Only a Liberal…

The following is one side of an argument I had with a supporter of federal govt run health care who thinks Wall Street is evil…

535 greedy, evil Wall Street SOBs each run their own insurance company. Greedy SOB #1 is named… Bernie. Bernie charges his customers $200 extra dollars per month over the market price for health insurance.

Greedy SOB #2 decides “You know what… I can steal all of Bernie’s business if I only charge $150 extra dollars per month. Ill steal all his market share, and still make a killing.”

Greedy SOB #3 says, “I’m only going to charge $100 extra.”
Greedy SOB #4 says, “I’m only going to charge $50 extra.”
Greedy SOB #5 says, “I’m going to charge market price.” But at market price, Greedy SOB #5 refuses to pay any claim, taking the money, filling in his hot tub with it, and rolling around on it in his mansion.
Greedy SOB #6 says, “I’m going to charge market price, and only deny half of the legitimate claims that come in. I’ll steal all of SOB #5’s market share. Muwahahaha.”

Bernie says, “I’m going to charge market price and pay for EVERY legitimate claim. I’ll steal all those greedy SOBs market share, and still make a profit.”

Greedy SOBs 2-6 go out of business… OR they follow suit and stay in business… maybe.

535 greedy SOBs, by the forces of competition are thus FORCED to provide consumers with the service they demand. They want to screw you… their very nature wants to steal every stinking penny from you. But they can’t. Their greed in fact lowers the price of insurance, increases the quality of service in the never ending pursuit to steal every last customer from their competition.

NOW… take those same 535 GREEDY WALL STREET SOBs and put them in charge of Congress. I ask you…

1. WHY THE HELL WOULD THEY EVER REDUCE COSTS AND INCREASE THE VALUE OF THEIR SERVICES WITH NO COMPETITION?
2. Which death panel is going to kill more people? The one on Wall Street or the on in Congress?
3. Why would anyone spend billions of dollars researching a cure for cancer with ZERO profit incentive?

You seem to think altruism will make the world a better place, despite all evidence to the contrary. I am perplexed by many people who will willingly hand over power to one political party and then get angry when that power is inevitably passed to the party they hate.

Perhaps you think the threat of elections will serve the same purpose as competition.The problem there is both people running for that office will do EXACTLY the same thing.

We’re stuck with bad politicians for 2-6 years. Bad corporations that mistreat their customers can go out of business OVERNIGHT.

The next time a liberal tells you the “general welfare” clause of the Constitution means the government can do anything they want, quote James Madison:

With respect to the words “general welfare,” I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. (Letter to James Robinson, 1831)

I realize liberals aren’t terribly interested in the facts behind the general welfare clause, since they simply want excuses for the federal govt to have more power, but this will at least cause them to stumble temporarily as they deal with their cognitive dissonance.

Hell no, are you kidding? I promise to elaborate past one sentence though.

I have heard from many on the progressive side of the spectrum that universal, zero-copay health care is a right, and is no different than the civil rights movement of the 60s. As shocked as I was at this ridiculous comparison, you will even hear that comparison from black congressmen who are old enough to have been victims of racist laws. The good news from all this is that my suspicion was correct; black people for the most part have gotten over the civil rights movement in reality. They pretend like they haven’t when they don’t feel like debating something, but they don’t feel threatened anymore, and they shouldn’t. While Al and Jesse have been screaming for decades, a nation of color blind white people were born who don’t give two sh*ts what color people are. But I digress.

Black people weren’t allowed to vote. Then they got 3/5ths of a vote. Then they got a vote, but weren’t allowed to ride in the front of the bus, drink from the same water fountains, and numerous other preposterous and ignorant nonsense. What sane and rational person believes these outrageous, racist policies to be analogous to health care?

I suppose the closest you can come to a similarity between the two requires a straw man argument. Let’s say that health care costs $40,000 per year. Black people were denied the same rights as whites, and in health care, this analogy would mean poor people were denied something that rich people weren’t. The problem with the analogy is two-fold; health insurance doesn’t cost $40,000 per year and poor people aren’t contributing tax money to health insurance like the blacks were to public buses and such.

If rich people want a nicer fountain, they can install one in their house, but everyone has access to the public water fountains. No one would argue that everyone is entitled to filet mignon 3 meals a day, yet Progressives and Statists will argue that EVERYONE deserves top notch, state of the art, free health care.

They argue that it would be a travesty if the fire department handed you a bill after they extinguished a fire at your house, therefore it is a travesty to make people pay medical bills. This is intellectual laziness at its worst. It certainly is an argument for universally free “catastrophic” care of some sort, which I do not disagree with, but it is not an argument for single-payer universal health care. The fire department extinguishes the fire. They do not rebuild your roof, replace your sheet rock, buy you a new fridge, replace your landscaping, and water your lawn for the rest of your life. I am all for an emergency room restarting your heart and giving you some medication to stabilize. I think there is a very strong argument for our society to provide that free of charge, but the notion that we must also replace the liver you destroyed with alcoholism and ibuprofen or the lungs you destroyed smoking cigarettes for 40 years is ludicrous and criminal.

Insurance is defined on Wikipedia as “a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent loss.” An insurance company collects relatively cheap premiums from thousands of people so that the few people who do have expensive health problems can be paid for.  These premiums should only cover unexpected and/or catastrophic health issues: the ones that cost way more money than the person can afford. An annual checkup is expected and cheap. An x-ray may be unexpected, but it is relatively cheap. Even if it is $500, that is not a lot of money. I don’t care how poor you are. Premiums should be for unexpected dialysis, a stay in an ICU, shattered femurs, heart bypass, etc.

Americans have become so spoiled and so prosperous that they have redefined “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as “easy life, no debt, and the requirement of happiness.” We are so filthy rich as a nation that food nazis can literally force restaurants to throw away perfectly good food because the FDA said it is not health enough for the homeless. I heard audio on Glenn Beck’s radio show of an American Communist (yes they still exist) who had the gall to say that 40 million Americans are in a food emergency. If 40 million Americans were in a “food emergency” in 2010, there would be extreme violence the likes we haven’t seen about food being routinely thrown away because it didn’t meet the strict standards of the FDA. Homeless people eat out of dumpsters, but food that has been sitting in a sterilized pan for 3 hours… UNFIT FOR CONSUMPTION.

I find the comparison between health care and civil rights disgusting. And it is especially embarrassing that those who were the victims of those laws only a few decades ago would use those crimes to argue for the government takeover of an extremely complicated, expensive segment of the market that will only get more expensive if competition is removed from the equation. It costs a lot to fix a human body without killing it, and that expertise and administration should not be handed over to people who can’t even deliver mail 6 days a week.

The reason the fire department will put out the fire for no extra charge is that your fire may spread to everyone’s house. That is why we all throw our money into the pot and don’t charge extra for every visit. But in addition to the fire department, home owners have hazard insurance. When the fire department leaves, you call your hazard insurance company, and they rebuild your house. So I understand an argument for some sort of government involvement in health care, but not 100% of it. A government ambulance may take you to the hospital, but a private insurance company should pick up the tab.

I recently read an article that typifies the Liberal vs Conservative media fight. While Liberals would have you believe that Fox News succeeds because there are a lot of Americans who yearn for wall-to-wall lying, the fact of the matter is in most debates, Conservatives have the facts on their side, and Liberals are simply scratching for approval (I said most debates, not all).

The article is “Dick Cheney’s lies about President Obama” by Eugene Robinson. After starting the article by comparing Cheney’s wisdom to that you would hear from homeless people sitting in bus shelters, Cheney’s big lie is “exposed” by Eugene. After the Christmas day underwear terrorist failed in his attempt, Obama’s behavior in the wake prompted Cheney to say the following:

As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war.

And Eugene’s immediate response in his article:

Flat-out untrue.

Ok, Eugene, I’m listening.

The fact is that Obama has said many times that we are at war against terrorists.

Obama has said many things, Eugene. That doesn’t mean he believes them. Eugene’s analysis is laughable if put in perspective. Picture his article being about the following fictitious quote from Cheney:

As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are broadcasting all legislation on CSPAN.

And Eugene responds with:

Flat-out untrue. The fact is that Obama has said many times that we are going to broadcast all legislation on CSPAN. See the video.

Now for those that don’t know, healthcare deliberations are NOT being broadcast on CSPAN, despite Obama promising it on at least 8 different occasions during the campaign. So we have established that Obama’s word is worthless.

The big picture

Before I continue analyzing, I want to highlight the overall issue. This is the best Liberals can do when accusing their opponents of lying. They always cite some lame, hard to pinpoint, crime that under scrutiny pales in comparison to Liberal lies. I’m not saying that Conservatives tell the truth… that’s preposterous. I’m saying Liberals are TERRIBLE at exposing it.

So is there a CSPAN-promise-like lie on the Conservative side? The CSPAN lie by Obama is a slam-dunk, so surely there is a slam dunk on the other side of the aisle. I decided to check by looking up the top-rated “lies” that Dick Cheney and Glenn Beck have reportedly told.

Dick Cheney

The Huffington post has an article about Cheney’s top 10 lies. You would figure #1 would be devastating.

Cheney’s Comments on unauthorized wire-tapping: “This was always a policy… to capture those international communications… It is legal. It was legal from the very beginning. It is constitutional, and to claim that it isn’t I think is just wrong.

Huffington Post rebuttal: “the approval for the warrantless surveillance of communications to and from the United States that followed on September 25 was neither “legal” nor “constitutional.”

There are numerous opinions on this, but in January 2009, a special-intelligence court ruled that the “government does not need a search warrant when it taps the phones or checks the e-mails of suspected terrorists who are outside the U.S., even if Americans may be overheard on the calls.” The LA Times wrote,

Although the Constitution protects the privacy rights of Americans against “unreasonable searches and seizures,” this principle does not bar U.S. spy agencies from conducting surveillance aimed at foreign targets abroad.

So the #1 lie by Dick Cheney according to the Huffington Post isn’t a lie at all. Dick Cheney has been working in the public eye for decades, and this is the number 1 lie according to his biggest critics. While I am sure Dick Cheney has lied at some point in his life, I am simply highlighting the pathetic lack of ability of Liberals to identify them.

Glenn Beck

I also searched for lies by Glenn Beck, and this page came up. The analysis is long, so I will summarize:

1. Glenn Beck claims science czar John Holdren proposed forced abortions and putting sterilants in the drinking water to control population.
2. PolitiFact talks about how the book was written by Holdren “more than three decades ago” when he was “then a young man.”
3. PolitiFact: “Holdren and the other authors discuss various “coercive” means of population control — including putting sterilants in the drinking water. But they stop well short of advocating such measures.”
4. Excerpt from Holdren’s book: “Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems.”
5. Another excerpt: “Most of the population control measures beyond family planning discussed above have never been tried. Some are as yet technically impossible and others are and probably will remain unacceptable to most societies.”
6. PolitiFact: “The authors argue that compulsory abortions could potentially be allowed under U.S. law “if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.” Again, that’s a far cry from advocating or proposing such a position.”

A FAR CRY?! Holdren and his coauthors say that sterilizing water “seems to horrify” people. Well, of course it does. Then they say population control measures are “unacceptable to most societies.” PolitiFact actually ends their analysis with the following:

The authors make clear that they did not support coercive means of population control. Certainly, nowhere in the book do the authors advocate for forced abortions.

You have got to be kidding me. Yes, Holdren’s book says you can’t sterilize the water, not for moral reasons, but because there is no current sterilant that is “uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals.” Holdren is disappointed that sterilization cannot currently be achieved.

This is the “big lie” by Glenn Beck. PolitiFact has applied what I call courtroom logic. Since Beck cannot prove in a court of law that Holdren advocated sterilization, then Holdren does not advocate sterilization. While this certainly means Holdren shouldn’t be prosecuted for his beliefs in a court of law, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe them. The excerpts from his book clearly show he wishes these tactics were acceptable and safe.

Conservative ascendancy

So all these sources, including Eugene Robinson, act as though they have really nailed their targets without a shadow of a doubt. In less than 1000 words, I have shown their attempts to be lame at best and inaccurate at worst. In comparison, Fox News and Rush Limbaugh point out the lies of their political opponents with video and audio of outright, easily provable lies, and juxtapose direct contradictions by individuals themselves. THAT is why they are winning their media battles.

Liberals need to get better at identifying big, and important, lies by Conservatives. I have no desire for one side to win or lose. I want the right ideas to win, regardless of which party is pushing them. Conservatives are dead wrong on the government’s role in drugs and prostitution, and Liberals are dead wrong on the government’s role in redistributing wealth and “promoting the general welfare.”

So Mr. Eugene Robinson, an op-ed columnist at the Washington Post, gets paid to write articles easily refuted by little-old-me. His partisanship is an embarrassment.

I wish I could take credit for thinking this up, but I have to attribute it to my father, who may have gotten it somewhere else. The White House has decided, since they’re getting killed in the polls about health care thanks to Fox News spending most of their time tearing it apart with analysis and video of town halls and tea parties, that rather than engage Fox in a debate, they will simply get Fox News to talk about something else. So Obama and his administration have blatantly started whining about Fox News, and Fox has taken the bait. Wall-to-wall coverage about how much the administration whines about Fox News, all the while spending less time on real issues.

I have to give the White House credit. Its a brilliant tactic. No one can doubt the political talent of the Obama team. They are many things, but political ignoramuses they are not. Why bother debating Fox News about issues when you can get Fox to change the topic of discussion by playing on their own vanity? Genius, pure genius.

The flip-side is that while Obama and Axelrod and Emmanuel and Anita Dunn spend their time playing Fox like a fiddle, they are not spending time running the #$%&* country. The right thing to do would be to argue with Fox News about the merits of nationalized single-payer health care, which all evidence shows is their goal. Obama wants single-payer… he has said so before. If they had outdated stuff like “facts” and “logic” on their side they could simply debate Fox News and win the debate.

How is it that the greatest politician in recent history, Barack Obama, is unable to debate simple Fox News reporters on an issue he so adamantly supports? If its so “clear” that a government run plan is the right way to go, why is he so incapable of convincing the masses?

On top of all that, Obama pretends he won’t deal with Fox News because they’re not really news, but he invites Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow to briefings. Olbermann, who nodded agreeably when Janeane Garafalo said those who protest higher taxes are racist, and Rachel Maddow who furthered the racist quotes FALSELY attributed to Rush Limbaugh. Its a free country… you’re allowed to be partisan, but Mr. President, don’t sell us a bag of crap and tell us its full of daisies. We can smell it.

The modern demagoguery of BIG pharmaceutical or BIG oil or BIG insurance relies heavily on the disturbingly common misconception that really high profits are an indicator of criminal activity (with rare exception such as the profits of companies run by Al Gore). Otherwise intelligent people will by the pernicious nonsense put forth by politicians about their opponent du jour. No one laments when Exxon has a bad financial quarter, but god forbid they have a record-breaking quarter. Almost on cue, politicians will come out of the woodwork talking about windfall profit taxes and investigations and hearings PURELY based on the amount of profit without a shred of evidence.

If a crime is being committed, it can be found at the transactional level. If you look at the transactions of the company and find they are legitimate, then you have no quarrel. But if BIG oil makes billions of these transactions, thereby multiplying their profit margin by the number of transactions, their final profit will be substantial. I suspect most people who understand the concept of profit margin would be flabbergasted to learn how low it is for some of the richest companies in the world, especially in the oil and medical industries.

I wrote about it last year… while politicians routinely attack BIG oil for its high profits, the same politicians are silent about the highER profit margins of Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. For every dollar Exxon keeps after paying their bills, Google keeps $3. Exxon is attacked because they sell more units than Google, but in reality, Google is keeping more of the customer’s money. Politicians don’t concern themselves with this kind of stuff, because Google is very popular with the electorate, and oil companies are not. A large enough proportion of the population has been convinced oil companies are hurting the planet, so demonizing their large profits is easy.

MSNBC - “The cost of crude oil accounted for about 47 percent of the cost of a gallon of regular gas in 2004, the latest figures available from the Dept of Energy. Federal, state, and local taxes accounted for about 23 cents of every dollar spent at the pump. Uncle Sam gets about 18.4 cents per gallon and state and local taxes average about 21 cents — though state taxes vary widely.”

At the pump, only about 4% of the price represents oil company profits. So if you wiped out all oil company profits, the price of a $3 gallon of gas would become $2.88. If you confiscated ALL profits, you would save 12 cents a gallon. When gas was $4 per gallon, Exxon got 16 cents from that gallon, while 60 cents went to taxes. You’re mad at oil companies? You should be mad at the government.

Health insurance profits

This slide shocked me when I saw it… for every dollar spent on health insurance, the insurance companies keep THREE CENTS. It is a terrific illustration of how difficult it is to run a medical insurance company.

So all this nonsense about insurance company profits and executive compensations driving up the cost of your health care is all total and utter nonsense. Is it annoying when some Yahoo gets millions of dollars in bonus even if the company does terribly? Hell yes it is, but taking it back will only fuel your need for schaudenfreude, not increase the weight of your wallet. You take all the insurance company profits back, and your health care costs go down a fraction. Use your head.

Replacing multiple semi-corrupt competing bureaucracies with one, very corrupt, monopolized bureaucracy is not logical. The govt is the most corrupt, lease efficient corporation in the country. Not to mention if they do end up running health care, they’ll just hire the insurance executives to manage it, as govt employees. You can’t escape corruption, you can only police it.

Discussing the morality of greed in the market is like discussing the morality of gravity. Its irrelevant, you just have to deal with it. It will always exist… you just have to have laws that prevent criminal activity. Profits are not criminal, despite popular belief.

From Walter E. Williams, filling in for Rush Limbaugh’s radio show:

In 1966, the House Ways and Means committee said that by 1990 Medicare would only cost $12 billion. In 1966 it started out at $3 billion, but they said by 1990, it will cost $12 billion.

In 1990, Medicare was $107 BILLION. Nine times higher than the congressional estimate. Today, its $420 billion.

Forget Republicans and Democrats. The government is a virus for wealth and productivity. It wastes and wastes and wastes, and then it expects you to celebrate it for doing so. It doesn’t matter which party is in charge. It doesn’t matter who’s driving the metaphorical car.

Think of the government as an inefficient engine. We can get to almost all places without it, but occasionally we need to use it. Politicians are the “mechanics” so they want you to use it a lot. They will spend millions of dollars and poll small groups to find out the best way to convince you to “drive” the car more, but the fact remains you don’t need a car to get to most of your destinations.

Despite all that, our engine runs better than other countries’ engines. I’m not saying we should change the engine type. We need to “drive” less. Stop giving the government more power and money. They waste it at incredible rates… rates that make Bernie Madoff look tame.

Medicare has TENS OF TRILLIONS in unfunded liabilities, a number so high most Americans can’t even get their head around it. If a private company were to do that, no bank would give it a loan. Why do regular Americans assume the world will continue to fund our insanity? And why do otherwise regular Americans want to hand over even one more responsibility to the disease that is the federal government? What amount of waste is too much, where you’ll say, “Perhaps we’re better off paying for our own health insurance.”

Supporting government run health care requires a mindlessness I am unable to comprehend. Every argument for it is in fact an argument against it (except those supporting socialism) even if I disagree with the premise of that argument.

“Private companies are greedy and wasteful.” SO YOU WANT THE GOVERNMENT TO RUN IT?!

“Private companies will let someone die for money.” SO YOU WANT THE GOVERNMENT TO RUN IT?!

Do you know who is helping administer the TARP funds and stimulus money? Goldman Sachs executives who now work for the federal government. So the very people that liberals blame for the financial mess and think should go to jail are the ones now “fixing” it. Its as though if the government hires you, your past transgressions are wiped clean, and you are now pure as the wind-driven snow.

Guess who will be running government run health care when some politician essentially makes private insurance unfeasible? It will be a combination of politicians and the very health insurance company executives and pharmaceutical company executives that you liberals hate so much.

Use your flipping brains.

I have a quote that sums up the liberal/progressive/socialist position on universal healthcare:

When it comes to health care, appealing to the public’s sympathy is a dead end. The whole health-care debate is precisely about avoiding responsibility for less fortunate citizens. (Dan Neil, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

SOOO illustrative of their mindset… let’s look at this piece by piece…

“appealing to the public’s sympathy is a dead end”

The author is talking about the government running health care because the insurance industry is an “ongoing criminal syndicate… that demands protection money from sick people.” He is essentially saying the politicians can’t appeal to the public to pass health care reform; the public has to be forced to do it.

“avoiding responsibility for less fortunate citizens”

Dan Neil does not have a clue, nor a concern, for the concept of freedom. He believes less fortunate citizens are my responsibility and your responsibility. What kind of un-American nonsense is that? If I am forced to do something, that isn’t sacrifice. That isn’t “taking responsibility.” Its FASCISM. I think its great that people support less fortunate citizens, but it sure as shit aint my “responsibility.” Wealth redistribution, for any reason, is not my responsibility.

He continues the article, never actually addressing the criticisms of government health care reform, addressing ads that oppose the attacks on Obamacare…

The ad then lights into Cigna Corp. CEO Ed Hanway, who is retiring with a $73 million golden parachute. The GOP’s prescription for the health-care crisis? “Be as rich as Ed and you’ll be happy, too.”

Of course it’s disingenuous. Executive compensation at insurance companies is at best peripheral to escalating health-care costs. For all we know, Mr. Hanway may be one of the good guys.

The important thing is that the ad hominem ad is pointed, shrewd and manipulative. And yes, it’s class warfare. But then again, this is war.

Part of what makes this country great is the institutional freedom of religion. It manifests itself in the phrase, “I’m entitled to my own opinion on god and spirituality and I don’t have to worry about the government.” Many other countries do not allow for this entitlement, whether by laws or societal pressures.

Unfortunately, this entitlement to one’s own religious beliefs has been inappropriately applied to any and all political issues, whether it should or not. Any issue involving public policy or politicians has become “politics” which I find ridiculous. An example of a political issue is how to correctly collect taxes in all forms. It is very hard to be 100% conclusive on the best method, and different logical opinions are acceptable, and I believe individuals are entitled to differing opinions. Another would be the question of when life begins. All rational, open-minded people can agree that an ovum is not a life subject to the laws and protection of the state, but a baby in a delivery room cut from the umbilical cord is a life subject to the laws and protection of the state. In between those two points lies political opinions, which individuals are entitled to.

Absence of evidence

Today, a political issue is anything that Republicans and Democrats argue about. Let me be clear; this is preposterous. Sometimes the Republicans are 100% correct and the Democrats are 100% wrong. Sometimes the Democrats are 100% correct and the Republicans are 100% wrong. The fact that two politicians are fighting over something does not make them entitled to their own “beliefs.” Politics in the strict sense and religion can only be based on beliefs in the absence of evidence.

If you have evidence that directly contradicts your political “belief,” your belief is WRONG. You are entitled to your fantasy, but don’t preach some moral equivalence about everyone being entitled to their beliefs. Everyone is entitled to their beliefs, but no one is entitled to their facts. If you claim to believe in a lie, you’re either ignorant or a liar. You have no right to announce it uncontested under the veil of “entitlement.”

Example of a belief: “I believe God has a beard.”
Example of an untrue fantasy: “I believe the government is better at reducing costs than the competition of the free market.”

The political arena has degraded so much that the second example is afforded as much credence as the first by tagging them both as “beliefs.” The first example is a belief that cannot be verified or disputed, so it is a legitimate “belief.” The second example is a statement that can be disputed by looking at historical accounts of multiple governments. There is no evidence to support the second statement, but endless data disputing it.

Illustration of competition

Imagine a country where one company sells candy bars. It has decided that a candy bar should cost $5. Let’s say it costs $2 to make it available to the public. Some people think this is too much, but there is nowhere else to get candy bars.

Insert a second company. It finds a way to make that same candy bar for only $1.75, and charges $4.75. Everyone starts buying their candy bar, and to avoid losing all its business, Company #1 starts charging $4.75, but makes less money.

Insert a third company. It also costs them $1.75 to make it, but they decide they don’t need as much profit, so they only charge $4.

Extend this scenario out to hundreds or thousands of companies in hundreds of different industries and you will see why a government monopoly is COMPLETELY incapable of reducing costs as efficiently as a free market. I am open to logical counter-arguments if you can find one.

Believing that a government can reduce costs better is simply wishful thinking that will get you nowhere. All they can do is set prices, not costs. Most likely, people choose to believe it because if it were true, than their ideological goal would be easier to reach. The ends justify the means. The fact that it is false does not concern the ideologue. [By the way, feel free to show me evidence that contradicts my assertion. I welcome facts and logic.]

False compassion of the minimum wage

Another “belief” that seems to be held by most of both political parties is that raising the minimum wage is “compassionate.” A wage is the price of labor, no different than the price of a candy bar or a car. It is worth what it is worth. If licking 100 stamps and placing them on envelopes saves someone $5, that is what it is worth. It is irrelevant if you think someone should be paid $10 for that task. If you force everyone to pay that person $10 when it is only worth $5, no one will be hired to lick stamps. Artificially raising the price of labor with a minimum wage does not change the actual benefit of that labor. It is no different than the disastrous price controls that the government has tried to utilize in the past, causing lines at gas stations. Raising the minimum wage is the opposite of compassionate.

Michigan Democrats are trying to raise the minimum wage in the state from $7 to $10. Any labor worth $8 per hour will not occur, or companies will figure out how to automate it. If it is worth $8, and the employer pays someone $10, he will lose $2. Do that long enough, and he will go out of business, causing the employees  to be unemployed so that no one is making $10 or $8. Again, if you can point out an error or omission in my facts or logic, I welcome it.

Beliefs exist in a vacuum of knowledge or evidence. Once someone shows you evidence that your belief is incorrect, your belief should disappear. Anything less is a state of denial in pursuit of not having to deal with cognitive dissonance. And so this public acceptance of entitlement to beliefs has led to being told never to speak about religion AND politics in polite company. Most issues currently considered politics should not be such, and people should have the utmost comfort discussing them in pursuit of dispelling pernicious myths.