Obama Care and Torrey Pines Tee Times

Most everyone knows that Torrey Pines stands as one of the most magnificent golf courses in the world.  Nestled against the Pacific shores of La Jolla, California, it offers unmatched cliff-side vistas—a golfer’s dream, and sparkles as the sight of the Buick Open each year.  It also stands out as a public course with exceptionally low greens fees (e.g. for you non-golfers, cost to play).

How do free markets react to exceptional values at artificially low prices?  Excess demand, of course.  Torrey Pines attempted deal with this by limiting advance tee times, meaning that golfers wishing to pay could not schedule a playing time in advance.  Instead, it required the golfer to come in several hours in advance, huddle in the dim, cold morning fog, and wait in turn for the chance to secure, after a wait of several hours, one of the prized tee times for the day, with no guarantees.

A frightful system?  Yes.  However, free market forces, like Marvel comic super heroes,  mercifully intervened.  A secondary market emerged.  The unemployed, underemployed, or the merely adventurous entrepreneur, could stand in line for others, secure the “golden ticket” tee time, and then sell the ticket to a broker.  The end user golfer purchased the ticket from a broker, paying full market value for the tee time, but getting to play the fabulous course on the day, and at the time, that he needed.  The entrepreneur, the broker, and the end user golfer all came out ahead.  Free enterprise at its best!

Alas, our story offers no happy ending.  Sadly, the California State Parks Department took exception to our happy little enterprise zone.  It secured illegal status for the brokering, scattered the entrepreneurs, and limited the allowance of out-of-county tee times to five per day.  The result?  A windfall for local residents, a requirement to sign up for tee times as much as six months in advance for everyone else, meaning no golf at all for most eager duffers, due to limits of time and scheduling.

Medical care, like golf, by its nature possesses even more stringent limits on time and scheduling.  As John Maynard Keynes accurately stated, “In the long run, we are all dead.”  Healthy competition between insurance companies or health care providers for your dollars seems most likely to secure an efficient allocation of health resources.  Government control of the economics of medical care likely will fare no better than its regulation of Torrey Pines tee times.  Enjoy your Obama Care; just don’t get sick.

Copyright 2010 –David J. Carr

The Worst Generation?

Our parents’ generation received the moniker: “The Greatest Generation” from former broadcaster Tom Brokow.  Brokow’s book of the same name makes a convincing case for the appellation. 

Born in the throes of the Great Depression, our parents matured in time to fight World War II, the Korean War, and for some even the Vietnam War.  A generation winning wars, raising the standard of living, giving birth to, well, us, the Baby Boomers.  We arrived on the wave of post-WWII prosperity, which washed across this great land. 

We grew up while our parents’ generation struggled to fight, and win, the Cold War against Communism, and the Soviet Union.  That last struggle saw the ageless warrior, Ronald Reagan, lead one last great triumph for that generation.

Having now reached middle age, of what triumphs can we boast?  Middle East peace? Not exactly.  Worldwide elimination of poverty?  No.  Worldwide embracing of democracy?  Fits and starts at best.  Worldwide embrace of capitalism?  Perhaps, but it came in the form of the 18^th or 19^th Century form, the one that smacks of corruption, exploitation, and avoidance of minimum labor and environmental laws now considered mandatory in this country as part of the definition of modern civilization.

Promotion of the family?  Hardly.  We did manage to bring in a new worldwide plague in the form of a new venereal disease: AIDS.   On our watch out-of-wedlock births soared.  In this country, minority birth out of wedlock exceeds 70% of total births.  Caucasian out-of-wedlock births continue to trend upward, and in some Scandinavian countries total birthrates show over 75% out-of-wedlock.  We appear well on the way to subsidizing the extinction of the nuclear family.  Public subsidies make the government, not a spouse, the “bread winner” of last resort.

Promotion of morality or even the rule of law?  Just like the Roman Empire, outside our borders “might makes right.”  All too often, military force remains the weapon of choice.  When self-proclaimed enemies declare war on us, rather than pray for them, we bomb them.  Even more unfortunate, the bombing remains insufficiently pinpoint to completely avoid the killing of  innocents, playing right into the hands of our enemies.

Domestic tranquility?  De Tocqueville mused that democracy will be finished when people discover that they can get what they want from their government, and send the bill to the next generation.  In 1968, the federal budget allocated over 45% of revenues to the military.  Today, thanks to the afore-mentioned Cold War victory, that percent stands reduced to a mere 19.1%, a peace dividend. (Source: gpoaccess.gov/budget)

Unfortunately, in its place, entitlement payments (Health and Human Services) rocketed from 7.3% in 1968 to 24.5% today, and represent the largest line item in the federal budget.  The federal debt stands at an all time high: $12 trillion and climbing.  The federal budget for 2010 projects an annual deficit of $1.4 trillion on a total budget of $3.6 trillion.  While we remain a wealthy nation with GDP of $12-14 trillion annually, we appear to be racing toward a sovereign debt crisis.

We respond by voting ourselves a new entitlement, health care, with generous subsidies and little in the way of legitimate funding mechanisms.  It also appears to provide little in the way of incentives for wellness or health cost containment.  The means to obtain this entitlement involved political gimmickry, backroom deals, and circumvention of the Senate filibuster mechanism. 

We remain unwilling to recognize that 43% of the citizens of the nation on our southern border would prefer to live here—no surprise—to take advantage of our entitlement system.  Our system invites their illegal immigration to our country by guaranteeing full benefits to all of their children simply by virtue of their birth upon arrival.  Indeed, currently 70% of the births in Los Angeles public hospitals record the parents as illegal immigrants.

Guaranteeing health care for all of these new U.S. citizens certainly will do nothing to discourage further illegal immigration.  While these brave new immigrants, and their innocent children, bring many positive attributes to our country, the further entrenchment of an underground economy seems destined to further undermine the rule of law in this country.

Will the U.S. end up being “no country for old men.”  Will we go down in history as the “worst generation”?  Time appears to be running short on the chance to make our legacy a positive one.

Copyright 2010—David J. Carr