from local police forces throughout the country, and the Department of Justice is responsible for analyzing and reporting the data.

* Crime-victims opinion surveys.  These almost always show a higher rate of crime, especially the violent sorts: rape, assault, armed robbery, attempted homicide.    In the USA, the Department of Justice administers an annual National Crime Survey every year.  The survey shows that about half the violent crime isn't reported to the police --- a finding more or less paralleled in other rich democratic countries.

* Interviews and surveys with incarcerated criminals.  For instance, in the early 1990s, a team of criminologists interviewed simultaneously inmates in a prison in New York state and Wisconsin.  They found in each prison that the interviewed prisoners confessed to 11 crimes they had committed for which they weren't arrested or convicted.

* Murder victims.  They are hard to get rid of.

Click on the "Continue" button below.

Today's First Buggy Topic

Prompted by a lead-off commentary at Economist's View by a professor at UC Berkeley, Michael O'Hara, the bug-stuff added some different perspective to the laments and criticisms of the California tax-payers that both O'Hara and Professor Mark Thoma, the talented head of Economist's View, himself voiced about the alleged stingy, selfish California tax-paying public. . . a line of bawling-out rebuke that was followed in the thread by dozens of other posters. 

Not by the buggy prof though.  His two posts will explain why.  Click here for both.

Something Else

Prof bug tried to widen the discussion with a third post that dealt with the highly progressive nature of the US tax-system, compared to the systems that flourish in the more advanced welfare-state systems on the Continent of Europe.  To that end, he drew on a recent 2009 study by two sociologists at Northwestern University --- both, incidentally, thanking several prominent left-wing liberals and Social Democrats for their comments on the study's manuscript.  It showed clearly, based on extensive data-analysis, that if you added to the national income-tax in the USA the other sources of tax-revenue ---meaning state and local government income-taxes, sales taxes, fees, property taxes, and business taxes and their equivalent elsewhere in Europe, Canada, and Australia --- the American tax system is by far the most progressive.

To drive home its findings, the two sociologists' study --- which prof bug did comment on at length in an earlier post at Economist's View back in January 2010: click here for that commentary---  showed that if you took the least progressive year between 1981 and 2006 for taxes in the USA (1994), and compared it with the most progressive year of all the European countries'stax payments  in those 25 years (Germany in 1989), 64% of the top 20% of income earners in the USA would have to have failed to pay taxes at all in order to equalize American tax payments with those in Germany. 

Their Moral?

If left-wing liberals and Social Democrats want to see the USA emulate the more systematic welfare-spending and reduced inequality of income that exists on the Continent of West Europe, then these political advocates are going to have to persuade Americans to shift from high property taxes and income-taxes and state-and-local sales taxes and so on to a highly regressive Value Added Tax system that exists in Europe and elsewhere for raising government revenue

Today's Buggy Post Is, As the Title Says,

. . . A follow-up to yesterday's prof bug stuff left on August 23: click here for it.   The interview in question is with Professor Didier Tabuteau, a socialist who organized the ministries of two socialist ministers for healthcare and social security in the early 1990s.  He currently holds a chair in the two subjects at Sciences Politiques in Paris and is probably, given his practical and academic experience, the leading expert on them in France. 

The Interview Will Follow in a Second

Note meanwhile that the interviewers were apparently other doctors and dentists in the French system, the resulting print copy then published in Le Monde in early January 2010.  Prof bug translated the French and posted it in clear, colloquial English at Economist's View, where it was removed by the moderator . . . maybe, who knows, because it was too long.  A shame though.  It was in response to several critics in the relevant thread there, a couple living in France, who thought prof bug had gone (as one put it) ballistic. 

No matter.  The debate between buggy went on yesterday evening and again this morning, so even if you read the thread at Economist View linked to on Sunday (August 22^nd, 2010), you might still find it beneficial --- and a source of some giggling entertainment --- if you click on the "Show More Comments" bar on the first page of the Economist's View thread and then run a buggy search for several bugged out posts and exchanges.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Didier Tabuteau: "The protection is even less expensive it is universal" LEMONDE.FR  11.01.10  5:23 p.m.   http://notesblanches.blogspot.com/2010/01/didier-tabuteau-la-protection-est.html

PRIVATIZATION:

Lulu: Is the French health system being privatized in the American manner.?

Didier Tabuteau: No, not in the American sense, for the basic coverage remains the same for everyone. But there is a gradual privatization of routine health care expenses, that is to say, not involving serious diseases, diseases of long duration (ALD), and hospitalizations.

For routine care of this sort, the reimbursement rates [by the state healthcare system] seem to be about 55%, according to our estimates.  This overall rate should be officially released and followed in the healthcare system.  In this way, it should serve as a major indicator for assessing the health coverage of real people who have no serious illness --- which is to say, the vast majority of the population.

DEFICITS AND GROWING HEALTHCARE EXPENSES

Click on the "Continue" button below.

Today's Buggy Topic Is Found,

. . . As usual, in three prof bug posts left at Economist's View.  Click here for the thread, then scroll to the bottom of the first page and click on the bar there that says "Show More Comments."  Please note that a long bug post --- the first one left in the thread --- was removed by the moderator, perhaps because of its length.

Today's Two Related Buggy Topics Are . . .

. . . Found in a lengthy analysis set out at Economist's View.  Click here for it in the relevant thread.   Be sure, if you're shaky about basic macroeconomic concepts, to follow the buggy link set out there to an impressive, simple, and informative set of diagrams and easily grasped comments by another professor.  Even a hour's study will likely improve your knowledge markedly.

The more substantive buggy topic deals with long-term structural problems in American labor markets as opposed to the existing high-level of current unemployment, much of it cyclical --- the fall-out from the 2007-2009 recession.  Some of the differences aren't easily separated, and some other.  They require different policy-measures.

Today's Buggy Topic Is . . .

. . . Found at Economist's View in a thread that starts off with a mangled interpretation of a blog-post and then unleashes the usual sneering invective by the customary left-wing posters, most of whom --- maybe with three or four exceptions --- seem to know next-to-nothing about economics.  Post bug's lengthy analysis tried to untangle the mess left by others, more or less the way the broom-and-shovel brigade enters the circus-arena the second after the elephant-parade and tries to get rid of the crap the huge pachyderm.  Click here for the clean-up bug-stuff.

Today's Buggy Topic

It unfolds, as usual, at Economist's View, where six lengthy buggy posts deal with more than just what the subject-title says here.   Three of the prof-bug posts deal directly with defense spending by the USA government, attacked by the usual suspects in the thread with lots of venom.  They are data-filled, look at defense spending as both a percentage of GDP and of federal budget spending since WWII and down to the present-day.

What Else Then?

Well , the remaining three posts tackle the ideological inanities of left-wing critics of American policies in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere where US military forces are deployed.  Prof bug then looks, among other things, at what's been sound in our policies toward Afghanistan and Iraq, but also where we have gone astray.  In the process, our buggy guy dissects the morally monstrous apologia for terrorists and dictatorships that not only exist today toward our opponents there, but go back to the 1930s.

There is nothing wrong with criticizing US foreign or military policies.  What seems intellectually and morally bankrupt are the apologies offered by certain left-wing types for 80 years now.

Click here for the bugged-out stuff

Today's Buggy Topic Is

. . . Found at Economist's View, the bugged out stuff elaborated in two posts full of data.  Click here for those posts.  To find them, scroll down to the bottom of the first page and click on the "Show More Comments" bar.

Today's Buggy Topic Consists Of . . .

Three long prof bug posts, left at Economist's View, that deal with the subject-matter captured in the title above --- each of those posts followed by the predictable catcalls and oh-so-wicked name-calling left by the usual suspects there.  Click here for the bugged-out stuff, which you'll find if you scroll to the bottom of the first page of the thread and click on the bar there that says "Show More Comments".