If you are opposed to the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) you may be hoping that the supreme court rules it unconstitutional. I believe that would be a disaster for many: those with pre-existing conditions who can not give coverage, people who can not switch employers or become entrepreneurs lest they lose coverage, young adults who can not stay on their parents' policies while in college. However, let's assume that disaster comes to pass - the supreme court makes us revert to the status quo of two years ago - what will the long term consequences be?
Well, remember that Obama Care was a response to a set of problems - rising health care costs leading companies to drop coverage and individuals to be priced out of the market leading to many more uninsured people, college kids that could not get coverage, sick people that could not get coverage at any price. All of those problems would come roaring back. Once the supreme court says we can't force people to buy coverage those pressures would build until the public demanded a fix. The logical fix would be to tax everyone and provide universal single payer coverage (a.k.a. Medicare for all). I for one think that's a good solution, but if you oppose ObamaCare I doubt that you do.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Friday, March 2, 2012
Religious Freedom vs. Women's Health
I am listening to NPR discussing the Blunt amendment trying to allow a religious exemption to providing healthcare. My comment was: Why has nobody mentioned that we routinely restrict religious freedom in other ways. Rastafarians can't smoke pot, Fundamentalist Mormons and Muslims can't practice polygamy, etc. Where is the Republican outrage over those restrictions?
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Fox News blathered about school prayer being reconsidered in the wake of yesterday's tragic shooting in Ohio. I would suggest that strong gun control laws might be more effective.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
School Choice
I live in one of the best public school districts in Michigan, rated 9 out of 10 stars by greatschools.org. Yet every day I drive my youngest child to an school in a district where the median income is about half that of where I live and the district rating is three stars. The school that my youngest son attends faces some problems: so many students are from poor homes that they just provide every child with a free breakfast and lunch, they were so short on funds for books in kindergarten that they sent home photocopied pages some weeks, students with less than stable home lives come to school unprepared and with behavioral issues.
My middle son also attends a school of choice, but it is in our district. In fact it is in the building that was my oldest son's neighborhood elementary school.
Recently I've seen several articles that decry school choice because it destroys neighborhood schools and many charters are unregulated and no more successful than the public schools which they replace. So, why do I choose to send two of my three kids to schools of choice?
School choice allows my youngest to learn in an immersion Chinese program. Research shows that learning a foreign language before the age of twelve is more effective than learning it later in life and has a host of benefits in general cognitive development. My middle son learns in a Montessori program that suits his learning style far better than a traditional classroom does.
School choice allows my middle son a learning environment better suited to his needs. It also allows students from other districts to be in his classes, making his school more diverse while affording them an opportunity they might not otherwise have.
What about the downsides of school choice mentioned above? I actually believe that they don't exist. My kids schools are regulated just like all other public schools. Neighborhood schools that are failing should be revamped instead of closed. The fact that they are closed is a consequence of a choice (a poor one in my opinion) that our society has made. In fact, instead of detracting from an inner city school system Post Oak Elementary pulled my youngest son from a relatively affluent district. My son brought with him two motivated, educated parents who can donate money for books and time for tutoring. He will ace the standardized tests.
My youngest son is learning Chinese. Additionally, I am pleased to report he ahead of where his brothers were at the same age in math and (on average) in reading. He enriches an impoverished district in many ways and it enriches him. Deregulation and closure of failing schools are awful problems but please don't conflate them with school choice. Taking away my choice won't solve those problems.
My middle son also attends a school of choice, but it is in our district. In fact it is in the building that was my oldest son's neighborhood elementary school.
Recently I've seen several articles that decry school choice because it destroys neighborhood schools and many charters are unregulated and no more successful than the public schools which they replace. So, why do I choose to send two of my three kids to schools of choice?
School choice allows my youngest to learn in an immersion Chinese program. Research shows that learning a foreign language before the age of twelve is more effective than learning it later in life and has a host of benefits in general cognitive development. My middle son learns in a Montessori program that suits his learning style far better than a traditional classroom does.
School choice allows my middle son a learning environment better suited to his needs. It also allows students from other districts to be in his classes, making his school more diverse while affording them an opportunity they might not otherwise have.
What about the downsides of school choice mentioned above? I actually believe that they don't exist. My kids schools are regulated just like all other public schools. Neighborhood schools that are failing should be revamped instead of closed. The fact that they are closed is a consequence of a choice (a poor one in my opinion) that our society has made. In fact, instead of detracting from an inner city school system Post Oak Elementary pulled my youngest son from a relatively affluent district. My son brought with him two motivated, educated parents who can donate money for books and time for tutoring. He will ace the standardized tests.
My youngest son is learning Chinese. Additionally, I am pleased to report he ahead of where his brothers were at the same age in math and (on average) in reading. He enriches an impoverished district in many ways and it enriches him. Deregulation and closure of failing schools are awful problems but please don't conflate them with school choice. Taking away my choice won't solve those problems.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
I am a JOB CREATOR
I learned programming and made a lot of money as an owner of a software company. I look like a self made man, but…
My company would not have been possible without the internet (which grew out of DARPAnet), the interstates my employees used to get to work, the public schools that gave me an educated workforce, the courts that allowed me to enforce contracts with clients, the government agencies that allowed me to know my food and water and medicines were safe, the postal service…
So, while I've been a big success, I owe a lot to the government. More importantly I want my kids to have the same kind of opportunities that I had. I am the 99%
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
SuperFreakonomics makes an unsupported claim
I finished reading SuperFreakonomics which repeatedly claimed that government solutions are more complex than necessary, with no evidence to support the assertion, so I sent them this e-mail. I'm not holding my breath waiting for a response.
I have read your books with great interest. Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics were in many ways about not accepting the conventional wisdom (drug dealers don't all get rich) and about not allowing your political views to shape your perceptions of how the world works (abortion decreases criminality). You prefer to make claims based on evidence.
Unfortunately, in SuperFreakonomics, you twice repeated an assertion that I believe is rooted in politics and is entirely unsupported by the data. Conservatives hold that government is less efficient than the private sector and that its solutions to problems are more complex than necessary.
It is unarguable that all complex human endeavors involve a large amount of waste. Government is full of bureaucrats engaged in empire building who would spend money more carefully if it were their own money that was being spent. However, I have spent time in private industry, which I can assure you is full of executives engaged in empire building who would spend money more carefully if it were their own money that was being spent.
As far as I can tell, there is no evidence that private industry is more efficient than government. Anecdotaly, we see a huge rate of small business failures (http://www.springerlink.com/content/u5218354gk84k205/). Large businesses also cause huge losses to our society, witness AIG, Enron, WorlCom, and Lehman. Management receives outsized compensation, even when performing so badly that corporate boards fire them (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/business/lets-stop-rewarding-failed-ceos-common-sense.html?_r=1&ref=business)
Private industry often provides complex solutions (like CDOs) to simple problems like home ownership. Executives laugh all the way to the bank (think Angelo Mozilo) while sticking shareholders and society with the downsides.
In fact, there are many problems for which government provides solutions that are less complex and more cost effective than the private sector (think of health care, education, parks, and highways). Many have argued, I believe correctly, that the U.S. system of delivering health care produces inferior results at greater cost than government run health care in other countries. Even if we only consider the U.S. we see Medicare and the VA providing more cost effective health care than private insurance companies. Medical billing is a private industry solution that is more complex than anything a government could dream up.
Countries without strong government programs such as Pakistan, Zimbabwe, and Somalia do not see complex problems solved effectively. In the history of the world no country has made its average citizen rich relative to the citizens of other countries without a strong government - so the complex problem that government solves best is how do we make our society grow rich. Perhaps you should stop doing our society the dis-service of claiming that governmental solutions are overly complex unless there is evidence to back that claim.
I have read your books with great interest. Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics were in many ways about not accepting the conventional wisdom (drug dealers don't all get rich) and about not allowing your political views to shape your perceptions of how the world works (abortion decreases criminality). You prefer to make claims based on evidence.
Unfortunately, in SuperFreakonomics, you twice repeated an assertion that I believe is rooted in politics and is entirely unsupported by the data. Conservatives hold that government is less efficient than the private sector and that its solutions to problems are more complex than necessary.
It is unarguable that all complex human endeavors involve a large amount of waste. Government is full of bureaucrats engaged in empire building who would spend money more carefully if it were their own money that was being spent. However, I have spent time in private industry, which I can assure you is full of executives engaged in empire building who would spend money more carefully if it were their own money that was being spent.
As far as I can tell, there is no evidence that private industry is more efficient than government. Anecdotaly, we see a huge rate of small business failures (http://www.springerlink.com/content/u5218354gk84k205/). Large businesses also cause huge losses to our society, witness AIG, Enron, WorlCom, and Lehman. Management receives outsized compensation, even when performing so badly that corporate boards fire them (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/business/lets-stop-rewarding-failed-ceos-common-sense.html?_r=1&ref=business)
Private industry often provides complex solutions (like CDOs) to simple problems like home ownership. Executives laugh all the way to the bank (think Angelo Mozilo) while sticking shareholders and society with the downsides.
In fact, there are many problems for which government provides solutions that are less complex and more cost effective than the private sector (think of health care, education, parks, and highways). Many have argued, I believe correctly, that the U.S. system of delivering health care produces inferior results at greater cost than government run health care in other countries. Even if we only consider the U.S. we see Medicare and the VA providing more cost effective health care than private insurance companies. Medical billing is a private industry solution that is more complex than anything a government could dream up.
Countries without strong government programs such as Pakistan, Zimbabwe, and Somalia do not see complex problems solved effectively. In the history of the world no country has made its average citizen rich relative to the citizens of other countries without a strong government - so the complex problem that government solves best is how do we make our society grow rich. Perhaps you should stop doing our society the dis-service of claiming that governmental solutions are overly complex unless there is evidence to back that claim.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Lip Service to Education
I constantly hear politicians, media pundits, teachers, and philanthropists opining on how important education is. Nevertheless, the fights almost always boil down to money. The fact that almost everyone ignores proven research on things that work but don't significantly affect the costs shows that providing a better education is not what the argument is all about.
The right wants to spend less on education, so they vilify the teachers unions. They talk about merit pay (but use it as an excuse to punish not reward), and abolishing teacher tenure (because newer teachers are paid less than those with seniority). Conversely, the left talks about class size and making sure that all teachers are "highly qualified." neither of which has been demonstrated to make substantial differences in achievement (Though I would argue that classes are far too large now, but that is another essay).
Here are a few things that would not cost a lot of money and which have been proven, yet I rarely hear either side in the debate seriously advocating for them:
1. Teach foreign language in earlier grades instead of in high school. You could put me in Beijing for a year and at the end of the year I would speak Chinese abysmally, but if you put my five year old there for a year, he'd speak fluently. The reason is not that he's so much smarter than me, but that the brain changes around the age of twelve, after which it becomes far less efficient at language acquisition. So, why do we wait until students are fourteen to start teaching foreign languages?
2. Start high school later in the day. Teens are chronically sleep deprived and their educational attainment suffers as a result. Study after study finds that switching them to a later schedule that better matches their circadian rhythms results in better cognitive function, yet we routinely make high school start earlier than middle school and elementary school.
3. Get rid of over processed foods in school meals. This week, the school tried to serve my kindergartener a "oatmeal chocolate chip bar" for breakfast. Ignoring the long list of chemicals in the ingredients, I found it had 9 grams of fat and 23 grams of sugar. It is unhealthy and when the sugar high wears off, the kids crash and can not learn. A recent study in Michigan found that eating school lunch instead of sack lunch was a bigger risk factor for obesity than two extra hours in front of a screen every day. Why not feed kids healthy food? It can't be that much more expensive.
4. Abolish DARE. Study after study shows that DARE is a waste of children's time. It does not affect drug use. After each study, DARE changes the curriculum a bit and claims that the last study was flawed because it studied an old curriculum. Why spend time and money on a program that doesn't work? Only because it makes adults feel happy that they are doing something about drugs in schools and to maintain good relations between the police and school administration.
Now that I've established that excellence in education is secondary to most arguments about education, I'd like to state for the record that you get what you pay for so until we increase education funding our system will continue to deteriorate.
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