Robert Wright

As pundits and bloggers over the coming months celebrate, deprecate, or otherwise pontificate about the secession of Southern states from the Union 150 years ago, it would be well to remember Alexander Hamilton’s claim that the “national debt, if not excessive, will be to us a national blessing; it will be a powerful cement of our union” because both of those claims have been proven correct time and again. (more)

In a recent New York Times op-ed, Paul Krugman attacked the widespread notion that Social Security in its present form is doomed. As usual, he is about half right. With strong productivity growth and slower longevity increase, current Social Security benefits can be kept up a long time without raising taxes. On the other hand, if productivity growth is flat and Americans live ever longer, Social Security may break before it bends. Almost every bean counter agrees, however, that health care liabilities are a far bigger threat to the federal government’s solvency. (more)

Has the economy stalled temporarily or do government and market bear paws have it in a death grip? Alan Greenspan suggested the former this week on CNBC but I’m leaning toward the latter. For decades, the U.S. economy has been weighted down by increasingly dysfunctional sectors like construction, higher education, health care, and retirement savings. High finance provided hope for awhile but probably will not do so again anytime soon thanks to bearish investor sentiment and new, far-ranging (but ultimately flawed) financial regulations. And there is no sign that policymakers will fix the other FUBAR (fouled up beyond all recognition) parts of the economy anytime soon. (more)

The Obama administration’s health care bill still hasn’t passed Congress and may never do so. Even if it does, it probably won’t work as advertised. Like most government endeavors, it’ll likely cost more and cover less than planned. Ironically, it is in the government’s power to substantially improve health care outcomes in the United States by passing a relatively simple piece of legislation, then getting out of the way. If the government is serious about reform, it should allow national health insurance mutuals to form and to offer individual, prenatal, noncan, participating policies linked to a life insurance policy. That’s a mouthful, but easy to grasp when broken down into bite-sized bits: (more)

America’s health care system is so sick that it is tempting to believe that whatever comes out of Congress later this month will have to be an improvement over the current ailment. If nothing else, American health care resembles a mash-up of the television medical dramas House and Scrubs, sometimes great but mostly tragically comical. The bleeding edge of global medical research slices into the ignorance of human physiology more deeply in the United States than anywhere else. Yet, America spends far more of its GDP on health care than any other country in the world and in exchange receives average outcomes disturbingly low for such a technologically advanced nation. That is because tens of millions of un- or underinsured Americans rely upon uber-expensive emergency room care while untold millions more receive care a far cry short of the technological frontier being conquered in their own backyards. (more)