4 ms·
Why are those the only options? Nationalization is also a potential and underrated part of the toolbox. A nationalized-health-care system could be a huge leve
by hakfoo 5y ago
Why are those the only options?
Nationalization is also a potential and underrated part of the toolbox.
A nationalized-health-care system could be a huge lever on inflation. On a basic level, it would enjoy near or full monopsony status on many products and labour categories, so it would be easy to say "our reimbursement rates rise 2% per annum, and if you want to sell ANY product, you'll take it and like it." An even more aggressive process could take medical education and supply production directly under a state umbrella, further reducing market pressure for ever-growing margins.
Similarly, a "free state universities for all" program could come with strict restrictions on program costs to clamp down on spiraling costs.
Other forms of state intervention-- subsidized goods, for example, or even WWII-style ration books-- could help to mitigate the negative consumer-facing effects of inflation. You might have to pay $100 per kilo of ground beef on the open market, but if we had a functional ration system, everyone still gets sufficient coupons to have a hamburger once or twice a week. If the only things you need "dollars" for are luxury nonsubsidized/nonrationed goods, then the dollar can crash and burn every few decades with minimal quality-of-life impact.
- cherrycherry98 5y agoWon't these new services require rather significant increases in taxes? Not to mention government takeover of industry to impose price fixing and rationing raises some red flags for me.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> Won't these new services require rather significant increases in taxes? No, because there are no new services, just nationalization of services people are already paying for, and removing to the extent the industry has profits (or surplus revenues in the nonprofit components), nationalization would provide free revenue in first-order effect.
- roenxi 5y agoEach of those is its own political debate. If there was political agreement that those plans worked then there would be no link to currency or debt. They'd be good ideas all weather and all systems. But they aren't good ideas, they are increasingly clever perpetual motion machines, claiming to make things cheaper while moving the cost around (without making it smaller) until it isn't clear where it is. Because there isn't a step in them to make things cheaper that doesn't involve waving a magic wand and saying "but if the government says it is cheap it will be cheap".
- hakfoo 5y agoThe government doesn't have stockholders demanding double digit year-over-year revenue growth to guide their pricing and product decisions. That's the magic wand.
- roenxi 5y agoThat magic wand doesn't make sense. The easiest way to get double-digit revenue growth is already to make the product cheaper. Note that many high-value companies (eg, Uber, Amazon) historically run on razor thin to negative margins when they want to grow their revenue.