Jensen Comment
Note that even before the 2018 corporate tax cuts the corporate income tax has
been a shrinking part of the Federal budget of the most recent decades. I've
long been an advocate of replacing it with a VAT tax but liberals and
conservatives alike hate that idea.
Medicare and Medicaid are the least sustainable entitlements predicted for
the future.
Interest on government debt is a huge worry since foreign interests (think
China and the oil-rich nations of the Middle East) own so much of it with the
threat that one day these large investors will stop rolling over their
investments in USA debt.
This is an interesting 2017 graph of the USA's trading partner performances
---
http://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/trade.png
It's easy to get distracted my big amounts, but look at the imbalances of trade
with nations like Japan, Germany, Italy, Ireland, and Switzerland. Add to this
what we spend helping to defend nations like Japan, Canada, Germany, and Italy?
The
enemy is fear
We think it's hate
But, it's fear Gandhi
Tech billionaires Marc Benioff and Jack Dorsey
are clashing over a key law that could seriously impact the San Francisco
homelessness crisis ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/marc-benioff-and-jack-dorsey-clash-over-san-francisco-homeless-measure-prop-c-2018-10
Jensen Comment
This is not popular among what I think is a majority of wealthy taxpayers.
Exhibit A is what happened when Seattle tried the same thing. Jeff Bezos and
others made sufficient threats to make Seattle's socialist mayor back down on a
soak-the-rich tax. Even worse is when the wealthy won't move their businesses
into soak-the-rich cities, and startups choose to start up someplace else.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/12/amazon-flexes-its-muscles-and-seattle-backs-down-on-a-business-tax.html
And if you're landlocked like San Francisco (think the SF Bay) with the highest
priced real estate in the USA perhaps you should think about rewarding the
homeless to leave rather than move to San Francisco. The same tactic is being
used on undocumented immigrants in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany where
immigrants are paid to leave.
California Evidence: What Happens
When States Decide to Really, Really Soak the Rich With Taxes ---
https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickgleason/2018/07/06/millionaires-flee-california-after-tax-hike/#34aa8f514189
Jensen Comment
This overlooks other tactics taken by the rich. For example, portfolios of very
people are heavy into tax exempt bonds which may have to be municipal bonds
issued in the state of residence in order to be exempt from state income taxes.
More commonly, rich people invest for capital gains that are not taxed until
realized (think common stocks and art work). Really rich people use off shore
tax havens that reduce both federal and state taxes. In other words it's very
difficult to soak the rich with taxes if they are astute enough to defer or
avoid those taxes. And sometimes they move to more tax-friendly states like the
nine states states that have no general state income tax ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_income_tax
However, it appears that only a small proportion of really rich folks in
California headed for Nevada, Texas, Florida, or some other state having no
income tax. In part this is due to the many magnets that hold people to their
long-time homes such as nearness to family and close friends and jobs.
More important is the impact of high taxes that prevent many wealthy people from
moving/retiring into California. California also has another barrier to
inflows --- the astronomical price of real estate. You have to be really,
really, really rich to consider buying even a modest home in San Francisco or
other parts of the Silicon Valley. When high real estate prices combine with
high upper tax rates you really don't need to build a physical wall at the
border to keep rich people from moving into a state like California. And
some rich folks don't like the fact that la la land politicians control all
branches of government in cities, counties, and the entire la la state of
California.
How many times have we heard ‘free
tuition,’ ‘free health care,’ and free you-name-it? If a particular good or
service is truly free, we can have as much of it as we want without the
sacrifice of other goods or services. Take a ‘free’ library; is it really free?
The answer is no. Had the library not been built, that $50 million could have
purchased something else. That something else sacrificed is the cost of the
library. While users of the library might pay a zero price, zero price and free
are not one and the same. So when politicians talk about providing something
free, ask them to identify the beneficent Santa Claus or tooth fairy. Walter Williams
Every great cause begins as a movement,
becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket. Eric Hoffer.
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal
sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of
miseries. Winston Churchill
Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters.
Margaret Wheatley
Even conversations
that are not politically correct.
That government is best which governs the least,
because its people discipline themselves. Thomas Jefferson
Why, we grow rusty and you
catch us at the very point of decadence --- by this time tomorrow we may have
forgotten everything we ever knew. That's a thought isn't it? We'd be back to
where we started --- improvising. Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Act I)
It's hard to beat a person who never gives up.
Babe Ruth,
Historic Home Run Hitter
What's sad is to witness what Syria has become because nobody gave up earlier.
And "because they're
nonstate actors, it's hard for us to get the satisfaction of [Gen.] MacArthur
and the [Japanese] Emperor [Hirohito] meeting and the war officially being
over," Obama observed, referencing the end of World War II.
We must be willing to get rid of the
life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
Joseph Campbell
If everyone is thinking alike, then
somebody isn't thinking.
George S. Patton
And many writers have imagined for themselves
republics and principalities that have never been seen or known to exist in
reality; for there is such a gap between how one lives and how one ought to live
that anyone who abandons what is done for what ought to be done learns his ruin
rather than his preservation: for a man who wishes to profess goodness at all
times will come to ruin among so many who are not good. Niccolo Machiavelli
If you don't know where you're going, you might
not get there.
Yogi
Berra
Happiness is like a butterfly: the
more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to
other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.
Henry David
Thoreau
You can get a lot farther with a smile and a
gun than you can with just a smile. Al Capone
The UN seeks to Make Migration Between Nations a Basic Human Right.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1052923/UN-migration-agreement-Angela-Merkel-EU-criticise-migration-hate-crime
Jensen Comment
The compact takes political correctness to the extreme of making it illegal to
criticize or debate the immigration.
This reminds me of The Little Red Hen tale with a twist where one nation works
diligently to prosper and then is forced by a "democratic vote" in the UN to
allow nations to be overwhelmed by immigrants in such numbers as to ravage the
prosperity in terms of free speech, food, health care, housing, education, etc.
In the UN voting is becoming "Mob Rule," which is one of the major criticisms of
democracy ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy#Criticism
That is the subject of the
short but pointed letter
that UC Berkeley’s Severin Borenstein sent to CEC Commissioner Robert
Weisenmiller, arguing that “residential rooftop solar is a much more
expensive way to move towards renewable energy than larger solar and wind
installations.” Rooftop solar generates energy anywhere from two to six
times the cost of energy from big renewable energy farms.
2) Cheaper emission reductions are easy to
find.
They could be had through regulations mandating
more urban density,
tougher home and vehicle efficiency standards, an increase in the renewable
energy mandate, transmission expansion, or almost anything else, really.
3) The mandate will arguably produce no
additional emission reductions at all.
California is
operating under statewide mandates to reach 50 percent renewable energy, a
doubled rate of energy efficiency, and 40 percent carbon reductions by 2030.
Mandating one form of renewables doesn’t increase the total amount that will
be deployed; it just shuffles the mix around. In this case, the CEC is
mandating a more expensive form of renewables, which, all things being
equal, will raise the cost of hitting the targets.
4) This rule was rushed into effect without
comment from outside energy experts or economists.
The CEC ran an
analysis
of the mandate’s effect on private homebuyers and found that it would cost
them anywhere from $8,000 to $12,000 more upfront, but they would save twice
that much over the lifetime of the house through lower energy bills — a
roughly $40 monthly payment and roughly $80 monthly savings.
However, to my knowledge, there was no
comprehensive analysis of the total social costs and benefits of the policy.
There’s no way to know if the policy is a net benefit to Californians at
all, much less whether it is more beneficial than other possible changes to
the building code.
5) California already struggles with an enormous surge of solar power during
the day.
The state already has enough solar that during midday,
it can drive wholesale energy prices to zero or below. Solar often
must be exported or curtailed.
Solar’s effect on energy demand is known as the “duck
curve,” which puts a strain on the
grid.
As Bloomberg New Energy Finance analyst Ethan Zindler
put it,
the mandate “has the potential to make the duck curve duckier.” What’s more,
much of that rooftop solar cannot be tracked or controlled by the utility
(particular smart inverters are required to link a system to the larger
grid), so the net effect could be a shakier grid, at least in the short
term.
Since all solar produces electricity at the same time
(when, y’know, the sun is out), each new unit of solar is competing with,
and
reducing the marginal value of,
all the other units. (This price suppression effect, covered in detail in
Varun Sivaram’s recent book
Taming the Sun,
is why falling solar costs are always chasing a receding target.) This is
true no matter where the solar is coming from.
It’s possible that by mandating all this new
rooftop solar — which must be paid retail rates under the state’s net
metering policy, no matter the locational or time-specific value of its
power — CEC will not increase the net amount of solar in the state much, or
at all. It might just substitute rooftop solar for centralized solar.
7) There’s a housing crisis in California.
And finally, some would argue that it’s ill-advised to
raise the upfront cost of housing in a state
gripped by a housing crisis.
Upfront costs are a particular challenge for middle- and low-income
homebuyers, which are being brutalized in the state already.
In short, California’s new rooftop solar mandate
might make it more expensive for the state to hit its renewable energy and
carbon targets without yielding any net new solar build or emission
reductions.
Energy wonks and practitioners have also offered a
variety of arguments in support of the mandate.
1) Political will is not fungible.
It is an eternal verity of politics that any new
policy is met by wonks explaining why other policies would have been better.
But California advocates and policymakers do not get to pick and choose
policies like they’re shopping at a supermarket. There was a coalition for
this.
As the Washington Examiner
writes,
“the change had broad support from home builders, state political leaders,
and solar advocates.” Also, the CEC was able to make the change without
legislative approval. And the costs are concentrated on builders and
homeowners rather than the broad public.
All of that is true of an extremely limited set of
policies. The right question isn’t whether this change is better than some
fantasy wonk bill, but whether it’s better than other policies that actually
could have passed or, more likely, the status quo.
2) The CEC probably overestimated costs.
The CEC drew its cost estimates from a comprehensive,
top-down
report on global clean energy trends
from BNEF. But there are many reasons to believe that it is substantially
overstating what rooftop solar will cost Californians. BNEF’s report
includes the solar rooftop retrofit market, but costs are
much lower for new construction, especially as it scales up.
When building solar into new construction, there
are no customer acquisition costs and no sales commissions, permitting costs
are much lower, financing costs are much lower, there’s already an
electrician on site, there are no interconnection applications, etc. Plus,
solar panels are cheaper when bought in bulk, and California builders
frequently build subdivisions all at once.
“With all these categories added up,” Arizona State
University researcher Wesley Herche and John Weaver write in a
close analysis in PV Magazine,
“this eliminates more than half the cost of a residential system, bringing
down the total to $1.12 per watt. From there, the elusive $1/watt is only a
few years away in terms of system cost declines.”
3) Scale will bring innovation.
Tesla’s solar roof tiles look expensive now,
but when the choice is between building a roof with a rooftop solar system
on top of it or building a roof with a solar system built in, the cost
calculus will look different. Increasing demand for
building-integrated solar products
will allow that industry to scale up and bring costs down as well.
4) Cost reductions bleed over.
All of these cost and operational improvements in
the solar rooftop industry will bleed over into areas outside the mandate —
into the retrofit market, and into other states — making rooftop solar more
attractive even in places it isn’t required.
5) Time-of-use rates mean new rooftop solar could drive new storage and
demand shifting.
California’s three big utilities are
shifting to time-of-use rates
for residential customers — meaning ratepayers will be charged more for
electricity when it is more valuable. This will also
affect net metering;
if retail rates are lower during the midday solar surge, net metering
compensation will be lower too.
That will give homeowners incentive to shift some
of their solar energy around, which they can do with home energy storage —
and helpfully, under the new building code, storage counts as compliance
with efficiency mandates. That should get a lot of storage, and with it a
lot of responsive demand, into California homes, which should help stabilize
the grid.
6) Jamming new distributed solar onto the grid forces utilities to make
needed changes.
This effect is difficult to quantify or fully
predict, but by forcing so much rooftop solar into the market, the mandate
could have the effect of forcing changes that need to be made anyway, like
standardizing the use of smart inverters that give utilities visibility into
home solar systems and properly incentivizing demand response.
Utilities are often loath to make life easier for
distributed energy (they don’t like what they don’t own), but this mandate
could force the issue, taking power out of utilities’ hands and putting it
into consumers’.
7) Solar will become more visible, familiar, and contagious.
Also difficult to quantify: By making rooftop solar so
much more common and familiar, like just another home appliance, the mandate
will help answer consumer questions and ease consumer fears. As Abigail Ross
Hopper, head of the Solar Energy Industries Association,
told GTM,
“I can’t overstate how strongly I feel about normalizing the solar
experience so it feels less risky to the consumer.”
Researchers have already shown that
solar panels are contagious
— when people see them, they want them. And that effect could redound beyond
solar, helping normalize renewable energy (and carbon policy) more
generally. (Though, if we’re being honest, it’s already pretty normal in
California.)
8) Rooftop solar and efficiency could help displace natural gas.
California now burns as much natural gas in buildings
as it does in power plants. Reducing that means increasing efficiency and
electrifying heating and cooling.
(The state has a natural gas utility that is
opposing electrification efforts;
it remains
very difficult
for the average California homeowner to fully electrify.) Solar on every new
home, plus mandates for highly efficient appliances, could drive
electrification and displace natural gas.
9) The housing market will be fine.
The additional upfront costs to homeowners from the
mandate are relatively small (again, probably much smaller than CEC
estimated), especially compared to the thicket of other charges and barriers
facing them in California — and the general effect of
skyrocketing prices.
And remember, only the initial homebuyer pays the
upfront costs, while every subsequent owner benefits from the energy
savings. And, who knows, if the mandate does affect home prices on the
margin, it might shift incentives toward building taller residences, which
god knows California could use.
In short, California’s rooftop solar mandate will
radically expand the rooftop solar market, drive down residential solar
costs in other markets and states, shift more power into consumer hands,
stimulate demand response and storage that will help grid flexibility, push
technological innovation, and create jobs. It’s not a first-best policy, but
given the urgency of the problem, it’s a good enough one. ¯
There are lots of ins and outs here.
I didn’t even list all of them.
Distributed generation like rooftop solar can also reduce the need for grid
upgrades, saving utilities money. But then they only do that in areas of
grid congestion, which this policy does not specifically target. There’s
also the chance they could
increase distribution costs on some parts of the grid.
I certainly
agree with the common wonk sentiment that there are lots of other, better
policies out there. This mandate wouldn’t have been my first choice, even in
terms of changes to the housing code. If the state wants homes to be
net-zero energy, it should first ramp up efficiency standards to make sure
every building envelope is fully sealed; efficiency is almost always cheaper
than rooftop solar.
California’s greatest needs — its
housing crisis,
its transportation emissions,
the carbon intensity of its economy — would all be well-served by greater
urban density. That means infill and building up; the requirement for solar
panels should never stand in the way of densifying. I wish
SB 827,
which was density on steroids, hadn’t
died in committee.
Still, as my
granddad Hugh used to say, try wishing in one hand and pissing in the other;
see which one fills up first. The politics and circumstances were right for
this to happen, not some other thing.
As a general matter, when it comes to action on
climate and clean energy, I’m inclined to think
just about anything is better than nothing.
But climate hawks should remain sensitive to the possibility that more solar
is not always and everywhere better — that in some circumstances, more
mandated solar could be worse than nothing,
insofar as it
crowds out cheaper low-carbon alternatives and raises costs without
improving outcomes.
On that score, a little intellectual humility is called for. We simply don’t
know yet what the full effects of the mandate will be. Not all of them are
predictable; not all will be quantifiable.
Either way, it’s best not to get too hung up on any particular technology or
technique for reducing carbon. There’s no substitute for taking a holistic
view of the energy system, balancing its various needs against the various
technologies capable of meeting them. Always, it is outcomes that matter.
Jensen Comment
Overlooked in the above article is the possible nuclear competition to expensive
solar power mandates.
In a world of global warming caused by our addiction to fossil fuels, there
is an urgent need to find sustainable alternative sources of energy.
If we don't, the future looks decidedly bleak for millions of people on this
planet: water and food shortages leading to famine and war.
Nuclear fusion has long been heralded as a potential answer to our prayers.
But it's always been "thirty years away", according to the industry joke.
Now several start-ups are saying they can make fusion a commercial reality
much sooner.
What is
nuclear fusion exactly?
Nuclear fusion is the merging of atomic nuclei to release masses of energy
and it has the potential to address our energy crisis.
It's the same process that powers the sun, and it's clean and - relatively -
safe. There are no emissions.
But
forcing these nuclei - deuterium and tritium, both forms of hydrogen - to
fuse together under immense pressure takes huge amounts of energy - more
than we've managed to get out so far.
School boards have recently banned songs and music
containing references to Santa Claus, Jesus and other religious Christmas
symbols. The New York City school system permits displays of Jewish menorahs and
the Muslim star and crescent but not the Christian Nativity scene.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2005/jan/1/20050101-113838-9193r/
The Associated Press reported Nov. 26: “A public
school teacher is suing his district and principal for barring him from using
excerpts from historical documents in his classroom because they contain
references to God and Christianity.” The historical documents are the
Declaration of Independence and “The Rights of the Colonists” by John Adams.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2005/jan/1/20050101-113838-9193r/
Speaking of politically incorrect holiday traditions, today is Sinterklaas
Day in The Netherlands. Take ten minutes and enjoy this description,
provided by David Sederis.
Jensen Comment
Nate combines the top polls, each of which is limited in one way or another by
methodology and possibly bias. Nate got his fame from predicting MLB baseball
that is a lot easier than election forecasting. I say easier for a number of
reasons, the major one being stationarity. The sampling populations in election
forecasting are a lot more non-stationary and can change day-by-day leading up
to election day.
Much is dependent upon voter turnout. Exhibit A is the lower turnout of
Hillary Clinton's followers in 2016 that did not vote because they thought she
had the election won without their votes.
Since Nate got burned predicting Scott Brown would not win Ted Kennedy's
Senate seat, Nate got better at election forecasting.
There isn’t a single piece of information produced by the CDC yesterday that
would point to a deteriorating health care system or a poorly functioning
one as the cause of the decrease in life expectancy.
In fact, the opposite may be true. For example, although the overall life
expectancy dropped, the death rate amongst members of every age group except
25-44 year-olds and those over 84 years of age actually improved. Indeed, in
those groups engaged in greater health care consumption and therefore more
impacted by its quality (the 45-74 year olds) the mortality actually
dropped.
And although one could correctly argue that 85 year-olds and older are also
consumers of healthcare, the issues at play in this group are much more
complicated and no conclusion could be gleamed from the data available. It
was in those age groups that are not large consumers of health care where
the mortality rate rose.
So, if it isn’t healthcare, what could be causing the death rates of 25-44
year-olds to rise so precipitously? The CDC, Dr. Raj, and even the Wall
Street Journal
answered
this question: accidents and suicides made for a rising incidence of deaths,
with smaller increases from pneumonia and influenza.
Indeed, for the two biggest killers and the two most directly affected by
the quality of healthcare delivered — heart disease and cancer — the death
rates diminished markedly. (See Tables below.)
Jensen Comment
This type of survey is misleading because it depends crucially upon
what questions are asked plus
how all questions are worded.
For example, there's a huge difference between the wording
of "illegal immigration" versus "Open borders to all seeking to enter." The
phrase "Illegal immigration" to most implies illegal immigration at rates
experienced in the last decade or so. The phrase "Open borders to all seeking to
enter" is an entirely different fear not mentioned in the survey, but it is a
fear that Trump probably wins heaviest on these days. Trump is not building his
political base on illegal immigration at present rates. He's building his base
on fears of open borders, and Democrats are not helping by avoiding mentioning
limits to welcomed immigration hordes.
There's a huge difference between the phrase "High medical
bills" versus "Spending $4+ trillion per year on Medicare-for-All." For many
spending $4+ trillion annually on most any single government program is
the most scary thing they can imagine. Others cannot even comprehend the
difference between $3 billion versus $3 trillion as long as fat cats pay the
difference. At $4+ trillion per year all cats will starve.
I also question how the sampling population "Americans"
was sampled. It's virtually impossible in research such as this to even reach
tens of millions of Americans, and there are tens of millions more who will
refuse to give out such information when contacted,
In other words, I contend that this study is more
misleading than helpful --- mostly due to what
questions are asked plus how all
questions are worded
The US
military budget is such a bloated monstrosity that it contains accounting
errors that could finance two-thirds of the cost of a government-run
single-payer health insurance system. All Americans could visit an unlimited
array of doctors at no out of pocket cost. At least that’s a notion
spreading on left-wing Twitter and endorsed and amplified by newly elected
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,
one of Democrats’ biggest
2018 sensations
and an undeniable master at the fine art of staying in the public
eye.
Unfortunately, it’s not true.
The idea
spread like a game of telephone from a Nation article
to the US Congress while losing a crucial point of detail: The Pentagon’s
accounting errors are genuinely enormous, but they’re also just accounting
errors — they don’t represent actual money that can be spent on something
else.
Proponents of this vision have the political wind at their backs and
continue to deploy the idea effectively to win intra-party arguments without
really making any headway on the core obstacles to writing a
Medicare-for-all bill that could become law. That said, to the extent that
political power rather than concrete legislation is the goal, that’s
probably for the best.
Misunderstandings fly around on Twitter all the time, and
AOC’s level of policy knowledge is pretty typical for a member of Congress.
But this particular flub is telling about progressive frustration over the
double standard on military versus non-military spending, and also the
fraught state of play regarding the push for a Medicare-for-all program.
The Pentagon’s mystery $21 trillion, explained
The underlying article by Dave Lindorff in the Nation
that kicked this off is an investigative report into the
Defense Department’s accounting practices.
Lindorff reveals that Pentagon accounting is quite weak, that the department
keeps flunking outside audits, that funds are shifted between accounts
without proper oversight, and that overall documentation of what’s actually
happening with the Pentagon’s vast budget is extremely poor.
Lindorff goes beyond these observations to allege that what’s happening
amounts to deliberate fraud, the purpose of which is to persuade Congress to
increase appropriations levels beyond what would otherwise be approved.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
We really cannot compare proposed Medicare-for-All plan without more specific
definitions of "Medicare-for-All" and the "cared for population." For example,
Medicare currently does not pay for the enormous cost of long-term nursing care.
Medicare only pays 80% of most of the things it does cover like hospital and
doctor care.
Also Medicare has built up trust funds over the 50 years using payroll
deductions from individuals and employers. The trust funds are not sustainable
at predicted usage rates, but it's not like the existing Medicare program did
not accumulate any finds for the elderly and disabled. A
Medicare-for-All plan does not have 50 years of payroll deductions to help pay
for an abrupt shock to the system.
Advocates of Medicare-for-All never mention that Medicare for all is mostly a
private sector program where claims are serviced in the private sector along
with private sector doctor, nursing, and medicine delivery of goods and
services. Medicare is not like the U.K. system where most services are delivered
by government employees.
The Nation's analysis of the Defense Department's expenses ignores the fact
that even if we entirely eliminated the current Army, Navy, and Air Force the
government's obligations to retired and disabled former military personnel would
carry on for hundreds of billions of dollars into the indefinite future. And how
long would the USA and its Medicare-for-All program survive without any Army,
Navy, and Air Force?
The Nation's analysis is an example of totally irresponsible and misleading
statistics.
“Medicare for all…would mean allowing individuals and employers to buy into
Medicare – basically a big public option.” Who says? Well Paul Krugman and
many others. This is not simply a debate about labels. This is a debate
about fundamental policy. Are we going to accept the status quo with the
tweak of a public option, or are we going to address the fundamental defects
in our system that have driven up costs, perpetuated mediocrity, and left
tens of millions vulnerable with impaired access to health care with all of
its consequences and often with intolerable financial hardship?
This
is similar to the debate that took place within the Democratic Party just
before Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama began jockeying for the 2008
presidential nomination. The Democratic Party machine was in complete
control of the policy debate on health care reform. The neoliberal party
elite had decided that we were going to “build on what works” –
employer-sponsored and union-supported plans – and reject single payer based
on their concepts of what was politically feasible. Those of us advocating
for the expanded and improved Medicare for all single payer approach were
ejected from the conversations (often rudely so – they were in charge!).
Similarly, with the contest for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination,
the debate at the platform committee confirmed that the battle had not
changed. The neoliberal leadership, represented by Neera Tanden, was
successful in rejecting the single payer Medicare for all plank.
Tanden,
of the Center of American Progress, has continued the fight for control of
the policy debate by releasing their new proposal, “Medicare Extra For All.”
Although some of the tweaks proposed seem beneficial, it basically continues
the current dysfunctional, fragmented financing system, but with one
important political change. They have stolen the “Medicare for all” label!
This has contributed to the ubiquitous deception that the public option is
Medicare for all. When the current candidates campaign on Medicare for all
but behind the scenes are supporting an option to buy into Medicare while
accepting campaign funds from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries,
we need to call them on their deception.
It is
no wonder the public is confused, even if they do not realize it. When Nobel
laureate Paul Krugman jumps in and says Medicare for all is allowing
individuals and employers to buy into Medicare as a public option, then we
know that the political campaigns are corrupted with deceptions. How can we
get the public to understand that a well designed, single payer national
health program – a bona fide Improved Medicare for All – is the reform that
they crave?