Today's Buggy Post Continues . . .

 . . . in the same thread linked to yesterday, under the same title (except for "Take 2").  This time, the prof bug stuff unfolds an exchange with an ultra-suspicious socialist utopian --- believe it or not, a former employee of the US Agency for International Development.  Enjoy!  That's what the spun-out buggy banter there is supposed to provide. 

Click here for the thread.

Today's Buggy Topic

No need to elaborate on it: the subject title above captures the topic and subject-matter of prof bug's latest long post . . . left at Economist's View, the praiseworthy economic web-site run by Professor Mark Thoma of the University of Oregon.  Click here for the bugged-out stuff.

Today's Buggy Topic

It's captured pretty faithfully by the subject-title here and is found, as usual --- at least, for the last few months --- in a prof bug post left at Economist's View.

The post, by the way, refers to the work of three important philosophers, all associated with Harvard: Quine, Davidson, and Putnam.  For good, readable accounts of their lives and work, click on the underlined links here.

Today's Buggy Post Deals . . .

with a subject treated at length about 11 days ago (June 7th, 2009), only it now links the progressivity of the US tax system to the desires of many in this country to switch to a single-payer state-run health system.   For good or bad, those EU welfare-state systems all entail a much more regressive tax structure than the US's --- which relies heavily on income-and-property taxes, as opposed to the EU's widespread use of a regressive set of consumption taxes --- mainly VAT . . . the value-added-tax. 

As a generally thing, the more advanced the welfare-state in the EU, the more it relies on a regressive set of consumption taxes.  By contrast, as the buggy post found at Economist View today shows --- click here ---- the US tax system turns out to be the most progressive in all of the high-income industrial countries.  Essentially, only liberal and social-democrats on the left and some conservatives on the right would like to switch all the same to such a regressive system. 

For the former left-wing enthusiasts, concealed taxes are a good way to supply large streams of predictable revenue for government spending.  For the right-wing enthusiasts, they hope to cut the burdens of an unusually progressive system . . . with the top 1% of American income-earners paying almost 40% of all federal income-tax.

No Reason for Complacency about Our Health System Follows:

Almost everybody agrees, it's true, that the US system is unusually costly as a percentage of GDP; involves too many non-portable health-insurance plans tied to a specific firm for which people work; and has too many people, about 46 million, who aren't covered by existing insurance-plans. . . for whatever reason, including the choice not to buy a plan even though they have much higher than average income.  (Unfortunately, unless these latter pay the entire medical bill, one way or another the costs get passed onto the rest of us --- such as their using emergency rooms and public clinics).

If there is any health-system in Europe that we'll probably emulate in the end, it's likely to be in a rich country not in the EU --- Switzerland.

What the Swiss government does is require everyone to buy at least a basic health-insurance policy offered by competing private insurers.  If someone ends up paying more than 10% of his income, then the Swiss government subsidizes the difference.  In the meantime, those who want and can afford more have a wide choice.  And even those with a basic insurance policy will have even costly operations covered.

The Upshot?

The Swiss are as healthy as any of the other European populations in the EU ---- and somewhat more healthy than Americans (though we have a more diverse population, ethnically and racially) --- and they get by paying less than 12% of GDP on health care every year. Here's a breakdown of spending as a percentage of GDP for five rich countries (2004, except for Switzerland).

              Health-Costs % of GDP 

Please Note:

The lengthy buggy analysis left at Economist View is not about the good or bad sides of the US health-care system.  Its does have its virtues compared to the European systems or Canada: very high quality doctors, very innovative medicines and medical procedures, a better record of longevity for certain illnesses, and fairly fast access to specialists.  The system, moreover, isn't just private.  Medicare and Medicaid are government run and rely on taxes mainly. 

What is clear --- as is every instance of much higher government spending in the advanced welfare-state countries of West Europe --- is that we would almost certainly have to overhaul our tax-system and switch to more covert taxes like the EU VAT . . . which is not only highly regressive, but would have t overcome large barriers in American public opinion that block ever increasing government spending as a percentage of GDP.

Today's Buggy Topic Continues . . .

. . . the discussion of Veblen and Mencken, set out at length in the previous buggy article on this site.  If you haven't read it, please do so first.  The 2nd long buggy post can be found in the same thread at Economist's View.  Click here for the link.

For More Reading on Pragmatism,

read the fast-moving survey at Wikipedia.  Click here.  A very readable historical account, which deals with both the lives and thought of the great pragmatists of the late 19th and early 20 centuries --- Charles Sanders Peirce,  John Dewey, George Santayana, and William James the pioneers, followed soon by George Herbert Mead and Sidney Hook, with others adding their own influence, can be found here. 

Notice in the Wikipedia article how pragmatism was elbowed out of serious philosophical work from roughly the 1930s until the 1960s, but how it was then rediscovered by the great American philosophers grouped under the heading of "analytical philosophy" . . . and notably Richard Rorty.

Today's Buggy Topic Was . . .

. . . inspired by a lengthy article on evolutionary economics, the author Thorstein Veblen --- a great pioneer in the late 19th and early 20th century of an institutional approach to economic life that merged sociology and economics, with a strong interest in comparative economic systems and how they interact with larger societal beliefs, norms, and practices. 

Veblen's Work

His most famous book is still read today, The Theory of the Leisure Class --- a satiric demolition job on the WASP upper class that emerged in the US in the late 19th and early 20th century.  A strenuous group that mixed old money and new financial and industrial wealth, the WASP upper class dominated the Ivy League schools; had a near monopoly over the major American industries and financial institutions of the era --- plus the most prestigious law firms in the country; lived in luxury, including huge mansions; and sought --- with limited success --- to fight off all challenges as they strove to imitate the far more historic and rooted upper class in Britain. 

The main challengers they sought to repel? 

New talented immigrants, mostly poor but bright, hard-working, ambitious, and determined to succeed in American life whatever the obstacles in mainstream economic and financial institutions.  The greatest challenge came from Jews, and so many flocked into the Ivy League thanks to their talent that in the mid-1920s all the schools instituted geographical-quotas to reduce their number.  The upper-class WASPS also sought to protect their ranks from the outside challengers by creating exclusive social and country clubs that systematically discriminated against Jews and all non-whites.   Those in Southern California also excluded systematically the management and owners of the new flourishing movie business in Hollywood, along with any famous Jewish actors, directors, and what have you.

Veblen-Background

For Veblen's life and a brief overview of his impressive work, click here.   For an updated analysis of the WASP Establishment --- its origins, its evolution, its downfall in American life after WWII --- no one is more knowledgeable than a one-time member of it, E. Digsby Baltzell, a gifted sociologist who documented its strengths and weaknesses (particularly its closure to outside talent) in numerous books.  His most famous book, The Protestant Establishment, came out in the 1970s, and in 2000 a systematic study of  the book's themes and changes in American life  was published in 2000 that collected several essays by Baltzell and other prominent sociologists.  Click here for the paperback version.

Enter Center-Stage H.L. Mencken

One of the two or three most famous American journalists of the last century, Mencken --- called by a prominent British journalist as the only genius full-time journalist in the history of the English language --- was a tireless satirist of American life in all its forms.  Not a deep thinker, he created a writing style without rival.  Today, if you look at Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, you'll find an entry under the title of Menckian and Menckenese to describe it racy rollicking form.  His three volume autobiography is one of the most entertaining and charming of that genre ever written; and to top it off, his pioneer study of the American language in all its varieties --- impeccably researched for years --- appeared in three volumes in the 1920s and are still in print.

The two giants in their fields --- Mencken and Veblen --- crossed when Mencken wrote an hilarious if unfair review of Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class.   No need to say more.  The Buggy prof post on Mencken and Veblen, with lengthy quotes from the lengthy Mencken review, can be accessed if you click for the relevant thread at Economist's View here.

Mencken Background

Click here ffor a good readable account, including a list of his enduring works.

Today's Buggy Topic

In the turbulent aftermath of the recent Iranian elections, it's doubly important for Americans and others to have a grasp of some essential facts about the country --- whether historical, demographic, economic, or political.  Prof bug sought to sketch in those facts in a lengthy post at Economist's View, which is only the first of a promised follow-up analysis. 

Guffaws Galore

Note the kind of amusing crackpot invective left by one of the inveterate radical left-wingers, their heads so crammed with extravagantly radical beliefs that never get challenged --- well, except by a wayward poster like me now and then --- to the point that they have extended their apologetic defenses of Communist tyrannies to the theocratic Iranian dictatorship and its entrenched power-holders.   Other simpleton-ideologues will no doubt follow suit.

Click here for the thread and prof bug's comments.

Today's Buggy Topic

As those of you who have visited this web-site the last few days will have guessed from the subject-title, it's one more prof bug post in a lengthy thread at Economist's View. 

If you haven't read the initial posted-article by Professor Mark Thoma (who runs that admirable economic blog), be sure to look it over and the four or five earlier buggy posts.  For the latest one, click here.

Today's 2nd Buggy Topic . . .

 . . . like the 1st one is dealt with in another lengthy post, this time filled with survey data, at Economist's View --- and for that matter in the same thread linked to now three or four times by prof bug.    It's been posted, the bugged-out commentary, at 11:24 A.M. on June 12, 2009.   If you haven't read the initial article linked to by Professor Mark Thoma, who runs Economist's View with a great deal of laudable skill and work, be sure to look at it first . . . and then, if you want, the four or five posts of a more buggy thrust.

Click here.

Today's Buggy Topic

Found in a thread at Economist's View, it's the 4th bugged-out post --- left on June 11, 2009, at 4:53 P.M. --- and it would be useful if you haven't visited that thread earlier to look over the lead post that started it and the earlier 3 buggy posts.  The latest bugged-out stuff is full of data-filled analysis of various immigrant experiences in the USA --- from the early 19th century right down to today. 

More Specifically . . .

that latest post shows how immigrant-group cultures that valued or devalued education varied noticeably, reinforced by certain other influences --- but also how these cultures can change over time.  And as with the earlier buggy posts in that thread --- which deals with the Non-cognitive skills that mold a child's personality-structure by an early age, after which change becomes increasingly hard in that structure --- it relates these markedly varying individual-and-social skills to success in education and in the job-market afterward.  Not to mention non-pecuniary success in other areas of adult-life, such as in marriage, child-rearing, and overall personal happiness.

Today's Buggy Topic . . .

. . . is thrashed out at Economist's View.  And is full of a lot of data about not just the recent EU Parliamentary elections, but the decline of Socialist parties in government throughout the EU-27 (member states), but also in Switzerland.   Only 8 still govern by Socialists however named. 

Click here for the two buggy posts.

A Big Mouthful, This Buggy Subject-Tile --- No?

Yes, and accurate enough.  No need to say more.  If you click here for the buggy posts at Economist's View --- three so far, with more possibly to come --- you'll see the relevance of the topic to the thread there. 

Today's Buggy Post

It's found at Economist's View, the praiseworthy economic web-site run by Professor Mark Thoma of the University of Oregon.  And it deals exactly with the topic set out in the subject-title here, only with more relevance for Americans.  That's because the buggy post there summarizes a complex study of 13 countries' overall tax systems , including the US's --- income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, estate-taxes, property taxes, and payroll taxes like those levied on wages for social security in the US:  7.65% (including for Medicare) in 2009. 

What the Study Shows

As you'll see, the study finds that the US tax system is by far the most progressive, followed by Australia --- another country with a low-level of welfare-state development.  In the middle, between the poles along of spectrum of a limited welfare-state like ours at one end and Sweden and Denmark at the other with their full-tilt welfare-states, are Canada and the UK --- with, however, the UK found to have an unusually and surprisingly regressive tax-system, mainly because of its reliance on heavy sales-taxes and a less progressive income-and property tax structure.    Aside from the UK, though, the more heavily welfare-oriented a country is in the EU, the more it relies on consumption taxes (VAT --- the value added tax). 

There are all sorts of reasons historically why the English-speaking countries --- the UK, Ireland, Canada, the US, Australia, and New Zealand --- have fostered more limited welfare-states than the Continental West Europeans. 

Still . . .

. . . a major reason is the English-speaking countries'  greater reliance on income and property taxes --- which, even with deductions, are more progressive than other forms of raising taxes.  They are also far more visible in their impact on income-earners, and foster generally a large majority of voters who resist big tax increases and usually favor tax-reductions.  By contrast, an end consumption-tax like the VAT in the EU --- which varies in West Europe from about 17-25% across the countries there (with exemptions for certain items like food and prescriptive drugs except in Denmark) --- is more concealed and provides a steady stream of government revenue for supporting high levels of social-spending of all sorts. 

In West Europe, remember, these policies are widely popular.  And, historically viewed, the development of a large regulatory-and-welfare state system finally ended the usually violent conflicts over capitalism, socialism, communism, and various forms of fascist and Nazi corporatism. 

For the Buggy Post

Click here.   Among other things, you'll find at the end of the lengthy bugged-out argument a link to two earlier, evidence-packed posts left at Economist"s View that set out a far more detailed and systematic historical account of why socialist influences have been so limited in the United States.

Agreed: A Strange Title,

. . . but accurate enough, so prof bug claims.  For proof, click here.  Please note that the lengthy buggy analysis is found at the bottom of page 2 of the comments.  Also note that it is only the first of two posts that prof bug will leave there.  When the second?

It depends on the claimants competing, alas, for the buggy prof's attention.

Today's Buggy Post Continues . . .

. . . what is now appearing as a mini-series on the comparative rates of job-creation, labor-market participation, and unemployment rates in the US and EU-15 . . . the latter referring to EU-members in West Europe as opposed to the 12 new members in East Europe.  All 15 are advanced industrial or post-industrial countries, and their population total is around 380 million.   The US population is a little over 300 million now.  Per capita income at the end of 2008 was around $47,000 at the end of 2008; for the EU-15, around $34,000 . . . with Germany, France, and Britain slightly above it, Italy and the southern EU countries lower, and Holland, Austria, Ireland, and the Scandinavian countries around $40,000 each.

A Few Other Comparative Data

Germany's population is about 80 million.  Britain's, France's, and Italy's is a little over 60 million.  Spain, a country that entered the EU-15 in the mid-1980s (along with Portugal) and has enjoyed especially good GDP growth the last several years until the recent economic crisis hit it, has 40 million.  Otherwise, except for Holland with about 17 million, the other EU-15 countries tend to have populations between about 5 million in Scandinavia (except for Sweden) and Ireland, and about 10 million in the remaining countries: Austria, Greece, Portugal, and Belgium. 

The new East European member-states are generally tiny in population too.  Most number between  less than a million to 7 million, though Romania has 22 million people and Poland 40 million. 

For the EU-27, the total population is around 500 million . . . just a tad under.  And, as former Communist-run countries, they have a lower per capita income, roughly $9-10,000 on an average.  Some, particularly two or three very tiny ones, have a noticeably higher per capita income, but most of the others are around $7,000 - $10,000 in range.

 Sidebar Observation:

All the data for GDP and per capita income are given in PPP terms: purchasing power parity, which seeks to take into account different price-levels in the US and elsewhere .  Otherwise, in an era of floating exchange rates --- freely floating or managed within a band ---- there would be too many fluctuations in the comparative data and growth trends. 

For instance, the euro entered into existence at the start of 1999, with an exchange rate of about 1 euro = $1.20.  Over the next three to four years, the euro fell steadily and reached bottom at about $0.85 (85 cents).  But real GDP and per capita income in the eurozone countries didn't fall almost 25%.  In that period, it actually rose.

Similarly, the euro then rebounded and rose steadily against the dollar after 2002.  At its height in 2007, it reached almost $1.60.  In that four year period, however, the GDP and per capita income of the eurozone countries didn't almost double, far from it.  And so economists, governments, and international agencies work out methods of comparing price-levels and purchasing power of a country's economy and population that dig beneath these marked fluctuations in exchange rates.  

Enter the Role of Crime, Imprisonment, Deterrence, and Unemployment and Employment Rates in the US and EU

The buggy commentary on all this is found at Economist's View, the laudable economic web-site run by Professor Mark Thoma of the University of Oregon.  Prompted by a Prof. Thoma link to an article that started the thread, the bugged-out stuff deals with all these matters --- plus, the problems that beset comparative data across countries if you just use aggregate-data like GDP and per capita income and unemployment rates across countries without delving deeper into what these aggregate data might be masking. 

No need to say more.  The buggy commentary is self-explanatory.  Click here for it.