Month: June 2007

A reader writes:

I do question your interpretation of the Social Gospel rhetoric of religious liberals like Barack Obama. You argue that their rhetoric calls for an expansive welfare state of the likes found in Europe. I see it as a call to make more effective, not more expansive, use of the tools of government for dealing with poverty, and as a criticism of the wasteful & bloated spending that the Bush administration has brought us. When Obama and others talk about how a small change in our priorities can ensure a better life for the poorest of our citizens, he isn’t talking about creating a European-style socialist state.

They are talking about the wasteful spending our government puts into national defense (such as the invasion and occupation of Iraq) and corporate welfare, and how many of our fiscal policies are aimed at enriching Big Businesses who feed off the public trough (such as Haliburton). They are talking about taking the money we spend already on things that benefit only special interests (and businesses like Haliburton are the epitome of special interests) or actually harm our national interests (like ill-conceived and executed military actions), and redirecting it to programs along the lines of the GI Bill, programs aimed at promoting individual initiative for self-improvement by providing the resources to carry out such initiative. In other words, Obama and others want make sure that American society has an effective framework and infrastructure for the poor to learn how to fish, so that they can feed themselves for a lifetime.

They don’t care if this teaching work is done primarily through the private non-profit sector and through the government; they do know that creating this framework and infrastructure requires a societal committment of resources, and that government has a key role to play in channeling these resources.

Ah, yes: eliminating waste and maximizing government efficiency. But who isn’t for these things? I’d love to kill off corporate welfare, avoid doomed wars, and encourage self-reliance among the less advantaged. But that’s less government, not more. There is somethig awry in believing that government can help people do without government. I see the goal as admirable. But history shows us that the means usually coopt the end.

Not encouraging news from the one place in Iraq where we were getting some.

Here’s some video:

For some reason, this isn’t front-page news. It should be. You can see more photos from a Tehran blogger here. Australia’s ABC News is on the case. FT has a story here. Gateway Pundit has gone cable on it. Blogger Winston opines:

The sanctions are affecting the regime slowly and the last punch (read Regime Change) can come through these scenes. We may wake up one day and hear on TV that mullahs are gone.

Know hope.

A reader writes:

I’m keeping my beard. And keeping it trimmed short. An unruly beard is an unsightly beard and properly an object of mirth among the young. But beardlessness can be equally funny, apparently. The last time I shaved mine off (once in thirty-five years), my son and his friends literally rolled on the floor laughing.  As my son said, "Dad, some guys are MEANT to have beards, and you are one of those guys." Shortly thereafter, at a fairly large party, my hostess handed out ballots and asked the guests to vote "Willard’s beard: Yes ___   No ____." 

The only "No" vote was my mother’s, who, incidentally, a month earlier had greeted me at a family funeral (the first time she saw me after the shave), by extending her hand, saying "Hello, I am Margaret Henson – so happy to meet you," passing on by and continuing to work the room.  Oh, and don’t be surprised if your dogs bark at you. Mine did every time I entered the house until I grew it back. As for the "minimalism" of hairlessness, please. It takes a lot more work.

If you need tips, here’s the best guide to growing and maintaining a beard I know. I’m not trimming mine till after Ptown’s Bear Week next month. But my mother is very unhappy about my having one for the wedding. So the follicular surge may fade by the end of August.

(Photo: James Russell Lowell, one of the founding editors of the Atlantic with a killer beard.)

Oxfordshire, England, 7 am.

For a newly updated, global gallery of Dish readers’ window views, click here.

Kevin Drum says there’s no evidence that pharmaceutical companies in socialized systems are less innovative. He cites a handful of big drug companies that have headquarters in Europe. But my point is not their nominal headquarters in a mutlinational world, but where the cash for their R&D comes from, and where they have been moving their operations under price pressure from the governments in Europe. Take GSK. Yes, it’s still nominally British. But Wiki revealingly tells us that

The majority of its activity is in the United States, although the company has a presence in almost 70 countries.

GSK isn’t alone. Check out Novartis, a nominally Swiss company Kevin cites that is also heavily based in the US. The reason is the size of the US market but equally the prices it can charge for its drugs here. Take that away, and you will surely have a drop in drug R&D. Yes, there is flim flam and abuse and corruption in Big Pharma. But not enough to ease the pain of the price restraints the Democrats are eager to slap on pharmaceuticals. Mark Kleiman makes my point better than I did:

Where a drug is invented doesn’t really matter much. A company that invents a drug in Europe still gets much of its profit from the American market. So the question is, what would be the effect on innovation of squeezing down on pharmaceutical prices in the U.S.?

My first guess is that it would slow things down. If both Wyeth and Novartis have to consider that their next blockbuster drug is going to bring in less revenue, the probability that Drug X will be that blockbuster has to be higher in order to justify spending the money to find out. That means some good prospects get overlooked; presumably not forever, but for now.

If every country tries to free-ride by making sure that its consumers don’t pay their share of the cost of innovation, it figures that there will be less innovation. Maybe that’s not right; maybe drug companies, faced with a somewhat less creamy American cash cow, would be able to negotiate up prices in Europe and Asia. (That’s Kevin’s guess.)

But one or the other is going to have to happen, or some combination. It’s not the case that reduced prices can come out of pharmaceutical-company profits; those firms have to raise capital in the same market as everyone else, and their risk-adjusted returns on equity aren’t out of line with those of other companies. (Pfizer’s market capitalization is just shy of $200 billion, which is something less than two months’ worth of U.S. health-care expenditure.)

So it’s true, to some extent, that the U.S. is effectively cross-subsidizing pharmaceutical consumption in other countries, either by sparing them higher prices or by keeping up the pace of innovation.

Kevin doesn’t worry, because we’re "over-medicated" anyway. Well, that’s a concession of the trade-off I’m asserting. For my part, I don’t think I’m over-medicated. And I do think that without the private healthcare system in the US, I – and millions of others – would be dead by now, and that includes the poor and the destitute with HIV in the developing world, who get a free ride off American capitalism as well. You want to throw global medical research into a depression? Back socialized medicine in America. Maybe the trade-off of fewer treatments tomorrow for more drugs for more people now is worth it. But you don’t get something for nothing.

Just in case you didn’t realize he’s a domestic liberal:

The report by Reform, the think-tank, said that the key policies of the Blair decade, such as high spending, increased taxes and a greater role for central government, had blocked public service reform and created new pressures on vulnerable groups such as the young.

In 2008-09 the tax burden will reach 38.1 per cent of gross income – its highest level for 25 years, Reform claims. This is one of a worrying "cocktail of factors" damaging the economic position of the young, it said.

Bush has laid the path for the Democrats to do the same, compounding the massive spending and entitlement increases of the Bush years with higher taxes and even bigger government. The next generation, as in Britain, will be faced with the bill.

Nancy Grace is expecting twins. (Hat tip: Jason.)