Jamelle Bouie tags Sarah Lacy’s piece on why America can’t “function like a fiscally responsible company” as a good example of “why tech writers should stay away from politics.”
I endorse his critiques, but there’s really a deeper issue here. A state is fundamentally an ethical enterprise aimed at promoting human welfare. A business isn’t like that. If you’re trying to look at America from a balance-sheet perspective the problem is very clear. It’s not “entitlements” and it’s not “Social Security” and it’s not “Medicare” and it’s not “health care costs” it’s the existence of old people. Old people, generally speaking, don’t produce anything of economic value. They sit around, retired, consuming goods and services and produce nothing but the occasional turn at babysitting. The optimal economic growth policy isn’t to slash Social Security or Medicare benefits, it’s to euthanize 70 year-olds and harvest their organs for auction. With that in place, you could cut taxes and massively ramp-up investments in physical infrastructure, early childhood education, and be on easy street. The problem with this isn’t that it wouldn’t work, it’s that it would be wrong, morally speaking.
Now obviously an idea like raising the retirement age to 70 isn’t as wrong as mandatory euthanasia at the age of 70. But by the same token, it doesn’t “work” as well at boosting per capita GDP or cutting down on American red ink. And both ideas exist on a continuum of the same tradeoff"”bolstering the living standards of old people is an economically inefficient undertaking that we sentimental human beings find ethically appealing. That’s not to say that the spot on the continuum occupied by current policy is the best possible way to make the tradeoff. But it’s simply to dramatize the nature of calculus we’re talking about. As a “business strategy” it’s ridiculous"”on a par with preserving the natural beauty of the Grand Canyon or having the military pay health care costs of soldiers who are too injured to fight"”but that’s because it’s not a business strategy.
You only need to raise the retirement age for productive, well paid, office work professionals. The working class should be able to get pensions as before.
If the government euthanized 70 year olds, people would retire much earlier than they do today. I, e.g., plan to retire at about 65-68 or so, because I might live to be 90, but if I were going to be shot on my 70th birthday I would retire much earlier.
Your plan might work if we euthanized 80 year olds, and it would save a heap of money.
To be fair, a lot of the “unsound business decisions” have at least some business justification. (I’m of course not arguing for running government like a business.) Not caring for wounded soldiers would likely decrease morale and combat effectiveness, just like employees would rather work for businesses with good health care coverage. It might still be a net win from a business perspective, but it’s not guaranteed…
To be fair, a lot of the “unsound business decisions” have at least some business justification. (I’m of course not arguing for running government like a business.) Not caring for wounded soldiers would likely decrease morale and combat effectiveness, just like employees would rather work for businesses with good health care coverage. It might still be a net win from a business perspective, but it’s not guaranteed…
Call this an unfair generalization if you must, but old people are no good at everything.
Call this an unfair generalization if you must, but old people are no good at everything.
bolstering the living standards of old people is an economically inefficient undertaking that we sentimental human beings find ethically appealing.
I don’t think we’re actually as ethical as all that. Everyone hopes to get old and retire some day so everyone thinks they will someday reap this benefit.
bolstering the living standards of old people is an economically inefficient undertaking that we sentimental human beings find ethically appealing.
I don’t think we’re actually as ethical as all that. Everyone hopes to get old and retire some day so everyone thinks they will someday reap this benefit.
“Millions to his bidding fly. They also serve who only stand and wait.” –Milton
“Millions to his bidding fly. They also serve who only stand and wait.” –Milton
I just want to make it clear that I liked the comment for the Simpsons reference, not because it’s true.
I just want to make it clear that I liked the comment for the Simpsons reference, not because it’s true.
You took the words right out of my comment box.
You took the words right out of my comment box.
We can take this analogy so much further.
If you analogize a government to a business, and its citizens to its employees, you might argue that caring for the elderly is simply carrying out the contractual obligations you incurred through negotiation with your employee base. If a business negotiates unsustainable pension benefits with its employees, then goes out of business, that’s the economically efficient thing to have happen. The new businesses that arise to take over the abandoned market niche will be more wise.
But wait! How were those pensions negotiated? Through a process by which the employees aggregated their bargaining power, appointed representatives, and used their collective numbers to force an agreement!
Yes, voting is unionizing, and the only true free market thing to do is abolish it. Hence forth your rights shall be whatever you can negotiate with the government in a negotiation session held between you and the federal govt on your 18th birthday. Whatever your leverage as a desirable citizen can earn you, that’s what you can get. If you don’t like it, you can negotiate with a different governocorp.
Yep. Those two sentences are probably sufficient to explain the different levels of public support for Medicare and Medicaid.
No one seems to have pointed out that it will be really great to run America as a fascist organization with a strict hierarchy, which most corporations are.
That will be wonderful for freedom and liberty.
With life expectancy in the low 70s in the US, there are probably not enough 80-year-old on whose arthritic, stooped old backs to balance the budget.
But if I have to balance my household budget, why can’t teh gummint?
But see–that is REAL freedom.
or didn’t you get the memo…
Economic value is determined by the preferences of the people who make up the economy. Even if you stick your tongue in your cheek and decide to ignore the preferences of the senior citizens in question, you still can’t say that retired old people do not produce anything of value. They do produce something. They produce greater well-being for their friends and relatives. People spend money (and vote to spend tax money) on keeping their elderly relatives alive and cared-for. How is that different than the money spent on milkshakes or widgets? You can’t just argue that the money would be better-spent elsewhere. Milkshakes are absolutely useless, and if they were banned, people would spend their milkshake money on other things. But milkshakes still have economic value because people like them.
Anyway, the distinction to be made is between government’s efforts to increase human welfare and the efforts of business to extract a profit from some welfare-increasing product or service.
As usual, there is a Star Trek episode that deals with this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_a_Life_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)
Yeah I like that… people making more than 100K, get to work to 70, people making more than 250K can’t retire until 80, and that is both SS and medicare.
Is it that fair? Of course! those are the bastards that are pushing for higher retirement age, let them get the first serving.
“Three score and ten–eighty if you’re lucky.”
-God
They’re good at complaining and blaming young people for the problems that old people caused.
I guess that even Matt needs to draw the line somewhere.
Only Comunists, Fascists and Nazis argue against that.
Good grief. Sarah Lacy’s father, now retired, was a philosophy professor, and a very good one. I first read Rawls in his ethics class.
I know he proofread “Once You’re Lucky” when she was writing it. Obviously she didn’t run this piece of dreck past him.
Your unfair generalization also applies to really young people, e.g. babies, which are no good at everything as well.
For example both:
poop/pee in their pants can’t change their soily underclothes by themselves babble nonsensibly can’t walk and can barely stand up by themselves are unsafe behind the wheel of a car need to be driven everywhere. need to be told how to do everything are a huge unproductive drain on society make too much noise during movies can’t wipe their own runny noses
the list goes on and on
one thing babies have though that old people don’t have: they are cute and cuddly and of course are little “you’s”.
The problem with the “solution” to the problems of safety nets for the elderly as proposed by Republicans and self-styled “deficit hawks” is that they universally proclaim a one-size-fits-all agenda is the only option. It;’s not. Leave the programs as-is for the lower middle-class and poor, while hiking taxes and the retirement age and reducing benefits for the better-off. http://www.sunstateactivist.org
The reason we have social security and medicare is so we don’t have to have grandma and grandpa living in the same house with us. Is that worth the tradeoff of having expensive social programs? I really don’t know.
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