Tag Archives: europe

Europe Wants To Make Its Memory Hole Global

by SalinaR35rp Posted on November 26, 2014

Mother Jones

Europe’s infamous right to be forgotten is on track to become truly Orwellian:

Europe’s privacy regulators want the right to be forgotten to go global. In a new set of guidelines agreed Wednesday in Brussels, the body representing the EU’s 28 national privacy regulators said that search engines should apply the bloc’s new right to be forgotten to all of their websites.

….Google may consider a way to apply the ruling on Google.com without applying it globally … by returning different results depending on whether the person is searching from an Internet Protocol address located within the EU. But it is unclear if such a move would satisfy regulators, as it would only make it harder to sidestep the ruling inside the EU, not globally.

“These are fundamental rights. My rights don’t go away at the border,” one data-protection official said of the idea of using IP addresses to apply the rule.

I understand that the EU has a more expansive view of personal privacy than the US and other countries. What’s more, I’m generally on their side in this battle when it comes to truly personal information. Both corporate and government collection of personal buying habits, internet browsing patterns, and so forth deserve to be reined in.

But here we’re talking about largely public information. It’s bad enough that the EU is insisting that people not only have a right to control genuinely personal data, but also have a right to shape attitudes and perceptions that are based on public record. It’s even worse that they’re now trying to impose this absurdity on the entire planet. If they insist on having a continent-wide memory hole, I guess that’s their business. But they sure don’t have the right to foist their insistence on artificially altering reality on the rest of us. Enough’s enough.

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Europe Wants To Make Its Memory Hole Global

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Economic Growth Starting to Show Real Signs of Life

by AveryHuang Posted on November 25, 2014

Mother Jones

The latest numbers from the Commerce Department show that GDP increased faster than we thought in the third quarter of 2014. Growth clocked in at 3.9 percent, an increase from the original estimate of 3.5 percent. “The economy expanded at its fastest pace in more than a decade,” says the Wall Street Journal. “The combined growth rate in the second and third quarters was 4.25%, the best six-month reading since 2003.”

This is true, but a bit misleading since both quarters were making up for a dismal first quarter in which GDP fell by 2.1 percent. Still, even if you look at things in a more defensible way, economic growth is unquestionably picking up. The chart on the right uses a 5-quarter moving average to smooth out individual quarters that might be unusually high or low, and the trajectory of the economy is clearly on the rise. You still can’t really say that things are booming, and it continues to be true that the labor market is loose and wages are pretty stagnant. Nonetheless, since 2011 growth has increased from about 1.8 percent annually to about 2.8 percent annually. Things are picking up.

If Europe can ever manage to get its act together, we might finally start really digging ourselves out of the Great Recession. I’m not sure I see any signs of that happening soon, though.

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Economic Growth Starting to Show Real Signs of Life

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Almost Everything You’ve Bought Recently Came to You Via This Dirty Industry

by choneqjxs Posted on October 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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If you’ve recently purchased a new iPhone, or a fancy t-shirt, or a children’s toy… or really virtually any consumer or industrial good, there’s a strong chance that a giant ship ferried it from or through China. China, dubbed “the world’s factory” for pumping out so much of the world’s consumables, now boasts seven of the world’s top ten busiest trading ports. Strung up and down its densely populated eastern coast, China’s ten biggest ports handle nearly 30 percent of the world’s containers each year.

These mega-ports—Shanghai’s is the planet’s busiest—helped China become the biggest trader in the world, eclipsing the US in 2012. China has also become the world’s second largest consumer market—meaning that more and more ships are unloading wares in the country’s ports, not just loading up.

But there’s a big downside for the planet in all that trade, according to a report released Tuesday by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a US-based environmental advocacy group with offices in Beijing. When the country’s brutal smog and worsening air crisis make international headlines, as it did earlier this month after runners in the Beijing marathon donned air masks, coal burning and China’s grid-locked streets get most of the attention. But emissions from China’s vast shipping industry have so far been “very much overlooked” by Chinese leaders, says Barbara Finamore, an author of the report and NRDC’s Asia director.

“Last September, the central government issued a national air control plan and it only mentioned this in passing,” she said in a phone interview from Beijing.

Finamore’s report argues that poor regulation in China means that in a single day one container ship can pollute as much as half a million trucks:

NRDC

That’s because regulations allow China’s oceangoing ships to burn fuel with sulfur levels that are 100 to 3,500 times higher than those permitted for road vehicles, according to the report. This so-called “bunker oil” is extremely dirty and spews toxic exhaust into the air, including harmful diesel particulates, and nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxide that cause smog. Those chemicals are known to lead to respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses. Shipping is not a small contributor: Two thirds of the sulfur pollution in the Chinese megacity of Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, comes from the shipping industry, says Finamore.

The exhaust not only pollutes the air locally, but also carries a powerful climate toll: A portion of the exhaust is “black carbon,” a fine particulate that, after CO2, is the second largest contributor to global warming. The US Environmental Protection Agency says it is particularly potent in melting arctic sea ice. As more ships take polar routes made more hospitable by warming, the black carbon they leave behind may accelerate melting, potentially further opening up once ice-bound lanes for more shipping. “It’s a vicious cycle,” says Finamore.

The report finds that 70 percent of emissions from major shipping routes occur within 400 km (about 250 miles) of a coastline, and that emissions can travel hundreds of miles inland. Stricter rules in North America (especially in California) and Europe mandate cleaner fuel when coming into port, and China is working to implement similar standards. In July, Hong Kong became the first city in China to regulate shipping emissions; other Chinese port cities and coastal regions have begun to introduce other control measures.

What works? According to the NRDC, there are three areas that could help clean up the industry, including moving to natural gas, using cleaner fuels, and powering down ships in ports:

NRDC

In a country where ambient air pollution contributed to an estimated 1.2 million premature deaths in 2010, Finamore says leaders are “scrambling” for solutions.

It’s this kind of pollution—and the public discontent it causes—that has gotten attention from the highest levels of government. Vice Premier Li Keqiang, the second-ranking Chinese official, formally declared a “war on pollution” earlier this year. Another Chinese leader gave a speech at the September UN climate talks in New York pledging that China would reach a peak in emissions “as soon as possible”—an unprecedented promise.

“They are taking it seriously,” Finamore says. “They are doing more than ever before to examine the environmental issues of various plans and sources of energy.”

But in China, she says, “implementation is always a problem.”

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Almost Everything You’ve Bought Recently Came to You Via This Dirty Industry

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5 New York Epidemics That Were Way Worse Than Ebola Will Be

by KayleeSXTE Posted on October 24, 2014

Mother Jones

An 1865 cartoon from Harper’s Weekly ridicules the incompetence of the New York City Board of Health, first established to fight yellow fever. US National Library of Medicine

Ebola has arrived in New York City. So should residents here be worried about a widespread outbreak? Almost certainly not: The disease is not airborne, and infected patients are only contagious once they show symptoms. Craig Spencer, the infected doctor in New York, has said he didn’t have symptoms Wednesday night when he rode the subway between Manhattan and Brooklyn and went bowling. Three people he came into contact with, who have not shown symptoms, have been placed in precautionary quarantine. And unlike West Africa, where health care is sparse and low-quality, the US is well equipped to handle cases of the virus; the hospital where Spencer is being treated has been preparing to treat Ebola patients. (Public heath officials in the city expected cases of Ebola to turn up sooner or later.)

But the prospect of a deadly disease outbreak in the Big Apple is still pretty scary, and the city hasn’t always dodged the pathogen bullet. Here are a few epidemics in New York that were far worse than Ebola is likely to be.

Yellow fever (1795-1803):

The wharf in Philadelphia where yellow fever cases were first identified. Wikimedia Commons

The city’s first health department was created in 1793 to block boats from Philadelphia, which at the time was in the grips of a yellow fever epidemic that left 5,000 dead. The tactic didn’t work: By 1795 cases began to appear in Manhattan, and by 1798 the disease had reached epidemic proportions there, with 800 deaths that year. Several thousand more died over the next few years. (The disease causes victims’ to vomit black bile and their skin to turn yellowish, and the fatality rate without treatment is as high as 50 percent.) This was no small blow for a city that at the time had only about 60,000 residents. As is the case today with Ebola in West Africa, misinformation was a big part of the problem: Doctors at the time had only just begun to speculate that the virus was carried by mosquitoes (other theorized sources included unsanitary conditions in slums and rotting coffee). Little effort was made to publicize the epidemic for fear of a mass exodus from the city, according to Baruch College. Today yellow fever is extremely rare in the United States but still kills 30,000 people every year, 90 percent of whom are in Africa.

Cholera (mid-1800s):

An 1865 poster from the New York City Sanitary Commission offers advice on how to avoid contracting cholera. Wikimedia Commons

By the 1830s New York was a booming metropolis of 200,000, with swarms of newcomers arriving daily on boats from Europe. When word of a raging cholera epidemic in Europe reached the city’s Board of Health, it instituted quarantines on incoming ships and tried to clean up the filthy streets. But again the board was reluctant to make public announcements, this time to avoid disrupting trade, according to city records. One resident claimed the board was “more afraid of merchants than of lying.” By June 1832, the disease, which causes severe diarrhea and can kill within hours if untreated, arrived in New York via boats traveling down the Hudson River from Quebec. Within two months, 3,500 people were dead—mostly poor Irish immigrants and blacks living in the city’s slums. Outbreaks occurred again in 1849, with some 5,000 deaths, and in 1866, with 1,100 deaths.

Polio (1916):

A physical therapist works with two children with polio in 1963. Charles Farmer/CDC

New York City was the epicenter of an outbreak of polio in 1916 that began with a handful of cases reported to a clinic in Brooklyn. The disease, which advances from feverlike symptoms to paralysis and sometimes death, ultimately spread to 9,000 New Yorkers and caused 2,400 deaths. Across the Northeast, the infection toll climbed to 23,000 by the fall. The disease remained prevalent in the United States until the 1954 introduction of Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine. Polio is now extremely rare here. But worldwide, it still infects 200,000 people every year, particularly in Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan.

Influenza (1918):

In 1918, soldiers with influenza are treated at an Army hospital in Kansas. Wikimedia Commons

In August 1918, a Norwegian ship called the Bergensfjord pulled into New York Harbor carrying 21 people infected with a new and virulent strain of the flu. Over the next several weeks, dozens more arrived, mostly on ships from Europe, and sick passengers were quarantined in a hospital just blocks from the modern-day Bellevue, where Spencer is currently being treated. Those unfortunate sailors were just the first in what would become the deadliest disease outbreak in the city’s history to that date. Over 30,000 deaths were recorded by November—the actual number was likely much higher—including 12,300 during the first week of November alone. One health worker visited a family in lower Manhattan and found an infant dead in its crib and all seven other family members severely ill.

Other nearby cities fared even worse: The death rate in New York was 4.7 per 1,000 cases, compared to 6.5 in Boston and 7.3 in Philadelphia, according to the National Institutes of Health. That may not sound like a lot, given that the Ebola death rate is closer to 50 percent, but because influenza is so easily spread it can infect a much greater number of people. Globally, the 1918 flu killed between 50100 million people, the worst public health crisis in modern times. Today, the flu is still considered the greatest infectious disease risk for Americans, killing between 3,000 and 50,000 every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In other words, it’s possible that more people could die from the flu this year in America than have died worldwide from Ebola during this outbreak. And yet only 1 in 3 Americans get a flu shot. Get a flu shot, people!

HIV/AIDS (1981-present):

An AIDS poster from New York City in the 1980s US National Library of Medicine

The scourge of HIV/AIDS is the most familiar epidemic for modern New Yorkers, beginning with the June 1981 discovery of 41 cases of a rare cancer among gay men across the country. Throughout the 1980s, campaigns by the city encouraged New Yorkers to use protection during sex and not to share needles or use intravenous drugs. By 1987, according to city records, $400 million had been spent on AIDS services. But activists for AIDS rights groups like ACT UP accused city officials, led by Mayor Ed Koch, of dragging their feet and ignoring the true scale of the crisis. It took until the mid-’90s for anti-retroviral drugs to become widely available. Today, for people who have access to adequate health care, HIV is often manageable. But to date, more than 100,000 New Yorkers have been killed by AIDS-related maladies, according to state health statistics. Despite recent advances in medical treatment, infection rates are still high in New York, disproportionately affecting racial minorities and gay men.

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5 New York Epidemics That Were Way Worse Than Ebola Will Be

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If Scotland Secedes, They Better Secede From the Pound Too

by Emily Collins Posted on September 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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Scotland will be voting next week on whether to secede from Great Britain, and Paul Krugman is aghast:

Everything that has happened in Europe since 2009 or so has demonstrated that sharing a currency without sharing a government is very dangerous. In economics jargon, fiscal and banking integration are essential elements of an optimum currency area. And an independent Scotland using Britain’s pound would be in even worse shape than euro countries, which at least have some say in how the European Central Bank is run.

I find it mind-boggling that Scotland would consider going down this path after all that has happened in the last few years. If Scottish voters really believe that it’s safe to become a country without a currency, they have been badly misled.

I don’t get this either. I understand why the pro-independence forces favor continued use of the pound: it’s one less scary thing for the pro-union forces to use in their campaign. People are used to the pound, and it’s obviously a stable, well-accepted currency. Conversely, a new Scottish currency would be a big unknown, and give people one more reason to vote against independence.

It’s quite likely, of course, that the whole thing is a charade. The pro-independence forces probably feel like they need to support continued use of the pound for now, just to take it off the table as a campaign issue. But if independence succeeds, there’s a good chance that Scotland will adopt its own currency within a few years for all the reasons Krugman brings up. Being stuck in a currency union is so obviously dangerous that it will probably be abandoned once things shake down in an independent Scotland and the new government has time to focus on it.

As for Scottish independence itself, I don’t have much of an opinion. I do have a generic opinion that secession usually sounds better than it actually is in practice. Every province or state or city or neighborhood always thinks they have deep and justified grievances against whatever polity they belong to, and often they’re right. That’s the nature of large agglomerations of human beings. But often those grievances are, in truth, fairly skin deep—usually some version of “cultural identity,” the last refuge of the person with no actual arguments to make—and secession merely resolves some of them while creating whole new ones. I think it rarely accomplishes much.

My super-rough rule of thumb is this: I support secession of (a) territories that speak a different language, (b) territories that are physically distant, and (c) territories that have genuinely suffered at the hands of a brutal regime. Jokes aside on items (a) and (c), none of these really apply to Scotland, so I’d put myself down as moderately opposed to independence. But if it does happen, I sure hope currency union really does turn out to be a charade. If you’re going to have your own country, then you should have your own money and your own monetary policy. If we’ve learned nothing else over the past half decade, surely we’ve at least learned that.

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If Scotland Secedes, They Better Secede From the Pound Too

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E.U. bans energy-sucking vacuums. Hairdryers could be next.

by RobtEleanor Posted on September 3, 2014

vacuum cleaners suck, hairdryers blow

E.U. bans energy-sucking vacuums. Hairdryers could be next.

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2 Sep 2014 9:03 PM

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If you are a sucker for a truly excellent croissant but attached at the cord to your hairdryer, you may need to rethink your dreams of moving to Europe. A study commissioned for the European Union’s energy efficiency directive found there are up to 30 household appliances that “could be restricted” — read: banned — in order to reduce energy consumption. Among the offenders: certain high-powered hairdryers, vacuum cleaners, toasters, and electric tea kettles.

In fact, Europe’s already started restricting them: A ban on megawatt vacuum cleaners went into effect September 1, meaning E.U. companies can no longer manufacture or import vacuum cleaners above 1600 watts. (In true Prohibition style, people made sure to stock up on the dirty vacuums before they hit the black market.)

But prohibiting high-powered hairdryers — according to one very unbiased group — defeats the purpose. From the BBC News:

The National Hairdressers’ Federation (NHF) has urged the EU to reconsider, saying its plans are “ill thought-out”.

Former NHF president Mark Corary said a ban would not reduce energy consumption as it would mean blow-drying a client’s hair would take longer.

“The more powerful, the faster the blow dry – it’s as simple as that,” he said.

Here’s a frosted tip for anxious hairdressers: Relax, the rules aren’t set yet. Of the 30 appliances on the list, only 20 will be put forward for final deliberation. We won’t know until early 2015 whether or not Europeans will be forced to dry their hair au naturel. Banning the tea kettle, though? That’s bollocks.

Source:
High-powered hairdryers under threat as EU considers ban

, BBC News.

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E.U. bans energy-sucking vacuums. Hairdryers could be next.

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This is What a Russian Invasion of Ukraine Looks Like

by Reinold Keillor Posted on August 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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It has become quite hard for Vladimir Putin to deny that Russia’s activities in Eastern Europe are benign. On Thursday, Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, announced that “Russian forces have actually entered Ukraine.” And at a State Department briefing, spokeswoman Jen Psaki called Russia’s activities “an incursion and a violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty.”

The most striking evidence comes from NATO, which has released satellite photos of what it calls “concrete examples of Russian activity inside Ukraine.”

Digital Globe/NATO

According to NATO, the image above depicts a Russian convoy carrying artillery in Krasnodon, an area of Ukraine currently controlled by pro-Russian separatists, on August 21.

Digital Globe/NATO

This shows artillery setting up in firing positions in Krasnodon. “This configuration is exactly how trained military professionals would arrange their assets on the ground, indicating that these are not unskilled amateurs, but Russian soldiers,” a NATO press release notes.

Digital Globe/NATO

This image shows side-by-side photos of Rostov-on-Don, about 31 miles from the Ukrainian border, taken two months apart. The photo on the left, taken on June 19, shows the area mostly empty. The photo on the right shows the same area on August 20 occupied with tanks and other armored vehicles, cargo trucks, and tents. These units “are capable of attacking with little warning, and could potentially overwhelm and push-back Ukrainian units,” according to NATO.

Digital Globe/NATO

According to NATO, this image shows Russian six artillery pieces, probably 6-inch howitzers, positioned six miles south of the Ukrainian border. The guns are pointed toward Ukraine.

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This is What a Russian Invasion of Ukraine Looks Like

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5 Terrifying Facts From the Leaked UN Climate Report

by KristanDowell Posted on August 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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How many synonyms for “grim” can I pack into one article? I had to consult the thesaurus: ghastly, horrid, awful, shocking, grisly, gruesome.

This week, a big report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was leaked before publication, and it confirmed, yet again, the grim—dire, frightful—reality the we face if we don’t slash our global greenhouse gas emissions, and slash them fast.

This “Synthesis Report,” to be released in November following a UN conference in Copenhagen, is still subject to revision. It is intended to summarize three previous UN climate publications and to “provide an integrated view” to the world’s governments of the risks they face from runaway carbon pollution, along with possible policy solutions.

As expected, the document contains a lot of what had already been reported after the three underpinning reports were released at global summits over the past year. It’s a long list of problems: sea level rise resulting in coastal flooding, crippling heat waves and multidecade droughts, torrential downpours, widespread food shortages, species extinction, pest outbreaks, economic damage, and exacerbated civil conflicts and poverty.

But in general, the 127-page leaked report provides starker language than the previous three, framing the crisis as a series of “irreversible” ecological and economic catastrophes that will occur if swift action is not taken.

Here are five particularly grim—depressing, distressing, upsetting, worrying, unpleasant—takeaways from the report.

1. Our efforts to combat climate change have been grossly inadequate.
The report says that anthropogenic (man-made) greenhouse gas emissions continued to increase from 1970 to 2010, at a pace that ramped up especially quickly between 2000 and 2010. That’s despite some regional action that has sought to limit emissions, including carbon-pricing schemes in Europe. We haven’t done enough, the United Nations says, and we’re already seeing the effects of inaction. “Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history,” the report says. “The climate changes that have already occurred have had widespread and consequential impacts on human and natural systems.”

2. Keeping global warming below the internationally agreed upon 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (above preindustrial levels) is going to be very hard.
To keep warming below this limit, our emissions need to be slashed dramatically. But at current rates, we’ll pump enough greenhouse gas into the atmosphere to sail past that critical level within the next 20 to 30 years, according to the report. We need to emit half as much greenhouse gas for the remainder of this century as we’ve already emitted over the past 250 years. Put simply, that’s going to be difficult—especially when you consider the fact that global emissions are growing, not declining, every year. The report says that to keep temperature increases to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, deep emissions cuts of between 40 and 70 percent are needed between 2010 and 2050, with emissions “falling towards zero or below” by 2100.

3. We’ll probably see nearly ice-free summers in the Arctic Ocean before mid-century.
The report says that in every warming scenario it the scientists considered, we should expect to see year-round reductions in Arctic sea ice. By 2050, that will likely result in strings of years in which there is the near absence of sea ice in the summer, following a well-established trend. And then there’s Greenland, where glaciers have been retreating since the 1960s—increasingly so after 1993—because of man-made global warming. The report says we may already be facing a situation in which Greenland’s ice sheet will vanish over the next millennium, contributing up to 23 feet of sea level rise.

4. Dangerous sea level rise will very likely impact 70 percent of the world’s coastlines by the end of the century.
The report finds that by 2100, the devastating effects of sea level rise—including flooding, infrastructure damage, and coastal erosion—will impact the vast majority of the world’s coastlines. That’s not good: Half the world’s population lives within 37 miles of the sea, and three-quarters of all large cities are located on the coast, according to the United Nations. The sea has already risen significantly: From 1901 to 2010, global mean sea level rose by 0.62 feet.

5. Even if we act now, there’s a real risk of “abrupt and irreversible” changes.
The carbon released by burning fossil fuels will stay in the atmosphere and the seas for centuries to come, the report says, even if we completely stop emitting CO2 as soon as possible. That means it’s virtually certain that global mean sea level rise will continue for many centuries beyond 2100. Without strategies to reduce emissions, the world will see 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit of warming above preindustrial temperatures by the end of the century, condemning us to “substantial species extinction, global and regional food insecurity, and consequential constraints on common human activities.”

What’s more, the report indicates that without action, the effects of climate change could be irreversible: “Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.”

Grim, indeed.

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5 Terrifying Facts From the Leaked UN Climate Report

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Obama Levies New Sanctions Against Russia. Europe Ponders Whether to Follow Suit.

by Fay4232lippdzs Posted on July 16, 2014

Mother Jones

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We now have a response to Russia’s latest military provocations in eastern Ukraine:

President Obama is ratcheting up pressure on Russia with new sanctions aimed at large banks and defense firms in what administration officials say is the most significant crackdown on Russian individuals and businesses since the crisis in Ukraine began.

….The new penalties come in coordination with European leaders now meeting in Brussels to contemplate their own sanctions against Russia. Those efforts are expected to center on obstructing loans to Russian interests from European development banks.

I’ll be curious to see what the Europeans decide to do. For all the opportunistic griping from Republicans about Obama being too soft on Putin and inviting a new Cold War blah blah blah, it’s always been European leaders who have been the obstacle to harsher sanctions against Russia. And since Russia does very little business with the US but does lots of business with Europe, American sanctions just don’t matter that much unless the Europeans join in. Obama’s hands are tied.

Of course, the very fact that Europe does lots of business with Russia means that sanctions hurt them a lot more than they hurt us. It’s easy for Americans to be blustery and hawkish, safe in the knowledge that Russian retaliation can’t really hurt us much. It’s a lot less easy for Europeans.

That said, the fact is that Obama has been trying to take the lead on this for months. European leaders now need to decide if they’re willing to join in. The ball’s in their court.

Continued – 

Obama Levies New Sanctions Against Russia. Europe Ponders Whether to Follow Suit.

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Obamacare is Working, and It Will Probably Continue to Work

by MarcyHamblin Posted on July 14, 2014

Mother Jones

Tyler Cowen isn’t satisfied with current answers to the question of how well Obamacare is working. But although no one has firm answers to the questions he asks, I think we know more than he implies we do—especially when you widen your scope beyond just the details of the Obamacare transition over the next few years. Here are a few quick responses to his questions:

1. Five to ten years from now, how much do we think employment will have gone down as a result of ACA?

Take a look at Europe. The answer almost certainly is (a) perhaps a little, but not much, and (b) it’s going to be swamped by other factors anyway. In fact, if Obamacare eventually leads to the end of employers being responsible for health insurance, it could end up helping employment. More generally, though, if you’re worried about employment trends, then health care taxes and mandates should be the least of your concerns. They’re just a blip by comparison to everything else going on.

1b. How will the effort to introduce greater equality of health care consumption fare if wage and income inequality continue to rise? Will this attempt at consumption near-equalization require massively distorting incentives?

No. Even if we move to full universal health care, it will likely raise marginal tax rates by something in the neighborhood of 6-7 points. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but the bulk of it will replace current spending by employers and will do little to distort anything. The remainder is simply too little to introduce more than a modest amount of distortion in a $15 trillion economy.

2. Will ACA even have improved overall health in America?

Probably a little bit, but not a lot—though it depends on how you measure it. Especially in the under-65 age group, for example, it will do little to reduce mortality. However—and this is something I can’t repeat often enough—this is not the main point of universal care anyway. The main point is to improve quality of life and reduce the life-shattering financial consequences of serious medical emergencies.

3. Given that prices in the individual insurance market already seem to have gone up 14-28 percent, and may go up more once political scrutiny of insurance companies lessens, what is the overall individual welfare calculation from this policy change?

Actually, prices will probably go up less in future years. The initial increase was a one-time response to the new requirements of the law, especially the addition of lots of sicker people to the insurance pool. In the future, given the competition between insurance companies, increases are likely to roughly match the rate of health care inflation.

4. Given supply side constraints, how much did ACA increase the consumption of health services in the United States?

We don’t know yet. But obviously the answer is that, yes, any kind of universal health care entitlement will increase consumption. Once again, though, look at Europe. We have decades of experience in lots of different countries with a wide array of different forms of universal health care, and in every case health consumption is lower than in the US. There may well be birthing pains associated with Obamacare, but in the longer run there’s simply no reason to think that it inevitably has to lead to a significant increase in consumption.

5. How much of the apparent slowdown of health care cost inflation is a) permanent, b) not just due to the slow economy, and c) due to ACA? Or how about d) the result of trends which have been operating slowly for the last 10-20 years?

Obviously historical evidence is never conclusive, but the historical evidence we have points very, very strongly to a permanent slowdown. There’s a lot of variability in medical inflation, but one of the most underreported trends in health care reporting has been our steady, 30-year-long decline in medical inflation. There’s no special reason to think this is suddenly going to change.

If I were allowed only one answer to all these questions, it would be this: Just look at the rest of the world. Health care is not an area where we’re confined to econometric studies and CBO models. There are dozens of countries that have implemented national health care in dozens of different ways, and we can look at how they’ve actually done in the real world. Almost universally, the answer is that they’ve done better than us on virtually every metric. Unless you really, truly believe that the United States is a unique outlier to the laws of economics, there’s very little reason to believe that national health care in America would fare any worse.

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Obamacare is Working, and It Will Probably Continue to Work

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