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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

There is a difference between subsidizing activities and paying for the essentials of govt. We blurred the distinction long ago. Police, fire, road building? These are essential govt activities.

Our white collar welfare defense industry, with a 700bil budget 300 of which we'll never use and is utter waste - justified only with, "Yeah, but cutting defense would eliminate a lot of jobs" - is a grotesque subsidy. Medicare Part D? Do I even need to explain what an unnecessary subsidy this is for big pharma? The generous mortgage interest deduction? That one was fucking brilliant, no? "Let's find a way to rape the environment and create a bubble!" Medicare? Excellent. "Let's take a captured consumer, serviced by a professional paid based on unit production, and whose work is so nuanced one can never tell if it's necessary or overkill, and remove the direct purchaser model, replacing it with a government-run third party payer structure. This will surely get costs under control." How about health insurance? "Let's tie medical insurance to employment by allowing employees to receive it from employers tax free. This won't complicate anything. It's much better than something as confusing as people buying insurance themselves. ...Much more preferable than compelling Americans to purchase a product on their own, which would require them to learn about how it works and become informed, savvy, bargain conscious consumers."

And let's not forget the mother of all subsidies we are about to see blow up in our faces: Student Loans. That one's so fucking stupid I don't even know where to start. But here it is in a nutshell:

"Here's an idea. Let's back billions of loans for people to go to college."

"How can we assess risk to set rates?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, a guy getting an engineering degree from Penn State might be better off then a guy getting a degree in modern dance at Dennison, no?"

"No. We'll just back all the loans the same."

"But no lender would ever do that. From an underwriting perspective, it's madness. And surely, we have to cap the amount lent. Otherwise, providers-- I mean, schools, will see a pool of money and raise costs perniciously."

"No. We won't do that. We'll lend liberally as we can, to meet the tuition increases."

"This will create millions of debt serfs who'll have to file bankruptcy."

"We'll see how that works. If too many do so, we'll block them from discharge by law."

"What happens if the value of a college education falls someday? This will be the mother of all bubbles."

"Madness. Two things that will never decrease in value - a college degree and housing."

"I assume you've gleaned this from business experience in those markets."

"I have worked on policy here in DC for twenty years. We know more than any business person could ever hope to understand about the operation of markets."

I am outside Philadelphia just now, and I like to think that everyone around me is engaging in these Sebby-like dialogues.