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December 2007
Dr. Merrill Matthews’ latest oped "Is Romney's Healthcare Plan Conservative?" is featured today in Human Events.
In the piece, Matthews discusses the presidential hopeful and former governor’s effort to pass universal health care coverage in the state of Massachusetts last year, and how the reform stacks up with conservative principles.
An excerpt:
“A recent headline in the Boston Herald said, “Republican rivals try to rough up Romney over Massachusetts healthcare.”
That headline was a reference to former Gov. and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s successful effort in 2006 to pass “universal” health insurance coverage in Massachusetts.
Read More...
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IPI Senior Fellow George A. Pieler is featured in a new oped on Forbes.com with Editor-in-Chief of the International Affairs Forum Jens F. Laurson.
The piece, entitled "Fear Stalks in the Andes," discusses the new U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement and how trade deals are increasingly used for political triangulation rather than for economic freedom.
An excerpt:
“The just-approved free-trade deal between the U.S. and Peru is said to be the last such arrangement. There are just so many reasons to fear foreign trade and overseas competition. Competition itself is unsettling, but when it benefits people whose name you can't pronounce, is it really worth risking your market share for? Read More...
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Video franchise reform efforts are sweeping the country. As many as 18 states have either enacted legislation, or have taken regulatory action, to allow for statewide franchises to be issued to providers of video services, reforming the decades-old and antiquated city-by-city method of issuing exclusive franchise video services.
The latest state is Wisconsin, which saw a year-long battle conclude this month with passage of legislation that, in the words of former Wisconsin Public Service Commissioner Joe Mettner writing in The Capitol Times, “aims to provide consumers a choice in video service providers, and in selecting bundled packages of broadband, video and telecommunications services. Read More...
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My old boss and good friend Dr. Richard Rahn has written a superb 735-word primer in today's Washington Times on why the Federal Reserve Board has been assigned contradictory and impossible tasks, especially in today's electronically networked, financially engineered global economy.
The only disappointment was that Richard failed to offer a solution to the dilemma he explains so well. Here is a letter I sent to him.
Dear Richard,
Your column today offers a very good description of what's going on with money and banking these days but I am curious why you didn't conclude that the Fed's assigned task(s)—either and certainly both—are hopeless and that the only way to ensure stable prices is to return to a hard-money, market-based currency. You don't have to go all the way to gold, which I prefer, Read More...
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How Much Good Can Come Out of Tax Reform?
Dr. Merrill Matthews of the Institute for Policy Innovation says a lot, just look back 2,000 years.
The New Testament tells us why Mary and Joseph journeyed to his hometown of Bethlehem.
“And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. . . And all went to be taxed, everyone to his own city.”
A better translation of the word “taxed” is registered.
The Roman tax system at Jesus’ birth was a mess, and Caesar Augustus wanted to reform it with a simpler, more-equitable and less-centralized system.
But so many people returned to Bethlehem to register for the new tax system that the inn was full.
Read More...
 How Much Good Can Come Out of Tax Reform? |
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It’s a good indication of the abysmal state of thinking in the Republican Party when it takes former Clinton Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers to be the one calling for a tax cut and to be the only guy around offering a serious proposal (unlike the Treasury proposal) for dealing with the financial crisis—ideas that are far more sensible than anything coming out of any Republican mouth in the Congress or on the campaign trial for the presidency.
Summers is an unabashed neo-Keynesian so not everything he has in mind passes muster. For example, in obeisance to pumping up aggregate demand to forestall a recession, he urges further interest rate cuts in order to stimulate consumer spending, seemingly oblivious to the inflationary implications of what he suggests. Read More...
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Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has been in early-primary-state New Hampshire talking up his support for eliminating the federal income tax and replacing it with a national sales tax.
Let us begin by saying that we’re thrilled that a presidential candidate is talking about fundamental tax reform. And the Institute for Policy Innovation is based in Texas, which is one of the states with a state sales tax rather than a state income tax. So we’ve seen sales taxes serve as a more than adequate replacement for income taxes.
That system works pretty well; Texans don’t fill out or file any income information with the state. Read More...
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In his retirement, former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan resembles more the mythological Pushmi Pullyu creature from Dr. Doolittle than the financial master of the universe he liked to portray himself as when he ran the nation’s central bank. But of course, the master-of-the-universe garb was always just a self-serving costume to keep him on the cover of weekly news magazines and disguise the real Pushmi Pullyu creature underneath who put the world economy through continuous gyrations from his stop-go monetary policy.
Read More...
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The OECD, in collaboration with UK-based research institutions, says that potential damage from world-wide flooding in coastal areas will increase in value from $3 trillion today to $35 trillion by 2070. That sounds like a big increase but how big is it really relative to expected growth in the global economy?
Using International Monetary Fund statistics (“World Economic Outlook Database,”), we estimate Gross World Product to be about $58.7 trillion in 2007 (measured in 2004 dollars). That means this year’s flood damage will amount to slightly more than 5 percent of total world output. That is a relatively big number. Read More...
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Much has been made of former Senator George Mitchell's report on December 13th regarding steroid use in Major League Baseball. Many suggest that there is deep disgust among fans over this scandal. Yet Major League attendance is up by millions over the time period during which the scandal has occurred. Why is that?
Americans are very good at comparmetalizing. They decry the use of banned substances yet at the same time go in growing numbers to the ballpark. Perhaps that is because we still love the game. Perhaps it is because we still enjoy seeing those dingers fly out of the park and that 100 mile per hour fast ball strike out a super star. Perhaps it's because there have always been deviant behaviors (Pete Rose's gambling scandal, the 1919 Black Sox, the alcohol abuse of the fifties) and we are satisfied to look the other way as long as the entertainment is there. Perhaps it is because the game is still, well, baseball and it reflects our times and our spirit. Read More...
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The American Enterprise Institute will be holding a conference December 20 to explore whether an optional federal charter is necessary and sufficient to ease the entry of international insurance companies into the American market and in the process benefit American consumers. In its write up about the conference, AEI says:
“Thus far, the debate about an optional federal charter for insurance companies has focused primarily on whether and how federal regulation of U.S. insurers will improve services for insurance consumers in the United States. But insurance, like banking and securities, is increasingly becoming a globalized market. U.S. insurers are increasingly diversifying their risks by offering their services abroad, and the reinsurance business model requires worldwide geographic diversification. Read More...
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Health information technology (HIT) has become all the rage. And with some reason.
The medical profession appears to be running behind—way behind—most other professions in adapting and adopting the latest technologies to the need to compile, store and transmit patient information.
That tardiness has prompted one person to comment that the doctor’s most important tool is still the clipboard.
We, too, share the hope that HIT will one day transform the health care system. The real question is whether it will be for the better or worse.
That’s because a lot of effort is being devoted to creating inter-operable health information databases that will allow, say, a hospital to transfer patient information to a doctor or another hospital, or vice-versa.
Read More...
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In Today’s Featured Article at Opinion Journal, Alan Greenspan alludes to “an accident waiting to happen” in which mysterious “global economic forces” loose on the world spawned “explosive economic growth” infecting the global economic organism like an economic retrovirus “gaining control of pricing” and producing spontaneous “market euphoria,” which generated “mispriced risk” and caused financial markets to “seize up.” Whew! Where does Greenspan come up with this crap? This isn’t economics, (neo-)classical or any other kind; it’s pure mumbo-jumbo — no worse, it’s economic rap music and to a tutored ear equally obscene.
I haven't read such self-serving drivel since Henry Kissinger's last vainglorious casuistry on foreign policy. Read More...
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The Institute for Policy Innovation’s Dr. Merrill Matthews says not if the federal government has its way.
The federal government has decided that the Salvation Army, one of the most diverse employers in the country, is discriminating.
John Fund of the Wall Street Journal reports that one of the Salvation Army thrift stores, based in Massachusetts, is requiring that its employees speak English on the job. The store posted the requirement and gave employees a year to learn English.
But when the store let go two Hispanic employees for continuing to speak Spanish, the federal government sued, saying that an English-only policy wasn’t relevant to job performance or safety.
Several members of Congress are echoing that message.
Read More...
English Only? |
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IPI Resident Scholar Dr. Merrill Matthews is featured today in the Wall Street Journal.
In his new oped, “A Health-Insurance Solution,” Matthews discusses the reintroduction of the “The Health Care Choice Act” in Congress by Rep. John Shadegg of Arizona, and how the bill may increase competition and consumer choice when it comes to health insurance.
An excerpt:
"Why can't people living in New Jersey buy health insurance available to residents of, say, Pennsylvania?
Rep. John Shadegg, an Arizona Republican, thinks they should -- and today will reintroduce legislation to make that possible.
Read More...
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Democrats have become eager—really eager—to do something about the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) before it forces millions of upper-middle-income Americans to pay more taxes this year.
Republicans, well, not so much.
That may strike a few people as odd, since Republicans have for years been calling for an end to the AMT, or at least reforming it or indexing it for inflation so that it doesn’t threaten to hammer more and more Americans every year. But those perplexed may not have seen the recent numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
According to the BLS, New Yorkers—and specifically those working in Manhattan—have the highest incomes in the country, making an average of $147,000 annually for the first quarter of 2007. Read More...
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In this space back on September 17, 2007, I wrote: “The real danger is that Republicans will panic over the prospect of Rangel’s preparation for 2009 and rush to cut a deal with the Chairman on the AMT this year to ‘limit the damage’ in future years.”
Yesterday, the Senate put an end to that danger for another year when it voted to throw Charlie Rangel’s bill in the trash can and passed instead a simple one-year “patch” without offsetting tax hikes to prevent millions more federal taxpayers from falling victim to the Alternative Minimum Tax:
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| IPI Senior Fellow Dr. Lawrence Hunter is featured today with a new oped in American Spectator entitled, “Hillary Hoists GOP by its Own Petard.” In the piece, the author discusses how Hillary Clinton’s new health care plan “builds on the misguided principles espoused by Republicans themselves,” such as Mitt Romney’s plan for Massachusetts and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan for California. An excerpt: Generals fight the last war, and politicians run against their opponents' historical records. So it's no surprise that the Republican Party is dredging up the specter of "HillaryCare" in response to Sen. Clinton's latest health-care reform proposals. This is a mistake. HillaryCare 2.0 is a very different creature than the stillborn beast Clinton unveiled to widespread scorn in 1993. Read More...
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Should Government Force People to Buy Health Insurance?
Dr. Merrill Matthews of the Institute for Policy Innovation says only if you also want them to pay fines.
As governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney passed legislation in 2006 requiring everyone in the state to have health insurance or pay a fine.
And those fines will be expensive: $219 per person for the first year being uninsured, and at least $150 per person a month thereafter. Actual insurance coverage will likely cost about twice that amount.
Those fines didn’t seem so bad when they were still in the future, but now they’re here. And some of the other Republican presidential candidates are pointing out that Romney-imposed financial pain.
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Massachusetts Health Care |
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Press Release:
Santa Clause May Cancel Future Christmas Eve Trips
Santa says someone needs a little Christmas Spirit
North Pole — Today Santa Clause Holdings, Inc., the parent company of Santa Clause International Children’s Gifts, announced that this may be the last year that Santa Clause will be able to make his annual Christmas Eve pilgrimage to give toys to all the good little boys and girls.
Said Santa Clause, CEO of Santa Clause International, “Mrs. Clause and the elves and I are all just sick about it. We want to continue doing this every year, but not if it’s going to be a burden to others or get us in a lawsuit. There are some Grinches just stealing the joy from Christmas.”
Recently, Santa Clause International has come under attack from two groups. Read More...
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IPI Resident Scholar and Health Care Expert Dr. Merrill Matthews is featured in the Wall Street Journal with a new oped entitled, “Hillary’s False Claims.”
In the piece, Matthews discusses the presidential hopeful’s false claims about the private-sector health insurance industry.
An excerpt:
“Earlier this week, campaigning in New Hampshire, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton asserted that health insurance companies spend $50 billion to avoid paying claims. "This is all part of their business model," she was quoted as saying. "This is how they make money, but it's so bad for the rest of us. I say to them, use the $50 billion to actually take care of people."
Read More...
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Author: Erin Fitch || Location: Lewisville, Texas, USA