One of our greatest disappointments with our 300 million compatriots is their inability to see the disadvantages of government trying to provide goods and services already provided by the private sector. We all know that describing something as "government issue" is to imply that it is of questionable quality, limited utility and minimal appeal. But Americans continue to accept the notion that government issued stuff is somehow a part of their collective salvation.
We cite but two examples, one minor, the other major:
Minor example: The feds have recently unveiled a web site for students and parents to use for comparing colleges. This site, to this point the chief product of Education Secretary Spellings's efforts at reforming higher education, to the SWNIDish eye offers nothing that can't already be found on a host of other, privately operated sites. One need only Google "colleges" to see the many imitators of Princeton Review and US News that have entered the lucrative world of college comparison shopping services. We bet that this new tax-supported web site will have fewer visitors than any of the top five private sites, thanks to its overall blandness.
Major example: HillaryCare 2.0 continues to operate on the assumption that the federal government's health care plans ought to be the foundation of every American's health care. We say that Hillary's insistence that all Americans have the option of buying a plan sponsored by Uncle Sugar will create an inevitable deterioration of the products in the market and a slide toward VA-style care for all but the most wealthy. For more on the false assumptions of HillaryCare, see Mark Steyn's superb Sunday column. But in any case, gentle readers should ask themselves, Why do I want an insurance program brought to me by the people who invented the Form 1040?
10 comments:
But I have a right to free health care and only the government can give that right and guarantee it.
We are entering a new era in the history of the United States. It is an era of compassion. And the federal government is the essential provider. We are elevating the dignity of each person.
It doesn't matter that $900 toilet seats will soon become $900 syringes. It only matters that working families get the coverage they deserve. The filthy rich have great healthcare. The federal government will make sure that everybody else does too. The federal government exists to help each one of us.
One exception only: Government issued cheese is known to be of the utmost quality and character.
zzmojpx
I'm happy we haven't privatized the postal system. I prefer paying only 39 cents per letter as opposed to several dollars, which is what UPS and FedEx charge for their residential ground service.
I am open to this thought concerning health care. However, I must ask how then do we insure those like several of my family members? They work everyday but have no healthcare. I can't see them getting it unless the gov't gets involved.
Well I happen to be under government health care currently. Let me give you a break down on my "free" health care. I hurt my neck back in Dec, had to go to the hospital. I sat around waiting for 5 hours to see someone, he looked at me for about 74 seconds then gave me some pain killers telling me if it still hurt in a week (it did) come back in a week (it did hurt, but I was on a flight to Germany at that point). Also, when ever one of us is hurt, or sick, we always get prescription strength motrin and are told to drink more water.
I hurt my knee in a combat training incedent, they gave me no drugs, told me to stop running and check back in with them in a few weeks...needless to say its still hurt...
I can go on and on, and so will you all if Mrs. Clinton is elected, hooray for crappy coverage by the TMC (military for the hospital, or more plainly: The Medical Center)
The postal service is the shining example of efficiency, customer service, and nimbleness (to their customers' needs).
Unfortunately, they charge 42 cents, not 39.
On the other hand, FedEx and UPS are barred by law from providing first class, daily mail service, so the comparison is specious.
So, obviously, I haven't mailed a letter in awhile. Mainly, that's because the Evil Government has exponentially expanded the internet by refusing to tax internet sales, thus enabling email to become widespread enough that my creditors have found it cost effective to let me pay my bills online for free. (By the way, I'm told that letters are now 41 cents, not 42.) As for the monopoly, FedEx and UPS can still ship second class mail, and it is that mail that costs several dollars per letter. (True, they are required by law to charge a certain minimum per letter, but their charges exceed that minimum.) My point is that the government is able to deliver first class mail much cheaper than FedEx and UPS can deliver second class mail--hardly a specious comparison.
So how much longer will we even need a federal postal service? If we were organizing the republic today, would we grant a constitutional monopoly to a federal postal service? Will this quaint relic ever pass from the scene, or will its government-protected status perpetuate it long past its useful life?
We will say this with all the cynicism we can muster: Britain outdoes the USA in bureaucracy by a factor of about 100. But somehow they've managed to organize a much more effective postal service than we. Still, even the Royal Mail's vaunted social status is in decline as the internet makes many post office services redundant.
We are trying to state all this without going postal, and the existence of that phrase surely says something about the effectiveness of government products as well.
Oh, and to PS/SWNID: first, your relatives don't lack health care. They can go to any hospital, and the hospital has the legal obligation to treat them without respect to their ability to pay. What they lack is not health care but health insurance.
And the question in our never-humble opinion is not whether we ought to do something to make health insurance more widely held. It is what that something is. We far prefer approaches that make private insurance more available to a wider group of folk, and particularly those that divorce health insurance from employment. Providing a government program to insure people has the powerful tendency of squeezing out private products, eliminating competition, and eventually lowering standards of care for everyone (the single-payer, government system of the UK is by most measures less successful than the largely private systems of Germany and France, for example).
Mark Steyn points out most pointedly that statistics commonly cited about the number of uninsured people are significantly inflated. That needs to be kept in mind so that the size of the "solution" fits the size of the problem.
The only logical comparison to make is between parcels and overnight packages which are comparable services. Service and price combined, UPS and FedEx win hands down. Of course the post office didn't begin offering overnight service until many years after private companies did.
The mandated monopoly on first class prevents any private firm from effectively competing in most residential shipping services. The government has no marginal costs (the postal carrier comes to your house whether there is anything to deliver or not), and private firms have high marginal costs.
UPS and FedEx were forced to cream skim for several decades before economies of scale were such that they could expand services, and not lose money doing so.
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