ObamaCare — The Way of the Dodo | Michael F. Cannon | Cato Institute: Commentary

ObamaCare — The Way of the Dodo | Michael F. Cannon | Cato Institute: Commentary: 'Let's pick one of Congress's accounting frauds at random: the "sustainable growth rate" (SGR) formula.

This little gremlin cuts Medicare payments to physicians every year on January 1. Or it would, except every year these cuts have come due, Congress has postponed them. But so long as hundreds of billions of dollars of future cuts remain on the books, future deficits and debt appear that much smaller.

Everyone knows Congress is going to postpone those cuts when docs and seniors start complaining. But by pretending that it won't, Congress makes the federal government's finances look better. (The real genius of the SGR is that the cumulative effect of pushing all postponed cuts into future years both preserves the SGR's debt-concealing power and ensures that physicians will grow increasingly desperate to make campaign contributions with each passing year.)'

'When ObamaCare's first batch of mandates took effect in September 2010, carriers notified their customers how much premiums would be raised as a result of these mandates. One Connecticut insurer put the hidden ObamaCare tax in the range of 20-30 percent of premiums. Naturally, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius threatened carriers with bankruptcy if they continued furnishing cost estimates 21. The notifications stopped.'

'With many states balking, Politico revealed that the law doesn't actually provide any funding for HHS to create exchanges 23. And there is exactly zero chance of any such funding emerging from the GOP House.'

'If the Obama administration provides unauthorized premium assistance through federally created exchanges, then some of those subsidies will, under the law's employer mandate, trigger penalties against employers. Employers would then have standing to challenge the unauthorized subsidies in court 25. In states that decline to create exchanges, those lawsuits could scuttle not only the unauthorized premium assistance but also the employer mandate.'

How can a law that is that long and was passed that quickly be expected to be consistent and logical?

GOP Wastes Obamacare Opportunity | Michael D. Tanner | Cato Institute: Commentary

GOP Wastes Obamacare Opportunity | Michael D. Tanner | Cato Institute: Commentary: 'According to the poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has traditionally found more support for the health-care law than other groups, just 34 percent of Americans now support the law. In fact, barely half of Democrats support the signature achievement of a Democratic president.'

'Yet Republicans have seemed strangely quiet about the issue of late. So much so, in fact, that the Washington Times was led to wonder if Republicans have "given up" on repeal. There certainly does not appear to be much evidence that Republicans are still making repeal a top priority. The House hasn't taken a vote on Obamacare since trying to change the bill's graduate-medical-education funding back in May. There isn't even an all-out effort to get behind a repeal of the CLASS Act, despite Democratic defections on the issue.

And the Republican presidential candidates have relatively little to say as well.'

William Niskanen, Wise and Principled | Richard W. Rahn | Cato Institute: Commentary

William Niskanen, Wise and Principled | Richard W. Rahn | Cato Institute: Commentary: 'After careful analysis of the data, he concluded that the marginal cost of government spending and taxes in the United States likely ranged between $2.75 and $4.50 per additional dollar of tax revenue. He wrote, "One wonders whether there are any government programs for which the marginal value is that high." To put what he was saying more simply, GDP is reduced by roughly three or four dollars for every additional dollar the government taxes and spends.'

Why We Can't Escape the Eurocrisis | Gerald P. O'Driscoll Jr. | Cato Institute: Commentary

Why We Can't Escape the Eurocrisis | Gerald P. O'Driscoll Jr. | Cato Institute: Commentary: 'The Fed maintains they cannot lose money because the ECB promises to repay the swaps in dollars. And yet, with the world awash in greenbacks, it is unclear why the Fed and the ECB even needed to engage in these transactions—except that it suggests funding problems at some EU banks. And if neither EU banks nor the ECB can secure enough needed dollars in global markets, there is a serious counterparty risk to the Fed.'

Give Us Your Engineers, Yearning to Innovate | Daniel Griswold | Cato Institute: Commentary

Give Us Your Engineers, Yearning to Innovate | Daniel Griswold | Cato Institute: Commentary: 'For the government, educated immigrants are pure gravy. Because of their higher salaries and low unemployment rates, they pay more in taxes than they consume in government services from Day One. According to an authoritative study by the National Research Council, each college-educated immigrant and his or her descendants represent a $198,000 fiscal gain (in net present value) for the United States. That means a boost of 50,000 such immigrants in a year would be equivalent to retiring almost $10 billion in government debt.'

'foreign students account for three-fourths of doctorates awarded by U.S. universities in mathematics, computer science and engineering, three-fifths of doctorates in physical sciences, and one-half of doctorates in life sciences. "Today, the difficulty is not in attracting top foreign students to America," Mr. Hanson writes, "but in keeping them here after they graduate."'

'America's immigration system sends the signal to those foreign-born students with valuable skills that we would really prefer that they return to China or India to start companies and file international patents rather than remain here in the United States. And if U.S. companies cannot hire the workers they need here, they eventually will relocate their productive facilities to nations where they can.'

I Don't Know - Leonard Read - Mises Daily

I Don't Know - Leonard Read - Mises Daily: 'A person can no more explain how the free market would attend to mail delivery than his great-grandfather could have explained how television could ever emerge from free-market forces!'

'How would the free market attend to mail delivery were the postal service desocialized? I don't know! Nor could anyone have known 100 years ago how the free market would develop the means to deliver the human voice from city to city. But take note of these facts: we have maintained mail delivery as a socialized operation; its service is getting worse, not better; its costs and prices are increasing, not decreasing; since 1932 it has accumulated an acknowledged deficit of $10 billion, and the deficits increase annually.[4]

Voice delivery, on the other hand, has been improving. Just a century ago the human voice could be delivered at the speed of sound, but only the distance two people could understand each other's shouting. Today, the human voice is delivered at the speed of light; and as to distance, it's any place on earth — you name it! The service has improved enormously; and the cost has decreased steadily.

In human-voice delivery, free-market forces have been more or less operative. No one could have predicted in 1865 what form these forces would take during the next hundred years. Even more remarkable, no one can describe how the miracles were performed after the fact. Once we realize that we cannot explain what has happened, it becomes obvious that we can never explain what will happen.'

Four Policies: The Original Intent - Brian Anderson - Mises Daily

Four Policies: The Original Intent - Brian Anderson - Mises Daily: 'In the Politics, Aristotle explains the character of law well. He recommends that there be as few laws as possible, and that they be altered as seldom as possible. The reason for this is that law should be an extension of our normal sense of right and wrong, so that people can observe it, for the most part, simply by living what they regard as morally upright lives.… The less frequently it changes and the more permanence it has, the more citizens will feel reverence for it.'

'Sustainable Planning' Is Not So Sustainable | Randal O'Toole | Cato Institute: Commentary

'Sustainable Planning' Is Not So Sustainable | Randal O'Toole | Cato Institute: Commentary: 'Since 1980, Portland has spent more than $3 billion building light-rail lines. Far from improving transit, the share of commuters taking transit to work has fallen from 9.8 percent in 1980 to 7.5 percent today, mainly because the region cut bus service to pay for the trains. Traffic congestion quadrupled between 1984 and 2004, which planners say was necessary to get people to ride transit.

The region's housing policies made single-family homes so expensive that most families with children moved to distant suburbs where they can afford a house with a yard. Residents of subsidized high-density housing projects drive just about as much as anyone else in the Portland area, and developers have learned to their sorrow that if they follow planners' guidelines in providing less parking for these projects, they will end up with high vacancy rates.

Despite these problems, Portland has received lots of positive publicity. The reason for this is simple: By forcing out families with children, inner Portland is left mainly with young singles and childless couples who eat out a lot, making Portland a mecca for tourists who like exciting new restaurants. This makes Portland a great place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there unless you like noisy, congested streets.'

Are Government Jobs Productive? - Ryan P. Long - Mises Daily

Are Government Jobs Productive? - Ryan P. Long - Mises Daily: 'Thus, the impact of paying government employees is to transfer economic resources from the production of economic goods and services to the performing of services for which there is no market demand.'

DOJ: Lying on Match.com needs to be a crime | Privacy Inc. - CNET News

DOJ: Lying on Match.com needs to be a crime | Privacy Inc. - CNET News: 'the Justice Department argues that it must be able to prosecute violations of Web sites' often-ignored, always-unintelligible "terms of service" policies.'

Should violating a TOS be a federal felony?