Most economists, not all economists. And most of those economists are the ones destroying economies, in my opinion.
If you're interested in reading a counter-viewpoint on why deflation is actually good – it's the policies aimed at countering it that are really what's bad – here you go: https://mises.org/blog/deflation-always-good-economy
That article is pretty bad. Even at this point in the article it is clear he does not understand why a small amount of inflation is good. For example he says:
"According to popular thinking, in response to a high rate of inflation, consumers will speed up their expenditure on goods at present, which should boost economic growth.
So why then is a rate of inflation of 10% or higher regarded by experts as a bad thing?"
According to this line of thinking if a little bit of something is good, then more of it should be good, right? I think we can all see the faultiness in this logic. What he doesn't get is after inflation reaches a certain point, people start expecting their money to be not worth as much in the very short term, leading to increase in buying, leading to higher inflation, and so on. This spiral is how economies like Zimbabwe end up with crazy inflation. However at a low rate, around 2% and a little higher, people do not immediately expect their money to be worth less in the short term, and therefore the economy does not enter this spiral.
The rest of the article goes into some decently complex economics. Suffice to say his core argument - that inflation hurts wealth creators because it decreases the value of said wealth- does not hold water unless said wealth creators are putting all their money in places with interest rates less than inflation. This means no investment in their or a business, but just parking the money in a bank. Anybody with that kind of money will know to put large amounts of money in inflation-protecting assets. Because risk of an investment is generally the amount of interest you get above and beyond inflation, parking money in assets growing at the rate of inflation is generally very safe.
That article is just bad. It spends a lot of time talking about reduction in prices, but the real problem with currency deflation is that it results in a reduction in wages.
If computers cost half as much as they did ten years ago meanwhile everyone is making the same amount of money, that's great. But if people are also making half as much money then it's useless, or worse than useless because then people are making less money but still have the same mortgage they took out ten years ago. Which is what happens with currency-generated deflation (as opposed to efficiency-generated consumer price deflation).
> The economic effect of money that was created out of thin air is exactly the same as that of counterfeit money — it impoverishes wealth generators.
Except that the created money can go to the government which it can spend in lieu of collecting more taxes, which would otherwise have come from "wealth generators" regardless.
It's not about the stuff that just cancels out, it's about everything that doesn't.
Money you already owe becomes more expensive to pay back.
It turns the currency into an investment vehicle that competes with economically productive activity for investment. If cash in a mattress predictably appreciates by 4% a year then nobody will be willing to invest in anything that produces less than that in real returns, so all of that productive activity disappears out of the economy to be replaced by currency speculation. Or is forced to pay the higher returns to investors by paying lower wages to employees or charging higher prices to customers, and is able to because less available investment means less competition when your would-be competitors don't get funded.
When most of the currency is held by speculators it causes high volatility in the currency value, which interferes with normal businesses using it as a currency because the value can fluctuate wildly even for those who only hold the currency temporarily. Which leads to economic inefficiency and less competition again.
Everything about it causes unearned wealth to go to people who uselessly hoard currency at the expense of everyone else.
Widespread deflation would drive the economy to a halt because it would be crazy to take out large loans (imagine paying down your mortgage without ever getting any equity) and it would discourage business investment in favor of the safer option of just sitting on huge piles of cash. Even your Mises institute guy seems to want zero inflation more than rapid deflation.
Should not the individual be held responsible for making a poor decision? Taking the stance that we should be protected from every possible bad thing that can happen is a recipe for economic disaster. Especially when the one offering such protection is the one that manipulates us the most.
"Crony" is so often followed by "capitalism", but it's really just cronyism that's the issue. You can find it in capitalism and you can find it in government. But they go best hand-in-hand. I'd argue that most crony capitalism is made possible only because they can leverage the monopolistic power of their crony allies in government for mutual gain.
I hear frequently the argument that crony capitalism is not really capitalism. And how "real capitalism" would work wonderfully.
That always remember me, how, when you argue with a communist, frequently those examples that you bring to the conversation are never "real communism".
I always find it sad that people have to raise money for for surgeries or serious health issues. It's great that people donate but this should simply not be necessary in an advanced society.
You might be interested in reading about the free rider problem. This is a well known phenomenon in economics. Also consider that there are no instances of charities providing for the basic needs of a nation's poor. It was with government programs that things like universal education and healthcare became a reality.
Some people voluntarily help some other people with some costs. There's a lot of people who don't get the care they need for whatever reason, even in a system where there's a lot of volunteers.
To get the best deal for everybody, governments in most countries step in to create a system where everybody pays in and the best deal for everybody is made (with the option for extra private care if you can afford it). You get a basic guaranteed level of healthcare in return for your taxes, as part of your participation in society. Corporations are prevented from deciding they need to charge you more than your annual income for the medication keeping you alive, while you're free to change jobs and start businesses when you wish, because you're not trapped in an insurance plan that you'll lost the moment you do something else.
Only in America is this seen as wrong. Everywhere else gets cheaper bills with zero chance of personal bankruptcy just because you got the wrong disease/got ill before/etc.
Pretty versus ugly, young versus old, white versus black, man versus woman, overweight vs average weight, high school dropout versus university graduate, religious versus non-believer, etc., etc., the ability to look past all of these things and donate purely based on need is not something crowds have ever been good at doing.
The problem in Keynes thinking on "social services" is that it's impossible to gather all of the knowledge necessary to ascertain what those would be. That knowledge is dispersed among ~320m citizens (in the U.S.) who each have particular wants and needs. And even if you could somehow attain that knowledge in one place, the likelihood of finding consensus on how a particular "social service" should be offered is next to zero. The end result? Nearly everyone disagrees with some of what government implements, which breeds resentment and causes gridlock much like we're seeing today in the U.S.
It doesn't have to be that way. By decentralizing decision making down to a level closer to the individual (if not the individual), more people get what they want. For example, right now there's a federal mandate for health insurance. Not everyone agrees with this mandate, so why not at least push it down a level to the states? California can still have a mandate for health insurance, and Alabama can decide not to. And then, why not push it to the city/county level? If you don't agree with San Francisco's mandate for health insurance, simply move to Oakland. You don't even have to move states, let alone countries.
Why do so many oppose such a solution where everyone can much more easily find a place where they agree with the "social services" offered (or not)?
> Why do so many oppose such a solution where everyone can much more easily find a place where they agree with the "social services" offered (or not)?
Because it creates collective action problems. Countries can exercise their sovereign powers to control commerce and the flow of people so as to reinforce their chosen social welfare systems. If they offer universal healthcare, for example, they can control immigration to manage the burden on their system (and keep out people who only move in when they get sick or to retire). U.S. states are precluded by the Constitution from doing that. Say Marylanders decide to pay higher taxes to support generous social services, and Virginians decide to stick to lower taxes and no service. There is nothing Maryland can do about free-loading Virginians who cross the border as soon as they get sick.[1] Likewise, say Virginia decides to reintroduce child labor, which gives Virginia a competitive advantage in producing cheap consumer goods. There is nothing Maryland can do to stop the flow of trinkets from Virginia undermining good Maryland companies whose prices are higher because they don't use child labor.
It's helpful to view the Constitution's Commerce Clause and Privileges and Immunities Clause as a two-pronged economic construct. One prong says that the U.S. is a totally free market internally for goods and labor. The other says that the federal government can intervene to address any collective problem actions that creates. To the extent that the provision of social services has knock-on economic effects (and it has major knock-on effects), it comports with the Constitution's design for those things to get kicked up to the Federal government.
One solution is to put a delay on eligibility. In your example, Maryland would provide free healthcare to anyone who has lived in Maryland as a permanent resident for 5+ years. Much like state universities. There's two different costs and in-state tuition is much cheaper. No more freeloading. Or less, anyway.
Whenever someone tells me, "It's too complicated!" I just think they're lazy. I usually don't say it though, to be polite. Instead I try to walk them through algorithmic thinking in a way that doesn't terrify them that I'll automate their jobs.
See the case I linked. Such laws are unconstitutional because they discriminate against new residents from other states. State universities are a weird special case in constitutional law.
An interesting read. However, there are many differences of regulation across state lines. For example, insurance is quite fractious (pun intended). I'll bet there's some way to innovate, even if politicians haven't stumbled across it yet. Perhaps the trick is to avoid calling it welfare, just as "credit default swaps" stayed unregulated because they pretended to not be insurance.
In your example of Maryland and Virginia and universal healthcare, Maryland will continually need to ensure they're collecting enough money (i.e., through taxes of some sort) to pay for universal healthcare. If an influx of unhealthy people enter the state, they'll have to increase taxes to pay for the higher healthcare bills, which will in turn make them less competitive with other states, and cause people to leave. There's no way Maryland adds universal healthcare and remains equal in all other categories.
In your example of child labor, it's arguably better for everyone if Virginia can produce cheaper goods. (Please don't think I'm in any way arguing for child labor.) Maryland benefits from the cheaper goods as well, and is able to free resources for other pursuits that are economically advantageous for them. We already see this to a degree in places that have an abundance of a natural resource – it's cheaper and more efficient for them to export the resource than it is for other places that don't have the resource.
In your example of child labor, it's arguably better for everyone if Virginia can produce cheaper goods. (Please don't think I'm in any way arguing for child labor.)
So is it arguably better for everyone or should there be protections for the children (who are presumably part of "everyone")?
I think if you immediately include a disclaimer about the children you probably don't believe there is much of an argument to be made.
Child labor is complex subject that we should avoid getting into here. The reason I added my disclaimer is because my argument is about cheaper goods, not any particular way they happen to be produced.
If I look at it strictly in terms of child labor, there's nothing stopping those opposed to child labor from leaving Virginia and/or discriminating against products made there. Just as we can today with products produced by brands that we know use child labor.
What? That's not what I said at all. In fact, as I initially said, "Please don't think I'm in any way arguing for child labor." How can I make it more clear?
My point is, in the hypothetical situation that a state did allow child labor – which I do not at all condone – people could choose not to buy products from that state, as people already do in not buying products from certain brands and countries that use child labor.
Universal healthcare works in various countries because everyone is forced to participate. Everyone pays into the system, everyone gets care when they get sick or are injured.
A US state can't do this on it's own because they can't force everyone to participate and they can't reject entrants from outside. In the Virginia/Maryland example Maryland would face an exodus of healthy and productive people who want lower taxes and an influx of sick people who want the free health care. It's not about "remaining equal in all other categories." It's that it wouldn't really work at all.
That's why you can't really have a system with massively different social services at the state level: the unbridled state to state migration.
They can't? How do they force everyone to pay state/local taxes? I doubt states would find it difficult to enforce participation.
On "unbridled state to state migration", I already covered that. Maryland would have to face the real cost of providing universal healthcare, and residents would have to decide whether it's still worth it to live there. Many sick people would decide that it's not, and choose to stay put in Virginia.
And if it truly wouldn't work, then it begs the question: Does it really work on the federal level? Why are costs skyrocketing and providers leaving exchanges?
Maryland would have to face the real cost of providing universal healthcare
The point is that they would have to face much more than the real costs of providing universal health care because they would have to provide care to a lot of people that never paid into the system due to migration.
It would work this way if the supreme court hadn't killed federalism over time by ignoring the 10th ammendment.
People don't really oppose federalism, but national level politicians win elections by promising benefits to interest groups to justify their existence. Promising to sit on your hands will never win an election.
Because if you don't mandate insurance, then the entire system falls apart. Sick people need it, healthy people don't want to pay for it. You need everyone to pay to make it affordable.
You're confusing insurance with healthcare. Insurance is supposed to be for risk mitigation, rare but extremely damaging events. If everyone uses insurance for everything health related, like we all want to do now, it's impossible for insurance to be anything other than a premium you pay on top of your healthcare costs.
Insurance shouldn't be used for routine stuff, and people shouldn't be required to have it unless they want it.
"insurance" in this case is also a savings account. People need to be forced to put money into the system when young and/or healthy so that's there's enough money available when they are not.
If they're not forced to do this, then they won't and people are forced to stand by and watch as they fall ill and due which is bad for the economy and may already disease, even if you don't care about the moral aspects.
There's little benefit to seperating these things out and obvious downsides to them not being mandated.
The premium on top of aggregate cost complaint would also apply to "pure insurance". Or else no one would bother selling it.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure they were saying that insurance didn't work, which is manifestly untrue. If they are complaining that it makes healthcare more expensive, well fine, but that is probably more about the principal agent problem than the administrative costs and profits of insurers.
This idea, which lies behind a lot of American libertarianism, says that theft (as taxation is construed here) outranks most or all other moral values, but does not explain why.
Instead, it hopes dogmatically that other moral values will be met as a side effect of following this one.
Not just theft, but aggression of any sort, including the most serious offenses such as rape and murder. Is there not a more fundamental moral value that we can all agree on?
> I'm arguing against being forced to help others who I have no relationship with, live in far off places, hold different health standards than me, etc.
How is that any difference from defense, law enforcement, fire protection, or property rights standards?
You're assuming that if the government didn't mandate health insurance, nobody would step in to help those people, which I don't believe is true. Lots of different groups – religious, businesses, municipalities, etc. – could fill that role. Individuals could even give directly to strangers in need through something like https://donorsee.com/.
This is Dan Ariely describing "The public goods game" and the instability of 'cheating'. Cheating in scare quotes because the conclusion stands -- in fact is enhanced -- even when the 'defect' choice is regarded as a choice that members of society are free to take (in fact that is the case he discusses).
>You're assuming that if the government didn't mandate health insurance, nobody would step in to help those people
No, the assumption is that if government mandated dollars stopped coming in, voluntary contributions wouldn't make up the difference. And that seems pretty obvious to anyone who pays attention to the political dialogue. Look at the Republicans who believe Obamacare is too costly. Their sole goal is to have less of their own dollars subsidize the sick.
That's also assuming the costs would stay the same, which they wouldn't if government stopped intervening. With lower costs, more people could afford to pay for healthcare out-of-pocket, which would reduce the amount of voluntary money necessary to cover those who truly need it.
I try to keep an open mind. I don't believe things will just solve themselves, nor do I think the market is the perfect solution. I do believe, however, that it's a better solution than government intervention, and we haven't found a superior solution.
Look at health care costs pre- and post-1965. They began increasing in 1965 with the passage of Medicare and Medicaid, and have continued to increase as more and more government regulations have been added since.
So are you in favor of a law so they can't discriminate on who they help? As if you are, it's an optional tax played for by people who aren't fully aware of the need. And if you aren't, better not tell anyone about your differences, you might die if the coke distributor knows you drink Pepsi or if the church knows you're gay.
No, in fact, the ability for these institutions to choose who they help is key. A business being able to choose to help only its own workers makes it possible to even help them in the first place. If they had to help anyone, it wouldn't be feasible. Same for a church or any institution. Being able to discriminate is important; it's not a dirty word.
Now before you go and doomsay about all sorts of discrimination happening based on race, gender, sexuality, etc., I'd argue that lots of institutions wouldn't discriminate on those factors. Case in point: most of the major tech companies. And if one did, would you really want to be associated with them and/or have them paying for your healthcare?
The ones that have recently faced age discrimination suits, criticism for the lack of diversity in their employees, and a whole range of reports of terrible conditions in their manufacturing plants? For some bizarre reason, I'm sceptical.
>And if one did, would you really want to be associated with them and/or have them paying for your healthcare
When compared to dying or living with severe health problems, absolutely. This entire thing is about unexpected healthcare costs, I may not have the ability to shop around for the most ethical choice.
No, the myriad that say "we care deeply about diversity and inclusivity" in their job posts. The ones that come out against banning travelers from Muslim-majority countries. The ones that care about climate change and the effects it has on people of this planet.
So adding a line to your job postings and sending out press releases is a better indicator than their actual acts? As you're probably talking about the same companies as me.
I understand what you're saying with "the ability to discriminate is important," but free discrimination has led to the trampling of human rights repeatedly in history.
> How do you justify the healthy paying for the unhealthy?
Over the course of time, everyone falls into both categories; this idea that there are healthy people is silly, everyone's health fails eventually and often randomly. Healthy is a temporary state. Everyone should contribute so everyone is covered when they become the unhealthy, as they all will.
Better to pay a little bit all of the time than to pay nothing and be unable to afford a giant medical bill that hits you all at once. This is why everyone should pay all of the time, then there's enough money to cover the every changing subset of people, which will eventually include you, who are sick.
But not everyone is (or becomes) healthy or unhealthy to the same degree. If I have no family history of health issues, or I simply want to take a chance that I'll remain healthy, why should anyone else tell me how much I should value my health?
It's really about double jeopardy. For a second put yourself behind the veil of ignorance. You are prebirth, you have no control over any factor of your birth other than one. That factor is that you get to pick whether you are born into a country with universal healthcare or one with non-mandated insurance where companies are able to discriminate on pre-existing conditions. Anyone who is risk averse is going to pick the universal healthcare one, otherwise you are risking a life where you are both sick but also bankrupted by medical costs.
That some people in society look at the circumstances of their birth and post-hoc reason that they don't want universal healthcare because it wouldn't have benefitted them is not the point really.
Even if you consider death a state of health – which is odd, who says "yeah, they're really unhealthy: they're dead" – the path to that state differs. Some people get sick very quickly right before death, while others are sick their whole life before death. Their required medical care vastly differs.
This is true, but it's not predictable which one you'll be. This line of reasoning is akin to claiming your car insurance should be cheaper because you'll never get into an accident. It's simply not logical. You cannot know if you're going to be someone who doesn't put a drain on the medical system or not, the future is not knowable.
You could be the healthiest person in the world and get punched by someone who gives you an expensive disease through blood contact; you could randomly get cancer at any age no matter how healthy you think you are. So this notion that you think you should pay less is based on a naive understanding of how health actually works; you cannot predict the future. You could be disabled tomorrow through no fault of your own. As such, the system must be designed to consider that everyone will be sick at some point and most people will be healthy most of the time, everyone pays and the sick are covered, problem solved for everyone. Social medicine works better than any other approach, this is a fact proven around the world. Those objecting to it are doing so on ideological grounds, not on rational ones.
I don't. I think paying for firefighters should be voluntary. Either I pay for it individually, or as part of my neighborhood, or at some other level that's much closer to me.
If I don't want to protect against my house burning down, why should I pay for it? And before you go and say, "because your neighbor's house could burn down too", they could choose to pay for firefighters and have them come out to douse my house in defense of their own.
There are already solutions available when there's no counter-party or the counter-party is unfit. i.e., uninsured motorist insurance, life insurance, etc.
And who's to say the extended family or community wouldn't step up to cover their expenses?
Or, instead of depending on utopic ideals and discredited economic theories, we can just make people buy liability insurance if they want to drive a car.
We obviously have different ideas about what's utopian and what's not. I think it's utopian to believe a centralized, federal government has all of the necessary knowledge and best intentions to make blanket decisions for hundreds of millions of people.
This really goes to prove my initial point in all of this: Why can't we get to a place where you can live somewhere more aligned with your utopian vision, and I can likewise live somewhere more aligned with mine? Why must either of us force our vision on the other?
If that's what you believe my utopia leads to, then you're completely misunderstanding my worldview. The principal of non-aggression means no one would be allowed to enslave or suppress anyone else. Period. Everyone has equal rights: black, female, gay, whatever.
No, sorry, you're confused with our current system of centralized power in the hands of a few who doll out rewards to their crony friends.
Who gets the money printed by the Federal Reserve first? Banks, where wealthy bankers then loan the money to others who are wealthy enough to be accepted for the loans. By the time the money reaches the poor and needy, inflation has already taken hold.
The party at fault may not have assets nor a job, your solution is is not a solution and doesn't help the person harmed when they actually need it, at the time of the accident.
> Financial responsibility is something to be enforced by courts, not mandated by congress.
> Nearly everyone disagrees with some of what government implements, which breeds resentment and causes gridlock much like we're seeing today in the U.S.
No, that's the electoral system; it's been empirically studied and established democracies with more proportional representation have much higher satisfaction with government than those like the US with poor proportionality, even though many of them also have much greater levels of public social support.
How is it more regressive than the status quo where you have to move to a different country? Moving states is less difficult, moving counties is even less difficult, moving cities is even less difficult, etc. The smaller you go, the less difficult it becomes.
There's a significant part of the U.S. population that wants to roll back gay marriage. What if that happened? As it is, you'd have to move out of the country.
You're relying on the right people being in office/power making the right decisions in your opinion. But of course, at any point the wrong people can get into office and make the wrong decision in your opinion. For nearly half the country, that happened when Obama entered office, and then again when Trump entered office.
> There's a significant part of the U.S. population that wants to roll back gay marriage.
Oppressing others isn't something that should be allowed to happen, period; those people are simply wrong, the position is immoral and indefensible. These things belong at the federal level, states should not be allowed to say oppression is OK because a majority of our citizens want to oppress gays.
To be clear, I am not one who is in favor of rolling back gay marriage. But you cannot logically say
> Oppressing others isn't something that should be allowed to happen, period
while in the same breath calling for the oppression of those you disagree with. It's an inconsistent position using the same argument you're railing against.
Good thing the paradox of tolerance has been solved for over a century! Now if only we could get the message out to people like you that seem to delight in ignoring centuries of philosophical discussion on this topic.
I'm not ignoring it, I just don't think it makes sense. "I'm tolerant of everyone except those I view as intolerant." In other words, you're intolerant of those you disagree with.
I believe true tolerance is respecting that everyone can have their own opinion/worldview. We can certainly disagree and have a good discussion about it, but nobody should be forcing their opinion/worldview on others who don't agree.
> but nobody should be forcing their opinion/worldview on others who don't agree.
And where in this thread has me or anyone forced our world view on you? Not allowing you to force your view on others isn't forcing our view on you. Frankly I don't think you understand what oppression or tolerance actually is.
Nowhere. I haven't claimed that. We're having a (mostly) thoughtful discussion with different opinions, which is great.
If you read back through the hierarchy to my comment here[1], you'll see that I ask the hypothetical question, What if gay marriage were rolled back in the U.S.?, to make the point that currently you'd have to move out of the country to escape the law. I do not believe in rolling it back! I used it as an example of a law/idea where there's a difference of opinion among worldviews.
We're actually on the same page here, gnaritas. People should have equal rights, regardless of their race, gender, sexual identity, etc. Nobody should be forcing their worldview on others. But that's exactly what the federal government does by making decisions that affect everyone. Every decision they make is made from a specific worldview. It's impossible for them to make a decision that complies with every unique worldview out there.
> while in the same breath calling for the oppression of those you disagree with.
You accused me of calling for the oppression of those I disagree with, so please do show me where I did that.
> But that's exactly what the federal government does by making decisions that affect everyone.
No, when the thing they're doing is providing equal rights, that isn't forcing anyone's world view on anyone else. Those who don't want gays to have rights aren't being imposed upon, they're still free to think whatever they like and they're free not to be gay; they have not suffered at all even though the law is in conflict with their world view.
> Every decision they make is made from a specific worldview.
While that is true, that doesn't imply said decision is imposing that view on anyone. Stopping group A from oppressing group
B is not imposing a worldview on group A.
> It's impossible for them to make a decision that complies with every unique worldview out there.
Of course, but it's not impossible for those decisions not to impose that view on anyone else. Protecting minority rights imposes nothing on anyone. If someone doesn't believe in gay marriage, the federal protection of it might be against their worldview, but nothing has been imposed upon them; they are not losing anything by someone else being treated equally.
You're failing to draw the necessary line between having different points of view, and having those points of view imposed upon you. Just because the feds do something at the federal level that may be the result of a world view in no way implies that thing they're doing imposes that view on anyone else.
Now certainly, many things they do "do" impose a worldview, but I'm only defending the protection of minority rights to have equal protection under the law, and that doesn't impose anything upon anyone.
You're very confused, I haven't called for the oppression of anyone. Disagreeing with people isn't oppressing them, stopping them from oppressing others isn't oppressing them. Stopping a bully from picking on someone isn't oppressing the bully, so yes, I can logically say what I said and you can't logically disagree with it. So please do show me, since you've accused me of it, where I've called to oppress anyone.
> it's impossible to gather all of the knowledge necessary to ascertain what those would be. That knowledge is dispersed among ~320m citizens (in the U.S.)
Enough said. All our problems are caused by trying to fight against this simple fact.
The further those services get pushed down, the less effective they become. With smaller groups to front costs, prices go up and less services are offered.
What supports that conclusion? There are lots of services – most actually, even insurance services – that thrive with voluntary participation. And the prices are driven down by lots of different companies competing for those customers.
Health insurance is not like other insurance. As best I know, no other insurance has the feature that an identifiable subset of people will need more than they can reasonably pay in the future. If we somehow knew my house was going to fall down in the next ten years, I couldn't feasibly insure it, and there are people who'll need much more healthcare than my house costs.
Arguably that militates against treating it as insurance as opposed to a straight-up single payer system or Singapore
style system (http://theweek.com/articles/684952/republicans-should-blow-e...), but it does mean you can't argue from the success of existing insurance markets.
I agree that the existing system is completely out of balance in terms of supply and demand. Why is that? I believe it's because government has intervened in the healthcare market, and removing them will lead to a market that's much more aligned with consumer demand.
Even now, there are places like https://surgerycenterok.com/ that prove high quality healthcare can be provided at affordable prices (they even list them on their website!).
The market is certainly not perfect. There is waste, bad investment, etc. There's no avoiding that. Unlike government, however, the market is much more efficient in realizing and correcting for that.
If only we had the evidence to support this sort of sweeping generalization. It's a nice theory on paper, in practice it seems to be more complicated depending on time scales and type of goal. There is a lot of no-true-scotsman-ing in support of the dogma, which muddies the waters. For people who want to affect actual change and believe in evidence-based approaches, it's really hard to avoid the conclusion that (today at least) you are best off with a mix.
This empirical mismatch is either handled by engaging in no-true-scotsman support for the dogma, or engaging
Having worked in both government and corporate environments, I don't see it. The efficiency of the market is about as mythical as the long term planning ability of the government.
I get what you're saying. It's a common view that balances the two ends of the spectrum, as you point out.
There was an article just a few days ago by Farhad Manjoo entitled Google, Not the Government, Is Building the Future (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/technology/personaltech/g...) that I think captures your viewpoint well. I'd like to spend some time digesting it, after which I'll likely write some thoughts.
Most economists, not all economists. And most of those economists are the ones destroying economies, in my opinion.
If you're interested in reading a counter-viewpoint on why deflation is actually good – it's the policies aimed at countering it that are really what's bad – here you go: https://mises.org/blog/deflation-always-good-economy