More Occupy-Wall-Street Humor

This cartoon is probably more amusing than the OWS jokes I posted a couple of days ago.

Making fun of looters and moochers is good sport, of course, so the cartoon is appealing in that regard.

I’m not comfortable, though, with the imagery of a rich guy who looks like he is from Wall Street.

Give me a group of honest rich people, folks who have accumulated wealth by providing value to the world, and I will defend them to my last breath.

The crowd on Wall Street, though, sometimes likes to put its snout in the public trough.

That irks me for three reasons.

First, I’m strongly opposed to bailouts.

Second, I viscerally despise government activities that redistribute from the poor to the rich.

Third, I loathe crony capitalism that gives well-connected rich people an advantage in the marketplace.

But the cartoon is funny, so let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the good. Enjoy and share.

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The Deadly Impact of Government-Run Healthcare in the U.K., but Don’t Expect a Krugman Retraction or Apology

The United Kingdom has one of the most statist healthcare systems in the world. Indeed, my Cato colleague Mike Tanner produced an excellent study showing that the U.K. system is  more rigid and centralized than what is found even in nations such as Germany and France.

Not surprisingly, this has generated terrible results for the British people, as I’ve noted here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

But those posts were mostly anecdotal. This new video from the U.K.-based Taxpayers Alliance measures the deadly impact of government-run healthcare.

But it’s not just a matter of lost lives. The video also make a very strong argument that more government spending doesn’t have any positive impact on health outcomes.

During the Obamacare debate, Paul Krugman told us we could ignore stories about what was happening across the ocean, writing that “In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false.”

I wonder if he’ll watch this video and somehow apologize? For some reason, I suspect we shouldn’t hold our collective breath waiting for a retraction.

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