Oregon Elephant

I have been watching the "John Adams" miniseries on HBO, and it has me fairly obsessed (my wife is getting a little irritated with me starting every sentence with "methinks").  It has gotten me thinking about the founders, and what they envisioned.  I came across this quote from Alexander Hamilton in #45 of The Federalist Papers: The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.  Sometimes people will say that t...

Below is a graph showing our tax rates compared to the rest of the industrialized world (taken from Wikipedia): Two things to note: Our personal income taxes are not as bad as some anti-tax zealots would have you believe…they are lower than most. Our corporate rates, however, are horrific.  They are higher than any other industrialized country save Japan. Lesson to be learned:  it’s easy for politicians to sell lower taxes for individuals.  Much harder to sell lower rates for corporations.  And very easy for liberals to paint corporations as getting off easy (the “big, bad conglomerate” schtick).  However, it’s just not true.  “Facts are stubborn things.”  - John Adams

Michael Cannon offers a great analysis at National Review online of the experiment Oregon undertook in 2008 to provide a lottery-picked group of Oregonians with Medicaid coverage.  Some of the interesting tidbits: "medical consumption was no higher in the first half of the year, suggesting there was no “pent-up demand” for medical care." "Though President Obama has claimed that broader health-insurance coverage and consumption of preventive care would lead to a reduction in emergency-room visits, the OHIE found no discernible difference in ER use between Medicaid enrollees and the control group." " Though the president has claimed his health-care law will “save lives,” the OHIE detected no evidence that extending Medicaid to 10,000 adults did so in the first year. " There was an improvement in patient's own assessment of their health.  However, "two-thirds of the improvement in self-reported health occurred almost immediately after enrollmen...