Tag Archives: Identity Politics

National Endowment for Rich Farts

08 Wednesday Mar 2017

Posted by in Big Government, Charity, Subsidies

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Wailing has begun over the possible defunding and demise of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). How could those cretins propose to eliminate an institution so very critical to promoting artistic expression? If that’s your reaction, you haven’t thought much about the main beneficiaries of federal sinkholes like the NEA. Granted, at $146 million annually, it is not a major federal budget item, but I’d rather not stoop to defend a lousy program because it’s small. So what’s my beef with the NEA, you ask? Read on.

First, any implication that the NEA is the lifeblood of the arts is laughable. No, the arts won’t die if federal funding is denied. Jeff Jacoby quotes figures suggesting that grants from the NEA represented less than 1% of all support for the arts and culture in the U.S. in 2015. Great art was created prior to the establishment of the NEA in 1965. Without the NEA, such bungles as “Piss Christ” would have met with less acclaim. As such a minor funding vehicle, eliminating the NEA won’t make much difference to artists, but it will end a subsidy for wealthy patrons, who can and do provide support for worthy projects, but also derive essentially private benefits from the federal arts spigot.

A large share of NEA grant money goes to non-profit organizations that are already subsidized to the extent that they are not taxed. (Let’s face it: the term “non-profit” itself is often a term of art.) Large arts organizations, which receive a significant share of NEA grants, often have highly-paid administrators and sumptuous facilities. Contributions to those organizations are tax-deductible for the donors. And few of those organizations provide art to the public for free or at a discount. Indeed, as noted at the last link, they often charge significant prices for attendance, and their audiences include a disproportionate percentage of high-income patrons.

Lawrence Reed argues persuasively that government need not subsidize the arts in an article in his series on the Cliches of Progressivism. Here are the highlights:

  • “Government funding of the arts… carries with it all the downsides of dependence on politics.
  • Claims that arts spending is magically “multiplied” are specious and usually self-serving, and never look at alternative uses of the same money.
  • Culture arises naturally and spontaneously among people who chose to interact with each other. Art is part of that, but it also competes with all sorts of other things people choose to do with their time and money.
  • If art is truly important, then the last thing we should want to do is politicize it or divert it toward those things that people with power think we should see or hear.”

Reed’s comment regarding “multipliers” might need some explanation in this context. The NEA’s defenders often claim that each dollar of NEA grant money results in multiple additional grants from other sources, but there is absolutely no evidence to support this claim except for a requirement that NEA grants be matched at the state level (not to mention a requirement for a state-level arts agency). Obviously, that represents another cost to taxpayers. It is quite possible, in fact, that the NEA and matching state grants act as substitutes for, and depress, private arts giving. See this piece in Forbes for more background. This NBER research utilized a large panel data set on individual charities and found only mixed support for the proposition that government grants encourage private contributions. In fact, the estimated effect was ambiguous for individual categories of charitable giving (which did not explicitly address the arts as a category). In any case, a positive cross-sectional effect of government grants on private giving for individual charities is consistent with a negative effect on other charities that do not receive public grants.

In a 20-year-old report from the Heritage Foundation, Stuart Butler offered a list of reasons to defund the NEA, which have held up well. Here, I provide eight that seem relevant:

  1. The arts will have more than enough support without the NEA: See above.
  2. Welfare for cultural elitists: See above. NEA grants fund a number of big and very elite organizations, but they would have you believe that it’s a veritable welfare program for the arts. That is a huge distortion. There is no question that the distribution of patrons of these organizations skews to the wealthy.
  3. Discourages charitable gifts to the arts: See above. Is the award of an NEA grant the equivalent of establishing a credit record to an arts organization? This might hold up for a few small organizations with projects the NEA has funded, but again, the support for this proposition is anecdotal and self-serving, and the numbers are small. And is there an implied stain on the legitimacy of any organization unable to win such a grant?
  4. Lowers the quality of American art: Committee decisions and central planning are not conducive to the spirit of creativity. Public institutions are often guided by political agendas, and government-sanctioned art stands in sharp contradiction to the ideal of free expression. Butler quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Beauty will not come at the call of the legislature…. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
  5. Funds pornography: this is not my hot button… it’s an issue only to the extent that public funds should not be used for purposes only flimsily in the public interest that many taxpayers find morally repugnant.
  6. Promotes politically correct art: See #4 above. The merits are then judged on the basis of criteria like race, ethnicity, and gender identity, not the quality of the art itself.
  7. Wastes resources: Butler offers a few examples of the waste at the NEA, a shortcoming common to all bureaucracies. The NEA funds organizations that behave as non-profit cronyists, engaging in lobbying efforts for more support. Butler also cites evidence that recipients of government grants in the UK hire more administrative staff than non-recipients, and tend not to reduce ticket prices.
  8. Funding the NEA disturbs the U.S. tradition of limited government: I suppose this goes without saying….

The federal government in the U.S. was granted a set of enumerated powers in the Constitution, and promoting the arts was not one of them. It wasn’t as if the subject didn’t come up at the Constitutional Convention. It did, and it was voted down. Today, entrenched interests at organizations like the NEA and National Public Radio distort the character of the constituencies they serve. In reality, those constituencies  are heavily concentrated among the cultural and economic elite. The NEA and NPR also promote the fiction that they are all that stand between access to the arts and culture and a bleak, artless dystopia. Give them credit for creating a fantasy about which the political left readily suspends disbelief.

The Vagina Subsidies

08 Wednesday Feb 2017

Posted by in Health Care, Subsidies

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Many believe that women are entitled to taxpayer subsidies by virtue of “reproductive rights”, or simply gender disparities in health care costs. Is this reasonable from an economic perspective? Is it fair? Some components of this claim on public resources are highly controversial. I discussed these issues last week in the following post, originally titled “Spite and the ‘Right’ To Subsidies”:

The Women’s March on Washington on January 21st was not precise in communicating its real objectives. But the costumes were cute, and some critics felt that more of the men in attendance should have worn them. Anyway, the leaders and organizers fell short in terms of articulating a coherent agenda. Unless, of course, you just “got it”. These women were angry, but it’s not as contagious as they think: a great many circumspect women recognize the unmatched freedoms, privileges, and prosperity enjoyed by women (and men) in the U.S. The inherent divisiveness of identity politics is simply not appealing to everyone.

There are a number of reasons why those marching unfortunates might feel put upon, and it must have felt cathartic to wail and gnash teeth. The dissatisfaction is mostly related to the fact that Donald Trump is the president, but if I had to guess, I’d say a quarter of the marchers weren’t registered to vote. Probably a third of the remainder did not vote, despite their registration.

All that aside, what sort of policy purpose did the marchers hope to achieve? For one thing, they do not want to lose federal funding and cross-subsidies for support of women’s health issues, including reproductive rights or family planning (terms of art for preventing pregnancies). That’s a passable translation of “stay away from my vagina!” There are several avenues through which the federal government arranges payments or subsidies for women’s health services such as childbirth, maternity care, and birth-prevention products and services:

  1. Medicaid reimbursements account for the bulk of direct federal funding for family planning services; states are responsible for a major share of reimbursements as well.
  2. Federal funding also occurs under Title X, the Public Health Service Act of 1970, which authorizes federal grants for family planning services.
  3. Indirect funding occurs through cross-subsidies inherent in the structure of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare:
    • The ACA requires health insurance to include a set of “essential benefits”. Premium payments from those for whom such benefits are superfluous subsidize those who require those benefits.
    • The ACA prohibits “gender rating”, so that men effectively subsidize the higher cost of care and coverage for women (up to roughly middle age).
  4. Those purchasing coverage on the Obamacare exchanges may be eligible for federal subsidies on their premium payments.

Both Medicaid and Title X grants are intended to serve the family-planning needs of low-income women. Likewise, the federal subsidies (#4) for insurance covering family planning services, including contraceptives, are designed to assist low-income women. The cross-subsidies inherent in the structure of Obamacare premia confer family planning benefits (and penalties) across a broad range of incomes.

Reproductive Rights and Family Planning

Many taxpayers object to the use of tax dollars to pay for contraceptive services on religious or moral grounds. This is unrelated to a woman’s right to use contraceptives; it has to do with coerced payment for anyone’s contraceptives. The Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision relieved private employers of the obligation to pay for abortifacients on religious grounds, however.

Even more controversial is the idea that federal tax dollars might be used to fund abortions. In fact, that is outlawed by the Hyde Amendment, a temporary provision routinely attached to budget appropriation bills each year. This amendment restricts the use of federal and state funds for abortion to cases of rape, incest, and when the mother’s life is in danger. Elective abortions, however, are not eligible for taxpayer funding. Unfortunately, Hyde and a related executive order issued by President Obama have not been wholly effective at preventing premium cross-subsidies and taxpayer subsidies from paying for elective abortions. That’s because of the limited choices of insurance plans available in many states and the failure of insurers and public authorities to monitor compliance. Carl Anderson in National Review explained these issues in “Obamacare’s Taxpayer-Funded Abortions“. Anderson points to the findings of a 2014 report from the federal General Accounting Office (GAO):

“Twenty-eight states have a legal environment that allows insurance plans within these exchanges to cover abortion. Among these 28 states, they found that 1,036 plans include abortion coverage, including every plan in New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Hawaii. More than 95 percent of the plans in Massachusetts, New York, and California also cover abortion.

… The GAO report makes clear that those who want to find a plan that does not cover abortion will have a very difficult time. In some cases, the information is available in the Summary of Benefits. In other cases, it is only available on the insurer’s website. In other cases, the information is available only by calling the insurer.”

The ACA also required insurers to account and bill separately for abortion coverage, but compliance is spotty:

“… the GAO found that, of the 18 insurers it investigated, none of them charged separately for abortion coverage, and none of them even itemized the coverage on their bills.”

Planned Parenthood

It’s also quite likely that Title X grants and even Medicaid are funding abortions, despite prohibition by the Hyde Amendment. Medicaid is rife with mismanagement, with tens of billions of dollars of improper payments each year. Title X grants, if not tied to specific procedures, are used to cover overhead costs, some of which undoubtedly support the abortion practices of certain health service providers. Planned Parenthood (PP) is the largest abortion practice in the country, in furtherance of Margaret Sanger’s eugenic vision. Abortions have been declining nationwide in recent years, but PP’s abortion count has been fairly stable. Between 2009 and 2014, several other prominent PP services declined by half to two-thirds, such as cancer screenings, breast exams/breast care, and pap smears, while PP’s total income grew.

PP has aborted more than 300,000 pregnancies every year since 2007, yet the organization claims that those procedures account for only 3% of its activity. The 3% figure is derived by treating an abortion as the equivalent of a pregnancy test, or an STD test, or a breast exam, a PAP smear, or any other “discrete clinical interaction”. This renders the 3% claim meaningless, or much worse, a deception. Abortion is a costly procedure relative to most of the other services counted by PP as equivalent. “Prenatal care” services can be complex, but the small count of such services delivered (about 19,000 annually) indicates that it does not account for a major part of PP’s budget.

It is difficult to find information on PP’s fee revenue by service; one analysis concluded that abortions accounted for about 52% of PP’s fee income in 2010. But it is impossible to know exactly how the organization allocates public funds. Of course, fees from some services might cross-subsidize others. But almost half of PP’s annual budget is funded by taxpayers. Therefore, at a minimum, PP should be required to provide more auditable information on the question of how it allocates taxpayer funds.

Gender Rating

Another major source of cross subsidies is the absence of gender rating in insurance coverage under Obamacare and other law. Health care costs are higher for women than men for a variety of reasons: First, of course, there is childbirth and maternity care. Women also tend to utilize clinical services at higher rates than men. Perhaps women are more careful about attending to their health needs, as they are more likely than men to have regular checkups. They tend to have more stress fractures and other musculo-skeletal injuries. And they live longer than men, creating higher costs in their senior years. In the past, gender rating by insurers in the individual market led to premium disparities between women and men of 25%-85%. Some states have prohibited or restricted gender rating for years, however, and employer plans nationally have been prohibited from gender rating since 1978.

Prohibitions against gender rating, like other forms of community rating, are ill-founded from an economic perspective. Hadley Heath put it well in 2013 in “Women Should Pay More for Health Insurance“:

“Pregnancy and childbearing aside, women seek preventive care and visit doctors more often. But these additional screenings cost money, and the person receiving the care should pay for it, not other members of her insurance pool (community-rated or not). After all, women may reap the benefits of this behavior by living longer lives; they should also take on the costs. …

A better, more equitable solution would be for both men and women to pay for more noncatastrophic health expenditures outside an insurance plan. This is the only way to ensure that individuals — not pools of people — pay for what they consume. … If our premiums don’t reflect our risk, our claims or our costs, then some people will be overcharged and others undercharged. The overcharged parties will underinsure, and the undercharged parties will overinsure, perpetuating the problems in our current system.”

Those who over-insure, or who have access to services at prices below cost by virtue of mandates and cross subsidies, will over-utilize scarce health care resources. Eliminating the prohibition on gender rating would not foreclose the opportunity to obtain reasonably-priced health care coverage, however. In fact, eliminating over-charges to men would give them an incentive to remain in the risk pool, which would restrain pricing in age ranges through which women experience higher costs. The elimination of cross subsidies to women would ease cost pressure in the delivery of services as well. And interstate competition among insurers would give women a better set of choices and prices. Heterosexual married couples would split the difference in gender-rated premium levels, of course, but lesbian couples would probably bear higher costs. In general, allowing choice in selecting coverage levels would focus costs on cost-causers, a requirement for economic efficiency. For example, to the extent that many pregnancies are intended, maternity care actually fails to meet the definition of an insurable risk. Requiring others to pay those costs creates an incredibly arbitrary and unfair burden, though insuring against complications is a different matter.

Assisting Low-Income Women

Again, much of the federal funding at issue is directed at low-income women. This includes Medicaid, Title X grants, and Obamacare subsidies on policies purchased through the state exchanges. Current discussions regarding an ACA replacement plan would subsidize low-income individuals via refundable tax credits, which are free of the nasty incentive effects of coverage mandates combined with cross subsidies. While some contend that Medicaid is under threat, the most “extreme” plans discussed thus far are limited to replacing current federal funding practices with block grants to the states, who manage the program. The grants might be frozen at current funding levels. In view of the Medicaid waste identified by the GAO, there is a need to create incentives for states to manage the program more effectively.

The rules prohibiting taxpayer-funded abortion payments are unlikely to change, though they might be given a more permanent form than by Hyde, and compliance efforts might be tightened. It is mistaken to argue in this context that denying funds to a poor woman for an abortion is the equivalent of burdening society with more dependency. One error is in thinking that somehow life is for sale by taxpayers. It is not. The second is in assigning a negative value to a person with untold potential. Those individuals should be thought of as sentient human assets to be nurtured under policies that promote family stability, effective educational institutions and incentives for self-reliance. The third mistake is in selling short the charitable motives of pro-lifers, most of whom know that true charity has nothing to do with the state.

Your Vagina, My Money

The marchers on the 21st of January were motivated in part by possible changes in the availability of federal tax money for women’s health care under the Trump Administration. There are several avenues through which that support is provided as aid to low-income women. The funding mechanisms and management of these programs must be improved, and they must be made more accountable to taxpayers. Moreover, subsidies to women are provided through the structure of premiums under Obamacare, which distort economic incentives, misallocate resources, and undermine the stability of health care costs and insurance premia. An end to “one-side-fits-all” insurance mandates and gender rating would go far in improving the efficiency and equity of health insurance.

The marchers’ concern also revolves around subsidized access to contraceptives and federal support for organizations that provide abortion services. Even complete removal of that support would have no bearing on fundamental “rights” in any true sense. It has nothing to do with the existence of a right to abort children, only the question of who pays. Ultimately, your reproductive decisions, and your non-reproductive decisions, should be your own financial responsibility, your insurer’s, or that of others who might wish to assist you. Private donors give many millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood every year, and presumably could give more. Don’t ask for taxpayers to be involved with your vagina in any way.

Spite and the “Right” to Subsidies

02 Thursday Feb 2017

Posted by in Health Care, Subsidies

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img_3898

The Women’s March on Washington on January 21st was not precise in communicating its real objectives. But the costumes were cute, and some critics felt that more of the men in attendance should have worn them. Anyway, the leaders and organizers fell short in terms of articulating a coherent agenda. Unless, of course, you just “got it”. These women were angry, but it’s not as contagious as they think: a great many circumspect women recognize the unmatched freedoms, privileges, and prosperity enjoyed by women (and men) in the U.S. And the inherent divisiveness of identity politics is simply not appealing to everyone.

There are a number of reasons why those marching unfortunates might feel put upon, and it must have felt cathartic to wail and gnash teeth. The dissatisfaction is mostly related to the fact that Donald Trump is the president. But if I had to guess, I’d say a quarter of the marchers weren’t registered to vote. Probably a third of the remainder did not vote, despite their registration.

All that aside, what sort of policy purpose did the marchers hope to achieve? For one thing, they do not want to lose federal funding and cross-subsidies for support of women’s health issues, including reproductive rights or family planning (terms of art for preventing pregnancies). That’s a passable translation of “stay away from my vagina!” There are several avenues through which the federal government arranges payments or subsidies for women’s health services such as childbirth, maternity care, and birth-prevention products and services:

  1. Medicaid reimbursements account for the bulk of direct federal funding for family planning services; states are responsible for a major share of reimbursements as well.
  2. Federal funding also occurs under Title X, the Public Health Service Act of 1970, which authorizes federal grants for family planning services.
  3. Indirect funding occurs through cross-subsidies inherent in the structure of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare:
    • The ACA requires health insurance to include a set of “essential benefits”. Premium payments from those for whom such benefits are superfluous subsidize those who require those benefits.
    • The ACA prohibits “gender rating”, so that men effectively subsidize the higher cost of care and coverage for women (up to roughly middle age).
  4. Those purchasing coverage on the Obamacare exchanges may be eligible for federal subsidies on their premium payments.

Both Medicaid and Title X grants are intended to serve the family-planning needs of low-income women. Likewise, the federal subsidies (#4) for insurance covering family planning services, including contraceptives, are designed to assist low-income women. The cross-subsidies inherent in the structure of Obamacare premia confer family planning benefits (and penalties) across a broad range of incomes.

Reproductive Rights and Family Planning

Many taxpayers object to the use of tax dollars to pay for contraceptive services on religious or moral grounds. This is unrelated to a woman’s right to use contraceptives; it has to do with coerced payment for anyone’s contraceptives. The Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision relieved private employers of the obligation to pay for abortifacients on religious grounds, however.

Even more controversial is the idea that federal tax dollars might be used to fund abortions. In fact, that is outlawed by the Hyde Amendment, a temporary provision routinely attached to budget appropriation bills each year. This amendment restricts the use of federal and state funds for abortion to cases of rape, incest, and when the mother’s life is in danger. Elective abortions, however, are not eligible for taxpayer funding. Unfortunately, Hyde and a related executive order issued by President Obama have not been wholly effective at preventing premium cross-subsidies and taxpayer subsidies from paying for elective abortions. That’s because of the limited choices of insurance plans available in many states and the failure of insurers and public authorities to monitor compliance. Carl Anderson in National Review explained these issues in “Obamacare’s Taxpayer-Funded Abortions“. Anderson points to the findings of a 2014 report from the federal General Accounting Office (GAO):

“Twenty-eight states have a legal environment that allows insurance plans within these exchanges to cover abortion. Among these 28 states, they found that 1,036 plans include abortion coverage, including every plan in New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Hawaii. More than 95 percent of the plans in Massachusetts, New York, and California also cover abortion.

… The GAO report makes clear that those who want to find a plan that does not cover abortion will have a very difficult time. In some cases, the information is available in the Summary of Benefits. In other cases, it is only available on the insurer’s website. In other cases, the information is available only by calling the insurer.”

The ACA also required insurers to account and bill separately for abortion coverage, but compliance is spotty:

“… the GAO found that, of the 18 insurers it investigated, none of them charged separately for abortion coverage, and none of them even itemized the coverage on their bills.”

Planned Parenthood

It’s also quite likely that Title X grants and even Medicaid are funding abortions, despite prohibition by the Hyde Amendment. Medicaid is rife with mismanagement, with tens of billions of dollars of improper payments each year. Title X grants, if not tied to specific procedures, are used to cover overhead costs, some of which undoubtedly support the abortion practices of certain health service providers. Planned Parenthood (PP) is the largest abortion practice in the country, in furtherance of Margaret Sanger’s eugenic vision. Abortions have been declining nationwide in recent years, but PP’s abortion count has been fairly stable. Between 2009 and 2014, several other prominent PP services declined by half to two-thirds, such as cancer screenings, breast exams/breast care, and pap smears, while PP’s total income grew.

PP has aborted more than 300,000 pregnancies every year since 2007, yet the organization claims that those procedures account for only 3% of its activity. The 3% figure is derived by treating an abortion as the equivalent of a pregnancy test, or an STD test, or a breast exam, a PAP smear, or any other “discrete clinical interaction”. This renders the 3% claim meaningless, or much worse, a deception. Abortion is a costly procedure relative to most of the other services counted by PP as equivalent. “Prenatal care” services can be complex, but the small count of such services delivered (about 19,000 annually) indicates that it does not account for a major part of PP’s budget.

It is difficult to find information on PP’s fee revenue by service; one analysis concluded that abortions accounted for about 52% of PP’s fee income in 2010. But it is impossible to know exactly how the organization allocates public funds. Of course, fees from some services might cross-subsidize others. But almost half of PP’s annual budget is funded by taxpayers. Therefore, at a minimum, PP should be required to provide more auditable information on the question of how it allocates taxpayer funds.

Gender Rating

Another major source of cross subsidies is the absence of gender rating in insurance coverage under Obamacare and other law. Health care costs are higher for women than men for a variety of reasons: First, of course, there is childbirth and maternity care. Women also tend to utilize clinical services at higher rates than men. Perhaps women are more careful about attending to their health needs, as they are more likely than men to have regular checkups. They tend to have more stress fractures and other musculo-skeletal injuries. And they live longer than men, creating higher costs in their senior years. In the past, gender rating by insurers in the individual market led to premium disparities between women and men of 25%-85%. Some states have prohibited or restricted gender rating for years, however, and employer plans nationally have been prohibited from gender rating since 1978.

Prohibitions against gender rating, like other forms of community rating, are ill-founded from an economic perspective. Hadley Heath put it well in 2013 in “Women Should Pay More for Health Insurance“:

“Pregnancy and childbearing aside, women seek preventive care and visit doctors more often. But these additional screenings cost money, and the person receiving the care should pay for it, not other members of her insurance pool (community-rated or not). After all, women may reap the benefits of this behavior by living longer lives; they should also take on the costs. …

A better, more equitable solution would be for both men and women to pay for more noncatastrophic health expenditures outside an insurance plan. This is the only way to ensure that individuals — not pools of people — pay for what they consume. … If our premiums don’t reflect our risk, our claims or our costs, then some people will be overcharged and others undercharged. The overcharged parties will underinsure, and the undercharged parties will overinsure, perpetuating the problems in our current system.”

Those who over-insure, or who have access to services at prices below cost by virtue of mandates and cross subsidies, will over-utilize scarce health care resources. Eliminating the prohibition on gender rating would not foreclose the opportunity to obtain reasonably-priced health care coverage, however. In fact, eliminating over-charges to men would give them an incentive to remain in the risk pool, which would restrain pricing in age ranges through which women experience higher costs. The elimination of cross subsidies to women would ease cost pressure in the delivery of services as well. And interstate competition among insurers would give women a better set of choices and prices. Heterosexual married couples would split the difference in gender-rated premium levels, of course, but lesbian couples would probably bear higher costs. In general, allowing choice in selecting coverage levels would focus costs on cost-causers, a requirement for economic efficiency. For example, to the extent that many pregnancies are intended, maternity care actually fails to meet the definition of an insurable risk. Requiring others to pay those costs creates an incredibly arbitrary and unfair burden, though insuring against complications is a different matter.

Assisting Low-Income Women

Again, much of the federal funding at issue is directed at low-income women. This includes Medicaid, Title X grants, and Obamacare subsidies on policies purchased through the state exchanges. Current discussions regarding an ACA replacement plan would subsidize low-income individuals via refundable tax credits, which are free of the nasty incentive effects of coverage mandates combined with cross subsidies. While some contend that Medicaid is under threat, the most “extreme” plans discussed thus far are limited to replacing current federal funding practices with block grants to the states, who manage the program. The grants might be frozen at current funding levels. In view of the Medicaid waste identified by the GAO, there is a need to create incentives for states to manage the program more effectively.

The rules prohibiting taxpayer-funded abortion payments are unlikely to change, though they might be given a more permanent form than by Hyde, and compliance efforts might be tightened. It is mistaken to argue in this context that denying funds to a poor woman for an abortion is the equivalent of burdening society with more dependency. One error is in thinking that somehow life is for sale by taxpayers. It is not. The second is in assigning a negative value to a person with untold potential. Those individuals should be thought of as sentient human assets to be nurtured under policies that promote family stability, effective educational institutions and incentives for self-reliance. The third mistake is in selling short the charitable motives of pro-lifers, most of whom know that true charity has nothing to do with the state.

Your Vagina, My Money

The marchers on the 21st of January were motivated in part by possible changes in the availability of federal tax money for women’s health care under the Trump Administration. There are several avenues through which that support is provided as aid to low-income women. The funding mechanisms and management of these programs must be improved, and they must be made more accountable to taxpayers. Moreover, subsidies to women are provided through the structure of premiums under Obamacare, which distort economic incentives, misallocate resources, and undermine the stability of health care costs and insurance premia. An end to “one-side-fits-all” insurance mandates and gender rating would go far in improving the efficiency and equity of health insurance.

The marchers’ concern also revolves around subsidized access to contraceptives and federal support for organizations that provide abortion services. Even complete removal of that support would have no bearing on fundamental “rights” in any true sense. It has nothing to do with the existence of a right to abort children, only the question of who pays. Ultimately, your reproductive decisions, and your non-reproductive decisions, should be your own financial responsibility, your insurer’s, or that of others who might wish to assist you. Private donors give many millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood every year, and presumably could give more. Don’t ask for taxpayers to be involved with your vagina in any way.

Post-Election Thoughts: The “Idiocracy”

11 Friday Nov 2016

Posted by in Free Speech, Liberty, Tyranny

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racism

I keep reading about “idiots” in my news feed, directed by angry supporters of Hillary Clinton at anyone who voted for Donald Trump. These crestfallen partisans do not appreciate an irony: their very arrogance and desire to proscribe the freedom of others to speak and act freely actually helped to coalesce Trump’s support. So smug are they in their beliefs and attitudes that they are able to render high-handed judgements as to whether certain beliefs are socially acceptable. That there are many dimensions to social problems is lost on this crowd: it’s all or nothing. You are an idiot, a racist, a misogynist, or a homophobe if you support free speech (because it might offend), private property (you are greedy), free markets (capitalist pig), law enforcement (racist), gun rights (violent), or if you hold attitudes that are “traditional” or religious. In fact, you are probably suspect if you are white, asian, or in any way successful: you are too privileged to understand the negative consequences of your privilege.

Here’s my disclaimer: I don’t particularly like Donald Trump and some of his antics. I strongly disagree with a few of his most prominent policy proposals. Nevertheless, I voted for him because Hillary Clinton is so obviously a devotee of centralized power and she is irredeemably crooked. I was repelled by the identity politics she celebrated, and I found a certain aspect of Donald Trump’s disregard for political correctness to be refreshing.

The fact is that many voters are sick and tired of the name-calling by the left, and of the proscriptive behavior it enables. I’m one of them. Robby Soave at Reason just wrote an excellent article on this point:

“The leftist drive to enforce a progressive social vision was relentless, and it happened too fast. I don’t say this because I’m opposed to that vision—like most members of the under-30 crowd, I have no problem with gender neutral pronouns—I say this because it inspired a backlash that gave us Trump….

There is a cost to depriving people of the freedom (in both the legal and social senses) to speak their mind. The presidency just went to the guy whose main qualification, according to his supporters, is that he isn’t afraid to speak his.“

In the wake of an election that didn’t go their way, the identity politickers are proving themselves to be petulant and vulgar creeps. They decry the Trump election as racist by placing entire demographics and regions into an “idiot” trick bag. They cry racism on counties in which the majority voted for Barack Obama in 2012, but flipped to Donald Trump in 2016.

But no one is shamed. I’d have loved it if Carly Fiorina had been nominated. I’d vote for Walter Williams if he ran for president. I have great respect for Peter Thiel but I don’t know whether I’d vote for him. I might. In the end, it’s usually about policies, and if your policy portfolio has an excessive basis in identity politics and political correctness, and if you are strident about it, don’t be surprised if you stir some resentment. The idiots just might be the ones shooting themselves in the foot.

Note: Yes, I’ve used that cartoon before. I like it!

Censor Me, For My Fathers Have Sinned

30 Thursday Apr 2015

Posted by in Marketplace of Ideas

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Male Privilege

Are you White? Asian? Male? A stay-at-home mom? Or maybe your family earns too much? Or your parents did? If any of those are “yes”, you just might be disqualified to engage in debate with those who self-proclaim their big-heartedness. You won’t be disqualified if your views are deemed “correct”, but then “debate” won’t really be an issue. If your views are “incorrect”, your privileged-group status is the stain of original sin, as Warren Meyer would say. Not only are you disqualified; you are an appropriate target for ad hominems.

I wrote about this phenomenon after experiencing it first-hand a few months ago in “Privileged While Males May Not Comment“. Warren Meyer at Coyote Blog just got me excited again when he expressed his amazement in “The Left and Original Sin“:

“… the sins of past generations somehow accrue to individuals of this generation. If you are male, you are born guilty for the infractions of all past males.“

Meyer mentions the recent incident involving Ben Affleck, who asked the host of a PBS documentary to omit any mention of a slave-owning Affleck ancestor:

“So an ancestor held opinions about slavery we all would find horrifying today. But given the times, I can bet that pretty much every relative of Affleck’s of that era, slaveholder or no, held opinions (say about women) that we would likely find offensive today.

Congrats to Affleck for achieving some negative alchemy here. He took an issue (his ancestor’s slave-holding) that did not reflect on him at all and converted it via some “I am a star” douchebaggery into something that makes him look like a tool.”

In addition to the demographic origins of sin mentioned above, you are likely to be stained if you believe in the profit motive, gun rights, or any number of other individual liberties. If you can’t be marked as a sinner by some privileged-group identity, the Left will find another label. If you are a black conservative, you will be called an “Uncle Tom”. Dealing with your arguments is just too inconvenient. As Meyer mentions in another recent post, Leftists are particularly unlikely to pass Bryan Caplan’s Ideological Turing test. They simply don’t listen to, or understand, other points of view.