The Conservative Nanny State (Dean Baker)

Great book. You can read it for free in Abode Reader here.
Here's an excerpt from the preface:

"The key flaw in the stance that most progressives have taken on economic issues is that they have accepted a framing whereby conservatives are assumed to support market outcomes, while progressives want to rely on the government. This framing leads progressives to futilely lash out against markets, rather than examining the factors that lead to undesirable market outcomes. The market is just a tool, and in fact a very useful one. It makes no more sense to lash out against markets than to lash out against the wheel.

The reality is that conservatives have been quite actively using the power of the government to shape market outcomes in ways that redistribute income upward. However, conservatives have been clever enough to not own up to their role in this process, pretending all along that everything is just the natural working of the market. And, progressives have been foolish enough to go along with this view."

Health Care and Budget Deficit Calculator

This is BRILLIANT (courtesy of the Center for Economic and Policy Research)
Notice that every country on the list has higher life expectancy and exponentially lower health care costs.

We need a public plan that can negotiate lower costs and we need it FAST.

Tougher Building Codes are a Must!

Great article on the need for tougher building codes across the U.S. for greater energy efficiency

Austin has had tough building codes for 25 years and as a result was able to forgo building another coal-fired power plant.

Tough codes make sense any way you look at it: cost-savings for consumers (particularly low-income households) in the form of lower energy bills; job-creation with greater demand for energy-efficient building; carbon- dioxide reduction for EVERYONE.

Without a national mandate, private builders will not have the incentive to participate and a tougher mandate in one town would encourage builders to find the cheapest (a.k.a. the weakest energy codes) place to build. This is essentially a race to the bottom and would be much more expensive in the long-run.

There is already plenty of federal and state-funding in the form of tax credits to participate. Now all we need is a mandate that ALL new buildings be built to maximum energy efficiency, with tougher standards put in place every year as the technology allows.

Tough topic, but an important and relevant one

Peter Singer makes some interesting points in this article in today's NYTimes. It can appear cold at times--specifically when talking about how economists "value" human life--but these are the tough questions that need to brought up:

You have advanced kidney cancer. It will kill you, probably in the next year or two. A drug called Sutent slows the spread of the cancer and may give you an extra six months, but at a cost of $54,000. Is a few more months worth that much?

There is a song that comes to mind - the Rolling Stones' "You can't always get what you want". Especially when what you want won't save your life and will come at the expense of saving someone else's life.

Correcting 5 Myths About the Stimulus

CBPP Gets It
Conservative Congressmen Don't Get It.

Here are the 5 myths. See the link for details:

"1: The recent rise in unemployment does not mean the law is not working.

2: The Administration and Congress expected the stimulus money to be spent gradually over the next two to three years, and what’s been spent to date is stimulating the economy and helping millions of Americans.

3: The nation faces a very serious long-term budget problem, but the recovery law will exacerbate that problem only a very small amount.

4: The law was specifically designed to help states close their budget shortfalls.

5: States are properly using stimulus funds for short-term projects."

More on Health Care Reform

Jonathan Gruber, Economics Professor at MIT, and well-respected health-policy expert:

Despite the resistance to changing the status quo, I believe that the most sensible source of financing for universal coverage would come from reducing the expensive, regressive, and inefficient subsidization of employer-sponsored insurance. Scaling back the exclusion would be highly progressive and would have the added benefit of reducing the incentives for overinsurance and excessive health care spending. This win–win solution would ameliorate a fundamental flaw in our current system while raising the revenues required to cover the uninsured.

Robert Reich and Paul Krugman on Health Care Reform

Tax the Wealthy to Keep Everyone Healthy:

It's the most blatant form of Robin-Hood economics ever proposed. The universal health care bill reported by the House yesterday pays for the health insurance of the 20 percent of Americans who need help affording it with a surtax on the richest 1 percent.

There's another word for it: fair. According to the most recent data (for 2007), the best-off 1 percent of American households take home about 20 percent of total income -- the highest percentage since 1928.

Amen, brother.

Here's Krugman:

OK, so the CBO score for the 3-committee House health care plan is in: $1 trillion over the next decade for 97 percent coverage of legal residents.

That’s a bargain: the catastrophe of being ill without insurance, the fear of losing insurance, all ended — for much less than the Bush administration’s useless $1.35 trillion first tax cut, quickly followed by another $350 billion.