LIBERAL MYTH OF THE DAY

PRICE CONTROLS WORK

Myth.

Biopharmaceutical Scientist, S. Marshal Priddy provides a good response:

“The biggest one that jumps out to me is the idea that a price control can function as a cost control. There’s a complete disconnect between some voters and the way in which pricing structures work. All you can really do by forcing mandates for costs are 1) force an oversupply of the good/service (if the fixed price is too high), 2) force shortages and perhaps a flourishing black market (if that price is too low), or 3) force inflation to percolate through the economy until the price actually makes sense. That last one is largely a reference to the minimum wage, and the idea that you can effect a change to standards of livings by forcing an increase in wages paid at the bottom.

Price controls of virtually any type strike me as a form of absurdity that should have been eliminated around the time that people stopped thinking the world was flat, and for about the same reason.  Fixed exchange rates would also apply.”

 

27 Comments

  1. scatback on July 1, 2012 at 10:06 am

    Also, instead of an idiotic, asinine, atrocious, & horrendous mandate, simply *encourage* people to buy health insurance via a tax deduction or credit. Of course, the tax-us-to-oblivion liberals would never go for that.

  2. George Ames on July 20, 2012 at 12:23 am

    Remarkable, but for EVERY president listed above, the Democratic Presidents were the responsible ones, controlling spending.
    The Republicans are the spendthrifts, according to your data.

    • quinersdiner on July 20, 2012 at 11:14 am

      I beg to differ. Spending bills originate in the House. Spending didn’t begin to be controlled until the Gingrich-led Republicans regained the House in 1994. Spending exploded when the Pelosi-led Democrats regained the House in 2006. I would concur that Republicans deserve a good share of blame for excessive spending, but Democrats by far the most. Thanks for writing.

      • George Ames on July 20, 2012 at 2:32 pm

        Ohhhh! So THAT is why House inspired spending is presently so out of control!?!?!? And the present house is controlled by the Repubs!

        It is obvious from your rebutal that ONLY the Republican controlled House, and NOT Obama, are responsible for today’s spending.

        You just gave Obama a total walk! He would say “Thank you!”

        Come on… try again.

        • quinersdiner on July 20, 2012 at 2:37 pm

          Actually, no. The House passed the Paul Ryan budget which holds government spending to a 3.5% increase. The Democratic-controlled Senate rejected it. Mr. Obama called for a 5.5% increase in spending which was unanimously rejected in the Senate. As for the Senate Democrats, well, they haven’t even submitted a budget for three years.

      • George Ames on July 20, 2012 at 4:03 pm

        Tom.. now you have me confused…
        You just said the House submitted a budget (the Ryan BINO)
        You also just said Pres. Obama submited a budget…
        and then …
        The Senate Democrats haven’t submitted a budget in 3 years… and that assumes they can!
        “Button, button, who has the button???…”

        Look it up at http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=200
        … under Clinton the Fed spending, as a % of GDP, went from about 22% to 18% ($1.858 Tril to $2.041T in 8 years) (up 9.85% in 8 yrs)
        By now .. IF BushII would have stayed on target and not cut taxes, (or at least funded his war properly), we WOULD HAVE ZERO FED DEBT in 2010 or 2011!

        And right now we would be enjoying a 20% PERMANENT Reduction in taxes with NO threat to our budget or the services provided.

        But, with BushII and the Repub House, they zoomed spending from $2.041T in 2000 to $2.704T (up 32%) after 8 years.

        You are right.. in 2008-2010, with Pelosi, the spending increased about 40% … fighting the effects of a recession/depression/wars. Those numbers are also bloody ugly.

        In the past, government works best when people compromise and get things done. That isn’t being done nearly enough right now.

        Like Bill Knapp said… if he hadn’t negotiated and compromised on his deals during his career, he would be a poor man.

      • George Ames on July 20, 2012 at 4:04 pm

        Opps… forgot to say the numbers used were 2005 constant dollars.

      • saneromeo on March 27, 2013 at 6:14 pm

        senate cant create a budget…but then again the scotus cant create a tax…(cough cough obamacare cough)

  3. Ted Grob on August 3, 2012 at 9:08 am

    Tom

    thanks very much for your article on the editorial page today. My wife and I very much enjoyed it.

  4. Ed on October 19, 2012 at 8:30 am

    Time is money, right? If you make one dollar every second, you will have a million dollars in twelve days. You will be a billionaire in 32 years. A trillion seconds ago, civilization didn’t exist, it will take you more than 31,000 years to
    make a trillion dollars.

    A billion minutes ago, Trajan was emperor in Rome. A million hours ago, it was 1895, and Grover Cleveland was President of the United States

    One million seconds will pass in the next 12 days.One billion seconds will take 32 years.One trillion seconds will pass in 31,688 years.

    t would take more than 10,000 18-wheelers to transport one trillion $1 bills. Our national debt today would fill up 30 of the largest container ships ever constructed, each holding more than 4,100 containers full of cash.

    You could spend $10 million a day and it would still take you 273 years to spend $1 trillion.

    Here are the ratios of deficit to GDP for the past five presidents:

    Ronald Reagan
    1981-88 4.2 %
    1982-89 4.2
    Average 4.2

    George H. W. Bush
    1989-92 4.0
    1990-93 4.3
    Average 4.2

    Bill Clinton
    1993-2000 0.8
    1994-2001 0.1
    Average 0.5

    George W. Bush
    2001-08 2.0
    2002-09 3.4
    Average 2.7

    Barack Obama
    2009-12* 9.1
    2010-12 8.7
    Average 8.9
    *fiscal 2012 ends Sept. 30, 2012, so this figure is estimated
    http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesglassman/2012/07/11/the-facts-about-budget-deficits-how-the-presidents-truly-rank/

    As for Obama, even excluding 2009, his spending has averaged 24.1 percent of GDP – the highest level for any three years since World War II.

    Obama’s deficit is 6 Trillion Dollars in 3.5 years, More than any other president in the history of the USA for a single term.

    He invested $90 Billion Dollars of our tax dollars in failed businesses, enough to hire 2 Million new teachers.

    Broken Promises: Over 100 his first term.

    Obama said he would never tax anyone whom makes less than 250K Per Year. With Obama Care, he has just passed the largest tax increase on the Middle Class this Country has ever seen.

    He said he would cut the deficit by half in his first term.

    He said he would have unemployment at 5.7% within his first term or he would not be running as president again.

    The list goes on, see the following link:
    http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/rulings/promise-broken/

    It’s time to put things into perspective, we can not afford to put America’s trust in Obama anymore.

    • quinersdiner on October 19, 2012 at 10:15 am

      Good info. The deficit stats are damning. Thanks for writing.

    • merlinobrien on September 17, 2015 at 3:32 pm

      The problem is not any president. It is the capitalist system.

      • quinersdiner on September 17, 2015 at 3:55 pm

        Socialism is just too heartless a system for me. I prefer freedom, equality of opportunity, and prosperity.

        • merlinobrien on September 18, 2015 at 9:23 am

          It seems like you don’t know what socialism is. “a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole”.
          The community doesn’t mean the state. It means mass cooperative enterprises.
          In what way is socialism heartless? You’re probably thinking of existing systems, but in fact there has never been a truly socialist system. We get close with socialist democracies like Norway, Canada and the UK (although the latter is in danger of falling to the right). The Soviet Union had many good social policies, but overall the system didn’t work. It wasn’t a real socialist system. There is very little difference between private and public ownership when you’re a worker in either system.

          You have complete freedom, equality, free health care, free education and prosperity in socialist democracies. So, please explain why socialism is heartless and why you have no equality of opportunity and prosperity?

          • quinersdiner on September 18, 2015 at 10:07 am

            You’re a dreamer, Merlin. I don’t mean that in an unkind way at all. I appreciate your idealism. Here are the hard facts: whenever socialism has been tried, people get hurt really, really bad. The ideal socialistic system will never work because people are flawed. You expose the flaw with your call for “free” healthcare and “free” education. There is no such thing as a “free lunch.” Someone has to pay. Someone has to produce. Socialism is built on coercion. It redistributes one person’s productivity to someone else who didn’t earn it, eventually creating a sense of entitlement in the growing ranks of non-producers. What an immoral system. Capitalism, for all its faults, has more built-in checks and balances. It is based on mutual self-interest. Capitalism’s track record destroys the track record of your socialist buddies.



  5. saneromeo on March 27, 2013 at 6:12 pm

    I thought this article was about Iraq for oil….george ames appears to forget that it was impossible for bush to do either, the economic crisis started with affordable housing act (frank, dodd), bush appeared twice to warn them away from it, oh and that little 9/11 thing kind of killed the stock market and the economy from …oh yeah bush’s 1st year in office….
    I am in no way excusing bush, just pointing out the failure to think objectively in order to score stupid-ego-I’m-right points….
    This economic mess effects (D)’s and (R)’s so lets just fix the mess and stop pointing fingers….the continued vitriole towards obama is because he REFUSES to fix the mess, instead prefers cloward and piven with a twist of marx….

  6. Brad Stanton on March 23, 2014 at 3:48 pm

    I’m not liberal at all, I voted for Bush Jr, in fact i campaigned for him. But how can you say the war in Mid east is not for oil? Bush was an oilman and so was Cheney. The price of gasoline went way up while they were in power. The oil companies were making outrageous profits then and now. There is no need for high gas prices, it is just the oil companies gouging us. Why don’t they fight wars in countries that don’t have oil? N Korea is way worse then Iraq, so is Sudan. But since they don’t have oil we won’t fight there.

    • quinersdiner on March 23, 2014 at 4:12 pm

      I would concede that oil was a part of it; but it was certainly not ALL about it, as characterized by the Left.

      • Brent Arnesen on November 13, 2014 at 7:19 pm

        If War is the absolute worst humanity can sink to, what justification is war as a solution? War, as I tell my children, is the breakdown of humanity and morality. There is nothing Good about war. Good may come after a war, but not by it. The only good thing about winning a war is that the war ends. The Third Reich started executing Jews after 1941, 2 years after the war began. Had Germany won, there is no reason to believe they wouldn’t have been voted out of office and demonized just the same as now.
        To the victor goes the spoils, and that includes the ability to look like the Moral victor as well, regardless of ones sins, but sins are recognized just the same.
        America is considered the paradigm of a Good Nation, yet we only recently outlawed slavery, only recently allowed women to vote, and some might argue, still “murder” the unborn at a rate greater than Nazi’s did Jews. Sure, we were “enlightened” when we won WWII, but in order to be as powerful as we were, we had to crack a few eggs.
        The sad thing is not the ideology of the Left or Right, but the polemics played by those in the peanut gallery as a diversion to avoid the hard work.

  7. Brad Stanton on March 23, 2014 at 3:51 pm

    It is a terrible mistake to assume that Republican leaders are Christian just because they say they are.

  8. M Ann Brown on September 28, 2014 at 1:50 pm

    Do you think “encouraging” people to buy car insurance would be successful, too? C’mon! Get real. The health insurance mandate makes sure every person is responsible for their own health care. Thought Republicans/Conservatives prefer people to be responsible? Insurance mandate had to be done!

    • quinersdiner on September 28, 2014 at 5:11 pm

      There are more effective and efficient ways of doing it than the Obamacare mandate. Thanks for writing.

  9. Paul Joslin on November 30, 2015 at 2:36 pm

    Regarding your opinion on socialism apparently you have never visited a socialist country nor truly understand their systems such as those in New Zealand, the Scandinavian countries or Australia where I have lived. Nobody is coerced. The system is arrived at by democratic vote with high rates of voting. And citizens fully understand the benefits of health care and education are not “free” but rather costs that are willing shared because, unlike so-called conservatives such as you, they believe in the common good, as recommended by Christ.
    Paul Joslin

    • quinersdiner on December 1, 2015 at 10:28 am

      Regarding your points: 1. Yes, the countries you cited are social democracies. They do hold elections. 2. Half of their tax burden are indirect, or hidden taxes, developed as a political tactic to hide the true tax burden of the nation. For example, in 1965, Finland’s national tax burden was 30%. It had risen to 44% by 2013, half of which were hidden taxes. 3.Conservatives also believe in the common good. We simply want to fund it directly with our own blood, sweat, and tears, which is why it has been documented that conservatives donate more money to charities, donate more blood to blood banks, and donate more volunteer time to charities. Liberals want to pay someone else to handle the common good. Conservatives are willing to do it themselves.

  10. d. knapp on August 23, 2016 at 11:04 pm

    another thought…. Let me buy ins. for just the things I want. If I miscalculate my needs? Tough for me. I know me and my life well enough to know I have almost ZERO chance of needing some of the nonsense required to be included in every policy out there now. I don’t need my well check or U.T.I. pd for by ins. They’re not that expensive. I go to a nurse practitioner and I’m good to go for half the cost and less than half the wait. People, you do not need to see the doc. for every little bump in the road of life (or bruise for that fact.). You pay a fortune so the kid can see the MD for every little cold! There is no reason a policy for a family of 3 w/ 1 child having no health issues should cost 1000+/ month! We spend about $300/yr for our whole crew for care incl. any Rx’s. The astronomical costs are b/c special interest grps have serious nonsense required in our policies in Ga. I will NEVER see a chiropractor and its required. I will NEVER enter substance abuse rehab (who b/c an addict after 50?) but its required. I will NEVER have another child, but OB coverage is required….for EVERYONE. Get rid of the coverage for faith healers and spiritual commutations (made up sarc.) and our catastrophic policy would be about a third its present cost. When I knew I had a chance for high risk pregnancy, I pd for the most expensive coverage to ensure my child and I would be covered. I didnt get the HMO and expect society to make up the difference in coverage. This is EXACTLY what OBAMA care has done. The people w/ highest risks are getting a great deal from others. We’re going with a Christian community based plan. I dont want a cent of my $ paying for murder or made up hocum. If I am wrong and find in my 70’s Im addicted to heroin or wanting to kill a defenseless baby, I guess I’ll be sorry for my poor choice of coverage.

    • quinersdiner on August 24, 2016 at 10:10 am

      This is very interesting. My policy will be cancelled at year’s end (thanks to Obamacare). What is the name of the company you’re getting your coverage through?

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