Return of the Fabians

"[They wanted] a business-like understanding of national needs which would take hold of the future like a governess, slap it into clean clothes, wash its face, blow its nose, make it sit up at the table and eat a proper meal.”

Does that sound vaguely familiar?

Does that begin to describe the sense you get when you hear some of the descriptions coming out of this or that figure in Washington as they talk about the need for more government involvement in healthcare, banking, energy, education, etc?

Does this sound similar to the meaning of some of the adds paid for by this or that group of actors or perhaps a political action committee, that ‘we can’t wait anymore, we need to fix ‘it’ now?’

Those words were used by the historian Barbara Tuchman to explain the Fabians, a society founded in 1884 in England. They were an interesting bunch. Tuchman described them as ‘essentially authoritarians, impatient with democratic process,’ they were ‘coldly bent on improving society’ (from their own perspective.) They wanted ‘Socialism without Marx or revolution, something like Macbeth with the murder.’ They favored ‘anything which strengthened the State and brought in revenue for more sewers, soup kitchens and unemployment insurance.’

And right now we have Senators and senior bureaucrats in Washington making statements to the effect that the House of Representatives should just accept the Senate’s healthcare bill, not debate it or change it or contest it. “Impatient with democratic process.”

Just to remind the folks in Washington who sometimes forget what’s what. The Constitution, the document you have sworn to protect, was designed to stimulate debate, to establish a slow and deliberative process in regards to the creation or changing of laws. This systems, what we learned as ‘checks and balances’ in our social studies courses when we were in school, is fully intended to make passing a law a slow process, one that is easily stopped.

Why is that? Because the Founding Fathers, having studied history a good deal more thoroughly than many – most – in Washington today, were aware that laws, once passed, are VERY difficult to ‘undo.’ And laws passed quickly are usually poorly thought out. Having not been thoroughly debated, they normally lack clarity and intellectual integrity.

The best example of this is in the length of a bill – any bill. Long bills (proposed laws) usually become that way because different offices construct different elements of the bill. The bill is then simply stacked together. Mark Twain famously observed that ‘I have to send you a long letter as I don’t have the time to write a short one.’ The same is true of bills.

Long bills create great complexity because as the length increases in any document it becomes more difficult to ensure consistency and integrity and the result is contradictions (apparent and real), mistakes, omissions and loopholes. This is only exacerbated by the process we see in Congress in which multiple offices draft different sections of the bill, often with only a cursory review of each other’s work. Further complicating the issue, amendments are then added to the bill, often without the drafter having actually read the whole bill. The result is the plethora of long, tortuously complicated laws that we have on the books, laws that need constant amendment to cover the various mistakes that are discovered every year.

But none of that matters to those in power in Washington today. Rather, as their ads insist, the need is to act ‘now.’ Let’s not think this through, let’s not debate it – as the Founding Fathers intended and as the Constitution insists, let’s not have a rational discussion on the pro’s and con’s of each issue. Instead, sane discussion is replaced with invective, finger pointing, and demagoguery. Those who call for debate have been accused of being no better then the slave traders of 200 years ago, and anyone who opposes this or that bill is clearly a tyrant in disguise.

The fact is that the procedures called for by the Founding Fathers, and resident in the Constitution, were designed to prevent tyranny, by insisting on a slow and deliberative process, so that the truth might be revealed by informed debate.

But that is not what the Fabians wanted and that is not what the politicians in Washington want now. Rather, like the Fabians, they want “progress” as they have defined it, and are impatient with the democratic process – the one identified in the Constitution - the same one they swore to protect. They have decided they have found ‘the truth’ and anyone and anything that stands in their way – to include the Constitutional process – must be pushed aside.

The Fabians have returned, and the Constitution be damned.

Bring Me a Rock: How Not to Fix HealthCare

The healthcare issue seems to have settled into a dance between sophistry and fear mongering. On the one hand are vague comments about healthcare being ‘broken’ and that ‘we have to act because …’ followed by loosely knit opinion; on the other hand is a constant screed that ‘if we don’t do something now…’ followed by predictions that start to sound like some Hollywood end of the world thriller.

Meanwhile, no one answers any hard questions with anything approaching real data. It would be comic if it weren’t so important. We have actors, posing as hyper-concerned citizens, telling us that we need to ‘fix it now,’ though precisely what they mean by ‘it’ is never made clear (Do they really mean they want every single piece of the healthcare industry addressed in one truly enormous piece of legislation? Teeth cleaning to brain surgery, all in one?) Nor does anyone care to define what is actually broken (if you are going to fix something, ostensibly it is broken).

But what is broken? A recent article in ‘Investor’s Business Daily’ provided the following statistics:

Percentage of men and women who survived a cancer five years after diagnosis:

U.S.              65%

England        46%

Canada         42%

Percentage of patients diagnosed with diabetes who received treatment within six months:

U.S.              93%

England        15%

Canada         43%

Percentage of seniors needing hip replacement who received it within six months:

U.S.             90%

England       15%

Canada        43%

Percentage referred to a medical specialist who saw them within one month:

U.S.             77%

England       40%

Canada        43%

Number of MRI scanners (a prime diagnostic tool) per million people:

U.S.             71

England       14

Canada        18

Percentage of seniors (65+), with low income, who say they are in "excellent health":

U.S.             12%

England         2%

Canada          6%

Was there some careful selection of the data shown? I suppose, though that last set of data are telling. Nevertheless, it speaks to facts, not hand-ringing.

One of the worst things leader or manager can do is provide guidance which is so vague or obscure as to actually make the situation worse. We have all known or worked for someone who only tells us something is wrong, but never really tells us what he is thinking or how to address the problem. We are told to ‘bring me a rock,’ and then told ‘no, not that rock. Bring me another.’ The ‘managers’ and ‘leaders’ who behave in this manner are poor managers and leaders. And usually, we find they had little knowledge of what they were trying to manage.

Congress, and a whole slew of special interest groups, are determined to ‘fix’ healthcare, though they can’t really be precise about what is broken except to say that 15% of Americans don’t have health insurance, and to constantly bang the drum that healthcare is expensive. Yet nothing in any of these proposed bills will actually reduce the amount of money we as a nation spend on healthcare, nor will it create more healthcare, nor has anyone in any of the harangues (I have seen no real debates) shown any element that will actually improve the quality of specific types of care. Is that because they can’t find something that is broken or they simply don’t know how to fix it? Or is it simply irrelevant?

Consider this: in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1970s in the US military every soldier, sailor, airmen and Marine received a yearly physical. But, as the services shrank in size in the 1970s and the number of dependents increased, there were fewer uniformed doctors and nurses to provide healthcare. The answer was that the military went to physicals every three years for everyone not on special status (such as pilots). This was done for one reason: the Department of Defense could not afford to hire more doctors and nurses. So they rationed healthcare.

Yet there isn’t a doctor or nurse in this country who will tell you that you should not have a physical every year.

Recently, the US Preventive Services Task Force, a panel whose members are appointed by the Department of Health and Human Services (those who would control our healthcare) recommended that women start regular breast cancer screening at age 50 vice 40. It is worth noting that this was based on new analysis of existing data, not any new discovery, and the final decision, according to the vice chair of the panel, was ‘qualitative’ ‘and not based on some magic number.’ Why let facts interfere? (The link to an article in the Wall Street Journal is provided below.)

The American Cancer Society disagrees. But, they are dealing with patients, not money. So, ask yourself this one question: How will government oversight increase cancer survival rates?  See if anyone has any facts.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126031689043682715.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Let's Create Jobs........

Sounds like a good idea: create jobs.

Like most things, though, there is a catch. Let’s say you have a Billion dollars in your pocket – every year. And, being a kind and generous sort, you decide to create some jobs. How many jobs can you create? Well, let’s assume that you start a company and you are going to pay everyone a $50,000 salary. So, you could employ 20,000. Well, actually, no. Because you need to pay Social Security and Medicare, every $50,000 salary will actually mean about $57,000 per person. Plus state taxes of perhaps 1 or 2%. So, let’s call it $58,000 per $57,000 job (though the employee only sees $50,000). So, you can create 17450 jobs.

So, why can’t the government create some jobs with all that tax money they collect and solve the unemployment problem?

The Federal government collects almost $3 trillion in taxes and such every year. That translates into 51 million ‘$50,000’ per year jobs. Problem solved, right? Well, not exactly. Because it seems that the numbers don’t quite work that way.

First, the government (any government) isn’t quite this efficient. Because of systemic inefficiencies, as well as the obvious cost of the bureaucracy that is handling the money, the ‘rule of thumb’ figure for the cost of a basic job in the federal government (that is, if you say this will require 100 people, the number you multiply 100 by to reach the annual labor cost) is $65,000 (or more, depends on which department).

So, the translation is simple: every time the government collects $58,000 in taxes, it deprives the free market economy of the money needed to fund a real job. To create a job, the government then needs to spend a bit more than $65,000. $3,000,000,000,000 in tax revenue translates into the equivalent of 51 million jobs. But $3,000,000,000,000 in government spending translates into 46 million jobs. Net loss is 5 million jobs.

Now, it isn’t quite this simple or clean, as the relation between the taxing and the spending is delayed and tortuous. But the general relationship is this: government spends more money creating a job then does the private sector and government spending. Once government moves past a certain point in providing security, infrastructure and governance – which occurs consumes less then 10% of the entire Gross Domestic Product - it stops adding to the solution, and starts adding to the problem.

Moreover, when government creates a job, there is no reason to believe they got it right; government often overpays, and the job may be of no value. It is no coincidence that real estate costs in the Washington DC area are some of the highest in the country. While the federal government does not pay very well at the very top end (that comes after folks leave government), it pays ‘middle management’ very well, as witnessed by the number of SES and GS-15s in the Washington area.

The Under-Funded War

There are some real myths surrounding the wars the US is now fighting.

First: Cost

Washington and the media insist that the war, that is the wars in Afghanistan, the Republic of the Philippines, Iraq, and the Horn of Africa, cost too much. So, some simple numbers: Since 2001 the United States has spent a bit more than one trillion dollars on the war. During the same period the total US Gross National Product is in excess of 100 trillion dollars. In short, we are spending less than 1% of our national wealth per year for something that both President Bush and President Obama state is vital to our national security.

If it is so vital, and I think it is, why is spending less than 1% of our wealth so extreme? A few nights ago the President suggested that the cost in Afghanistan could reach 300 billion dollars per year. Such a number still represents a tiny sum if it is indeed vital to our national security.

This is not too say that there hasn’t been a real cost in people, 5000 dead and 30000 wounded. which is a horrible price.  But, here too the numbers are illuminating. I recently saw a figure that estimated that roughly one million US citizens have participated in this war over the last 8 years. That is compared to a national population of 303 million. To put that in perspective, the US population in 1970 was 203 million, and the number of US citizens who took part in Viet Nam was a bit less than 7 million; 1/3 of a percent versus 3.5 percent.  Almost twelve times the level of involvement.

Second: Duration

We are told that we cannot have open-ended commitments (even though it is vital to our national security). Why not? In fact, if something is vital to our national security doesn’t that demand an open commitment? The logic of this argument escapes me.

The fact is that anything that is vital to our security requires commitment for however long it takes. Presidents in the past have made this case and the American people, who routinely have more sense then their elected servants in Washington or the “experts” in the media, have agreed. That is why there are still US forces in Korea (59 years), Japan (65 years), Germany (65 years), Italy (65 years), the Sinai (30 years). We kept forces in the Philippines from 1944 to 1993 (49 years). The American citizenry understands security and sustained commitment. It’s why we have kept a fleet of ships forward deployed to the western Pacific for more than 100 years (yes, 100 years).

The only people who don’t “get this” live within 30 or 40 miles of Washington DC and in a few select ivory towers around the country. The idea that we will commit to something that is stated to be vital to our national security - but only for 18 months - is lunacy.

Third: Nation Building

We are told nation building is impossible. Well, anyone who says that has never been to Seoul, Korea. We helped the Koreans rebuild their nation, the Germans, the French, the Italians and the Greeks, the Philippines, Japan, etc. Nation building is hard because it DOES require commitment. There are a host of “experts” (in more ivory towers) who will tell you that the cases cited above were ‘different’ and that the current candidates for nation building lack this or that trait and therefore can’t be successful candidates for nation-building.

I would suggest that the nations listed above are about as diverse a group of cultures as you would want. Yet we – they and the US working together – did engage in nation building. The only difference was the leadership in the 1940s and 1950s didn’t listen to any “experts” who insisted, because of their own lack of intellect and imagination and spine, that it couldn’t be done.

Nothing important is achieved quickly or at low cost in real sweat. The American people get that. It is fairly clear that the experts in Washington and the ivory towers don’t.