Let Them Eat Flounder

“There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as ‘moral indignation’, which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue.”

–       Erich Fromm

Stereotypes exist for a reason.  One of my favorite stereotypes is the hand-wringing bleeding heart who seeks to gain adoration by demonstrating their inestimable goodness, so demonstrated by telling others what to do. 

“Princeton University economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton argued during the American Economic Association’s annual meeting in San Diego that a slice of the U.S. population is getting rich at the expense of the rest of the population.”  A source used by the economists is “The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development [which] decries U.S health care as being too expensive, claiming that it costs roughly $8,000 per household.”  The academics tag this with the historically charged description of “poll tax,” a term they must have learned in the history classes that failed to teach them the economic outcomes of large central-planning, collectivist solutions. 

The OECD:  “Together with governments, policy makers and citizens, we work on establishing international norms and finding evidence-based solutions to a range of social, economic and environmental challenges. From improving economic performance and creating jobs to fostering strong education and fighting international tax evasion…”  Our Ivy League economists are taking pointers from those with an explicit agenda for top-down, supra-national control of daily affairs.  That alone should call their credibility into question.  This is so stereotypically predictable that …

Ah ha, and there it is:  “In order to combat rising costs, Case and Deaton, a Nobel Prize winner in economics, said that everyone needs to be in the health system, via insurance or a single-payer system like Medicare-for-all, and there must be cost controls, including price caps on drugs and government decisions not to cover some procedures.”  All of which means rationing, shortages, higher costs, more government debt, and a clear two-tier system where the very well-off and/or connected get far better care than the comforted majority.

“Deaton is especially critical of U.S. doctors, pointing to the fact that 16 percent of people in the top 1 percent of income earners are physicians, according to research by Williams College professor Jon Bakija and others.  ‘Physicians are a giant rent-seeking conspiracy that’s taking money away from the rest of us, and yet everybody loves physicians,’ Deaton told the Post. ‘You can’t touch them.’” 

Despite the cartoonish stupidity of these economists, their points are worth considering because of the terrifying traction they have already gained among the benighted mob.  Do these venomous moralists believe that the evil rich physicians stole their wealth?  If so, then why not say so plainly and call for prosecution and confiscation? 

It might surprise these academics to know that apart from deferred reward and accrued academic debt, most physicians simply spend more hours at work than most of their neighbors.  Do the economists expect doctors to work even harder, or accept even less to accomplish their goodness-by-proxy?  Envy and class warfare will not provide better average health care, nor will it provide a net economic benefit for the society that seeks to enslave its physicians.  Those that believe otherwise deserve what they get.  For my part, once I’ve covered my monthly bills, don’t expect me to slog back to the ER to support those who would attack me.  I’ll be on the beach, fishing.  

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