Tag Archives: political economy

Now the Bill Must Pass?

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The Georgia legislature has passed a bill and put it in front of the governor that would

protect pastors from performing same-sex marriages and give “faith-based” organizations permission to deny use of their business for anything they find “objectionable.” Businesses wouldn’t have to hire anyone whose religious beliefs are different from theirs[.]

The NFL doesn’t like that.

“NFL policies emphasize tolerance and inclusiveness, and prohibit discrimination based on age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, or any other improper standard,” league spokesman Brian McCarthy said. “Whether the laws and regulations of a state and local community are consistent with these policies would be one of many factors NFL owners may use to evaluate potential Super Bowl host sites.”

So, what else does that mean?  Would the NFL then require the Atlanta Falcons to leave Georgia, too?  Sounds like this is a dare that Georgia must accept: the governor must sign the bill.

Too Far

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In New York,

Instead of handing patients slips of paper, physicians soon must electronically send orders directly to pharmacies for everything from antibiotics to cholesterol pills to painkillers, with some exceptions. Otherwise, prescribers face the possibility of fines, license loss or even jail.

Because New York’s Know Betters know better.

However.

Digital prescribing thwarts prescription-slip forgery and theft….

They also expose the patient, the doctor, and the pharmacy to hacking.  Sort of like an IRS or an OMB hack we all know and love.

There are other downsides.

Patients, for instance, could accidentally have prescriptions sent to the wrong pharmacy or to one that has closed or out of stock by the time they arrive. Instead of taking a piece of paper to another pharmacy, patients have to get the doctor to re-issue the prescription or the pharmacy to transfer it.

It’s also harder for patients to shop around for medication deals when a script is in a pharmacy’s system instead of in hand, says Dr. Joseph R. Maldonado, president of the Medical Society of the State of New York.

And there’s the business of government meddling in a private enterprise’s internal affairs and here interfering with a doctor-patient admin function.

No matter how well intentioned, government cannot be allowed into a private business’ concerns.  New York still is being a nanny state.

In Which Mr Pollock Is On The Right Track

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Alex Pollock is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the R Street Institute, and he had a suggestion regarding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack.

The moment Fannie and Freddie have returned to the government cash equal to all the principal and a full 10% annual return [a goal to which F&F are very close], Congress should declare the Treasury’s senior preferred stock as retired,….

Following this, Fannie and Freddie would be very close to the non-government controlled private enterprises they should be.

But then Pollock veered off the track.

…and simultaneously that these companies be treated as systemically important financial institutions.

In a truly free market economy, there is no such thing as a systemically important financial institution; the very concept is a complete non sequitur.

Aside from that, designating these as SIFIs both would keep taxpayers on the hook to bail these institutions out the next time their poor judgment or bad luck straiten them, and it would increase the likelihood of their bankruptcy by reducing risk and thereby removing incentives to behave more cautiously and fiscally responsibly in that free market.

Tough To Do Inside the EU, Though

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Here’s an area where it really would be good to look like Europe, or at least the UK part of it.

UK Treasury chief George Osborne unveiled a major shake-up of corporate taxes in Britain on Wednesday, saying he intends to lower the main rate companies pay to less than half the rate levied on firms in the US.

Of course, such tax rate competition is hard to do in the EU, what with the European Commission’s utter dislike for it.

It may be that the British really will need to leave the European Union, if they want to compete in the global economy.

The House Budget Blueprint On Offer

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The debate is well worth having.

House conservatives have vowed to block a fiscal 2017 budget put forth by Republican leadership Tuesday, saying it doesn’t cut spending enough and creating uncertainty over the GOP’s ability to pass a fiscal blueprint this year.

Never mind that the blueprint cuts spending by $6.5 trillion over the next 10 years and, if future Congresses stick to the plan would eliminate deficits and so permit beginning to pay down the nation’s $19 trillion debt.  The cuts in the first year of these 10 years don’t go far enough to suit these self-styled conservatives (small-c, you’ll note).

It’s certainly true that real cuts in the hand are worth two (or more) promised cuts in later years; however, this is the first budget plan in decades that actually, explicitly promises those later cuts and to that concrete end.

But: as these guys consider blowing up another budget plan, they need to ask themselves how much spending they’ll be able to cut if they force a plan that has no hope of being enacted?  What do they think will be the value of their political symbolism?