Detailed Abstractions

Ahhh… the NY Times – telling us how great it is to die in Rwanda of a heart attack with health insurance, than to survive a heart attack in the US without (via Cato here).  The premise from the NY Times is a Rwandan official who is just besides themselves when they met an American college student who doesn’t have health insurance.  Cato wonders what they are thinking when:

…[In Rwanda] Dialysis is “generally unavailable.”  As are many treatments for cancer, strokes, and heart attacks, making those ailments “death sentences” more often than in advanced nations.  Life expectancy at birth is 58 years, compared to 78 years in the United States.  Rwandan children are 15 times more likely to die before their first birthday (7 vs. 107 deaths per 1,000 live births) and 25 times more likely to die before turning five (8 vs. 196 deaths per 1,000 live births) than U.S.-born children.  (If you want to meet some Rwandan kids struggling to make it to age 5, read my friend’s blog, Life of a Thousand Hills.)  And yet, the saddest thing is a healthy-but-uninsured American college student…..

But the NY Times isn’t alone in their idiocy (as usual).  Via Reason.com (here), they wonder how a floating grocery store can possibly be a bad thing?

Nestle has put together a floating supermarket barge, and on Friday it sailed the product-laden boatmarket (superboat? grocerybarge?) into brave new Amazonian emerging markets…

My first reaction: Neat!…

Apparently that reaction is not shared by all. At Alternet, Michele Simon, a public health lawyer and author of Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back, calls this an “especially disgusting news item” about which “writing about it is the only way I know to release my outrage. My version of screaming from the rooftop.”…

Yes, apparently many pundits from around the world are working tirelessly to keep all the options they have out of the hands of lesser people… for their own good of course.  As reason writer Ms. Mangu-Ward summed it up:

…Nestle is sending its boat into the hinterlands precisely because those hinterlands are now full of people who might be able to swing the purchase of the occasional chocolate bar, something well outside the scope of their financial lives just a few years ago. Hardly the sort of thing that makes me want to take to the rooftops–or the Internet–to express my outrage….

Arlen Specter….you remember, the guy who was going to lose his Senate seat so changed parties from Republicans to Democrats…. only to be soundly defeated in the primary?  Well, if you care, you can see an example of the last, desperate gasp of a man losing all of his power (via Politico here).

Good news on the medical front.  Via Bloomberg, Stem Cells From Own Eyes Restore Vision to Blinded Patients, Study Shows:

Patients blinded in one or both eyes by chemical burns regained their vision after healthy stem cells were extracted from their eyes and reimplanted, according to a report by Italian researchers at a scientific meeting….

As should’ve been expected and according to all recent news, having a Treasury Department position of paymaster isn’t working out so well for the free market.

Earlier this year, against all basic free market principles the Obama Administration through the Treasury Department started setting up compensation boards (CNN):

WASHINGTON (CNN) — An amendment in the $787 billion economic stimulus package passed by Congress Friday would severely restrict bonuses and other forms of compensation for top executives at companies receiving federal bailout money….

Due to all the negative publicity surrounding the government’s handing over billions of dollars in tax payer dollars to corporations which deserved to fell, Senator Dodd explains:

…”The decisions of certain Wall Street executives to enrich themselves at the expense of taxpayers have seriously undermined public confidence in efforts to stabilize the economy. American taxpayers deserve better,” Dodd said….

Now it might just be me, but I’m not sure Wall Street executives are allowed to vote on appropriations bills and then force the treasury to distribute the funds as they see fit.  It seems Mr. Dodd is blaming Wall Street for the government’s failure to handle the crisis correctly.

With all logic aside though, they went forward.  Not only did they seek to limit overall compensation of the highest paid, but asked for refunds from bonuses already given – one provision in the bill:

…The secretary of the Treasury must review past compensation paid to the top 25 employees of TARP recipients and seek reimbursements “if those payments were contrary to the public interest or inconsistent with the purposes of the [stimulus package] or the TARP,” according to Dodd’s statement….

& People everywhere rejoiced…. I mean complained.  In what was an obviously anti-capitalist move sure to do more damage than any political good it might bring about, people everywhere spoke up (examples here, here, & here), including NBER (abstract here – paper costs $5):

…Important facts about compensation are that: the compensation distribution is highly skewed; each year, a sizeable fraction of chief executives lose money; the use of equity grants has increased; the income accruing to CEOs from the sale of stock has increased; regardless of the measure we adopt, compensation responds strongly to innovations in shareholder wealth; measured as dollar changes in compensation, incentives have strengthened over time, measured as percentage changes in wealth, they have not changed in any appreciable way….

Even little ole me could see this as a negative and wrote about this here just a month or so ago (here):

…Even without bothering with the fact that the government is not in any position to understand what kind of compensation any single employee should have, this is still a radical and arbitrary move that if continued can work to destabilize the economy.

…this decision is an anathema to a free society breaking not only the contract rights of ordinary citizens, but also violating all individuals by pushing a blatant ex  post facto punishment….

& now we have exactly what was shown through economic analysis and basic logic to be true (@Bloomberg):

Nov. 23 (Bloomberg) — Bank of America Corp.’s board may extend its search for a permanent new chief executive officer into 2010 if directors can’t settle on a candidate in the next three days, according to people familiar with the matter….

…At least four external candidates, including Citigroup Inc. director Michael O’Neill, rebuffed approaches….

…That’s narrowing the field and giving the board “an incredibly tough job,” said Michael Holland, who oversees more than $4 billion as chairman of Holland & Co. in New York. “For people who have choices, it’s hard to figure out why someone would take this job.”…

Is it now time to stop calling obvious results  (Un)?intended Consequences…