Robert J. Samuelson's warped economics

I told you so. And Robert J. Samuelson did not.

Writing in the Albuquerque Tribune over the last few years I explained more than once that the Republican administration (abetted by corporate Democrats) was repealing New Deal regulations. If that succeeded (I worried), we might revisit what inspired the New Deal -- the Great Depression.

Happily, we’re not there but if the free marketers at Treasury and the Federal Reserve are nationalizing one big chunk of Wall Street after another it’s because depression is possible. (I interrupt writing this commentary to note that NPR just played a few measures of “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime” after an update on the financial crisis.)

I couched my Tribune warnings about depression carefully; after all, I’m not a professional economist. But amateurism turns out to have been an advantage; professional economists may suffer from delusions of adequacy, of scientific rigor and of freedom from ideology. Which brings us back to Mr. Samuelson; a contributing editor at the Washington Post and Newsweek and syndicated columnist, he’s also the Albuquerque Journal’s go-to guy for economics wisdom.

Only this week (Wednesday, Sept. 17) the Journal gave Samuelson its most prominent pulpit (underneath the editorial cartoon) to preach his umpteenth sermon against universal health care and entitlements. His argument, as always, rests on debatable assumptions.

First, Samuelson assumes health care should be a business like any other, a commodity measured in dollars-and-cents. Don’t talk “values” to him.

 

Funny -- I distinctly remember doctors who were neither entrepreneurs nor industry employees. As professional guild members, they responded to non-material incentives as well as dollars. If memory serves, sick people were still patients then, not yet customers.

He assumes, too, that it’s preferable to fund wars, including wars of choice, than health care. And crucially, he prefers lower taxes to universal health insurance.

Because my patience is limited, let’s pass on examining his “factual” statements and cut right to Samuelson’s chase:

“There is a basic dilemma that most Americans refuse to acknowledge. What we all want for ourselves and our families -- access to unlimited healthcare paid for by somebody else -- may be ruinous for us as a society.”

Balderdash! That’s not what “we all want,” but no matter. Focus, please, on Samuelson’s revelation of his inner Reagan -- we shouldn’t pay taxes for the common good. Libertarians, in fact, reject the very idea of a common good except as the magical result of individuals striving to maximize their narrow self-interest.

(For them, the Jewish, Christian and Muslim scriptures -- all about community, justice and even brotherhood -- must be Socialist claptrap!)

Consider, too, Samuelson’s logic -- if universal health care would ruin our society, why haven’t France, Germany, Britain, Canada and the Scandinavian countries imploded?

Samuelson can be reasonable. “Medicare,” he says, “is so large that by altering how it operates, government can reshape the entire health care system.” So he recommends some “unglamorous” efficiency measures. They make sense, but if he were the impartial economic expert he plays in the newspapers, wouldn’t he ponder the greater inefficiencies in private health insurance?

His Establishment bias goes way beyond health. No agonizing for Samuelson on the growing income gap between the very rich and everybody else -- shades of the 1920s! Nor on the export of American jobs or low investment in public goods (like crumbling bridges). He has inveighed against swollen Wall Street salaries, but on the deregulation now jeopardizing us, he’s been confused, as if the problem was bad people on Wall Street rather than the system. Thus, in April, as the subprime scandal unfolded, Samuelson wrote that greed, shortsightedness and herd behavior compromise modern finance. “But regulation cannot cure this dilemma, because regulators can't anticipate all the problems and hazards, either.”

That’s wrong, mostly. Regulation did deter but corporate America had it removed.

The Journal, whose Op Ed pages tilt far right, is readjusting. Adding conservative George Will, for example, moves them toward the political center assuming he sometimes replaces neo-conservative columnists. Yet in economics, except for the rare offering from liberal Harold Myerson, Samuelson dominates.

Perhaps the next Journal adjustment will give us a gamut of economic opinion.

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Commentary, Economics, Health