Multiple Choice: An Airline Pricing Question

It appears as a stylized fact that airlines are getting an increased portion of their revenue through pricing channels other than the "basic ticket." Examples: baggage fees; ticket change fees; food and drink charges; charges for pillows and blankets; optional and priced plans for early check-in; charges for extra leg room. Kevin O'Leary of discount carrier RyanAir has repeatedly suggested charging for the loo, but I don't think that has been implemented yet.

Why the increased reliance on these new revenue channels?

a) Behavioral economics: Consumers don't notice such charges as readily as ticket prices. (I try this with my cat -- hide the pill in her food, but she outsmarts me every time. But don't let me influence your choice; cats might be smarter than people. One of my favorite econ profs used to famously tell his graduate students: You all think you are smarter than dogs, but you aren't -- you're just quicker.)

b) All these things have positive marginal costs, so the airlines are simply learning to price services in line with their costs.

c) Price discrimination. People who travel with lots of bags, for e.g., are more likely to have an inelastic demand for travel, so use baggage charges as a price discrimination scheme. This is similar to IBM in the old days charging their mainframe computer users by the number of "cards" that they consumed. (For youngsters, in the old days, data and even programs were coded onto paper cards and fed into computers. Yes, it was a pain in the butt.)

d) That perennial issue of taxes, and avoidance thereof. According to an IRS ruling in January, the kinds of fees being discussed are not subject to the 7.5% airline transportation tax. See here for details on the ruling, including the IRS private letter.

e) Because they can.

And the answer is.....

On the Proper Role of Government

As reported in CNET:

On Thursday, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), posted an open letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, expressing "concern" over the iPhone 4's reported reception problems.

Need we say anything more?

Goldman Coughs Up

So Goldman Sachs wil pay the largest penalty ever assessed on a Wall Street investment bank, $550 million. By settling with the SEC, Goldman avoids going to court with the government. I imagine however that there will now be a slew of private suits, even though investors will get $250 million and the US Treasury the rest. Goldman states in the settlement document,

"It was a mistake for the Goldman marketing materials to state that the reference portfolio was 'selected by' ACA Management LLC without disclosing the role of Paulson & Co. Inc. in the portfolio selection process and that Paulson's economic interests were adverse to CDO investors. Goldman regrets that the marketing materials did not contain that disclosure."

This is exactly what I have said all along. Their marketing materials were clearly deceptive. Nobody with good conscience should have prepared those.

Now GS has to follow through with some employee discipline.

Subsidize the Media?

Lee Bollinger, ex-Provost of Dartmouth College and current President of Columbia University, wrote in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal that we should consider public funding of the press.

You cannot be serious.

Sure, I can see the arguments -- we fund research in academia, and that is unbiased. Plus we fund NPR and hey, the British have the rock solid BBC. As an economist, can't I see all the positive externalities coming from the New York Times?

Bollinger states that in regard to public funding of academic research,

...there have been strikingly few instances of government abuse. Indeed, the most problematic funding issues in academic research come from alliances with the corporate sector.

Well, I wonder what evidence he has to support this claim. In my view, government funding of research is great at pushing forward the mainstream, generally accepted vision. Climate science is a great example.

Bollinger's argument shows why you cannot use the standard kind of economic efficiency arguments on everything. If we agree to subsidize everything that gives positive externalities at the margin, where will we stop? There are way too many activities that generate benefits that cannot be appropriated through market transactions. A free market is not going to be perfect in that regard. But holding it to the standard of optimality is not right. We have to compare it to the real alternative, which would be public funding of some activities. Can you imagine what it would look like if we were to start funding the media. (Hint: What would happen to Fox? Or Drudge?)

PS. There once was a time when I used to listen to the BBC on a shortwave radio, they were so good. That time is long past.

iPhone on June 24th

The prices he gave were $199 for a 16gb model, $299 for 32 GB. Decent.

Looks like its new phone time. The FaceTime program is really neat.

And here is a picture that Jobs showed, I took it from macrumorslive.com, where I was following Jobs' address. Note that Tuck's Bridge program is all about the intersection of business and the liberal arts. Maybe Steve needs a third dimension: business, technology, and the liberal arts. Nice.

Video Calling -- How Cool is That?

I'm watching a live blog of Steve Jobs' address to the WWDC in San Francisco.

He saved one of the coolest features of the new iPhone for last -- video calling.

Are we in the 21st century or what?

An Insurance Story

I busted one of the panes in the rear window of my Toyota Tacoma yesterday. I was putting a piece of cedar decking into it, and just nicked the edge of the window -- shattered it.

Called a window replacement service and almost had a heart attack: $1200 for the Toyota OEM replacement window. $1200 for one stupid Finlander moment?

But...I could get a third-party replacement, installed, for $295. A call to a second service confirmed the OEM price but got the third party window down to $220.

Now isn't that amazing. The OEM window costs 5.5 times as much, and we are not talking small change here. There might be some, hopefully minor, quality difference -- on the fit, most likely. I will find out tomorrow when I see the window.

Why the huge price difference? Two things. One, a monopoly position in the OEM window, due to the brand of Toyota. Second, insurance. Most people with comprehensive insurance will just pay the deductible and will therefore go for the more expensive but brand name window. Me, I cannot justify sending that kind of money to Toyota no matter who is paying, so even though I have comprehensive, if that third party window is OK it is going in.

What a lesson in what insurance can do to demand and prices! Do we wonder why medical services cost so much?

One of my colleagues had a very interesting proposal for health insurance that I have not come across. There are proposals to pay health care providers a lump sum -- bundled payment -- for a patient with some diagnosis. Say you need a hip replacement; then your insurer would pay the provider a lump sum of like $12,000. My colleague takes this one step further: he would have the insurer pay the patient the $12,000 and let them get their hip replaced wherever they wish.

That would create some very neat incentives! The problems, and they are important, are several. Foremost is the risk that the lump sum won't be enough to cover some complications. That puts additional risk onto the patient. Second might be the issue that some folks would rather take the money than the new hip. So we would have a nation of limping, but wealthier, elderly.

More on Carried Interest

I received the following comment on my initial post on carried interest:

One way of framing the carried interest question is to find the policy that preserves
the favored tax treatment in the aggregate. If I hold an index fund, my dividends
are taxed at a 15% rate and my realized long-term capital gains are taxed at a
20% rate. Now suppose I hire you to pick my stock for me. However we tax you,
there should be a consistency so that the aggregate dividends and capital gains
are still taxed in a favored manner.

My way of thinking of this would be the following: Suppose a set of friends get together to buy stock. There are five of them and they each put up 20% of the capital. They do well, and decide that one of them who has been bringing the best advice to the group should become the "general partner" and do most of the work. For that, the other four agree to reduce their share of any portfolio gains from 20% to 18%, so that the fifth partner will get 28%.

Since the aggregate capital gains are still the same, the argument above would imply that the manager/GP in my example should get capital gains taxation on his 28% just like the other four "limited partners."

This is a nice analogy, and analogies are nice for framing the issues and perhaps particularly for thinking about horizontal equity issues (are folks in this situation being treated similarly to folks elsewhere doing essentially the same thing?).

But this argument does not trump, for l return to the issue of economic efficiency -- what activities do we want to favor from an "activity level" point of view? By giving our newly minted General Partner the ability to get capital gains treatment on his larger share of the pie, we are enabling division of labor in investment activities. If we made the GP pay ordinary tax rates on any larger share he was given by his partners, we would reduce the incentives the partners would have to take advantage of comparative advantage and specialization.

Do we want to encourage such division of labor? Well, that is the question -- do we want to encourage the supply of specialized labor into management of private equity and venture capital? Perhaps. Capital gains rates are low after all because we want to encourage long term investments over short term.

The Carried Interest Dilemma

A couple colleagues and I were discussing the "carried interest" issue today. In a nutshell, a private equity firm, and other investment vehicles as well, such as venture capital firms, are organized as a partnership, with limited partners (LPs) providing the cash to invest and the general partner (GP) providing the management (and maybe a little bit of cash). The GP is often compensated in two parts, as memorialized in the phrase "2 plus 20": the GP gets 2% of the assets as a management fee, but they also get 20% of any gains when the investment is closed out.

The controversy is over Federal taxation. Now, the 2% is taxed as ordinary income (high rates!) and the 20% is taxed at capital gains rates (lower). Many folks feel that is unfair, letting these rapacious private equity fellows pay such low taxes on huge capital gains.

Before going too far into this, the right question of course is: what will be the different economic outcomes of different tax policies, and what do we think of those outcomes? Fairness is not foremost in my mind -- incentives, behavior, and outcomes loom larger.

It is not hard to think of analogies where similar compensation is paid. The taxation of those situations is instructive. For analogies, how about employees' grants of stock or stock options? Suppose I give stock to an employee, to create incentives for her to increase value. At the time of the stock grant, my understanding is that the value of the shares at that time is income, taxed at ordinary rates. Any capital gain in the stock would be taxed at capital gains rates, assuming the holding period was long enough. If I give the employee options, there is generally no tax due with the option grant, but when exercised, the difference between strike price and market value is ordinary income, unless the stock obtained through exercise is held for a certain period of time.

Another interesting case to consider would be if I lent money to an employee with the requirement that they use it to buy stock. My guess is that what would be taxable at ordinary rates here would be any difference in the interest rate charged the employee versus market rates. If there was a capital gain on the stock, then those would be taxed at capital gains rates.

This latter situation is close to what is happening with private equity. The GPs are being given an interest free loan to buy 20% of the portfolio. They should certainly pay taxes on that interest free loan.

A paper that comes to this conclusion is: Cunningham and Engler, The Carried Interest Controversy: Let's Not Get Carried Away, 61 Tax L. Rev. 121 (2007-2008).

But there is more than just the interest free loan, as the GPS essentially get to buy the shares at a zero price as well.

The more appropriate analogy seems to be the options one. The GPs are being given a call option on 20% of the portfolio, with a strike price of zero. Following the employee stock option tax policy, the grant of the option is not a taxable event. But when the option is exercised, it would be taxed at ordinary income rates, unless the GP somehow maintained their investment position for a period of time after that.

The idea of not taxing the granting of the option but taxing the gain at ordinary rates seems a nice balancing of our desire to stimulate incentives for creating long term value against the creation of excess incentives to enter one specific industry or profession. The tax advantage is essentially one of deferment of taxes -- no tax liability upon grant of the option, but upon exercise.

I think this solution balances nicely the incentives we want to preserve for investments that create value against giving excess incentives for supplying talent to certain industries.

Apple the Second Largest Company by Equity Value

Many stories have reported that Apple today overtook Microsoft in the market value of its equity.

What is more interesting is that Apple is the second-largest company in the US by market value of equity -- second to Exxon Mobil. See here.

Including debt to get total company, or enterprise value, would change the rankings as Apple has no debt and Microsoft has some. And of course other companies may have a lot more.

But it is still very impressive for a company that was almost dead a little over ten years ago.

I still remember the first Apple I bought...an LC 475. It had something like 4mb of ram -- I had to always play around, shutting off some of the built in system components, to get it to run certain programs. That was the first machine I bought for home use, and I have never bought anything other than an Apple since.

Nuke the BP oil leak?

I think BP is in big trouble, as is the Gulf of Mexico. It is a real tragedy for sure -- the only surprising thing so far is the seemingly small amount of actual damage to wetlands, beaches etc. Perhaps I am not paying enough attention, but the internet is not exactly overwhelmed with pictures and evidence of oil everywhere.

But the stories starting to come out on how BP folks made ill-fated decisions that possibly led to the disaster are scary for the company. Larry Kudlow on CNBC has been railing against BP for days on end...he just referred to them as an enemy of the US. Now that is because of something the company is supposedly doing in Iran, but Kudlow mixes Iran and the Gulf in a pretty vitriolic diatribe against the company.

Then there are these stories about how Russia used tactical nukes to stop blowouts back in the USSR days...supposedly did it five times and it worked four out of the five. Hmmmm...what about that fifth time?

Here is the Russian newspaper story that I guess discusses the use of nukes in blowouts. If you cannot read Russian, try this. Where is Red Adair when we need him?

Cyanobacteria in lakes vs. bacteria in pools

The local vigilantes on my beautiful New Hampshire lake have been spotting and reporting cyanobacteria blooms for two years now. Cyanobacteria are naturally occurring bacterial that do at times give off toxins that can cause harm to mammals. Dogs have been known to become sick, although I am unaware of any confirmed cases of human illness. Last summer I got very concerned when some local researchers reported -- in an unpublished paper that nonetheless got much local press-- a statistical correlation between living close to freshwater lakes and onset of ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease. I don't know where that research now stands, but in my considered opinion it suffered from serious defects. One of these potential defects was the way cases of ALS were reported. I actually got an email from someone on my lake who said that anyone knowing of ALS cases around our lake should report them to the researchers. Hmmmmm....I wonder if a similar email went out to folks who don't live near a lake?

Anyway, the risk from cyanobacteria is incredibly small, especially if one doesn't swim directly in visible blooms (I like to cite a WHO report that said if you are standing in kneedeep water and cannot see your toes, you probably should not go swimming. Hell, even those of us from the UP would figure that one out!)

But finally, the CDC has come out with a report saying that 1 in 8 public swimming pools pose immediate infection risks.

I always told people who asked about cyanobacteria in my beautiful clean Goose Pond: maybe if you are worried you would prefer to go to the pool at Storrs Pond in Hanover and swim in chlorinated water that a bunch of little kid have....well you don't want to know.

Risks are everywhere.

Is Greece Facing a Liquidity Problem or it it Truly Insolvent?

I imagine that the Jean-Claude Trichet has dealt with more pleasant situations than the one over the weekend.

Last week, Mr. Trichet was broadly quoted as saying that the European Central Bank had not even considered the option of buying European government bonds.

Today, the ECB announced that it would indeed be buying government bonds, but that the Bank did not bow to any pressure in coming to this decision -- see here for a sample of one of the hundreds of stories.

OK, no political pressure but certainly a lot of bond market vigilante pressure!

The issue for the US back in 2008-09 was whether banks were insolvent or illiquid. The line there is a gray one to be sure. I support the lender of last resort stepping in during liquidity crises, which in modern banking systems are inevitable, but not to rescue truly insolvent institutions.

The question then is: is Greece insolvent or just illiquid?

This looks to me like massive monetization of European debt, which will not be good for the Euro. And, unlike the US, much if not most of Europe has very little leeway for additional taxation. The US can solve its debt problems, in the worst case scenario, by increasing taxes, most favorably through a VAT. I am certainly not advocating that we do this; I would prefer to see the pressure kept on to cut spending. But if need be, I think the US could raise several percentage points of GDP through a VAT with very little cost to the economy. I don't think that Greece, or many other European countries, could do that.

Seems to me that insolvency is the more likely situation, and bailing out insolvents cannot be good policy. The only offsetting arguments are that the state of the markets do raise liquidity issues for other countries, if Greece were to be let go.

Tough decision for the ECB.

Are Apple's Actions Anticompetitive? Doubtful

As has been widely discussed, it appears that Apple will be preventing iPhone applications developers from using anything other than Apple-approved development tools -- ruling out, among other tools, Adobe's Flash CS5. See here for more of the facts and here for more editorial comment.

Do these kind of restrictions rise to the level of being anticompetitive in the sense of antitrust? Let me sketch some possibilities, none of which I think make for a reasonable business strategy nor do they meet any kind of anticompetitive test. The most likely explanation is a very non-strategic one, simply that Apple wants to make sure that its iPhones and iPads meet the kind of quality test that its vertically integrated Mac platform does. Applications can impact the overall user experience in a variety of ways, and Apple has all the incentive in the world to make sure that they do not impair performance.

It pays to go back and re-study the Microsoft antitrust case. There, the government's claim was that Microsoft was excluding other internet browsers such as Netscape from the original equipment market, mostly by bundling its own browser (Internet Explorer) with its operating system, Windows. The alleged reason for this exclusion was Microsoft's desire to protect its market power in the operating system market. Interesting - the actions were not designed to gain market power in the browser market, but to protect a position in operating systems. Supposedly, Microsoft feared that as other browsers got traction, software developers could write applications that would interface directly with the browser (so called middle-ware) rather than having to interface with the operating system itself. Once applications could be written for browsers, Windows would potentially face more potential entry into the operating system market, since new operating systems would not face the chicken-and-egg problem of not having any applications that could interface with it. That is, the argument was that Windows had a nice network externality working for it, through software developers, and the middleware concept was seen as a threat to the market power that that network externality conveyed.

Now this is not the only possible angle to thinking about Apple and the exclusion of non-approved development tools, but it is an interesting one to consider. That is, could Apple be excluding some development tools to protect its position in a related market?

What market might Apple be trying to protect? Maybe its the Applications Store platform? This is what the post by John Gruber linked to above builds on. Can one build a coherent argument that Apple is restricting development tools so that the Apps Store becomes a standard, for purposes of exploiting market power? This is not unlike some of the earlier antitrust claims, more popular in Europe, that Apple put restrictions on iPods and iTunes so as to lock customers into both platforms.

I think there is one big weakness in any anticompetitive angle to this story, and that involves the inherent lack of power of a standard on an applications store platform. Recall the essential source of market power in the Microsoft story: the software development network externality, whereby the fixed costs of writing for different operating systems gave the operating system with the largest installed base an insurmountable advantage.

I cannot see anything working the same way in the mobile phone applications market. One possibility would be to get all developers writing for the iPhone platform, thereby giving the iPhone and iPad the chicken and egg externality benefit. But the mobile phone market is way too competitive for this story to hold water. The market share of iPhone is around 25%, with very strong competitors. Maybe for the iPad, but that is a whole new market that is too early to even assess for viability. I also do not know how much credence the "fixed cost of development" story should be given here. With Microsoft, I could see that writing something like a whole new spreadsheet package for a new operating system, and overcoming the advantage of installed base of existing products, would be a real challenge. But for mobile apps? Are the fixed development costs really going to prevent apps developers from writing more than one version of a product, if there were two platforms with different requirements? Isn't the gaming market a point against this argument, with popular games being written for the different platforms all the time?

Maybe the Apps Store market itself? Could Apple be trying to protect a dominant position in selling applications? Doubtful. For one, if that were the objective, I fail to see why restricting product would be beneficial -- does Amazon restrict products from its site? Second, it is way too easy for competing applications stores to launch and compete.

I am left with Occam's Razor, having to accept the simplest explanation: Apple wants to approach what it would have with a fully vertically integrated chain from hardware to operating system to applications. That means putting some restrictions on the applications.

There's an Ad for That!: Apple's Amazing Innovation Juggernaut

Apple was on a tear this week. Last Saturday, they had a very successful launch of the iPad, opening up a whole new category for exploration and innovation. Our lives, in short, just got even more interesting and better. Then later in the week, they gave a preview of the new iPhone operating system, which powers not just the iPhones but the iPad as well.

Among the new features was an ability for application developers to include advertisements that run inside of applications. This takes the amazing evolving world of mobile applications to a new revenue-generating level.

The opportunities are going to be pretty incredible. Advertisements will be able to use the GPS capability of the iPhone. So, if you are using an app that looks for restaurants, and you are standing in Marquette, Michigan, well then I would hope that Jean Kays Pasties on Presque Isle Avenue would drop you a nice little note inviting you in to try one of the Upper Peninsula's true delicacies.

Think of how this is a change from Google's search-based advertising. With Google, ads are focused on the search terms that you type in. With Apple, the ads are tailored based on the app you are running (and there are thousands of those) and then the infinitely variable physical location. Plus who knows what else?

The other thing that Apple did was to take another step in the standards war going on over HTML and Adobe's flash. Apple will restrict developers to using programming languages approved by Apple, and that is presumably not going to include Adobe's package that converts Flash based apps to run on the iPhone. I am not quite sure what is going on here, but certainly Apple's control of the entire vertically integrated package of software and hardware has been key to its success so far. I can see obvious potential for some third party programs and languages to impinge on the overall value of a device, from the consumer's perspective. Whether Flash presents those problems, or if something else is going on, that I cannot say.

Stupak to Retire

More fallout from the health care bill. This time, Representative Bart Stupak of Michigan has announced -- or will soon announce, I guess -- his retirement.

Stupak it turns out represents my home territory, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I thought I recognized a faint Yooper accent. I saw him on CNN yesterday while he was giving a speech in Bessemer, Michigan.

Well, well. Interesting times for sure. Stupak was the leader of the pro-life argument against the health care bill, and had been leading a bloc of pro-life Democrats against the bill. At the very end, he voted for the bill after getting the promise of an executive order from the President that promised to continue current Federal prohibition against financial support of abortions.

Folks will have different takes on what this means for, well, just about everything. The weekend papers will make for good reading.

An Important Referendum in CA

Steve Chapman writes in the Chicago Tribune about the upcoming ballot initiative in California to legalize possession, growing and sale of small amounts of....marijuana!

Now I think there is the small problem of Federal laws against drugs like marijuana, but I am guessing the cooler heads in the Obama administration might decide that it would be better to let CA give it a shot.

What a noble experiment that would be. Question: what would happen to anyone in prison for possession or sale of amounts that would now be legal?

Lights Out!

A while back I got an email from my neighborhood association that had the bright idea to get rid of our street lights. The thinking behind this brainstorm was twofold, one being to combat global warming and the other being to save money.

I replied with what I thought was a pretty witty piece about taking us back into the Dark Ages. While I would support preserving the night sky for stargazing, I could not see any evidence for significant cost or carbon savings, certainly not enough to offset the disadvantages of dark streets. The idea seems to have died, as the neighborhood is still lit at night.

But I must have been wrong, as now the whole world is turning out the lights. I can't wait for someone to estimate the additional crime and accidents that will occur during that hour.

The Health Care Bill

It should not be all that surprising that we finally got a health care bill passed. Before the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts, the House and Senate had already passed separate bills; all that remained was to combine the two. The House had the courage to pass the Senate bill with the hope that a reconciliation bill of some kind will remove the most egregious parts of the Senate bill.

The opposition of the populace, as measured by polls and other more informal means, ended up being set aside in favor of the hope that by November all will be forgotten, by a respectable belief on the part of some that the bill is really good for the country, and no doubt by a lot of armtwisting and dealmaking on the part of Pelosi, Reid and the President.

I do believe that the Anthem/Wellpoint increases in individual insurance rates in California, discussed by me in prior posts, played a not-insignificant role. Those increases pointed to the failure of the individual insurance market and defused some of the critics of the bill. The President and others hammered on those increases as evidence of what would happen if the bill did not pass -- and to extent they are correct; the individual markets are in a bit of a death spiral due to adverse selection and other issues.

I would really like to see a news reporter did into that Anthem decision to see if the Anthem folks understodd the gravity of their decisions at that time.

But this is now all water under the bridge.

On the positive side -- always an optimist -- the bill does some good. I have said for some time now that this country passed the point of not wanting to have all citizens have decent health insurance. This bill goes a long way to fixing that basic social safety net issue. Let's not deceive ourselves, however, there will still be a lot of uninsured people, just as there are a lot of folks who do not file their tax returns.

And there is no doubt, as I note above, that the individual and small group health insurance market was headed for disaster. That was making it extremely difficult for self-employed people and for small businesses (if you worked for an employer who did not offer insurance, you had to buy it on your own in a lemons market). That probably induced many people to work for large companies rather than striking out on their own. Removing that wedge between self-employment and working for large companies could be good for entrepreneurship and innovation. I have little doubt that access to health insurance was a large factor in many decisions as to what kind of career to pursue, at least at some point in one's life.

If the new exchanges function well, my hope is that the bill will be altered in the future to allow people in companies that offer plans to buy insurance from the exchanges as well. As the bill stands, that is not allowed (I am not sure why). If that would happen, then the link between place of employment and health insurance will indeed be broken. That in my mind is one of the better things that could happen. Sorry, but I just don't believe that an employer has the ability or incentives to offer me the best kind of insurance. I don't have Dartmouth offer me retirement investment services; they just give me a portion of my salary and let me invest it in my choice of independent, professional investment funds. Health insurance should be handled the same way.

It is too bad that the tax on plans was taken away because of union opposition (well, postponed until some time well in the future). To reduce demand to a more natural level, we need to remove the 25% - 40% subsidy given to purchasers of insurance through the exclusion of health benefits from taxation. I suspect that this tax will get moved up in time as the costs of the new bill become obvious. Get ready, but it actually is a good thing (maybe next they will remove the interest deduction for first and second homes as well?).

I have to look through the bill to see what provisions there are on the supply of doctors. I really worry what is going to happen with another 20 million or so people putting unlimited demands on an already-stretched health care system. This is not the time to be without a physician, for sure -- line one up now. And, I suspect that in the future, because there is going to be more nonprice rationing, WHERE you live will become almost as important as what company you work for, in regard to having access to medical care. I suspect that health care is going to become very similar to public schools, with location being very important and with a two tiered system emerging as well.

So, we are off to a brave new world. At least Americans can now walk through Europe without being thought of as monsters who don't provide health insurance to their neediest of citizens. And there will be some interesting possibilities for innovation and efficiency in this new system.

Is This How History Will View Bush?

Interesting editorial by Richard Grenell in Al Jazeera on the current Iraqi elections.

On January 10, 2007, George W Bush, the then US president, defied critics and ignored popular opinion and political polls in the US by committing more than 20,000 additional American troops to the war in Iraq.

"The Surge," as it is commonly called, has since been credited with bringing the Iraqi people more security, less violence and greater freedoms. By July 2008, the surge was heralded as a success from Baghdad to Boston.

Grenell also has some choice quotes from Obama, Biden and H. Clinton on their view of The Surge.

There is no doubt that the war was costly and the planning and handling of the immediate post-war situation was pretty well botched. Also, the rhetoric for the war was unfortunately focused too much on WMD instead of the facts of S. Hussein's greater non-WMD threats to peace, security, and freedom.

Run the counterfactual for me, please. What if the US had not invaded Iraq back in 2003? Quick bottom line: would the Middle East and the rest of the world be more or less secure than we are now? Would the prospect for longterm peace, security and freedom in the Middle East be more or less than now?