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High costs of care and insurance don’t add up to Obama’s healthcare reform plan

Depending upon whom you ask, the U.S. either has the best health care in the world, or really bad health care. The two main complaints are that health care is too expensive, and that too many Americans don’t have health insurance, and therefore lack access to adequate care. Both issues must be considered in perspective.

The U.S. Census Bureau tells us that in 2007, the last year for which it has data, the number of people with health insurance increased to 253.4 million, and the number without health insurance dropped to 45.7 million, or 15.3 percent. Given the current economic situation, more people now don’t have insurance.

However, consider that among those without coverage 9.2 million are in households earning $75,000 or more, 9.7 million are illegal aliens and non-citizens, and many don’t have coverage for three months a year, or less. At worst, the number is closer to 30 million, about 10 percent of the actual citizen population. The United States government should not concern itself with whether people who are not citizens have health insurance, nor be concerned whether citizens with the means to purchase insurance decide not to.

Some factors in the high cost of health care are:

• The U.S. has the latest medical technology in the world, and more of it than other countries, especially those with national health systems. That technology is expensive: Late generation scanners, for example, cost $1.5 million to $3 million each, and we have lots of them.

• We have the best pharmaceuticals available, although it takes too long to get through the research and development and approval phases, and new drugs are expensive. According to MedicalNet.com, “it takes an average of 12 years for an experimental drug to [get] to your medicine cabinet … Only 5 in 5,000 drugs that enter preclinical testing progress to human testing. One of these 5 drugs that are tested in people is approved. The chance for a new drug to actually make it to market is thus only 1 in 5,000.” A U.S. Department of State publication says, “Estimates about the cost of developing a new drug vary widely, from a low of $800 million to nearly $2 billion per drug.”

• There are also: tests and procedures done as defensive medicine; malpractice insurance for doctors that costs tens of thousands a year; costs from excessive malpractice awards and frivolous lawsuits; costs resulting from complying with arguably the most complex, confounding and frequently amended set of regulations of any industry; fraud, abuse and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid programs; and the payment deficit of Medicare/Medicaid reimbursements that other patients have to pay.

Many of these costs can be lowered through thoughtful effort, but health care is similar to hotel rooms in terms of cost: The Ritz Carlton costs more than the Flea Bag B & B, and our health care is at the Ritz end of the spectrum, both in cost and quality.

Before we turn our system into the Flea Bag B & B we ought to know how Americans feel about their care. A poll by the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and Zogby International revealed that Americans oppose the House of Representatives' reform bill 50-42.

Other points from the poll:

• 84 percent have a regular doctor whereas 15 percent do not, and 76 percent trust their doctor, while 2.6 percent do not.

• 83 percent are somewhat or very satisfied with their health care, while 15.6 percent are somewhat or very dissatisfied.

• 59 percent thought a federal health plan could undermine private insurance companies.

Congressional Budget Office director Doug Elmendorf told the House Energy and Commerce Committee in March that creating a system where a public plan could compete on a level playing field against private coverage would be “extremely difficult.” In April, the Lewin Group health care consultant firm found that premiums for the public option plan would be 30 to 40 percent lower than private plans.

With this in mind, nine Republican Senators told President Obama in a letter that “Washington-run programs undermine market-based competition through their ability to impose price controls and shift costs to other purchasers. Forcing free market plans to compete with these government-run programs would create an unlevel playing field and inevitably doom true competition. The end result would be a federal government takeover of our health care system, taking decisions out of the hands of doctors and patients and placing them in the hands of a Washington bureaucracy.”

The House plan will inevitably produce rationing of care like that in England, Canada and other countries with socialized medicine, where patients wait months for procedures and to see a doctor. The critically ill and elderly are expected to suffer or just die because the best treatments are too expensive or not cost effective for someone their age.

A government-run health system like the statists in the administration and Congress want is probably better than no system at all, but it is vastly inferior to what we have now, even with the existing problems. And they can be fixed.

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Technorati Tags: Health Care, Politics, Statists, Liberalism

Obama, Gates and Crowley: Everybody screwed up!

There is plenty to criticize in the strange case of the arrest of Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates at his home by Cambridge, Mass. police.

When police responded to a call that two men were apparently breaking into a residence, they found Mr. Gates had broken into his own home because he didn’t have his keys. That should have been enough to satisfy the police that Mr. Gates was not a burglar and the police then would have gone about their business. But, alas, things often turn out to not be as simple as they ought to be.

Mr. Gates is a black man and was offended to be questioned by police about being in his own home. Many of us might have felt the same in those circumstances. But Mr. Gates had a chip on his shoulder, and began accusing the police of racism. Now, Mr. Gates is not compelled to be polite to police officers at all, and particularly under these conditions, but he ought to have had better sense and better manners than to allege racist motives to the police officers, one of whom was a black man. That was Screw-up #1.

Screw-up #2 came when police Sgt. Joseph Crowley failed to leave the scene after being satisfied that Mr. Gates was not committing a crime. Instead, Sgt. Crowley took offense at Mr. Gates insults and allegations, and arrested him. The Sergeant should know that it is not against the law for people in their own home to be less than polite to police, even rude and vulgar. He and the other officers should have simply left the premises.

President Barack Obama committed Screw-up #3 when responding to a question about the incident at the end of a press conference he said that the Cambridge police acted "stupidly" when they arrested someone they knew was in his own home. Why would the President of the United States comment on so insignificant an event? Why would a reporter ask the President a question about this event? Was it staged by the White House? Why would President Obama, having admitted not knowing the facts, make any comment at all, let alone to call the police behavior stupid?

Mr. Gates owes the police an apology for being a rude and stupid, and playing the race card.

Sgt. Crowley owes Mr. Gates an apology for not having better sense than to improperly and unnecessarily escalate the situation by arresting Mr. Gates because the Sergeant was offended by Mr. Gates language.

President Obama owes the Cambridge police an apology for his ham-handed insult; and he owes the American people an apology for behaving like a dope.

Now, let’s move on.

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Demonstrators protest cap-and-trade and healthcare reform

Not many of us saw anything about the protests last Friday at Sen. Jim Webb’s (D-Va.) Richmond office and Sen. Mark Warner’s (D-Va.) Chesterfield County office.

Sen. Webb’s staff witnessed more than 200 demonstrators, and Sen. Warner’s staff watched roughly 300 people let their opinions about the cap-and-trade energy bill and the healthcare reform proposal now before Congress be known in no uncertain terms.

Protestors held up signs reading:

"Government-run health care makes me sick."

"Can we be more disgusted? Yes we can."

"No Obama care."

And chanted slogans:

"You work for me!"

"We've had enough!"

"Webb vote no, or you will go!"

Neither Senator has committed himself on either measure, with aides explaining that the bills are still in their early stages.

Resistance to these two legislative monstrosities is growing, and may yet force substantial revision to both measures.


Video link courtesy of API

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Barry, we've got a problem!

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Technorati Tags: Obama, Politics, Statists, Democrats

Cap-and-Trade policy based upon unproven theory, not fact

The conventional wisdom has it that human activity is harming Earth’s atmosphere and if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels, catastrophe will ensue. We’re told this is settled science, the debate is over and the U.S. must drastically change its energy policy.

Until recently this theory was called “man-made global warming,” but when evidence surfaced that Earth’s average temperature has fallen for the last several years, a change in terminology was needed, from “man-made global warming” to “man-made climate change.”

Environmentalists now blame human activity for global cooling as well as for global warming, and probably will continue to blame humans if the atmosphere neither warms nor cools.

The man-made climate change faction’s belief exceeds known scientific fact. Its adherents have become a cult and their mission has become a crusade in which they ignore contrary evidence, and demonize anyone with the temerity to disagree with them. They have labeled these people “deniers,” as if by doing so they can make their theory legitimate. But man-made climate change is merely a theory, and in fact is being passionately challenged in the scientific community by an increasing number of scientists. Incontrovertible evidence simply doesn’t exist and there is no scientific consensus.

What is known is that Earth’s atmosphere experiences alternate periods of warming and cooling, and has for eons, long before man appeared on the scene. And most people recognize the Earth is currently experiencing a general warming trend. That is where agreement ends, however.

“Scientists no longer support man’s activities as a cause of global warming/climate change,” declared a headline in the Canada Free Press in May of 2007. A sub-head stated: “Growing Number of Scientists Convert to Skeptics After Reviewing New Research.”

“Following the U.S. Senate’s vote today on a global warming measure it is an opportune time to examine the recent and quite remarkable momentum shift taking place in climate science,” the story began. “Many former believers in catastrophic man-made global warming have recently reversed themselves and are now climate skeptics.”

The article listed 13 scientists from around the world, their impressive credentials, and their opinion of the global warming theory, and said “[t]he names included below are just a sampling of the prominent scientists who have spoken out recently to oppose former Vice President Al Gore, the United Nations, and the media driven ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming.”

A year later the Telegraph of London posted a story on its Website under the headline, “Scientists sign petition denying man-made global warming,” then reported that “[m]ore than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition denying that man is responsible for global warming ... including 9,000 with PhDs, [who] claim that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane are actually beneficial for the environment.”

The renowned late American physicist Frederick Seitz created the petition in 1998 in response to the Kyoto Protocol a year earlier, and urged the U.S. government to reject the treaty, saying that “[t]he proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.”

“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of ... greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate,” the petition continued. “Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments.”

The president of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, Arthur Robinson, commented: “If this many American scientists will sign this petition, you certainly can’t continue to contend that there is a consensus on this subject.”

And in March of this year the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Website posted these comments: “Fifty-nine additional scientists from around the world have been added to the U.S. Senate Minority Report of dissenting scientists, pushing the total to over 700 skeptical international scientists ... This updated report ... represents an additional 300 (and growing) scientists and climate researchers since the initial report’s release in December 2007.

“The over 700 dissenting scientists are now more than 13 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media-hyped IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] 2007 Summary for Policymakers.” These scientists “hail from all over the world, including Japan, Italy, UK, Czech Republic, Canada, Netherlands, the U.S. and many are affiliated with prestigious institutions including, NASA, U.S. Navy, U.S. Defense Department, Energy Department, U.S. Air Force, the Philosophical Society of Washington (the oldest scientific society in Washington), Princeton University, Tulane University, American University, Oregon State University, U.S. Naval Academy and EPA ... The explosion of skeptical scientific voices is accelerating unabated in 2009.”

It’s a safe bet many Americans, perhaps most, have heard little about the strong and growing body of dissenting scientists, because the national media has disgraced and debased itself by taking sides on important issues like this one.

The debate on man’s role in climate change is not over, and sensible national leaders, if any remain, will stop planning draconian changes to our way of life to correct a problem that hasn’t been proved to exist.

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Technorati Tags: Government, Politics, Energyr, Democrats

Pickens' project failure demonstratesfutility of rushing "green energy"

The CBS News headline proclaimed “Pickens Plan for Huge Wind Farm Blows Away,” as Texas oilman and billionaire financier T. Boone Pickens latest venture to build a huge wind farm to demonstrate the viability of alternative energy has instead become a demonstration of why such ideas are not viable.

His plan was unveiled last year in the face of highest-ever oil and natural gas prices, when oil prices peaked at more than $145 a barrel and wholesale natural gas reached $47.61 per cubic meter, making his plan for a 4,000 megawatt wind power project in Pampa, Texas look very appealing. Had the project been completed, it would have produced electricity equivalent to four nuclear-power plants and would have powered 1.3 million homes. But, alas, it won’t be completed.

Mr. Pickens has a goal of reducing oil imports by 30 percent in ten years by replacing oil with natural gas in cars and trucks and using wind power to replace natural gas as a source of electricity. Among the reasons for the decision to abandon the wind project were "the collapse of the capital markets" and "the steep downturn of natural gas prices,” a spokesman for Mr. Pickens' company told The Washington Post.

Lower natural-gas prices, down to $27.86 last weekend, made the more expensive wind power less desirable as an alternative to gas-fired electric plants. Another problem is the lack of transmission lines to get power from the wind turbines into the electricity grid.

This project is the poster child for the futility of trying too hard to implement green energy. It is dramatic evidence that while the Congress and the Obama administration, the environmental lobby and the global warming/global cooling/climate change faction all want to move away from fossil fuels as fast as possible, the new technologies, the nation's electrical infrastructure and the existing energy system quite plainly are not ready for this transition.

“It was a little more complicated than we thought,” Mr. Pickens told The Dallas Morning News, a bit of understatement that supports a point made here more than a couple of times. His comment surprises a lot of folks who expected a savvy businessman like T. Boone Pickens not to make an error characteristic of rookies.

But shortsighted decisions like this one are part and parcel of the rabid green movement, which attempts to implement immature technologies at virtually any cost without having taken a long, sober look at the problems that must be conquered first. To his credit, and unlike so many others in the green energy lobby, Mr. Pickens recognized the futility of this plan, and sensibly abandoned the project.

Someday the United States will be ready for this transformation, and sensible people will wait until then to make the move. What the Congress, the administration, the environmentalist fringe and the greenies must do is adopt a position of thoughtful analysis, and move as quickly as possible, but as deliberately as necessary, to get to that point.

In watching Barack Obama work to enact his agenda one gets the idea that he either is unaware of the obstacles these measures face, or he just doesn’t care. But even if all the changes he wants to bring about are good ideas – and they definitely aren’t – it’s just not prudent, or possible, to do everything so quickly and all at the same time in this economic environment without making a series of critical and costly mistakes.

Fortunately, as time passes and more of the details of the President’s radical plans become known, resistance grows.

As the United States government tries to force-feed green energy to the American people and jam it into a market that is unprepared to accept it, our President is trying to get the world’s developing nations – among which are China and India, two of the fastest growing users of fossil fuels – to clean up their high-polluting factories. They are saying, however, “No way. It will wreck our economy.” Those nations understand what Mr. Obama apparently does not understand: That implementing an energy policy for ideological reasons, and against market forces, is foolish and dangerous.

As for Mr. Pickens’ goal of reducing oil imports, it doesn’t take building wind farms for which the supporting infrastructure is non-existent to accomplish that goal. All that is required is to ease government restrictions and remove obstacles to drilling where domestic oil and gas reserves lie, and allow American energy companies to do what they do best.

This simple solution would increase domestic oil and gas supplies and the oil and gas industry would continue efforts to clean up oil and gas emissions, it would allow the technologies for alternative energy sources to develop naturally along with the infrastructure to support them.

This approach not only has the advantage of making a lot of sense, but also has the support of the energy industry, which is the leading investor in developing new, less polluting ways to use existing fossil fuels, and also in developing alternative energy sources.

But the doctrinaire Left is in charge, driving full speed ahead, looking neither left nor right, nor much past the hood ornament up front.

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Technorati Tags: Energy, Liberalism, Government, Democrats

Every Real American needs to watch this

I hadn't seen this before a friend sent it to me this weekend.

Great story.

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Technorati Tags: Culture, Politics, Patriotism

Americans becoming fed up with government encroachment

A recent visit to Colonial Williamsburg had the predictable effect of rekindling interest in the founding of our country, and brought to mind the character of colonial life and important events in the prelude to the American Revolution.

One of the informational talks at a historical site described how the revolution began, arising slowly from mounting discontent with the degree of control imposed by King George and the British Parliament over the day-to-day lives of the colonists.

One of the best known of those is the issue of taxation without representation, and the colonists’ impatience with the various taxes imposed on them, which eventually prompted the civil disobedience at Boston Harbor in December of 1773 when colonists dressed as Indians dumped cases of tea overboard to protest the Tea Act.

But as most everyone knows the Boston Tea Party was not the actual start of the revolution; it did not fully materialize for more than two years, with the adoption of Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 by the Continental Congress. In the intervening period the relationship between Mother England and the Colonies continued to deteriorate until the night of April 18, 1775, when about 700 British Army regulars were given secret orders to capture and destroy military supplies that were reportedly stored by the Massachusetts militia at Concord. Armed conflict broke out the following day at Lexington and Concord.

The colonists knew that their cause was lost if they could not resist the British with arms, and were not about to be put in that position. When the King’s men attempted to steal their munitions, they fought back. The following day, Virginians at Williamsburg reacted similarly when the Brits robbed their magazine, though no shots were fired in Virginia.

As the fighting escalated into full-scale war, the colonists were not of one mind. There were three distinct factions: those opposed to British rule; those loyal to Britain, and those who were neutral. Estimates range from only one-third to as many as forty percent of the colonists actually opposed the Crown.

Today, we see similarities to the mid-eighteenth century. The federal government has been growing slowly but steadily for most of its existence, and especially since the 1930s. With the shocking expansion accompanying the Obama administration’s assumption of the White House, the federal government will spend nearly one of every four dollars in the economy, up from just less than one in every five last year.

And people are taking notice. Finally.

A rather spirited opposition is rising against the mounting encroachments of the federal government into the lives of the people. In response to various stimuli the government, among other things, has:

~ taken charge of banks and auto manufacturing,

~ created trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see,

~ stated its intention to implement a massive overhaul of the healthcare system that most certainly will nationalize healthcare,

~ passed legislation that will impose dire restrictions on the conventional sources of energy and dramatically raise costs to business thus increasing the costs of nearly everything to the people.

Many people see what is happening as returning to the state of things in 1775, watching as their freedoms are being taken away and they resent that they don’t have anything to say about it.

As in the 1770s the people are not of one mind. And like in that time, a small minority can effect great change.

We have already had Tea Parties to protest the injustices we see. Ted Cruz, Republican candidate for Texas Attorney General addressed the East Texas Tea Party on July 4 on just this subject:

“That’s the spirit that is under assault right now, today, in Washington. When government takes over everything, the people who lose are the people. Our freedoms are what are lost when everything is drawn into Washington, DC.

“I’m absolutely convinced the greatest legacy Barack Obama is going to leave in the Presidency is a new generation of leaders rising up, throughout the country, to stand up and defend our liberty. The men and women here will fight for our freedom. We will stand up. We will turn this around.

…

“I will end with the words of Thomas Jefferson: ‘If citizens fear their government, there is tyranny. But if government fears their citizens, there is liberty.’”

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Technorati Tags: Freedom, Politics, Government, Statists

Palin continues to confuse her enemies

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin continues to confound political observers. The woman whose sudden entrance onto the national political stage so badly confused the liberal machine last fall has just as suddenly announced her departure, unexpectedly announcing her resignation as Governor last Friday, less than three years into her term.

You can evaluate Mrs. Palin’s political effectiveness by looking at how people reacted to her. The barrage of gutter-level personal attacks after Sen. John McCain chose her as his running mate was swift and vicious. So badly flummoxed was the opposition that they stooped to personal attacks that targeted the Palin children, which successfully demonstrated the lack of class and civility of the attackers, and actually helped Gov. Palin.

This strategy found a new low when comic David Letterman suggested that Mrs. Palin’s 14 year-old daughter had had a sexual encounter with a baseball player during a game at Yankee Stadium. He then made disparaging remarks about the Governor’s appearance.

Is this the best the left can do?

This behavior epitomizes the undisciplined mind of fringe liberals, who are so hypnotically linked to their ideology that they cannot accept the idea that everyone doesn’t agree with them, and when people don’t agree with them, they lose control.

Gov. Palin’s enemies in Alaska pursued ethics charges against her that lacked merit, but were expensive to defend, and proved to be a substantial distraction. Politics can often be a dirty game.

The Democratic National Committee committed an unforced error with this reaction: "Either Sarah Palin is leaving the people of Alaska high and dry to pursue her long shot national political ambitions or she simply can't handle the job now that her popularity has dimmed and oil revenues are down. Either way – her decision to abandon her post and the people of Alaska who elected her continues a pattern of bizarre behavior that more than anything else may explain the decision she made today."

Even if every slam against Mrs. Palin in that statement was true, you’d think the DNC would be happy that its enemy is stepping down. Message to the DNC: Sometimes it’s better to just keep quiet.

What millions of Americans like about Mrs. Palin is her basic “normalness”: She is one of us. An attractive wife and mother, college educated, a church-goer, a person with a simple lifestyle, a woman who willingly gave birth to a Down syndrome child instead of aborting it … she could be our next door neighbor. And that is what freaked out the opposition so effectively. Her broad, “normal American” appeal presented an image contrary to everything the radicals believe in, and the only way they could neutralize that appeal was to attack her personally and try to belittle her. But that tactic failed.

Would Sarah Palin have been a good Vice President? Like everyone else, she has weaknesses, and despite her natural appeal didn’t always come across as someone that could run a country. She isn’t a polished and eloquent speaker, but then, consider Joe Biden’s frequent gaffs. She doesn’t have foreign policy experience, but then neither does Barack Obama. However, unlike Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden and Sen. McCain, she does have executive experience as a mayor, the head of a state commission, and a governor. And she has proven that she will take on entrenched political factions and win.

So the jury is still out on that question. But the opposition must have been worried, given its frenzied attack strategy.

Suddenly stepping down as governor in mid-term, however, has everyone wondering what is going on, including her supporters. Even the most positive evaluations say this move is risky if Mrs. Palin hopes to have a future in politics. With the decision to walk away, she has branded herself a “quitter,” despite whatever good reasons she may have for stepping down. And, predictably, her enemies are having a field day playing guessing games.

She’s fed up with the pettiness of her opposition and with the nastiness of politics, and the toll her sudden prominence has taken on her children, who are supposed to be off limits from the normal sewer-tactics of the political game. In her statement last Friday, she said: “Political operatives descended on Alaska last August, digging for dirt. The ethics law I championed became their weapon of choice. Over the past nine months I’ve been accused of all sorts of frivolous ethics violations – such as holding a fish in a photograph, wearing a jacket with a logo on it, and answering reporters’ questions. Every one – all 15 of the ethics complaints have been dismissed.” But there are still hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills to pay. Who could blame her for wanting to escape that?

But maybe there is something ugly lying beneath the surface yet to be discovered, an actual scandal, instead of a made-up scandal. Right now, nobody knows for sure, and until something substantive actually comes to light, everyone would be well advised to keep quiet, behave themselves, and make an honest effort to be mature, responsible adults.

There is a strong feeling that those expectations are too high.

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Technorati Tags: Culture, Politics, Palin, Democrats

Random thoughts on a Thursday

Spencer Pratt: 9/11 Was an "Inside Job"

That headline appeared on the MSN Home Page when I opened it today, and was followed by this: “Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag Pratt shared some controversial views on a radio show earlier this week.

“In a Monday appearance on Alex Jones' radio show, Infowars, the couple revealed they feel 9/11 was an ‘inside job,’ say the idea that global warming exists is ‘mind boggling’ and lament the ‘end of humanity.’”

I’ll have to confess that my reaction was less than charitable: “Who is Spencer Pratt; who is Heidi Montag Pratt; and why should anyone give a tinker’s damn what they think?”

I decided that despite my general feeling of not caring to know the answer to that question I would go to the source of all knowledge, Wikipedia, to see what I could learn, and found this: “Spencer William Pratt (born August 14, 1983) is an American television personality known for his role as the antagonistic husband of Heidi Montag on MTV's The Hills. He is the older brother of Stephanie Pratt, who also appears on The Hills.”

Well, I feel much better now. Just knowing that Spencer and Heidi are involved with MTV confirms my initial reaction of not giving a tinker’s damn, and also explains why I’d never heard of either of them. Or their show.

Then I found an email containing a story that I had read a while back, but had forgotten about that does a great job of explaining the fallacies of liberal-think/socialism.

An economics professor at a local college made the statement to one of his classes that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked, and that in a society where no one would be poor and no one would be rich, life would be wonderful.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade; no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.

The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little for the first test had studied even less this time, and the ones who studied hard for the first test decided they wanted a free ride, too, so they also studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the third test rolled around, predictably, the average was lower, still.

The scores never increased, but the bickering, blame and name-calling did, and the resulting hard feelings meant that no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

To the students’ great surprise the experiment in socialistic grading resulted in all the students failing the class. The professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because, like sharing grades, when the rewards are great, the effort to succeed is great, but when the rewards are taken away, no one will want t try to be successful.

That’s a pretty effective explanation of how socialism works and why it is evil.

(Thanks to John B. for the reminder.)

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Technorati Tags: Liberalism, Politics, Socialism