The View from Right Field

“An American Appreciation of Bill English”

This is the title of a new post in my other blog, “A Different New Zealand.”  I have written about Bill English and his “social investment” approach before (see, inter alia, here and here).  This post is about his retiring from the New Zealand Parliament.

The Risk of Government Just Goes On and On

Megan McArdle rips, fairly, on the tax bill for, inter alia, fiscal irresponsibility (is this the time to be increasing the deficit and the debt?) and the way the individual tax cuts are being passed and then being repealed in 2025 (or so).  It is my understanding that, to be able to pass the bill without a filibuster in the Senate, the bill has to, among other things, not increase the deficit ten years out.  Therefore, the bill provides for the individual cuts to expire before the end of the ten-year period – but with the expectation that they will be extended at that point.  Which is what happened to the George W. Bush tax cuts passed in 2001.  The Democrats extended them in 2010.

Still, this is lousy way to write a tax bill.  While it is perhaps likely the cuts will be extended, who knows.  Is it fair to expect people to plan for the future when they don’t know what tax rules are going to be?  It is hard enough with Congress changing the tax laws every couple years.  The tax bill adds even more to Congress’s normal, somewhat scatterbrained approach.

Mosul and Hillary Clinton’s Campaign: Winning, Losing, and Figuring Out Why

On Saturday, The Wall Street Journal reported on an assessment prepared by U.S. and British military officers of the successful effort to take Mosul back from Islamic State forces.  The top U.S. general in the effort, Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, ordered the review.  The Journal noted:

“It is common for the military to analyze the lessons of its operations, but its examination of the hard-fought Mosul campaign has particular relevance.  The battle was a test of a new type of warfare the U.S. has employed in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan in recent years – one in which most ground combat is done by indigenous forces with Americans providing advisers and firepower.”

While the campaign was successful, the report looked at not only what worked, but also what didn’t.  For example:

Thoughts Upon Germany's Election: Perhaps a Way for Parties to Win Votes Is to Have Good Leaders

As The Wall Street Journal predicted on Saturday, while Angela Merkel has won re-election in the German elections today, the parties on the fringe of German politics have grown.  With the established center-right and center left parties¹ getting a combined total of less than 55% of the total vote², Germany seems to be following the trend in other European countries.  As the Journal noted:

“In swaths of Continental Europe, the established center-right and center-left parties have suffered far more dramatic collapses, while populist movements from the nationalist right to the anticapitalist left have become strong enough to aspire to power.”

The Journal tries to identify the reason(s):

Medicare for All (Or At Least More): Will It Mean Political Campaigns Based on More Knee Replacements?

Democratic Representative John Conyers, Jr., from Michigan has introduced a bill that would allow anybody, of any age, to buy into Medicare.  The theory is “everyone loves Medicare,” so why not let people buy into it if they want to.  Last year Hillary Clinton proposed letting people over 55 buy into Medicare.

Megan McArdle explained the problems with this idea.  Among others, there was this:

“If we followed Clinton’s plan, and lowered the Medicare eligibility age, one effect would be to take some pressure off Obamacare’s exchanges, by moving the sicker and older patients out of the pool.  But that cost has to go somewhere, and where it’s likely to end up is in hospitals, as their patient load shifts dramatically toward lower-reimbursed Medicare patients.

New Zealand: The Lucky Country – In Politics

You can find my most recent post on my other blog, “A Different New Zealand,” here.

“Social Investment”: The Kind of Idea Our Campaign Should Be About

With the election campaign turning into almost five months of Same Old Hillary and Dangerous Donald, it’s time to look elsewhere if you want to talk about actually accomplishing something, and doing something good, in politics and government.

In October of 2014, I wrote a post entitled “Making Government Work Better – Something Everybody Can Agree On, Right?”  That post talked about assessing laws against what they are supposed to achieve and rewriting them so they work better.  I got the idea from New Zealand and said that it seemed to me to be “a concept that both right and left should be able to unite behind.”

Let me do some more of that, once again with an example from New Zealand.  The National Party is heading a center-right government in New Zealand.  The Finance Minister of that government, Bill English, has been talking about, and is actually starting to implement, something he calls “social investment.”  The idea originally came from a review of the state-run Accident Compensation Commission in 2011.  Back then it was called “forward liability investment approach,” and it “was applied to getting beneficiaries into paid work and keeping them there, thereby avoiding paying a lifetime’s benefit to them.”¹ 

#NeverTrump Judges Paul Ryan

Some members of #NeverTrump are now ripping on House Speaker Paul Ryan.  Even though Speaker Ryan has publicly criticized Donald Trump’s appalling complaints about the judge in the Trump University case and is working hard to develop a detailed House Republican program representing real Republican principles, Speaker Ryan has said he will vote for Mr. Trump and that puts him beyond the pale for many #NeverTrump-ers. George Will, for one, did it in his column on Monday.¹ [See UPDATE below.]

I certainly understand Mr. Will’s views on Donald Trump, and I will not be voting for Mr. Trump myself.  However, that does not mean I am going to accuse Speaker Ryan of, in effect, selling his soul to the devil (whether the Faust version or “Damn Yankees”).  It is easy for columnists like Mr. Will (or bloggers like me) to act morally superior to politicians like Speaker Ryan for the choices they have to make.  It’s easy to say #NeverTrump when it won’t affect your life or what you are trying to do in it.  But for people such as Paul Ryan, who are in the battle and see some potential to actually do something good at some point, it is not so easy.  And it is not for me to criticize the difficult choices they have to make – especially because it is sometimes not so easy to know which decision today will turn out to be the best one ten or fifteen years down the road.  Let me give an example.  From New Zealand (of course).

An American Looks at Waitangi Day

You can find my most recent post on my other blog, “A Different New Zealand,” here.

Renting a Car in Mexico and New Zealand: The Role of Trust in Economic Efficiency and Cultural Differences

I recently read a book by Russ Roberts¹, in which he talked about the importance of trust in life, both to make life nicer² and to make economic life easier (and better).  Our experiences in renting a car in Mexico (we went to the Yucatan peninsula in January 2015) and in New Zealand (in 2014) are a good example of Mr. Roberts’ point.

When we were in New Zealand, we took the ferry from Wellington to Picton, at the top of the South Island.  We were going to pick up a car at the ferry terminal in Picton.  There was a long line at each rental agency (a lot of people had taken the ferry).  We were renting from Avis.  When we got to the front of the line, the people at the desk just gave us the keys, told us where the car was, and said to come back if there are any problems with it.  When we turned the car in three weeks later at the Christchurch airport, it was much the same: Here are the keys; send me the bill; good-bye.

The process in Mexico was very different.  The line at the Avis counter in the airport in Cancun was much shorter, but it took much longer.  Part of that may be that things go at a little slower pace in Mexico, but most of it was due to a lack of trust.  It took the guy ahead of me a long time to return his car because they had found a small scratch they said was not on the car when he picked it up and he hadn’t purchased the insurance.