NHS is 'broken' and must 'reform or die', says Keir Starmer - "Keir Starmer warned that the 'broken' NHS must 'reform or die' today after a damning report found billions of pounds in extra investment has failed to boost performance... he will make clear there is no prospect of pouring more money in without root and branch changes. Instead he argued resources must be shifted from inefficient hospitals to community care and preventing illness developing. 'We have to fix the plumbing before turning on the taps. No more money without reform,' Sir Keir said - suggesting the process would take a decade. In a round of interviews this morning ahead of Sir Keir's keynote speech, Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the NHS 'unquestionably' wastes money and could go 'bust' without fundamental change. He also criticised the British Medical Association - which doubles as regulator and industry body - for 'sabre-rattling'. Professor Sir John Bell, who was a member of the Covid Vaccine Taskforce, echoed concerns about the BMA saying it has been a 'major drag' on reform. The radical approach is being unveiled after a damning new report by Lord Darzi, a pioneering surgeon and former Labour health minister, concluded the NHS is in a 'critical condition'... Lord Darzi, who now sits as an independent peer, said he was 'shocked' by the scale of the failings he unearthed... the NHS is bogged down in bureaucracy and has become less productive with the money it receives... 'The NHS is at a fork in the road, and we have a choice about how it should meet these rising demands. 'Raise taxes on working people to meet the ever-higher costs of an ageing population - or reform to secure its future. 'We know working people can't afford to pay more, so it's reform or die.'... 'I want to frame this plan around three big shifts - first, moving from an analogue to a digital NHS. A tomorrow service, not just a today service. 'Second, we've got to shift more care from hospitals to communities... And third, we've got to be much bolder in moving from sickness to prevention.' Lord Darzi's report highlights a lack of investment in new buildings, scanners and technology - all of which have hampered productivity... 'My colleagues in the NHS are working harder than ever but our productivity has fallen. 'We get caught up frantically trying to find beds that have been axed or using IT that is outdated or trying to work out how to get things done because operational processes are overwhelmed... Former Tory health secretary Victoria Atkins has written to Mr Streeting, outlining how the Conservatives were already working to improve outcomes for patients. Her letter criticises the Darzi review for only focusing on England, highlighting the NHS performs worse in Wales, which has been run by Labour for 25 years... Regulatory-type organisations now employ some 7,000 staff, or 35 per NHS provider trust, having doubled in size over the past 20 years."
Clearly, the NHS just needs even more money. Why is Keir Starmer starving the NHS of money so he can privatise it? NHS Underfunding is always the root of all its problems, even if the UK spends slightly more as a percentage of GDP on public healthcare than the OECD average
Brits treat their own wounds and make slings over fear of hospital waits - "While the NHS in England – which was run by Conservative governments for 14 years until Labour’s election victory last month – is struggling, the health service is also failing to meet targets in other parts of the UK run by different parties. A Conservative Party spokesman said: ‘In government, we boosted NHS funding by over a third in real terms, increasing total funding to £165 billion, and recruited records numbers of doctors and nurses, allowing the NHS to recover from the pandemic and waiting lists to fall at their fastest rate in a decade. ‘Whilst we put record sums into the NHS, the Labour-run Government in Wales has overseen Welsh NHS funding fall, meaning waiting lists are at a record high and ambulance response times are at record lows.’"
Ramon Agusta on X - "#NHS In 1999, the population was 58m with 1m NHS staff. In 2023, the population is 68m with 1.8m NHS staff. The population has risen 15% (which is far too high also) but staff has risen 80%. What on earth are they all doing? #Starmergeddon"
Nate Silver on X - "In 2007, the UK had higher GDP per capita ($50K) than the US ($48K). Now (2022) ours is $76K and theirs is $46K! (Source: World Bank) Their economy has actually shrunk on a per-head basis. And stuff like this is going to make the gap bigger:"
Max Roser on X - "The last time Americans were poorer than people here in the UK was in the 19th century. Here is the data, taking differences in the cost of living into account."
TracingWoodgrains on X - "UK retail workers who admit they would not take warehouse jobs without a substantial raise nonetheless successfully sue for their wages to be raised to the level of warehouse workers embarrassing abuse of law"
Left wing ideology is about equal pay for unequal work
Equality Act 2010 - "The UK’s Orwellian sounding Equality Act 2010 is strikingly Marxist. It demands equal pay for work of equal value where these are defined as follows:
'A’s work is equal to that of B if it is like B’s work, rated as equivalent to B’s work, or of equal value to B’s work. A’s work is like B’s work if A’s work and B’s work are the same or broadly similar, and such differences as there are between their work are not of practical importance in relation to the terms of their work. …A’s work is rated as equivalent to B’s work if a job evaluation study— gives an equal value to A’s job and B’s job in terms of the demands made on a worker …A’s work is of equal value to B’s work if it is neither like B’s work nor rated as equivalent to B’s work, but nevertheless equal to B’s work in terms of the demands made on A by reference to factors such as effort, skill and decision-making.'
In short, supply and demand have been replaced by judges and labor boards with the authority to deem which jobs are “equal” and therefore should be paid equally. And the labor boards do so based on vague and subjective considerations that do not change with changing circumstances. Imagine replacing “jobs” with “condiments” and having judges decide whether ketchup and mustard should be priced equally because they are similar, broadly comparable, or rated equivalent in terms of the effort, skill, and decision-making that went into their production. You think I am joking. I am not. Here’s an example of a case just decided in the UK.
'More than 3,500 current and former workers at Next have won the final stage of a six-year legal battle for equal pay. An employment tribunal said store staff, who are predominantly women, should not have been paid at lower rates than employees in warehouses, where just over half the staff are male.'
The tribunal ruled that retail workers and warehouse workers were “equal” and thus had to be paid equally. Next replied that they paid everyone market wages. Verboten!... No one is alleging that male and female warehouse workers were paid unequally or that male and female retail workers were paid unequally or that there was any direct or indirect discrimination. The only claim is that warehouse workers, who are less likely to be female than retail workers, earn more than retail workers. And since these jobs have been judged “equal,” the company has violated Equality Act 2010. Who could have predicted that jobs as disparate as warehouse and retail jobs might one day be deemed “equal.” Yet because Next failed to foresee such lunacy they are now required to pay millions in back wages to their retail employees. Software engineers, particularly in AI, are currently in high demand. A British firm looking to hire them may hesitate to raise wages, fearing that a future ruling could classify software engineers as “equal” to a larger, lower-paid group like HR administrators. Such a decision could easily push the firm into bankruptcy. The warehouse workers were almost 50% female (47.25%). So females were not barred from the higher paying jobs. The fact that 77.5% of the retail workers were female suggests that retail work has special appeal to females relative to males and thus that there are compensating differentials. Any of the three female plaintiffs could have taken jobs in the warehouse. If the jobs are equal and the warehouse jobs pay more this is, on the plaintiffs’ theory, “puzzling”. [Or, as Ayn Rand would say, blank out.] In fact, the court case reveals that Next was struggling to fill the warehouse positions and offered any retail employee—including the plaintiffs—the opportunity to switch to warehouse work. On cross-examination, one of the plaintiffs admitted that, given the unpleasant conditions in the warehouse—described by the court as “the drone of machinery,…vibration, alarm sirens and the screeching of machinery, wheels and rollers, continuously present in all areas”—the warehouse job “did not seem particularly attractive” compared to the greater autonomy and more appealing environment of the retail job. The plaintiff added that she would only have considered the warehouse job if it paid “a lot more money.” Thank goodness for the men and women who were willing to take such jobs for only a little more money! It should not shock that different people have different preferences over jobs, just as they have different preferences over ice cream. In particular, it will perhaps surprise only the judges to learn that men tend to be more wage-focused and “women are relatively more attracted to employers with low pay but high values of nonpay characteristics (NBER 32408).” The court, however, recoiled from this idea, noting that if they were to take demonstrated preferences seriously this would be tantamount to applying “an unfettered free market model of supply and demand.” The horror... if you think that a skill is vital for a job, that’s discrimination!... The evaluators are thrilled–because the fact that the jobs are unequal proves that they are equal!... Labor boards will inevitably lead to the misallocation of labor, diminishing both wealth and fairness. Severe misallocation may lead to further intervention, in the worst scenario, even to the allocation of labor by fiat. Politicization breeds division, rent-seeking, and a stagnant, unpleasant society. More generally, it pains me that there is no recognition that the market is a discovery procedure, including the discovery of the value of different skills and people’s preferences over different jobs. No recognition that the market harnesses tacit knowledge and knowledge of particular circumstances of time and place–knowledge that is difficult to quantify, communicate, or communicate in a timely manner–and that “society’s economic problems are primarily related to adapting quickly to changes in these circumstances.” No recognition that a price is a signal wrapped up in an incentive."
Meme - "Taylor Swift when grocery stores make a 1.6% profit *Angry Hulk*
Taylor Swift explaining why her concert tickets are $5,000 *Smart Hulk*"
Meme - "Me: By taxing churches, we could generate an extra $71 billion per year.
Them: Yeah, but my church feeds the poor!
Me: That's awesome! They can write it off when they file their taxes."
Left wingers really don't understand why churches aren't "taxed", but this is no surprise, since they don't understand the difference between income and wealth. Of course, if you suggest "taxing" non-religious charities, they'll get very upset
It's telling that even Politifact rated this claim "False"
Reasons to question child-care studies funded by Ottawa - "child-care organizations advocating for more federal control of the sector released a trio of separate reports. One was published by the Childcare Resource and Research Unit, which received a combined $346,432 in transfer payments from two federal departments last fiscal year, and whose latest report in particular was funded by Employment and Social Development Canada — a fact noticeably absent from media stories about it. The second was published by the Atkinson Centre at the University of Toronto, one of whose co-authors previously received $150,235 from the Trudeau government for a child-care project. And the third, published by the Prosperity Project, was written by a member of the Trudeau government’s national child-care council. Anyone notice a pattern among these organizations and authors cheerleading for more federal control of child care? The problems with the Trudeau government’s national daycare program are so severe, however, even government-control cheerleaders cannot deny them. For example, the Childcare Resource and Research Unit report notes government subsidization “intensified demand” and that, as waiting lists exploded, “the visible mismatch between child-care supply and demand became a leading media story and an overarching concern.” But the Childcare Resource and Research Unit’s raison d’être is to work towards a universal publicly-funded child-care system, so its confidence in a government-controlled system is not easily shaken by such inconvenient facts as widespread shortages and market imbalance as a result of government control. In line with the Trudeau government’s ideological bent, its advocacy disregards parental choice and its report disparages private for-profit child-care providers as it pushes for national government-controlled daycare... In some communities, educator shortages are so severe that programs operate without any qualified staff. Disabled children in particular are “acutely impacted” by child-care shortages. But even after highlighting these shortages and quality reductions and the market imbalance created by the federal program, the Atkinson Centre authors’ prescribed solution is more government spending, more government control and a further reduction in the private sector’s role. Evidently the problems created by government control must be fixed through more government control — a strategy unlikely to succeed given the horrendous track record of government control in the first place... In arguing for more federal control, the Prosperity Project report also claims federal spending on government-controlled centres is preferable to funding parents directly and letting them decide how to care for their children. The problem with this claim is that if parents really preferred government-controlled care over other options, they would use the funds to get their children government-controlled care. The fact is, many parents don’t like the government-controlled option. In addition to attacking parental choice, the Prosperity Project report, consistent as always with the Trudeau government’s agenda, applauds “public management” of private child-care providers — a comment that drew sharp criticism from these same private providers. “This report,” wrote Krystal Churcher, chair of the Association of Alberta Childcare Entrepreneurs, “exhibits clear bias and hostility toward private child-care operators while undermining the valuable contributions of women entrepreneurs” in the child-care sector and also unfairly discounting family-based care. The trampling of parental choice, the bias against family-based care and the hostility towards private providers are themes common to these organizations’ advocacy and the Trudeau government’s child-care agenda. It is no wonder they and the government are so intertwined."
Do wealthy Canadians pay enough taxes? That depends how we define 'fair share' - "When the federal government announced an increase in capital gains taxes in its recent budget, the hike was defended, in part, as a way to ensure the wealthiest Canadians pay their fair share. But how exactly do we determine what a "fair share" is? Especially, as some data suggests, the wealthiest are already paying a larger share of the overall income tax burden. "That word fair is completely subjective," said Trevor Tombe, a professor of economics at the University of Calgary. "What's needed in any kind of statement around what is or isn't fair is clarity around what the person means when they say that word." Jake Fuss, director of fiscal studies at the Fraser Institute, echoed that a lot of these discussions are not informed by definitions, which is why the institute releases an annual report about Canada's tax system that has found high-income Canadians are paying disproportionately more in taxes... the top 20 per cent of income earning families pay 61.9 per cent (that's nearly two thirds) of all the country's personal income taxes, while accounting for just under half of its total income. As well, the study found that those top income earning families pay 53.1 per cent of total taxes. Similar data was also compiled by Statistics Canada on those who pay higher income taxes"
Left wingers always claims increased taxes on "the rich" are justified so they pay their "fair" share. Presumably nothing will ever be too much. Maybe not even a 100% tax rate, since when they say they want to "tax the rich", they mean they want to tax them so much, they're no longer "rich"
Left wingers get around inconvenient facts by dismissing and mocking the Frasier Institute. Too bad that means they'll need to dismiss and mock the government too
Reviewing the Impact of Taxes on Economic Growth - "With the Biden administration proposing a variety of new taxes, it is worth revisiting the literature on how taxes impact economic growth. In 2012, we published a review of the evidence, noting that most studies find negative impacts. However, many papers have been written since, some using more sophisticated empirical methods to identify a causal impact of taxes on economic growth. Below we review this new evidence, again confirming our original findings: Taxes, particularly on corporate and individual income, harm economic growth... We investigate papers in top economics journals and National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working papers over the past few years, considering both U.S. and international evidence. This research covers a wide variety of taxes, including income, consumption, and corporate taxation. All seven papers reviewed here find that tax cuts have positive effects on growth, although some papers note that the strength of this effect depends on which taxes are cut, for whom, and when. Mertens and Olea (2018) used time series data from 1946 to 2012 to estimate the impacts of marginal tax rates on individual income. They found that marginal rate cuts led to both increases in real GDP and declines in unemployment. A 1 percentage-point decrease in the tax rate increases real GDP by 0.78 percent by the third year after the tax change. Importantly, they find that changes in income following a tax change are responsive to the marginal rate change regardless of the change in the average tax rate. This illustrates that the positive GDP changes the authors find are the response to changes in the incentives, rather than due to an increase aggregate demand through the consumption channel. Cuts in tax rates for the top 1 percent also have positive impacts on other income groups, consistent with a supply-side narrative of how reductions in top marginal rates can increase incomes for other groups over time. However, tax cuts for the top 1 percent do increase inequality. Zidar (2019) examines the impact of federal tax burdens on economic growth and labor supply across different income groups and states from 1950-2011. He finds positive impacts of tax cuts on economic growth following two years after the change in policy but finds that tax cuts for low- and moderate-income taxpayers affect growth more than tax cuts for high-income taxpayers. The paper finds that a 1 percent of state GDP tax decrease for the bottom 90 percent of earners increases state GDP by 6.6 percent. Looking at labor supply effects in particular, he finds that a 1 percent of state GDP tax decrease increases labor force participation for the bottom 90 percent of earners by 3.5 percentage points and hours worked by 2 percent. He does not find any significant impact on labor force participation rates, hours worked, or GDP growth for the top 10 percent of earners from a similarly sized tax change, somewhat in contrast to the results found in Mertens and Olea (2018) for top earners... the paper provides compelling evidence of tax cuts impacting growth through the supply side, consistent with neoclassical economic theory. Ljungvist and Smolyansky (2018) look at 250 state corporate tax changes from 1970-2010 to assess their impact on employment and income. By comparing nearby counties across states, this allows the authors to isolate the impacts of corporate tax changes relative to other policies that might affect economic growth. They find that a 1 percentage-point cut in statutory corporate tax rates leads to a 0.2 percent increase in employment and a 0.3 percent increase in wages. They find that tax increases are almost uniformly harmful, while tax cuts seem to have their strongest positive impact during recessionary environments. As with some of the other studies discussed here, the paper mainly examines short-runs effects, and it is possible that these positive effects could grow over a longer time horizon. Gunter et al. (2019) use a data set of 51 countries from 1970-2014 to examine the impacts of value-added taxes (VAT) on economic growth. They find that the effect of taxes on growth are highly non-linear: At low rates with small changes, the effects are essentially zero, but the economic damage grows with a higher initial tax rate and larger rate changes. For this reason, increases in the VAT in countries with high VAT rates, such as much of industrialized Europe, will have more significant impacts on GDP than increases in countries with low VAT rates. These non-linearities imply strong Laffer curve effects... Alinaghi and Reed (2021) conduct a meta-analysis on the effects of taxes on growth for OECD countries. Their sample includes 979 estimates from 49 studies. Unlike other papers discussed in this review, this paper considers both the effects of taxes and spending on growth. The authors disaggregate policy changes into three categories: tax negative fiscal policies, tax positive fiscal policies, and tax ambiguous fiscal policies. Tax negative fiscal policies include increases to fund unproductive investments, or increases in distortionary taxes combined with a decrease in non-distortionary taxes. Tax positive fiscal policies include tax increases to fund productive investment, decreases in distortionary taxation combined with increases in non-distortionary taxation, or tax increases to reduce the deficit. Tax ambiguous fiscal policies are those where the overall economic effect is unclear. Using these classifications, the authors find a 10 percent decrease in taxes of a tax negative fiscal package increases GDP growth by 0.2 percent. The same sized tax decrease for tax positive fiscal policies reduces GDP growth by 0.2 percent."
Dr. Naomi Wolf on X - "I’m a small time landlord in that I saved up month by month as a broke single mom for 12 years to pay the mortgage on a rental property for my longterm financial security. Yesterday I learned from my broker that as of Jan 1, NYC and the Federal gov’t are giving people with zero jobs or money, rental vouchers equivalent to the rent for my property. This makes me wonder: why did I work so hard?"
Matthew Yglesias on X - "Waymo's self-driving taxis are, as best as we can tell, considerably safer than human drivers. A perfect example of how you can't just think about regulatory issues in terms of sympathetic little guys against evil "corporate power.""
Left wingers don't love the underdog. They hate the "powerful"
Meme - Swann Marcus @SwannMarcus89: "Progressives never bother to ask a simple question, which is this: How many countries have a higher median income than the United States? Answer: 1 and it is a country of 650k ppl They talk about our median income in a vacuum in order to mislead morons into thinking it's low"
"Median equivalised Country disposable income (US$, PPP)
1 - Luxembourg 49,748
2 - United States 48,625"
Our Revolution @OurRevolution: "To solve a problem, start by asking the right questions"
Alexis Cardarella @thatquietsong: "Half of America makes less than 35k. Stop asking us why we're not having children. Stop asking us why we're not buying homes. Stop asking us why we can't save. Stop asking why we don't get a better job. Ask corporations why they're paying their employees low wages."
Readers added context: "The median household income as of 2023 is $80,610 per year according to the Federal Reserve. The median individual income is $42,220"
Meme - Memetic sisyphus @memeticsisyphus: "Perfect analogy for how they view taxes. Closed system, direct competition with everyone, your neighbor doing well doesn't improve your life, one pie that does not grow, wealth is not created only taken. They're upset someone has more than them. They think that's unfair. So they'll build a system to take what you have."
James Medlock @jdcmedlock: "Not having progressive estate taxation is just bad game design"
"LET'S SEE... I GOT 31, YOU HAVE 28, 35 FOR YOU, AND-"
"-I'VE GOT 10,019."
"*SIGH*"
"HEY, ADD ANOTHER 20 TO EVERYONE, ON ME!"
"I HATE THIS."
"NO ONE WANTS To PLAY BOARD GAMES WITH ME EVER SINCE I INHERITED 4,000,000 VICTORY POINTS FROM MY GRANDFATHER."
Rutger Bregman on X - "Devastating review of the degrowth literature (561 studies):
--> 'few studies use quantitative or qualitative data...'
--> [those that do] 'tend to include small samples or focus on non-representative cases'
-->'large majority (almost 90%) are opinions rather than analysis'"
Reviewing studies of degrowth: Are claims matched by data, methods and policy analysis?
Thread by @YIMBYLAND on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "The average NEPA impact statement takes 4.5 years to complete. That's ridiculous. Here's a list of things that took less time to BUILD than it takes to complete a 575 page impact statement...
1. Golden Gate Bridge - 4 years, 4.5 months
2. Empire State Building - 1 year, 45 days
3. Hoover Dam - 4 years, 1 month
4. NYC's original 28 station subway (IRT) - 4 years
5. Willis Tower - 3 years
6. The Manhattan Project - 2 years, 2 months
7. Gateway Arch - 2 years, 8 months
8. The Pentagon - 1 year, 4 months
9. Disneyland - 1 year
10. Seattle Space Needle - 400 days
11. The Boeing 747 - 2 years, 7 months
12. The Alaska Highway (1,700 miles) - 234 days
13. USS Nautilus (1st nuclear sub) - 3 years, 6 months
NEPA was very important for the time in which it was created.... In 1970. Today, NEPA is holding us back from building clean energy, transit, infrastructure, and much needed housing. It’s time for reform."
Swann Marcus on X - "I've mentioned this to people before, but we built the transcontinental railroad in 6 years using dynamite and dudes with sledgehammers whereas California's high speed rail line was authorized in 2008 and they didn't even start construction until 7 years later"
Patrick Metzdorf on X - "Elon isn't wrong with his assertion that "large infrastructure projects are effectively illegal in the west", due to regulatory constraints and accumulated red tape."
Thomas Edwards on X - "Not “the west”, just “the US”. For example, even Italy has high speed rail."
Patrick Metzdorf on X - "Fair. The UK has also largely failed at their High-Speed Rail projects for similar reasons, and even Germany is lagging quite behind. But you're right, a lot of Europe seems to be able to do more than the US in this regard."
Grübelmonster on X - "Meanwhile, Spain has built the largest HSR network in Europe. Second only to China. IDK what the Brits are doing with their HS2 project and its insane costs - are they using golden rails or what?"