The Democrats are Democrats

Is Megan McArdle actually surprised that no one mentioned Obamacare at the debates? Or is this rhetorical surprise? The Affordable Care Act barely came up. What candidates wanted to talk about was Medicare-for-all. That is nothing short of extraordinary. In 2010, President Barack Obama signed into law the biggest entitlement expansion, and the most significant… Read More The Democrats are Democrats

McArdle: Corruption is not an Indictment of Global Capitalism

In the first place, the countries are hardly exemplars of the free market: With the notable exception of Iceland, these are not countries I would describe as “capitalist”: Russia, Pakistan, Iraq, Ukraine, Egypt.  They’re countries where kleptocratic government officials amass money not through commerce, but through quasi-legal extortion, or siphoning off the till. This is an… Read More McArdle: Corruption is not an Indictment of Global Capitalism

Dealing with Zombie Debt

Megan McArdle, illuminating a very real issue: Very old debts are very difficult to collect, because they disappear from credit reports after seven years, and after a state’s statute of limitation on debt collections expires, the collector can’t even sue. So these wily collectors either hope that the debtor feels bad about being a deadbeat… Read More Dealing with Zombie Debt

Megan McArdle Discovers the Problem with A Government-Instituted Health Exchange:

Politicians were making decisions about it: So no, this is not a good project undone by Republican “sabotage,” as I saw suggested on Twitter this morning. It’s a potentially good IT project undone by system design and deadlines chosen for political reasons, rather than feasibility. What we’ve been through in the last week, I’d argue,… Read More Megan McArdle Discovers the Problem with A Government-Instituted Health Exchange: