Thomas Sowell is a well-known economist who has always seemed to me level-headed and non-ideological. His piece today, Magic Numbers in Politics, on the RealClearPolitics site seems to me instructive in the context of the current arguments over health care and stimulus packages.
Politicians love numbers, because they are simple and make good sound bites. Those who understand where the numbers come from are less sanguine about the arguments because they understand all the questionable underlying assumptions. Politicians either don't understand this, or (more likely) don't care, so long as the numbers seem to support their policies and their re-elections.
We are assured, for example, that the Senate health bill will "only" cost $829 billion over the next ten years, well below President Obama's $1 trillion cap. In fact, the politicians all know, and we all know, it will end up costing more. The deep Medicare cuts that are included in the calculations probably won't occur, or certainly won't be as deep as assumed. The "savings" imputed from various actions won't save as much as assumed, if they save anything. And so on. If one plays with the equations long enough, and tinkers with the assumption enough, one can generate any prediction one wants.
The claim that the government can provide health care coverage to tens of millions more people, many of them poor and requiring Federal subsidies, and not cost the nation any more money is ludicrous, but politicians expect us to believe it anyway. Expanding coverage may be worth doing even if it does cost us more, but then we ought to be up front about it, instead of playing this fake numbers game.
Thoughts and observations about the world condition.
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