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To: jttmab who wrote (14729)	6/12/2002 4:32:33 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 21057

It doesn't intuitively follow that additional cash would have reduced the leverage. No, but it doesn't follow that the additional cash would have increased the leverage either. Either opinion amounts to speculation. We do agree that there has been successful and unsuccessful deregulations. Obviously. While I support dergulation, only an anarchist would say that there should be no regulation or regulatory law. Also even some area crying out can for deregulation can be made worse if the deregulation is done in a follish way. along with that more people can fly [though it would be somewhat difficult to show how much that had to do with deregulation and how much it had to with rising income and other factors.], but you've also got a reduction in services, there has been no improvement in time to travel, and the maintenance practices of the major airlines have degraded, e.g., they now have third party machine shops providing non aircraft qualified critical parts [illegally]. There usually is other factors to consider, but it seems logical that the dramatic drop in inflation adjusted costs for air travel was a big factor in the increase of air travel or more specifically that my claim that it made air travel more affordable was accurate. I don't know why improvements in travel time would be expected. The planes are similar (some of them are the exact same planes that where flying before deregulation), only a few new airports have been built. Total passenger miles have greatly increased, and security (something that adds a lot to the time spent in the airport) was not deregulated. As for maintenance I have hear stories (anecdotal evidence) about sloppy maintenance, but 1 - The safety record of airlines has improved since deregulation 2 - The deregulation was at least mostly deregulation of fares and routes. I don't think maintenance requirements where reduced. and 3 - "providing non aircraft qualified critical parts [illegally]." Note you say illegally. If it was illegal then and it is illegal now, it isn't a matter of a change in the regulation. Tax rates as a disincentive to investments. Eye wash. Bill Gates is pretty damn wealthy, and to a lesser degree all the other CEO's and officers of the company. None of them are sloughing off to an early retirement. They're personnally driven to excel and they let their tax accountants worry about the numbers. The majority of investment dollars do not come directlyfrom the pockets of CEOs or even CEOs and senior company officers. Even when investment money does come from such sources it is often evaluated on its estimated after tax level of return. Lowering taxes results in a higher after tax return and thus encourages investment. Also the higher return itself results in more additional cash available to invest, and the lowered tax rates result in better targeting of the investment because it is less important to structure investments to reduce taxes. And I could cite a member of Congress that sent his wife to Germany for medical treatment. What's the point? Merely that your point (or at least your implication), that the health care in Europe was superior to that in the US is in doubt. I was not asserting that it is better in the US, merely that it is better in some ways. That leaves a rather significant portion of the population that doesn't have any health care coverage at all. And it's a group of lower income, though not low enough to qualify for Medicaid that is strapped to the wall. It's a group that is denied access because of the costs. Health care coverage is different then health care. Many people have access to health care even though they do not have insurance coverage. Some people self insure. Others could get coverage but decline because they are young and healthy and they (mistakently or not) think its not worth spending a lot of money on coverage. Many others qualify for coverage by the government but don't apply for it. The number of people that really can not afford private coverage and do not qualify for any for of free of subsidized coverage is much smaller then the figure that is usually throw around (the number of people with no medical insurance) and even these people are not without acces to health care. And cost comparisons. Cost of what? Do you want to consider the comparitive costs only of government funding? If that's what you want to do, the US wins. If you want to compare the entire national costs between the two systems, the US doesn't win. Do you want to make any consideration for life expectency? I think that's a pretty important criteria for judging the effectivness of a health care system. The cost to government is a big factor because that cost is involentarily paid for by the tax payers. Also because if it is high then people will be less able to afford going outside the system. They can't afford to pay for public and private insurance but they are forced to pay for the public insurance so they don't get the oportunity to bypass the longer waits and apparently poorer service from public health care. The US does have higher direct dollar (or pound or euro) cost, but 1 - as I said before a disproporionate share of the medical advances are made here (of course to an extent that amounts to Americans subsidizeing the rest of the world). 2 - The system is better for most people then most public systems. You are right that some countries with public health care have good private health care available but most people in those countries use public health care because they have to pay for it anyway. 3 - The cost should include the longer waiting times and the even the costs to the doctors that have to provide their services at a lower rate then what they would recieve in a free market. The longer life expectancy is probably mainly do to lifestyle. Americans don't have the healthiest diets and we have gotten very fat. Also genetics and other factors can muddle the issue. I any case I'm not really saying that the US system is so great merely that things would be worse if we socialized the system. And all of this is getting away from the original point - That the US is wealthier then Europe (which I defined as the EC countries). It started with your comment - "If you look at Western Europe which has higher tax rates, you'll find that the savings rate is higher than the US." and my reply - "And higher unemployment, and lower GDP per capita. The higher taxes and a higher level or regulation in Europe have made them less wealthy then they would have been without these things. The increased savings makes up some of the difference but is not enough to make up for all of the difference." Even if you consider all of American health care spending to be worthless (which would be nonsensical) and just subtract it from the per capita GDP figures the US still has more production, more wealth, and more income, per person, then the EC countries do. Tim