# A Closer Look at the Left’s Agenda: Scientific, Economic, and Numerical Illiteracy on the Campaign



## Bruddah IZ (Jul 15, 2019)

https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/research/docs/a-closer-look-at-the-lefts-agenda-scientific-economic-and-numerical-illiteracy-on-the-campaign-trail.pdf


A Closer Look at the Left’s Agenda:
Scientific, Economic, and Numerical
Illiteracy on the Campaign Trail
MICHAEL J. BOSKIN


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## Bruddah IZ (Jul 15, 2019)

A new internal Democrat poll in swing districts released on Sunday showed that socialist Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) are extremely unpopular and that they may cost the Democratic Party the presidency and the House in 2020.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/49475/not-typo-democrat-poll-shows-what-voters-think-ryan-saavedra?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=benshapiro


I knew she would come in handy some day.  Like how she started by killing Amazon jobs in New York.


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## Ricky Fandango (Jul 15, 2019)

Bruddah IZ said:


> https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/research/docs/a-closer-look-at-the-lefts-agenda-scientific-economic-and-numerical-illiteracy-on-the-campaign-trail.pdf
> 
> 
> A Closer Look at the Left’s Agenda:
> ...


This gonna take some time to process.


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## Bruddah IZ (Jul 15, 2019)

The most prominent Medicare for All plan—that of Senator Bernie Sanders—would have no co-pays, no deductibles, and no premiums. That would surely increase the demand for health services, relative to today’s system, far beyond just the increased demand from the newly covered. Pricing medical services at zero to the consumer means they will demand an amount up to the point that the expected benefits to them are worth nothing rather than the 20 percent or more co-pay prevalent in most plans today.

With no plausible increase in supply (in fact, projected shortages of doctors would likely worsen, and some hospitals would fold) and regulated pricing (Medicare provider reimbursements run about 40 percent less than those from private insurance), the immediate result would be long waits and crowding out for everything from doctor visits to hospital beds. A mini-version of that happened with Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.

Pressure to raise regulated reimbursements (currently low but adjusted for prevailing local market conditions) from dissatisfied voters forced to switch into the system would be intense. If that happened, explicit costs would soar, as would the taxes necessary
to pay for them. In fact, current Medicare, with its low reimbursement rates, would be unsustainable without the large role played by the higher-paying private (primarily employer-based) plans in keeping doctors and hospitals in business. Even the New York Times had to admit in a front page story that “Some hospitals, especially struggling rural centers, would close virtually overnight, according to policy experts. Others,
they say, would try to offset the steep cuts by laying off hundreds of thousands of workers and abandoning lower paying services like mental health.”


https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/research/docs/a-closer-look-at-the-lefts-agenda-scientific-economic-and-numerical-illiteracy-on-the-campaign-trail.pdf


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## Bruddah IZ (Jul 15, 2019)

Of course, if employer-provided insurance disappeared, there would be no need to exclude the benefit from taxable income. How much and how soon that would result in higher wages remains to be seen. To the extent that wages rose over time in response, income and payroll tax revenue would also rise. The tax expenditure for employer-provided insurance is estimated to be $3 trillion over ten years, and of course, there would in theory be no (in practice some, as in all countries with government-provided health care) private spending on health insurance or out-of- pocket expenses.

There will undoubtedly be other features that raise or lower costs. Medicare has somewhat lower administrative costs compared to private plans, but it is unclear how much that would persist in the expanded system. It also has considerably more fraud than private plans.10 Overall, the claims to lower cost, increase access, and improve quality simultaneously are just *economically illiterate.*


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## Bruddah IZ (Jul 15, 2019)

Taken together, these policies bear a striking resemblance to Eugene Debs’s 1912 Socialist Party presidential campaign platform.18 His successor as Socialist Party presidential candidate, Norman Thomas, is famously alleged—with no proof—to have said, “The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program. Until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”

With a majority of millennials responding in polls that they have a more favorable view of socialism than of capitalism, we must hope that the perennially misattributed aphorism “If you are not a socialist at twenty, you have no heart; if you are not a conservative at forty, you have no brain” implies an impending change in attitudes.19But given the sorry state of our schools, to the old adage “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it” must be added “And likewise for those who never learned about it.”


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## Bruddah IZ (Jul 15, 2019)

Reflecting here on moral responsibility, I have referred to "we." For it has never occurred to me that the moral responsibility falls much less heavily on those of us on *the American left* *than it fell on Comrade Stalin and those who replicated his feats in one country after another. And I am afraid thatsome of that moral responsibility falls on the "democratic socialists," "radical democrats," and other leftwingers who endlessly denounced Stalinism but could usually be counted on to support— "critically," of course—the essentials of our political line on world and national affairs.--  Eugene Genovese*


https://www.dissentmagazine.org/wp-content/files_mf/1353953160genovesethequestion.pdf


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## Bruddah IZ (Jul 15, 2019)

Especially amusing has been the spectacle of those who pronounced themselves anti-Stalin-ists and denounced the socialist countries at every turn and yet even today applaud each new revolution, although any damned fool has to know that most of them will end in the same place. *For that matter, how could we have survived politically were it not for the countless liberals *who, to one extent or another, supported us, apparently under the comforting delusion that we were social reformers in rather too much of a hurry—a delusion we ourselves never suffered from.

There are liberals and liberals, and a distinction would have to be made in a more leisurely presentation. *Even in academia there are indeed those who defend liberal principles tenaciously and honorably. But the countless opportunists and careerists who dominate the historical associations call themselves liberals as a matter of political convenience. They went with the McCarthyite flow in the 1950s and go with its left-wing variant today. In the unlikely prospect of a fascist or communist ascendancy tomorrow, they may be counted on to apply for party cards as soon as it looks like the smart move.*

*Many of my old comrades and almost all of those ostensibly independent radicals and high-minded liberals remain unruffled.* After all, did we not often protest against some outrage or other in the Soviet Union or China, signing an indignant petition or open letter? I know I did. And does not that change everything? I am afraid not, but I have nothing to offer as critique other than that which may be found in Galatians 6:7.--Genovese


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## Bruddah IZ (Jul 15, 2019)

We easily forget the economic rationale that Marx taught us, namely, that socialism would have to provide unprecedented abundance if it were to sustain social liberation of any kind. With a few notable exceptions, leftists no longer find it fashionable to discuss economics at all beyond the now routine rejection of a "command economy" and some disingenuous mumbling about the necessity for markets. But where is there a serious attempt to determine the extent to which any socialism could function without a command economy or to show how a socialist economy could integrate markets? A few left-wing economists, most notably Louis Ferleger and Jay Mandle, tried to raise these questions long before the collapse of the socialist economies, but they were effec- tively shut out of the left-wing press and are still ignored. And we may doubt that the wry remark of Nancy Folbre and Samuel Bowles, two other respected left-wing economists, will cause a wrinkle: *"Leftwing economists— among whom we count ourselves—have thus far failed to come up with a convincing alternative to capitalism." *(Nancy Folbre and Samuel Bowles, letter to the Nation, Nov. 29, 1993; and see also, Louis Ferleger and Jay R.Mandle, A New Mandate: Democratic Choices for a Prosperous Economy, University of Missouri Press, 1994).--Genovessse

And yes they are talking about Piketty.


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## Bruddah IZ (Jul 16, 2019)

4) Eliminate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and pollution from agriculture. The modern intensive agriculture necessary to feed the world’s 7.5 billion people relies extensively on the use of fossil fuels, for example for tillage, transportation, grain drying, the manufacture of fertilizer, pesticides, and farm equipment, as well as farm electricity. Pending a cost- effective scalable alternative that won’t require large numbers of citizens to do their own organic farming (by the way, current organic farms use about 30–50 percent less fossil
fuel, not zero), meeting this target anytime soon would result in large reductions in crop yields and soaring food prices. Studies of the controlled response of wheat and corn yields in the United States show yield improvement from fertilizer use of 70 percent and over
100 percent, respectively.15 When President George W. Bush greatly expanded ethanol blending mandates for motor vehicle fuel in 2007, the resulting decline in food crop acreage and output contributed to corn prices spiking 20–40 percent and increased hunger and malnutrition, especially in corn-importing countries, such as Mexico, Egypt, and much of Africa and the Middle East. The risk from a much larger decline in crop yields is even worse.— Boskin


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## Bruddah IZ (Jul 17, 2019)

(2) Upgrade all existing buildings to full energy efficiency. Estimates differ somewhat, but in round numbers there are 100 million single-family homes and apartment, commercial, industrial, and government buildings in the United States. That would require retrofitting well over four thousand buildings an hour for twelve years (almost two thousand per hour for fifteen years for Joe Biden’s “retrofit 50 percent” plan). *That is so mathematically and economically illiterate—just installing solar in a typical home takes two to three months on average—as to be simply ridiculous, even before considering the prohibitive cost.12*


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## nononono (Jul 17, 2019)

*Poor Poor Democrats and their " Matchstick " campaign....*


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## Bruddah IZ (Jul 17, 2019)

Real Health Insurance Is a Crime

Warren Gibson

Health insurance is a crime. No, I’m not using a metaphor. I’m not saying it’s a mess, though it certainly is that. I’m saying it’s illegal to offer real health insurance in America. To see why, we need to understand what real insurance is and differentiate that from what we currently have.

*Real Insurance*

Life is risky. When we pool our risks with others through insurance policies, we reduce the financial impact of unforeseen accidents or illness or premature death in return for a premium we willingly pay. I don’t regret the money I’ve spent on auto insurance during my first 55 years of driving, even though I’ve yet to file a claim.

Insurance originated among affinity groups such as churches or labor unions, but now most insurance is provided by large firms with economies of scale, some organized for profit and some not. Through trial and error, these companies have learned to reduce the problems of adverse selection and moral hazard to manageable levels.

A key word above is unforeseen.
If some circumstance is known, it’s not a risk and therefore cannot be the subject of genuine risk-pooling insurance. That’s why, prior to Obamacare, some insurance companies insisted that applicants share information about their physical condition. Those with preexisting conditions were turned down, invited to high-risk pools, or offered policies with higher premiums and higher deductibles.
Insurers are now forbidden to reject applicants due to preexisting conditions or to charge them higher rates.


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## Bruddah IZ (Jul 17, 2019)

They are also forbidden from charging different rates due to different health conditions — and from offering plans that exclude certain coverage items, many of which are not “unforeseen.”

*In other words, it’s illegal to offer real health insurance. —W. Gibson*


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## Bruddah IZ (Jul 17, 2019)

*Word Games*

Is all this just semantics? Not at all. What currently passes for health insurance in America is really just prepaid health care — on a kind of all-you-can-consume buffet card. The system is a series of cost-shifting schemes stitched together by various special interests. There is no price transparency. The resulting overconsumption makes premiums skyrocket, and health resources get misallocated relative to genuine wants and needs.


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## Bruddah IZ (Jul 20, 2019)

Campaign Proposals and Policy Implementation 

The 2020 presidential election is off to an historically early start, with two dozen Democrats running for president. Combined with the Democrats’ 2018 retaking of the House of Representatives, it has led to a dizzying array of policy proposals, resolutions, and bills. Some are more fleshed out, some less. *Most are quite radical; many are economically, scientifically, or numerically illiterate* (by the way, some Republicans are not immune either). 

*If the Democrats retain the House and retake the White House and Senate next year, variants of these proposals likely will become law, even if their candidate does not come from the far left side of the party (witness the hostile reception to the few candidates questioning Socialism or Medicare for All and the serial moves left on many issues by moderate Joe Biden).1 And they will remake virtually every aspect of our lives, including health care, technology, defense, education, foreign policy, treaties, environmental regulation, social security, monetary policy, taxes, spending, deficits, and debt—even the structure of government and our legal rights and liberties.* 

*The policy community and media have too often not taken these Democrats’ proposals seriously enough. Almost all the Democrat presidential candidates immediately jumped on board with the most extreme proposals, including Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. That made Nancy Pelosi’s demand to vote on Obamacare— “We have to pass it to see what’s in it”—seem innocuous by comparison. *And the mainstream media, environmentalists, and left-leaning think tanks and academics laud the proposals for being wonderfully aspirational, if maybe a bit too difficult to achieve fully so quickly.2 Opponents are mostly content to mock them as socialist and highlight the most extreme implications, such as eliminating cows or airplanes. The policies and their proposers deserve more than such a shallow analysis. From taxes, spending, and debt to climate risks, from lifting up the less fortunate to strengthening our constitutional republic, they legitimately raise vital national issues.


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## Bruddah IZ (Jul 29, 2019)

Especially amusing has been the spectacle of those who pronounced themselves anti-Stalin-ists and denounced the socialist countries at every turn and yet even today applaud each new revolution, although any damned fool has to know that most of them will end in the same place. *For that matter, how could we have survived politically were it not for the countless liberals *who, to one extent or another, supported us, apparently under the comforting delusion that we were social reformers in rather too much of a hurry—a delusion we ourselves never suffered from.

There are liberals and liberals, and a distinction would have to be made in a more leisurely presentation. *Even in academia there are indeed those who defend liberal principles tenaciously and honorably. But the countless opportunists and careerists who dominate the historical associations call themselves liberals as a matter of political convenience. They went with the McCarthyite flow in the 1950s and go with its left-wing variant today. In the unlikely prospect of a fascist or communist ascendancy tomorrow, they may be counted on to apply for party cards as soon as it looks like the smart move.*

*Many of my old comrades and almost all of those ostensibly independent radicals and high-minded liberals remain unruffled.* After all, did we not often protest against some outrage or other in the Soviet Union or China, signing an indignant petition or open letter? I know I did. And does not that change everything? I am afraid not, but I have nothing to offer as critique other than that which may be found in Galatians 6:7.--Genovese


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## Bruddah IZ (Aug 1, 2019)

Social Security Reform

The unfunded liabilities in Social Security rival the overall national debt (and are larger still for Medicare).37 They are crowding out other important government functions and risk serious economic harm. While the precarious long-run financial status of Social Security has been apparent for some time, the system has not been substantially reformed since 1983.38 Those reforms included some higher taxes and a small increase in the normal full retirement age phased in very slowly. The result was supposed to be a Social Security surplus that could be saved to reduce the need for future adjustments. Indeed, the reforms were supposed to solve the seventy-five-year projected actuarial deficit. However, the notional surplus in Social Security did not result in real capital accumulation but instead helped finance the rest of the budget.

Social Security has been highly successful in helping reduce the incidence of poverty among the elderly.39 It is by far the largest and most popular government spending program. A variety of options for reforming Social Security have been suggested over the years, but reform attempts by President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush ran aground, on a personal scandal and an attempt to lead with a private account component, respectively. Likewise, *President Obama pulled the rug out from under the Simpson-Bowles Commission reforms, despite the fact that he himself had appointed the commission.*


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## Bruddah IZ (Aug 1, 2019)

*The Case for Abolishing Minimum Wage Laws*
In the end, raising the minimum wage transfers income from less valuable workers who become unemployed to more valuable workers who retain their jobs.
*Thursday, August 1, 2019
*
If voters believe that raising the minimum wage helps workers, then politicians have an incentive to agitate in favor of increasing it. And we are now hip-deep into election season, which means that we should expect this issue to come up repeatedly as we ramp up to 2020. *But people acquainted with the dismal science know that no amount of legislation can change the fact that the actual minimum wage is zero*, *which is what workers receive when the mandated wage rate prices them out of the market.
*
https://fee.org/articles/the-case-for-abolishing-minimum-wage-laws/


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## Bruddah IZ (Aug 1, 2019)

At the least, this makes the minimum wage a problematic tool for helping workers. Yet, there is a more fundamental issue at work. If raising the minimum wage is a good idea, why stop at $15 an hour? Wouldn’t $16 an hour be better still? Or $20? There is no magical property to a $15 minimum wage.* Fifteen is just an arbitrary number politicians picked out of the air while looking for something appealing and alliterative.*


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## Bruddah IZ (Aug 3, 2019)

The Green New Deal

The Green New Deal, mocked for some of its more absurd initial suggestions, such as abolishing airplanes and cows, is a top-down government-planning industrial-policy nightmare. It proposes over twelve years to:

(1) Require that 100 percent of power be provided by renewables. Impossible. Wind and solar now account for just 8 percent and, despite all the subsidies and mandates, are not projected to reach even 30 percent for several decades. Intermittent wind and solar require backup if electricity is to be reliably provided, and that will come from fossil fuels. The only renewable alternatives are hydroelectric power and nuclear power. Together they account for more than three times the power from wind and solar, of which nuclear accounts for two-thirds but will decline with impending plant retirements. We should be using more, not less, nuclear power, but it cannot be expanded quickly for a host of reasons, from a dearth of young nuclear engineers in the pipeline to permitting red tape. In any event, it
is strongly opposed by most environmentalists, as are more dams. California’s legislature and regulators are so captured by the solar and wind lobbies that hydro is excluded from meeting renewables standards, and of the state’s two nuclear power plants, one is shuttered and the other likely soon will be.
Finally, battery storage is beyond prohibitively expensive, costing many trillions of dollars because of the required scale. Decades of publicly funded university and national lab—and private—research has not resulted in sufficient progress. Worse yet, massive amounts of rare earth minerals and a huge expansion of lithium production from China, or huge costs and significant time to discover, produce, and scale output from Australia, Brazil, and the United States, would also be required to produce the magnets for wind turbines and the batteries for electric cars.


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## Bruddah IZ (Aug 3, 2019)

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, brewer, and baker that we expect our daily dinner, but from their regard to their self-interest.”--Adam Smith


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## Bruddah IZ (Aug 6, 2019)

*“Free Everything” and the First Law of Politics*
Entrepreneurs do a much better job than politicians at alleviating scarcity through efficient, value-creating production.
*Tuesday, August 6, 2019

*
The other night, a politician criticized Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren for offering voters “free everything and impossible promises.” *Remarkably, the critique came not from a Republican fiscal conservative but from a fellow Democrat during a primary debate. John Delaney, a former congressman from Maryland, said such policies were based on “fairytale economics.”*

*Fairytale Economics *
As economist Thomas Sowell wrote,

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

So it was surprising to see a presidential candidate give a nod to the first lesson of economics and lay off the first lesson of politics for a moment.
https://fee.org/articles/free-everything-and-the-first-law-of-politics/?utm_campaign=FEE Daily&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=75407244&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8jC-fsRk4TvTvei8LVq7ZalUgI6t18dyt0pFwLO949-OMAvbhuSB8m6dYmGZ-ddRrMhleA8fM6ajqrIV5Tiy25tHoe2g&_hsmi=75407244


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## Bruddah IZ (Aug 7, 2019)

https://fee.org/articles/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-says-she-opposes-capitalism-a-recently-taken-photo-suggests-otherwise/

*Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Says She Opposes Capitalism. A Recently Taken Photo Suggests Otherwise*
Although people disagree with capitalism, they seem to agree with the results it produces.
*Friday, February 15, 2019

There are many who speak loudly against capitalism, all the while still enjoying its benefits. *To illustrate this point, just look at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez texting from her iPhone, wearing a Movado watch, and drinking a Starbucks coffee. A democratic socialist, who thinks of capitalism as an immoral system, seems to enjoy the goods provided by big corporations. It is not only Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, however; this is common behavior in Western societies.

The iPhone that @AOC is texting on, the Starbucks coffee under her arm, and the Movado watch she is wearing were all made by "greedy corporations."



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## nononono (Aug 8, 2019)

*




*

*Democrats Idea of Employment..." Unemployment "..!*


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