Tag Archives: J.D. Tuccille

Medicare For All … and Tax Hikes, Long Waits, Inferior Care

23 Thursday Jun 2022

Posted by in Health Care, Health Insurance

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Political humorist P.J. O’Rourke once quipped that if you think health care is expensive now, wait till it’s free! A Stephen Green post reminded me of the source of that wisdom. But there are many who say they don’t understand why we simply don’t offer the Medicare program to everyone … free! Well, the reasons are quite simple: we can’t afford it, and it would be bad policy. In fact, it’s too costly and bad policy even if it isn’t free! Medicare is technically insolvent as it is — broke, in plain language. According to the Medicare Trustees 2022 Report linked above, the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will be depleted by 2028. That only means the Medicare system has authority to take funds the Treasury borrows to pay ongoing benefits through 2028, so the remaining trust fund balance is little consolation. The long-term actuarial deficit is $700 billion, but it’s possibly as high as $1.5 trillion under an alternative, high-cost scenario shown in the Trustee’s report.

Single Payer Medicare?

Extending free Medicare to the entire population would cost over $30 trillion in the first 10 years, and that’s a conservative estimate. And be forewarned: single-payer health care is government health care, which invariably leads to rationed access and protracted waiting times, poor quality, and escalating costs. For a detailed look at many of the quality problems suffered by Medicare patients, see this paper by Michael Cannon and Jacqueline Pohida. Don’t be deceived by claims that Medicare’s administrative costs are lower than private insurance: The real cost of Medicare is largely hidden through the imposition of low reimbursement rates to providers, while taxpayers get stuck with a significant bill.

Avik Roy has discussed variations on “Medicare For All” (M4A), most of which share very little with today’s Medicare. Not only would they fail to address its shortcomings; they would be much worse. Some do not include the range of private plans currently offered through Medicare Advantage. In fact, under the plans offered by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, Medicare Advantage would be terminated, as would all other private insurance for the working-age population. Medicaid would also be eliminated. “Medicare”, in its surviving form, would be the single-payer system, “free” at the point of care and without premiums. Again, a free health care buffet would unleash gluttonous demand, so certain restrictions must be in place to limit pricing and access to care. Think rationing, which should sound ominous to those whose health is failing.

Physician reimbursement rates under traditional Medicare are now only about 60% of private reimbursements, and that filters down to the wages earned by other workers in the health care sector. Naturally, broadening Medicare’s reach will cause providers and their employees to drop-out or cut back. And again, services will be subject to various other forms of rationing. These are unavoidable failings of free or heavily-subsidized health care systems, not to mention the massive burden on taxpayers. And by the way, the “rich” are nowhere near rich enough to pay for all of it.

As to the overall effects, here’s what CBO Director Phillip L. Swagel told the Senate Budget Committee recently, as quoted in Reason by JD Tuccille:

“The increase in demand for personal health care would exceed the increase in supply, resulting in greater unmet demand than the amount under current law. The increase in unmet demand would correspond to increased congestion in the health care system, including delays and forgone care.”

The “increase in supply” mentioned by Swagel is something of a pipe dream.

Buy-Ins and Public Option

There are less drastic proposals than full-blown M4A, such as so-called Medicare buy-ins. For example, those age 50 – 64 might be given the option to “buy-in” to Medicare coverage. It’s not clear whether that would include a choice of Medicare Advantage plans. Many would find the coverage available through traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage to be inadequate. It is often inferior to private plans, including the lack of dependent coverage and no out-of-pocket maximum for traditional Medicare. Supplemental coverage would be necessary for many individuals choosing the latter.

Another question is how employers would adjust to a segment of their work force in the 50-64 age group opting-out of sponsored coverage. Would the company be required to pick-up the Medicare tab? Would there be compensatory adjustments in wages? Fully compensatory changes are unlikely. Even with partial adjustments, how would an employer adjust company-wide wage scales for younger workers who perform the same or similar duties as those opting into Medicare. And what of the tax-free benefit for workers on employer-paid premiums? Medicare premiums are not tax deductible… at least not yet!

All of the other concerns about low provider reimbursement rates would apply to a Medicare buy-in. The supply of medical care, particularly to the segment buying in, might prove thin. The buy-in option would have very little impact on the number of uninsured individuals. However, several studies have found that the buy-in option would increase premiums for private plans on the individual market (see the last link). That’s largely because providers will try to stick private insurers and patients with the burden of cross-subsidizing Medicare buy-ins.

Another proposal is for a Medicare plan or similar public option to be made available to all in the exchange marketplace. This would take a more massive toll on taxpayers and health care access and quality than the buy-in approach. Moreover, because of pressure for cross-subsidies, private plans will struggle to stay in business. The destruction would be gradual, but the public option would slowly eliminate choice from the marketplace. Cannon and Pohida believe that offering a public option could lead to improvements if the private and public plans are allowed to compete on a level playing field, largely in terms of subsidies and regulatory hurdles, but that is highly unlikely.

Cuts Ahead?

A lesser known issue is the impact of spending caps put in place under the Affordable Care Act. These apply to Medicare and Medicaid as well as federal subsidies on policies purchased on the Obamacare exchanges. When those caps are exceeded, access becomes temporarily restricted, with some practices actually closing their doors for a period of days or weeks. Health economist John Goodman notes that seniors tend to eat into the allowable spending amounts much faster than younger cohorts. That means seniors might be denied costlier forms of care. To the extent that any variation on M4A covers a broader age range, there might be more pressure to curtail certain forms of care for seniors, which would be a most unfortunate case of policy-induced age discrimination.

As for Medicare as it stands now, Goodman describes the potential cuts that are coming. These include the possibility of reduced amenities (e.g., hospital wards with more patients per room and lower-cost meals), and as already mentioned, longer waits and restricted availability of costlier treatments. Goodman states that the necessary cuts to make Medicare whole would be equivalent to the loss of three years of coverage for a 65-year old, and the cuts will affect both traditional Medicare and privately-issued (but publicly subsidized) Advantage plans.

Conclusion

There’s no chance any form of M4A would reduce the cost of care or improve access to care. An expanded Medicare would bear the hallmarks of central planning that have accelerated the monopolization of health care under Obamacare. And like Obamacare, the final form of any M4A plan will be the product of negotiations between self-interested politicians, corporatists and regulators. Big pharmaceutical companies, insurers, large hospital systems, and other interest groups will wrangle for the rents that “reform” legislation might bring. Costs will rise and access to care will be restricted. Taxpayers will be saddled with a large chunk of the cost.

In the end it’s likely to be a mess. Far better to adopt reforms that would bring more innovation, choice, and competition to the markets for health insurance and health care. That includes expanding the range of options available under private Medicare (Advantage). At the same time, Obamacare should be scrapped in favor of a range of a greater range of private options with income-dependent subsidies, including catastrophic coverage only, as well as reduced regulation of insurers and providers.

Ideology and the Public School Monopoly

15 Tuesday Oct 2019

Posted by in Education

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I toured our local public high school not long ago after some renovations. It’s my old school and my kids attended there as well, though it’s been largely stripped of its old character. Our sweet tour guide, when asked about school security and whether any staff are armed, said no, and then proudly informed us that the temperament of the school was “pretty progressive”, and that sort of thing would not go over well. Later, as I stepped into the new library, I happened to notice a table right up-front intended to showcase several books. The first title I laid eyes on was “Social Justice”, a topic emphasizing all manner of grievances, current and historical, the identification of culpable parties (and their unworthy descendants), and presumed correctives. The latter include reparations, redistribution, control of speech, criminalization, and often shaming. At best, these correctives deliver palliatives to the aggrieved that must be forcibly extracted by the state from others, with little consideration for the predictably disastrous second-order effects they engender.

The prominent display of the social justice book and our tour guide’s attitude regarding security were unsurprising manifestations of the educational emphasis our kids get today: the public schools have become indoctrination camps. Of course, a good class in American history will leave no doubt about the injustices that have occurred in our nation over 250 years. There were many individual victims and many groups were victimized. We could say the same about a good class in European history, or the history of events in any region of the world. However, the social justice doctrine being peddled to our children today assigns blame for victimhood to anyone deemed not to be a victim, as well as the growth and very success of western civilization, including capitalism, this despite the unprecedented comforts available today across the socioeconomic spectrum. It’s as if the SJWs wish to convince our children that all economic gains are of the zero-sum variety.

The politicization of the curriculum in our schools is an extremely dangerous phenomenon. Many schools are banning literature, distorting history, subverting science in favor of politicized orthodoxy, and teaching “social justice math“, which I’m sure is heavy on zero-sum word problems. And how about this “Run from the cop” worksheet given to first graders in a Pittsburgh school! Federal and state education authorities are taking an active hand in much of this. For example, a new ethnic studies curriculum for California high schools proposed by the state Department of Education takes a notably anti-Israel perspective. At the federal level, there is the Common Core initiative (and see here) which, in addition to educational inefficacy, is a source of many of the same concerns cited above. President Obama’s school discipline policy, heavy in its emphasis on “disparate impact”, was perhaps even more disastrous (and see here).

Social studies textbooks today are increasingly written by leftist authors who distort U.S. history, present anti-science viewpoints on environmental topics, and promote the divisive tenets of multiculturalism. The U.S. history covered in this prominent textbook is subject to a variety of left-wing biases, but it is not unique in that regard. And it’s not only a matter of bias in favor of collectivist philosophy and leftist interpretations of historical events. For example, it’s way over the top to teach public school children that Christians are bigots.

But God bless the teachers, many of whom are indeed wonderful people, and many of whom are very good at what they do (my daughter being a prime example!). There is little doubt, however, that leftism dominates the faculty in most public schools. John Hinderaker writes of the political activism practiced by the faculty at a high school in Edina, Minnesota, where lessons about “white privilege” are part of the curriculum even in the feeder schools. It’s a travesty that many of our nation’s public school teachers are products of university schools of education with extremely low academic standards relative to other academic divisions within those universities. And these schools of education have been thoroughly politicized. Needless to say, a good many of their graduates are easily cowed by the typical “feel-good”, free-lunch, social justice arguments made by the Left.

In a sense, these civil servants are a local counterpart to the army of federal bureaucrats sometimes known as the “deep state”. They are funded by taxpayers and are often represented by powerful unions. Under-performing teachers are difficult to dismiss, and they are able to exercise great discretion in the messages they deliver to students. As Darleen Click writes, “The ‘woke’ want your children“.

The leftist thrust of public education today descends from a long evolution shaped by “progressive” education reforms, and most reforms receiving attention within today’s education establishment fail to address the single biggest problem: the public school monopoly. That inattention is reinforced by attempts to maintain ideological purity among participants in the debate over school reform. Social studies teachers Mike Margeson and Justin Spears, writing for the Foundation for Economic Education on the motives for establishing public education, say the following about historical reforms:

“The objective was to nationalize the youth in a particular mold. … From Luther to Fichte, the idea to use the coercive power of the state to force kids into schools and indoctrinate them was clear. Horace Mann became instrumental in importing this system and helping it spread throughout the United States.”

Breaking the public education monopoly is imperative to improving both the quality and cost of education. That means choice, in all it’s liberating glory. J.D. Tuccille has a great take on this issue: choice is the only way we can assure that our children are taught from a perspective that parents most prefer. Many parents know that they must take an active part in educating their children. That includes their role in selecting the school they believe will be best for their kids, as well as ongoing scrutiny of the school’s performance. A simple by-product of choice is that schools and their faculties might be more circumspect about shading their instruction with their own political agendas.

 

 

Preserve the Separation of Google and State

28 Friday Sep 2018

Posted by in Antitrust, Censorship, Privacy

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Little did we suspect that Google’s collection of personal data and manipulation of search results was mere practice for the job of censoring, curating, and providing behavioral surveillance for repressive governments (more on search manipulation here and here). Actually, some of us have expressed trepidation that our own individual liberty might face such a vulnerability, with Google working in concert with our own government:

“As a firm like Google attains the status of an arm of the state, or multiple states, it could provide a mechanism whereby those authorities could manipulate behavior and coerce their citizens, making the internet into a tool of tyranny rather than liberty. ‘Don’t be evil’ is not much of a guarantee.”

Now, however, the company is working with the government of mainland China to implement a version of its search engine that meets the needs of the Communist regime. J.D. Tuccille calls this “Privatized Authoritarianism”. Search results from Google’s Chinese utility might come back blank, or certain sites might be banned, or at least banned from the first page of results (e.g., Wikipedia, the BBC).

Not only that, the Chinese government is building a system of “social credit scores” for its citizens, essentially a one-number report card like the FICO credit score in the West. This one, however, is driven by more than financial transactions; it’s intended to account for a variety of behaviors including one’s record in criminal and civil matters, anything reflecting one’s “trustworthiness”, general comportment, and alignment with official doctrine. The country is building a gargantuan network of surveillance cameras with visual recognition technology and artificial intelligence that will be used to generate inputs to the social score. And Google’s Chinese search platform?

“… users’ interest in pursuing forbidden paths of inquiry will certainly become part of their permanent record. That’s no joke in a country that’s rapidly modernizing the hoary old mechanisms of the police state with a modern ‘social credit’ system that can effectively place people under house arrest with nary a trench coat in sight.

‘A poor Chinese social credit score can lead to bans from travel, certain schools, luxury hotels, government positions, and even dating apps,’ notes the Brookings Institution. Liu Hu, an investigative journalist, incurred the Chinese government’s wrath for exposing corruption among Communist Party officials. He’s among millions who have been punished with a tanked social credit score that prevents him from easily working or even leaving his hometown.”

Political search activity is one thing. What happens if you search for information on foreign news sources? Certain medications or certain disfavored goods? Movies? Books? Sex? What are the consequences of actually clicking on a particular link in a search result? Could the governments place “honey pots” into search results? Could the system be used by the government to entrap citizens? You bet it could!

The Chinese government is everything a liberal should hate, classical or otherwise. But they do what they do. Google, which takes pride in its “do the right thing” mantra, is most certainly not doing the right thing by contributing to this intrusive effort. And it could happen here in the West. In fact, it is probably already happening here to some degree.

Google was fined $2.7 billion by the European Union in 2017 for biasing its search results in favor of its own services. That ruling was made on traditional antitrust grounds: the bias in search results was judged to have anti-competitive effects on the searched-for service markets. But apart from a direct connection to some other form of commerce, traditional antitrust arguments are difficult to make against a free search engine. The company has a high market share but by no means a monopoly over search results, at least in the U.S.

Still, a partnership between Google and government is potentially troublesome, and more so than run-of-the-mill corporatism, though there is that, too. Many individuals are blasé about managing their privacy on social media, while many others seek a level of anonymity to those outside of their social circle. The latter may be wise, but it won’t do them much good if the government gains access to their on-line behavior. The real issue is ownership of our personal information, and that is an unsettled area of the law. Google acquires that information for free in exchange for providing a free search engine. But can Google or any other company with an online platform legally use your personal data as it likes? No, at least not in principle, but that’s no guarantee that the data won’t be used in ways to which you’d object. If anyone should have rightful monopoly rights over the use of individual data, it’s the individual. But strict data privacy might mean we’ll have to pay to use the search engine.

Government has a monopoly on force, but one can hardly bring antitrust action against government, Google partnership or not. That monopoly on force is why our constitutional rights are so critical. Those rights are primarily unenumerated in the U.S. Constitution, while the powers of the federal government are explicitly limited and enumerated. Individual liberty, including the right to privacy, must be respected and protected by our institutions. That should include data privacy. As the reach of government social programs grows, however, participation requires that personal data is increasingly shared with the government. That’s another good reason to keep government small!

Frittered Freedoms and Secular Stagnation

23 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by in Government, Human Welfare

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Dying Economy

Economic freedom is strongly associated with higher living standards, but the United States is steadily working to reverse its historical gains. That conclusion is supported by the work of W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm from the William J. O’Neil Center for Global Markets and Freedom at the SMU Cox School of Business. They make use of an index of economic freedom published by Canada’s Fraser Institute, which is available for 94 countries going back to 1970. It incorporates 43 components such as tax rates, inflation, trade barriers, various regulations and the availability of credit.

“Hong Kong and Singapore, two former British outposts in Asia, have the highest freedom capital stocks, followed by the United States. India and China have adopted market-oriented reforms in recent years, but they’re still among the countries ranking low in freedom capital — a hangover from decades of central planning. Populism left Venezuela with a meager freedom capital stock.“

Cox and Alm fit a cross-country statistical model linking the freedom index to annual per capita consumption, which is a measure of the average standard of living. The data can be explored here. (I was hoping to see interactive scatter plots, but that may require the additional inconvenience of a download).

That freedom should be strongly associated with a society’s ability to consume may not be obvious to everyone, but it follows from some basic axioms: a more productive capital stock generates more choices and more consumables, and the capital will be more highly valued as a result. More freedom means broader choice and more flexibility over the use of capital, which enhances its value. There are many ways that freedoms can enhance the value of capital, such as lower taxes, fewer regulatory burdens and compliance costs, low inflation, and well-developed markets for capital funding. So it should be easy to recognize that the stock and value of a country’s capital are dependent on the freedoms under which it was cultivated. Cox and Alm refer to this contribution as “freedom capital”.

Comparing a country’s actual consumption to the level predicted by the freedom index measures the extent to which the county is consuming over or under a budget defined by its freedom capital. An under-prediction implies that the country’s actual level of consumption is not sustainable given the freedoms and/or constraints embedded in its institutions. A negative trend in the freedom index may also portend declines in the country’s standard of living.

The U.S. does not fare well based on these criteria. According to Cox and Alm, the U.S. consumes at a level 22% above what is afforded by its freedom index, and the index has declined over the past eight years. These facts do not bode well for our future standard of living.

The Cox and Alm research is also reviewed by J.D. Tuccille in Reason. He adds some interesting details from the Fraser Institute’s “Economic Freedom of the World” report showing the dramatic way in which the poor around the world are affected by economic freedoms:

“Annual per capita income is $11,610 in ‘most free’ countries, abruptly falling off to $3,929 in the second quartile, and declining from there [to $1,358 in the lowest quartile].

Economic freedom is also closely connected with civil liberties. Relatively free countries tend to respect people’s autonomy across the board. Authoritarian governments don’t confine their predations to any one area of human life. Freedom is a package deal.

So, if the United States is in for economic stagnation because of decayed economic freedom, we should expect that the poor will be hit hardest.“

I wish that Cox and Alm could arrange an audience with Pope Francis, whose ideas about helping the poor run precisely counter to these lessons.

There Oughta NOT Be a Law

11 Thursday Dec 2014

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We have too many laws and too many busy-bodies wishing to force others into conformity with their own moral and  behavioral strictures. It is more excessive in some jurisdictions than others, but the unnecessary criminalization of harmless behavior is a spreading canker. The death of Eric Garner  in New York City exemplifies the horrible consequences, an aspect which sets it apart from the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Last week, Mark Perry posted links and summaries of three essays on Garner’s death “and what it teaches us about over-criminalization, government force, police brutality, the regulatory superstate, and the violence of the state.”

Both the Brown and Garner cases involved tobacco products, a primary target of busy-bodies worldwide. Garner was choked to death by police who restrained him for violating a law against selling individual cigarettes (“loosies”). Brown, then a suspect in a strong-arm convenience store theft of Swisher cigarillos, was shot by an officer claiming that Brown charged him in the street after a physical altercation moments earlier. Both incidents are said to have involved excessive force by police toward African Americans, but grand juries refused to indict the officers in both cases. Whether excessive force was used against Brown or Garner, or whether racism was involved, a major contrast is that the Garner case involved the enforcement of a law that seems ridiculously petty.

The three links provided by Perry are from:

    • J.D. Tuccille, who argues that over-regulation of behavior not only leads to conflict but also encourages corruption in law enforcement.
    • Randy Soave, who discusses the incentive structure faced by police and the extent of over-regulation, “from cigarettes to sodas of a certain size, unlicensed lemonade stands, raw milk, alcohol (for teens), marijuana, food trucks, taxicab alternatives, and even fishing supplies (in schools)“.
    • Jonah Goldberg, who elaborates on a simple truism: if you pass a new law, it must be enforced. Enforcement means force, and force is what government is all about. Therefore, if you insist on more detailed control over others, you can expect some violence.

Michael Munger makes the same point, condemning both the left and the right for their failure to understand the simple but far-reaching flaw in our polity:

“The left is outraged that the state is not doing exactly what the left expects from an idealized, unicorn state. In fact, the state is actually made up of actual human-style people, and people are flawed. The left wants to rely on abstract systems, and then be perpetually astonished when things go really wrong. It’s not bad people that are the problem. The THING, the thing itself is the abuse, folks…. The right is just denying that there is a problem, the system is working, the jury has spoken, etc.”

In “Worse Than Racism,” Eric Raymond discusses Garner’s death in the context of Alexis de Tocqueville’s  “soft despotism,” our penchant for promulgating rules for others “all justified in soothing ways to achieve worthy objectives. Such as discouraging people from smoking by heavily taxing cigarettes. Eric Garner died in a New York minute because ‘soft despotism’ turned hard enough to kill him in cold blood.”

Raymond presses hard:

“Every one of the soft despots who passed that law should be arraigned for the murder of Eric Garner. They directed the power of the state to frivolous ends, forgetting – or worse, probably not caring – that the enforcement of those ‘small complicated rules’ depends on the gun, the truncheon, and the chokehold. 

But we are all accessories before the fact. Because we elected them. We ceded them the power to pass oh, so many well-intentioned laws, criminalizing so much behavior that one prominent legal analyst has concluded the average American commits three inadvertent felonies a day.”

Finally, here’s an interesting connection: research  advocating high taxation of cigarettes  was published in 2008 by none other than Jonathan Gruber. Yes, the architect of Obamacare who often gloated on camera at academic conferences about the clever lack of transparency in the health care law and the stupidity of the American voter. He was also busy providing a rationale for the morality meddlers to more heavily tax and regulate “unacceptable” behavior. It is fitting and ironic that such an infamous elitist as Gruber has a connection to the soft despotism that led to the death of Eric Garner.

A Dumb Tax Code Tests Loyalty

07 Thursday Aug 2014

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taxes

The complex and punitive tax treatment of U.S. corporate income creates incentives for firms to seek relief through various maneuvers. According to the TaxProf Blog, quoting KPMG, the U.S. corporate tax rate is the highest among industrialized countries and the second highest in the world. U.S. corporations are taxed on profits earned overseas, which is disadvantageous relative to so-called “territorial” tax systems. Corporate income is taxed twice, as well: once as corporate income and again when income is paid to shareholders, though often at a favorable “qualified dividend” rate (and double taxation of dividends is not uncommon internationally). Of course, there are myriad provisions in the tax code that reduce the severity of the corporate tax bite by providing deductions (some of which are mentioned at the first link). But the code is quite complex and it creates unnecessary compliance costs; on balance, it provides compelling reasons for corporations to attempt to shift income overseas to obtain more favorable treatment. A growing number of firms have engaged in so-called corporate “tax inversions,” which involve shifting ownership to an overseas corporate parent. This is said to represent a threat to the U.S. tax base, and it has recently captured the attention of the media.

What should be done about this trend? The first link above, from the TaxProf, discusses two options: “… a general reform of the U.S. corporate tax and specific provisions to deal with tax-motivated international mergers.” The first option would involve a vastly simpler tax code, with fewer and less generous deductions and lower tax rates. That change would be desirable if only to reduce compliance costs, but it could also be used to make the U.S. tax code more competitive internationally. A strong case can be made for eliminating the corporate income tax entirely, based on the likely favorable impact on employment, wages and international competitiveness that it would engender.

The second option mentioned in connection with reducing tax inversions involves more targeted measures which do nothing to reduce the complexity of the tax code. Apparently, the Treasury is investigating a “long list” of alternative administrative actions to discourage inversions. Again, from the TaxProf:

The President’s FY2015 budget proposes to treat all mergers as U.S. firms if the U.S. firm’s shareholders have 50% or more ownership of the combined firm or maintains management and control in the United States. Similar legislation has also been introduced in the 113th Congress.

Public attention may have discouraged Walgreens from pursuing an inversion, and the Obama administration is clearly “jawboning” in an effort to stop the activity.

Finally, Jonathan Alter wants U.S. corporations to take “loyalty oaths” to prevent them from seeking out inversion opportunities. This proposal is certainly “creepy,” as noted by J.D. Tuccille in Reason Magazine. Loyalty oaths? Seriously? From Tuccille:

… this whole “economic patriotism” crusade starts at a bad place and spirals down into a cesspool. So, if that’s the model you work from…

To make it clear where this all goes, the National Recovery Administration once boasted, “The Fascist Principles are very similar to those we have been evolving here in America.” Its head, Hugh Johnson, noted about the adoption or rejection of the blue eagle symbol and its code, “Those who are not with us are against us.”

Where else might this go? Will “buy American” form the basis of a loyalty oath of some kind? What tax consequences might await violators? What other forms of cooperation with intrusive authorities might be enforced in this way? David Harsanyi has some interesting thoughts on the question of “properly channeled nationalism”:

It’s worth remembering that when Alter proposes that Obama discipline companies that have done nothing illegal or illegitimate, he’s simply taking Obama’s “economic patriotism” to its next logical step. He wants the administration to threaten the close “easy access to American markets” companies enjoy. And really, haven’t we all suffered enough with all this unhindered access to affordable goods, exotic merchandise and cool gadgets? Samsung. Honda. Toyota. Nestle. GlaxoSmithKline. Do you believe shoppers concern themselves with the fact that Food Lion is subsidiary of a Belgium company? I suspect that most Americans, in their everyday lives, don’t care where their favorite companies are situated, because intuitively they understand the benefits of trade.

Too many times already, I have heard statements implying disloyalty after daring to criticize the president’s initiatives. That’s a very bad sign. The U.S. achieved greatness in large part because it offered basic freedoms in personal, social and economic life. Decisions about what and with whom to do business, though not completely free of government interference, must be a person’s own, even in voluntary association with others (as in the corporate form). People should be free to transfer their assets abroad or to sell their assets to anyone, regardless of domicile. If this is a desirable place to live and do business, such freedoms should never be a source of concern. In fact, with a tax code that is simpler and more competitive, it could never be anything but a source of strength.