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This state has been currupt forever. It use to be a stronger and more unified state when German immigrants were here, but as immigration progressed and the backlash of World Wars in the early 1900's, Germans moved out to the midwest! It has been all down hill since!!!!!
It's a shame, Germans built strong family communities in the state along with prosperous farm land.
I'm on my way out, so I'll get back to you later on most of this, but you can only get away with it in certain branches of medicine. Why? Because hospitals are forced to take medicare if they want to be accredited by JCAHO, and they need to be accredited by JCAHO to stay open. Even surgery centers have a minimum number of medicare cases they must do per quarter. It is also increasingly more difficult to NOT take medicaid. They pay the hospital based on how many medicaid patients they take. If you only take the emergencies as required by law, you are getting paid like 5% of the medicare fee, so you are operating at a big loss. So the government implements a competitor and then forces enough people to accept whatever fee the government wants to pay that it creates a huge downward shift in compensation.
The government have not only implemented a competitor here, they are also engaging in anti-competitive practices. One of the problems with government takeover of any industry is that they can use their legislative power to prop up their own enterprise. If a private company used leverage to force consumers to use their products, they would be subject to anti-trust litigation.
It's fine for the government to provide a competitor if they compete on the same terms as everyone else. But they aren't doing this (they seldom do) -- instead, they are forcing themselves on providers who must swallow this bitter pill at a loss. The question then is, how do they recuperate their loss ? Ultimately, the tab needs to be picked up by some subsidy, most probably from other insurers. It's in the interests of the federal government to operate in this manner, because by imposing a stealth tax on private industry, they can move some of this fiscal train wreck off their balance sheets.
However -- I suspect this is ultimately a stealth tax on other insurers rather than a wage control on those who practice (though as below, there may be other regulatory interventions that are de-facto community service requirements or wage controls)
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Also, I am not permitted to charge whatever I want. There are laws preventing me from saying "Well Mr. Gates, the OR is being prepped for your emergency open heart surgery. My fee for putting you to sleep will be 1 Million dollars. You have every right to look for a cheaper Anesthesiologist to come in. It has to be someone with privileges at tis hospital though, and since I am the one on call, you will have to pay them enough to make it worth coming in on a non-call day. Of course, we will be wasting valuable time. I hope your heart doesn't give out before then."
Emergency care doesn't readily lend itself to the application of market principles. The only check and balance to prevent you from getting completely screwed as a provider of emergency services, is for you to have the option of applying your skills elsewhere.
Do you have the option of charging whatever you want for non-emergency services ? Also, are you more or less required to be available to provide emergency services as a condition of working at a hospital ?
I suspect that the effect ultimately is that providers are paid well, but need to work long hours to meet whatever external mandates are imposed.
Free market only works given certain assumptions. When you have substantial neighborhood effects and/or moral hazard (that is, transactions or choices have effect on third parties), or natural monopolies (duplicate infrastructure makes competition inefficient), free market doesn't work well.
Impractical because the traffic load is small compared to access of the streets. This is an example of neighborhood effect -- streets are not exclusible.
Possible but controversial. There are some issues involved with authority (they can't really arrest people)
Not very practical (natural monopoly). A more practical libertarian solution would be a volunteer fire department (you still need taxes to pay for equipment)
Natural monopoly, neighborhood effect (added noise, traffic, eyesores in front of your place affect property values)
Obvious problems with this (conflict of interest issues)
Too bad. Your best bet is to ask them to do less. You have natural monopoly issues, and moral hazard if someone pays mercenaries to go overseas.
No, in NJ, we just socialize every single thing.
Unless you have some clear principles on what service is and isn't a good candidate for government control, you are handing your government an opportunity to overreach, and take over services that they do not administer effectively or efficiently. Then you wonder why your taxes are so high.
I guess you didn't realize the little "rolleyes" emoticon I threw in there to indicate my sarcasm. I was being entirely sarcastic with my post, and no, I don't "wonder why [my] taxes are so high". I was pointing out how ridiculous the libertarian/quasi-anarchist reactionary right-wing loons can get with their whining about taxes and socialized services.
I guess you didn't realize the little "rolleyes" emoticon I threw in there to indicate my sarcasm. I was being entirely sarcastic with my post, and no, I don't "wonder why [my] taxes are so high". I was pointing out how ridiculous the libertarian/quasi-anarchist reactionary right-wing loons can get with their whining about taxes and socialized services.
No, I understood why you were being sarcastic, but I still think it deserved a serious response, because it looked as though you were lumping in citizens hiring private militias with privately run schools.
The question implicit in this is, if the government should not provide schools, why should they provide (for example), law enforcement, etc. It's not enough to wave ones hands and say that this thing is "obviously" different from that one.
Now I would turn this question on its head. If you are for the government running schools, then why shouldn't the government also run grocery stores ? Bakeries ? Restaurants ? The auto industry (oops! it already does) ?
Now I would turn this question on its head. If you are for the government running schools, then why shouldn't the government also run grocery stores ? Bakeries ? Restaurants ? The auto industry (oops! it already does) ?
If you don't have anything intelligent or thoughtful response, why post ? I thought it merited a better response than a flippant dismissal or a juvenile "you're an idiot" response.
Actually, my response was quite honest. Your response does boggle the mind.
You asked how you could run a town on a much lower budget. I gave an answer. It would require a very different approach, and a fundamentally different way of asking what you expect the local government to provide. I understand that what I mentioned would not be very popular here (which is why we pay high taxes instead), but it is possible.
Not really. Government should provide services to all. Your ideas benefit no one -- unless, of course, you're rich and have no need of services.
If the problem were addressed at a state level, there are more incremental, less radical reforms one could make to the school system. For example, vouchers are an incremental step towards providing some incentives to all parties (the students and the schools) that one could provide not only on an all-or-nothing basis (e.g. students can choose any public school, or any private school that costs no more than the most expensive public school) but also an incremental basis (decide to what degree you're prepared to do this)
The reason that this would need to be addressed at a state level is that you need some market dynamic, and many towns just aren't big enough for this to work (you'll always end up with winner-take-all and one dominant school emerging)
As for parks, charging for parks is possible, and it is potentially good for raising revenue. Depending on the geography and size of the park, this can be practical.
Is that a complaint about the substance of my post, or the agility of your mind ?
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Not really. Government should provide services to all.
What services should they provide, and why ?
As I asked elsewhere -- if the government should run the education system, then why should they not also run bakeries and restaurants ? What principle do you use to decide whether the government should run this service of that service ? You need to do better than arbitrary discretion here -- that's a dangerous road to follow (consider for the moment the implications of case by case discretion on free speech as opposed to a broad principle, and consider the consequences in countries where such a discretionary approach is the norm)
If the government makes services available to all, they have the option of directly administering those services themselves, or providing funding to users of those services.
In the case of education, it is possible to make the services in question available to all, without the government being an education provider.
For example, some universal health care systems put the government in charge of funding, but the doctors themselves are not government employees.
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our ideas benefit no one -- unless, of course, you're rich and have no need of services.
There are some towns where almost everyone is quite wealthy. Suppose you had no government schools, and you gave those below a certain income threshold vouchers that were sufficient to cover Catholic school tuition (leaving aside for the moment that there may be legal obstructions to doing this in NJ -- you would know better than I). That would substantially reduce property tax load (and education costs)
Ironically, the system that is presently in place is terrible for children whose parents can't afford to move to a good school district. It is based on a vicious "keep the bums out" mentality. The argument that spending more money on weak schools is the way forward is a losing one -- the costs of administering public schools in Newark is staggering as it is. What needs to be addressed is efficiency and effectiveness.
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