The Power of Thinking Small
Ezra Klein asks Olympia Snowe if there are health care ideas that she likes, but that she doesn’t think are politically feasible. Something like how many people would prefer a single-payer system or the Wyden-Bennett approach but recognize that the votes in congress just aren’t there. She says:
I don’t know that I have anything in that category. I believe we should build upon the current system. We don’t want to disrupt that. I’m traditional in my approach towards reforming health care. Given the size and the amount of money we spend on it, I think it would be far too disruptive to upend the system. I think it’s preferable to build on what has worked well in our system and change the egregious practices in the insurance industry. I think the skepticism of that industry has been understandable and I share it, that’s why we really need to look at all facets to ensure they live up to certain standards and perform. But if they don’t, I think a trigger could be a powerful lever in that regard without having the government involved at the outset.
It’s probably helpful in some ways as a practical politician to let the contours of your ambition be totally circumscribed by practicality. But also a bit sad. A relatively small number of somewhat right-of-center senators have an enormous amount of practical power at this point in time. If more of them had more in the way of vision and ambition, they might really be able to get great things done. But the tendency is for them to be much more split-the-difference compromisers than big thinking radical centrists.
49 Responses to “The Power of Thinking Small”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
October 17th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Obama’s entire healthcare plan is but a covert way to redistribute wealth from European Americans to blacks and mestizos.
Socialized medicine only worked in small, homogeneous countries.
October 17th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Socialized medicine only worked in small, homogeneous countries.
It seems to work fine in small, diverse countries like Sweden. And it seems to work fine in a large, homogeneous country like Japan. And it works in a medium-sized diverse country like France. And in the only large, wealthy, diverse country on earth (that’s America!) Medicare works fine.
October 17th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
According to my CIA World Fact Book 2001, Sweden is 97% white, France 89% white, and Japan 99% ethnic Japanese. (The USA is only 60% white.)
Harvard economists Alberto Alensina and Edward Glaeser have convincenly argued that socialism only worked in homogeneous countries, and America’s antipathy toward such socialism is attributable to America’s racial diversity.
October 17th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
I kind of understand wanting to avoid disruptive change for Burkean reasons, but it’s kind of odd that a centrist Republican wouldn’t have a list of center-right think-tank tweaks like HSAs in response to a query like that.
October 17th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
The USA is only 60% white.
A quick Wiki check says the US is 79.8% white, of whom 15.4% are Hispanics (who generally identify as white for demographic purposes).
Of course, the purpose of your posts is to imply that the reason we can’t have good health care is because of minorities.
October 17th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Adam,
Only less than 1% of Mexicans are European / white.
34% are pure Amerindian
65% are mestizo (mostly Amerindian with a splash of Spaniard or negro blood)
October 17th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
——–Forwarded Message——–
“In the presence of [ethnic] diversity, we hunker down. We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it’s not just that we don’t trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don’t trust people who do look like us.” —Harvard professor Robert D. Putnam
It was one of the more irony-laden incidents in the history of celebrity social scientists. While in Sweden to receive a $50,000 academic prize as political science professor of the year, Harvard’s Robert D. Putnam, a former Carter administration official who made his reputation writing about the decline of social trust in America in his bestseller Bowling Alone, confessed to Financial Times columnist John Lloyd that his latest research discovery—that ethnic diversity decreases trust and co-operation in communities—was so explosive that for the last half decade he hadn’t dared announce it “until he could develop proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity, saying it ‘would have been irresponsible to publish without that.’”
In a column headlined “Harvard study paints bleak picture of ethnic diversity,” Lloyd summarized the results of the largest study ever of “civic engagement,” a survey of 26,200 people in 40 American communities:
“When the data were adjusted for class, income and other factors, they showed that the more people of different races lived in the same community, the greater the loss of trust. ‘They don’t trust the local mayor, they don’t trust the local paper, they don’t trust other people and they don’t trust institutions,’ said Prof Putnam. ‘The only thing there’s more of is protest marches and TV watching.’”
– American Conservative Magazine
October 17th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Triggers:
He who wanders about in the worldly jungle, when confronted by a mean-spirited, nasty, and hungry beast had better hope that he didn’t leave his “trigger” hanging on his congressperson’s wall somewhere.
October 17th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
I have to say, I wasn’t expecting this thread to instantly turn into a white supremacist forum.
Anyway, it’s hard to evaluate the claim that countries as large and ethnically diverse as the US can’t have modern health-insurance systems, since it’s based on a sample size of 0.
October 17th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
“I’m traditional in my approach towards reforming health care. Given the size and the amount of money we spend on it, I think it would be far too disruptive to upend the system.”
Kinda sounds like she’s saying it’s her belief that protecting the profits and status of businesses supersedes reform. Really, she sounds like she’s admitting to be the industry-designated monkey wrench. Practicality or lack of vision have nothing to do with anything – she’s just a bad-faith actor.
October 17th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Socialized medicine only worked in small, homogeneous countries …
What is a ‘homogeneous’ country? Last time I looked, the entire human population on the planet earth (and as far as anyone knows, throughout the entire universe) is biologically defined as genus Homo, species sapiens, and subspecies sapiens. Homo sapiens sapiens — that’s as far as legitimate biological taxonomy can take us, save for the one genetically-definable sub-category of Gender. In the entire space-time continuum there are no other humans anywhere, but yet some populations of H.s.s. are more “homogeneous” than others? That’s the most ridiculous proposition I’ve run across since the last time I heard Sarah Palin say something.
HUMANS ARE ALL THE SAME, for chrissake! The genetic differences that yield a different skin color, or eye shape, or hair texture, are no more significant than the genetic differences that allow for blue or brown eyes or brown or red or blond hair. Homogeneous? Try the word “Aryan” — it has a better ‘ring’ to it.
Good grief.
October 17th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
I have to say, I wasn’t expecting this thread to instantly turn into a white supremacist forum.
This place has been plagued by a surprisingly large number of racist trolls for years now. I wish Matt would just ban them, as they make it almost impossible to have a real conversation around here.
October 17th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Oly Snowe is just playing Karl Rovian jiu jitsu:
“We saw what dangerous disruption innovation has had in the financial sector so maybe we should be cautious about introducing radical change into the healthcare system, given that millions of lives are at risk. Best to introduce change slowly. Very slowly.”
At a rate inversely proportional to the rate at which campaign donations from Big Insurance flows into the Republican coffers.
October 17th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
This place has been plagued by a surprisingly large number of racist trolls for years now.
Well, that is not really surprising since this blogger is very keen on injecting race and ethnicity into pretty much everything. Conservative and liberal racists are not that different.
October 17th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
I think it’s preferable to build on what has worked well in our system and change the egregious practices in the insurance industry.
Well, the logic of that is impeccable. Next up, she’ll build a house on sand and legislate that it behaves like concrete.
October 17th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Re JH at 12:
The concern about racist trolls should not blind us to Burt’s larger argument: Ethnic and racial allegiances in America’s diverse population are causing disunion.
It is two-faced to argue that “We are all Americans” and to then remain silent when 4500+ Americans are killed –in part because an Israeli billionaire who dumped $15 Million into the DNC’s coffers thought that taking out Saddam Hussein would be good for Israel.
It is two-faced to argue that “We are all Americans” and to then whore for the Hispanic lobby by tolerating massive imports of illegal, low-wage labor when millions of Americans –of all races and ethnic groups — are unemployed and millions more have seen their real wages decline over the past 20 years.
You can not promote a multicultural society that works cooperatively to solve major problems when you play games in back rooms that stabs one group in the back in order to buy the votes of another. All you do is discredit the very concept.
October 17th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Also, if Burt wants to suck Sailer’s cock in public, he should just arrange to meet him in a mall.
October 17th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
If the Democratic Party exists to fight for the common citizen against the Whores of the Superrich –the Republican Party — then why do roughly 40 million low-to medium income blue collar voters hate and despise the Democratic Party.
And why do so many billionaires love it?
October 17th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
It seems to me Snowe’s position is exactly what one should expect from a conservative. To me, conservatism should be about acknowledging that, while there is much room for improvement, we have come a far way; and furthermore our society is extremely sophisticated and it is not obvious that changes which would appear to make things better wouldn’t in fact make things worse. This lends itself to trying to make progress in marginal steps, trusting first and foremost things that have worked in the past.
One the things that saddens me most about US politics is that this does NOT appear to be how the Republicans approach it. I’d be very happy if we lived in a world where both sides recognized certain problems, one side actively sought to address those problems, and the lag from the other side was essentially a reluctance to support solutions until they had been tested or carefully analyzed (or, to support their own set of solutions that relied more on reasonably successful methods of the past). Instead, it seems to me Republicans deny problems exist at all, except problems caused by government, which I think is akin to denying that past problems existed as well.
October 17th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
hen why do roughly 40 million low-to medium income blue collar voters hate and despise the Democratic Party.
It sends their money to colored people, to buy whiskey and have abortions with.
October 17th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Senator Snowe is one of the few people in the Republican Party who can make former President Bush sound intelligent. She is so inarticulate that she is unable to explain why she supports any particular healthcare policy and fails to understand that she is now the scapegoat for all future failures of whatever is eventually passed.
October 17th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
It is two-faced to argue that “We are all Americans” and to then whore for the Hispanic lobby by tolerating massive imports of illegal, low-wage labor when millions of Americans –of all races and ethnic groups — are unemployed and millions more have seen their real wages decline over the past 20 years.
It’s also two-faced to suggest that America is ’special’ in some way, and to then lambaste the fact that less fortunate people from ostensibly inferior nation states want to come here — at substantial personal risk — in hopes they can better their own already miserable situation. Seems to me I recall that the entire “white” population of “America” derived from a series of virtually identical circumstances that have spanned the last three-plus centuries.
Frankly, I’d trade what, 12 million? “illegals” even-up for 12 million Wingnut bigots any day of the goddamned year. Heck, I’d swap out fifty million (how many are there, really?) Wingnuts for however many million honest and hardworking “Hispanics” might want to come here.
Now THAT’s what might well come to be called PROGRESS!
October 17th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Isn’t ‘radical centrist’ a contradiction in terms? Surely one of the key attributes of the centrist is support for fairly non-controversial compromise policies which don’t change the status quo very much?
October 17th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Yes Snowe we should definitely build upon our worlds best health care system.
Our system wastes a lot of money and since we spend so much we shouldn’t disrupt that wastefulness.
Socialized medicine only worked in small, homogeneous countries.
So according to you blacks, and Hispanics are to blame for our shitty health care system. Damn nigga’s ans spics, ruining everything, they’re just like the damn Jews…
Other then the fact that you’re a complete racists (whom I’m betting is to much of a pussy to admit it) you’re also a complete idiot. America already has socialized medicine that works, Medicare, VA FEHP, various state health plans, all cost around 20-40% and are all more liked.
HUMANS ARE ALL THE SAME, Genetic studies, ironically have found that race isn’t a factor in genetic difference. In fact they found that members of the same race have the same amount of genetic difference then a member of that race and another. So this means sadly that we have racists like Burt who thinks that because you have non-white skin you’re to blame for everything.
“We saw what dangerous disruption innovation has had in the financial sector…”
And and that horrible innovation was Republicans removing government from the finical system. Even the so called “moderate sane republicans” are clueless.
And why do so many billionaires love it(the democrat party)?
Because billionaires tend to be intelligent.
October 17th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Dead on about Snowe’s lack of vision. But you have to remember that she comes from a small state – 1.3 million people. The odds of a state with very few people producing even one person who’s capable of being a good senator is essentially zero. The Metro New York City area has produced eight current Senators – one per 2 million of population. Maine is 4x that.
October 17th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
Vermont is even smaller, and Patrick Leahy is pretty awesome. (Sanders, as you know, is from Brooklyn.)
October 17th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Hello,
People are not blaming blacks or Hispanics for the current state of the U.S. health care system. However, the outcomes of the health care system are dependent upon the people living in the U.S. If you just look at whites in the U.S., the outcomes of the U.S. health care system are similar to those small all white European countries. Blacks and Hispanics, on average, pull down health outcomes in the U.S. due to the culture and behaviorial patterns along with genetics such as high blood pressure.
The idea that if the U.S. had the same system as Japan then blacks and Hispanics would have the same health outcomes as the people living in Japan is totally unrealistic.
Even in the VA system or Medicare, whites do better than blacks or Hispanics. You should also look up the massive problems the VA has had treating prostate cancer.
October 17th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Snowe: I was going to focus on the idea that Snowe didn’t want to expand on her “dream” health care policies because someone might hit her from the right in the next primary… but, seeing Mike’s (#19) comment re: “conservatism” the way it’s defined in Poli Sci 101, it could be she’s just dogmatically leery of major changes.
Homogeneity: Regarding the idea that more swarthy people are queering social discourse: I was perusing some old N. Geos that I’m putting out for a yard sale, and noticed an article c. 1920 listing the traits of the various “races” of Europe, what with the major redraw of their map in progress.
We picked up a demographic taste of that smorgasbord here in the US, and people bitched and moaned about it, then. Somehow, we got over it. Now we’ve got Burt cut-and-pasting a claim from AC that we just down get along in diverse communities. If said communities are red-lined, I’m sure that’s true.
My experience in rather mixed actual neighborhoods in AZ and HI lead me to believe that the AC party line is BS. I seriously doubt they’ve lived it, so I don’t know if they’re just clueless, or lying homo.s.
October 17th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
At least 19% of all babies born in Fallujah hospital born with deformities
http://joshfulton.blogspot.com/2…es-born- in.html
October 17th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Re: superdestroyer (#27), “People are not blaming blacks or Hispanics for the current state of the U.S. health care system.”
Sure “they” do. I hear it all the time. They blame ‘em for the state of health care, education, crime, and gun control. What came first, the culture and behavioral patterns or the socio-economics? Answer: the culture and behavioral patterns wouldn’t have worked out the way they have, if the socio-economics didn’t continue to suck.
And why haven’t “those people” just gotten over their history, taken a shower, and made something of themselves, eh? For the same reason “you” can’t get over your own BS petty issues.
October 17th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Matt you seem to be missing a medium-sized, diverse country in your example, Australia. 25% of the population born overseas, and socialised medicine, plus with much lower taxes than Sweden.
October 17th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
The hell happened to abb1?
To think I used to respect the guy and take his comments seriously. Sigh.
October 17th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
big thinking radical centrists
Uh, what?
WTF is that other than another line to save up for Matt’s eulogy?
October 17th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Blacks and Hispanics, on average, pull down health outcomes in the U.S. due to the culture and behaviorial patterns
Sorry, poopers, as long as healthcare remains one of the last bastions of tacit segregation, you’re not going to get away with “Those People are letting down Whitey.”
October 17th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
If you fools want to see who the real “racists” are, then check out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1rWaviRfDY&feature=fvsre1
Peace!
October 17th, 2009 at 11:57 pm
I second the notion that it is time for Matt to start banning the trolls. They totally derail every post with their bs.
Regarding Matt’s post, I think Ms. Snowe has what she would call a “conservative” temperament. Conservatives don’t like radical changes. For them it is slow and gradual process. Burkean or whatever. I am not saying it is right but it is a viewpoint. And Ms. Snowe has a lot more integrity that the other GOP (and certain Democratic) Senators.
October 18th, 2009 at 12:19 am
Trolls = people whom the more politically correct/intentionally ignorant disagree with.
It is, after all, hardly troll-like to suggest diversity in society does not correlate with a large welfare state…Matt himself has addressed that meme in prior posts of his as have various reputable authorities like Putnam, etc. Making the act of discussing this fact a “thought crime” is not going to be successful in changing anyone’s mind…
October 18th, 2009 at 1:09 am
” But the tendency is for them to be much more split-the-difference compromisers than big thinking radical centrists.”
Most consistent “centrists” end up there because they are risk, I.e. change, averse. If they were big thinking they would be leaders in some leading edge direction. At best they are plumbers, the architects are bolder and are not defending the center.
Every building needs plumbing work – but if the plumber drives the design you’ll end up with too many sinks and toilets.
October 18th, 2009 at 7:01 am
pseudonymous in nc,
One of the problems is that the U.S. is forced to make policy as if everyone acts in the same way. Thus we have lousy schools in the urban centers, poor health outcomes in the population of blacks and Hispanics.
Also, how does social segregation lead to higher birthrates, early age of first pregnancy, and higher obesity rates?
October 18th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
“According to my CIA World Fact Book 2001, Sweden is 97% white, France 89% white, and Japan 99% ethnic Japanese. (The USA is only 60% white.)
Harvard economists Alberto Alensina and Edward Glaeser have convincenly argued that socialism only worked in homogeneous countries, and America’s antipathy toward such socialism is attributable to America’s racial diversity.”
Alensina and Glaeser *argue* the first, but not the second, i.e., that the Americans won’t support extensive welfare policies because they don’t want to help members of ethnic and racial outgroups. They’re answering a particular causal puzzle–why the US diverges from other advanced industrialized states–not a feasibility question–would those policies work as well if they were adopted here. And by no means do political economists agree that they’ve demonstrated this proposition.
October 18th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Unless the sheer size of the U.S. relative to Canada and Australia makes it so we can’t learn anything from them, they seem like pretty strong evidence to me that you can have an individualist, not-big-on-history, wide-open-frontier society with Anglo-Saxon culture as the norm but lots of non-white people, too, and have
October 18th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Unless the sheer size of the U.S. relative to Canada and Australia makes it so we can’t learn anything from them, they seem like pretty strong evidence to me that you can have an individualist, not-big-on-history, wide-open-frontier society with Anglo-Saxon culture as the norm but lots of non-white people, too, and have universal, publicly-paid-for health care, with tax rates closer to that of the U.S. than those of Scandinavia.
Race does play a role in the U.S. that it doesn’t in Canada and Australia, though, which I think is largely a legacy of slavery and the civil war and Jim Crow, etc..
October 18th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
One of the problems is that the U.S. is forced to make policy as if everyone acts in the same way. Thus–
“Thus?” That’s a non-sequitur. You’re going to have to do better than that, including proving your premise.
Still, I see that you’ve retreated from “making Whitey look bad” as the core of your argument.
October 18th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
pseudonymous in nc,
In the U.S., we treat education, health care, crime, and social welfare in a way that everyone will perform the same in the same situation. thus we have an educational system that assumes that everyone can learn quantum mechanics, we have a health care system that assumes everyone understand the differences between viruses and bacteria, and we have a law enforcement system that assumes that everyone will call 911 if they see a crime.
However, when you compares, blacks, whites, and Hispanics, the ability to understand math, biology, or even written regulations is very different. Thus, the U.S. has massive racial differences.
I assume you are from the school that any failures on the part of blacks and Hispanics is the fault of whites because either whites are racist or whites are greedy. Of course, the performance of East and South Asians proves that you are wrong.
October 18th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
It is NOT government’s job to fight for anyone, rich or poor, it is there is be a fair “cop on the beat” defending everyone, rich or poor. If you think somehow the “rich’ are evil and the “poor” are good, just because of their relative wealth, we are all lost.
October 18th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
thus we have an educational system that assumes that everyone can learn quantum mechanics,
False. I would try to explain things to you but I suspect you’re one of “those people” who just can’t get it.
October 19th, 2009 at 7:25 am
Barbar,
The U.S. educational system operates under the assumption that if you spend enough money, train enough teachers, give enough support, and motivate students adequately, then everyone can learn any topic. Taken to its natural conclusion, that means that everyone should be able to learn quantum mechanics.
To agree with the idea that everyone cannot learn quantum mechanics, means that everyone will not be able to learn algebra, chemistry, or ever to read. That is why the U.S. spend a huge amount of money trying to teach students who have zero desire to learn anything.
October 19th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
@47: False. The U.S. educational system operates on the premise that you can’t tell who can and cannot learn quantum mechanics until they try (or at least try to learn a related subject like calculus). You can’t tell the QM-capable from the non-QM-capable just by looking at them.
People can and do flunk out of advanced math and science courses long before reaching the QM level, even in the U.S.
Also, since QM and reading have very different levels of difficulty, your second paragraph doesn’t follow from your first. It’s quite possible that reading could be within the grasp of everyone (except maybe a few mentally disabled people) and QM not.
You are correct that motivation is a big problem in education and it’s difficult for schools to address it, but that doesn’t actually support the larger conclusions you seem to be trying to draw from it.
October 19th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Chris,
Your model is not the way that education works in the U.S. If too many people fail calculus, then educators are held accountable and blamed. If blacks fail at a higher rate than whites, then the educators are called racist and failures. If women do not succeed at the same rate as men, then the educators are called sexist and failures.
The only way to succeed in education is to ensure everyone succeeds. That is why schools dumb things down. If you had someone a certificate that they can do quantum mechanics, then eveyrone is happy.