patrick.net

Socialized medicine has made doctors apathetic, which led to the deaths of 15,000 people in France and 20,000 in Italy from a heat wave.

hmm, I can see the connection... i need a doctor to tell me to hydrate...

good thing all doctors to a man and woman in america immediately rushed to new orleans to assist after katrina...

another great, entertaining and informative 'futurist' article...

there are supposed to be skill sets shortages in australia, also - absolutely no tradesmen, no IT people, no nurses or doctors, no nothing. what the hell is that about? what is everyone doing then, selling insurance? they have to steal doctors and nurses from zimbabwe, apparently, even though they have world-class medical schools here.

i had some poor girl, presumably calling me from a call centre in india, insisting that i take a mobile phone from optus with a $30 plan, they would send it to me straight away in the mail, just give me the name and address...

when i suggested i might want to compare pricing plans with my existing provider before embarking on such a rash act, she insisted that it was the best deal going... it was pretty funny listening to her arguments though, she was certainly trying her best... i could barely understand her dialect most of the time tho... i was going to call optus in australia and complain about their bizarre sales tactics and unethical coercive sales scripts...

does anyone think that 5 different names that all point to 'futurist' articles mugh be the same person?

the futurist authors need a good slapping, i've never read so much jingoistic stupidity in all my life...

I can’t think of any reason to force someone to live in agony for a prolonged period of time.

Me neither. We need to rethink the medical philosophy.

My son needed minor surgery when he was 9 months old. We have really good insurance, but still had a co-payment on a $20,000+ surgery (that took less than an hour) and had to pay $1700 out of pocket.

So you have to co-pay $20000? What was the cost of the surgery?

SQT,

I guess I should say, insurance co’s are covering preventative care less and less. My insurance used to cover maintenance care, but they are not doing that anymore. How stupid is that? How much money would you save in the long run by ensuring that people stay healthier longer?

I could really go off on this subject, but it is too depressing. Without opening up another generational conflict debate, the problem is one of simple suboptimal-market behavior. The problem is that lightly-regulated/deregulated insurance will tend to become as efficient as possible. They do this by spreading out the cost of risk to as many payers as possible, with the right "risk distributions". Add all this up and you have a system that essentially "taxes" the younger, healthier segment to pay for the care of the older and less healthy segment.

But the non-optimal part is there is no or very little value judgement to the appropriateness of care. Aside from extreme things like nose-jobs, the market is allocating health resources based upon what makes insurance providers most profitable. A lot of that comes from putting disproportionate resource into elderly or terminal patients while putting as few resources as possible into young, healthy "maintenance" patients.

The market doesn't solve all problems. This is a clear example of where a free market will fail every time (even though it will be quite efficient). In mathematical terms I like to think that the market is ignoring certain factors which it can't value well, and as such it gets stuck in a local maxima.

I don’t believe even 10% of H1B holders will even think about buying houses as long as they are just H1B workers. Vast majority of my H1B colleagues were renters. Having this type of visa does not guarantee anything and every sensible person should realize that.

However, the increase in employment-based immigration quota can be very significant because it allows more "backlogged" H-1B workers to become new permanent residents aka new homebuyers.

If you can protest and wave a mexican flag you go back to mexico and do the same to free it from corruption. Don’t bring your corruption here.

I just do not understand why people protest against proper law enforcement.

@Peter P

Please continue to post your thought in [this] thread. Randy, we have yet to hear from you.

The last time I put forth a theoretical and historically bounded rationale for loose immigration it ended up starting a pretty big flame fest. That was quite a while ago, so I can't even seem to easily find it to link.

In short, flexible labor markets are better than non-flexible labor markets. This, unfortunately to many people's minds, includes the good, bad and ugly. Bottom line is that, for a growing, healthy, dynamic economy, loose immigration is a major positive factor to adding labor market flexibility. And, note that I have made no distinction between legal and illegal immigration. Legality is itself simply a constraint factor (actually a cost factor) in an economic model. "What is and isn't legal" is, after all, itself simply driven by whim of the moment not by any underlying absolutes -- at least insofar as complex societal issues like immigration are concerned.

I just do not understand why people protest against proper law enforcement.

Perhaps they believe that the laws are unjust. I'm not saying they are right in this case, but we have had very unjust laws in the past that took pain, suffering, and protest to change. Or does anyone wish to defend the Jim Crow Laws?

The last time I put forth a theoretical and historically bounded rationale for loose immigration it ended up starting a pretty big flame fest. That was quite a while ago, so I can’t even seem to easily find it to link.

Well, the issue has little to do with immigration itself.

We need to see if the potential changes may cause us to change our position on the housing bubble. In particular, will there be enough highly-paid immigrants in the Bay Area to cushion the bubble bust.

Perhaps they believe that the laws are unjust.

They are definitely unjust to law-abiding employers who have to compete with those who hire illegal aliens.

Good news: we can solve the problem with the guess worker program.

I do not think immigration reform proposals, in any of their current forms, will affect the housing market materially at all.

I cannot back this up empirically, but my nose tells me that most marginal immigrants (let's say those who are illegal, but could be made or could have been legal but for lack of knowledge, lack of access to legal resources, minor lack of financial resource, etc.) are by and large working-class or lower. These people, although some buy houses, do not affect the housing market direction or volatility in any material way. Immigrants who have such access are able to find ways to do so legally -- in fact they must do so legally so as to have ready access to their wealth. These are the ones buying houses, and they already are priced into the market. I don't see anything yet that would do much to change the flow of legal, wealthy immigrants.

I do not think immigration reform proposals, in any of their current forms, will affect the housing market materially at all.

How about the increase in employment-based immigration quota? These new immigrats already have high-paying jobs as H-1B workers. Once they get their greencards, they may start buying.

It was my understanding that in most "illegal households" where they own the home at least one member of the house is legal. It is quite common for one or two adults to be legal (and thus their children), but then for them to bring in extended family and friends who may be illegal.

While living in Redwood City a neighbor was a single mom, nurse, and legal. But she had her two sisters and their families living with them, none of which were legal. She was a home owner and working-class, so I guess this contradicts my earlier intuition. But then again, she was an immigrant from back in the early 80s, and I don't know what the legal environment was then. Maybe she got in on the last amnesty.

As an aside, they were wonderful neighbors too. The kind of guys who would help you re-shingle your roof on the weekend for the price of hanging out in the backyard to BBQ and drink some beers that evening. Whenever I saw the police bring a teenager home it was the proper wasp's kids, not her kids.

Not specific to this thread, but anybody read this?
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/03/shiller_longter.html

Newsfreak,

The phrase "Amerika" is a "cute" way of saying this country is a totalitarian state like Nazi Germany or the USSR. I find that deeply offensive, but hey that's just me.

Perhaps you really do agree with Abbie Hoffman:

"We are not interested in the greening of Amerika except for the grass that will cover its grave."

Steal this Book

You are surely entitled to your opinion. I will defend to the death your right to think and say whatever you want. As you well know many brave young men and women have died because they took an oath to defend our constitution and our country--the United States of America.

Garth,

I believe what Surfer X meant when he first used the term was that anybody that had the audacity to imply that home values may have gotten "ahead of themselves" or acknowledge that there may be a bubble (let alone an impending crash) was branded as un-American! In the context of the blind faith in equity extraction that's replaced common sense I have to allow it.

Amerika is the common spelling in many languages, German being one of them. Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika. I find newsfreak's usage no more offensive than Bap33's persistent references to "Libs hate [insert anything good or decent]".

Both are just being provocative (provokativ).

Don't get me wrong. I firmly believe in the Marketplace of Ideas. I hold no personal grudge against anyone who dislikes our country. Likewise, many of us love our country but hate some of its policies or some of the things we've done wrong. Like slavery or Separate but Equal or the Indian Wars to name some non-controversial examples.

But part of the equation in free speech is that both sides get to express themselves. I love this country, and I like to stand up for it. I don't think it should be slandered casually or just for kicks.

H1B workers are employed by Consulting company's and not directly by employers like IBM or CISCO and they are exploited to the hilt. They ratio of H1Bs applied by big employers to small consulting companies are 1:5. They are paid much less than the wage for the position they are working: 40 - 60K. I do not think they would have money to buy houses here at the current prices. They might push themselves over the limit to buy one based on peer pressure thinking it is an investment to make money. I am hoping they will make well informed decisions about what they purchase since they dont have much savings.

In many cases the spouses are working too and their combined income easily surpasses 100K.

AFAIK, spouses of H-1B workers are not allowed to work, unless they are independently authorized to work.

Ha Ha,

I guess you have never seen failed RE projects. I have seen plenty, in Asia after the Asian Financial crisis. When it crashed, just within a matter of weeks, all projects came to a halt because the funding plug was abruptly pulled. You see miles and miles of vacant land with foundation or half-erected frames left but no more cranes working on site. It was abandoned, just like that, totally surreal. Then, you will see that piece of land left to ruins for years, if not decades.

I expect to see the same in around this area, we will have plenty of half finished townhomes and condos which will later become shelters for the homeless. Saw it before elsewhere, will be amusing to see it again here.

test

this thing is perverse for not taking posts - just to leak a secret - patrick is looking at proper forum hosting software...

Randy,

There seems to be a lot of 'markets getting stuck in local maxima' going on generally - do you think that's therefore the reason govts need to intervene? e.g. conditions in the Satanic mills of northern England were such that unions and govts had to start setting minimal wages and conditions for employment. I could go on forever about this, Sociology 101, Social Policy 101 and the manifest failures of markets left unregulated to produce equitable or fair outcomes, etc. This requires a 'good' government, not a corrupted one...

Just on the healthcare thing, somewhat belatedly (blog wouldn't take an earlier post):

Different Sean,
I have used doctors in France and England, and they were as good as here. Also, since we don't have either the longest lifespan or the lowest infant mortality rate I'm not sure why we are always disparaging every other country's medical system. Yes, we can keep the dying on machines and keep them in agony for an additional three months or so, but is that necessarily good?

the WHo estimated that about 50% of healthcare costs worldwide is on people who die within 12 months anyway, mostly the elderly...

i can't even get the 2nd part of this post on, the blog keeps rejecting things arbitrarily... doesn't seem to have anything to do with length, formatting characters, etc...

no such thing as “good” government. That’s why we get to keep and bare arms.

that's just a myth following mistrust of british rule under capricious monarchs... so you created a monarch-style president to replace it...

definitely less lawyers - the US is the most litigious country in the world...

don't you bare arms at the beach?

Ha Ha Says:
March 30th, 2006 at 9:28 pm
Report Predicts Housing Market Slowdown
A grim new prediction for California real estate: a slowdown that could last for years.

That seems to have happened in Sydney over the last 1-2 years. The real estate agents won't admit it, of course. However, the consensus I've heard is something like a 10-15% slump in prices in that period - certainly not 10% growth every year ad infinitum, underpinned by magical forces that belie economic fundamentals!

The question is, will it 'plateau' for years, or will it turn back down anywhere up to, say, 33%? (A 50% gain = 33% loss) It would be interesting to try to model this, because the inputs are really interesting -- only a small % of total properties are put up for a sale in a boom time, so all the people who purchased earlier are unharmed -- so a housing boom doesn't hurt everyone, just that small % trying to buy in the boom time who don't have some existing equity or an inheritance or whatever. Ongoing boom conditions start to hurt more and more people, obviously. So, when you've run out of all available credit and imagined credit, prices will start declining...

It's a 'self-regulating market' of sorts, which is what the politicians hope for so they don't have to do anything, but at what cost? Like the tech wreck and the '87 crash and all the rest of it, nothing is ever said in the media in a systemic way of all the people hurt in the capitalist boom/bust cycle...

Owneroccupier Says: March 29th, 2006 at 10:25 pm
I am only too familiar with the type you are talking about in Vancouver BC. The entire circle of my parents’ friends supplanted themselves to Vancouver and Sydney when the news broke out that Hong Kong were to be returned to China.

Interestingly, that probably helped to feed a local bubble in Sydney - Melbourne tended not to go up at the same time. Likewise, there was a sudden spike in Sydney R/E straight after the '87 stockmarket collapse - but not elsewhere. Then there's a spreading-out effect to other states shortly after simply because investors sought out of state investments when Sydney prices got too high... But it's hard to prove this empirically in amongst all the realtor hype, and other postulated drivers...