是谁在制造美国的灾难？ (图)

美国斯坦福大学著名经济学家汤姆斯.苏维尔教授的这篇文章值得认真读一读。

他指出，奥巴马作为美国的总统一意孤行，要重建美国。

他为此目的不惜代价,不论手段，要在各个领域里把属于美国人民的权力和决定权转移到华盛顿精英，最后到他自己手中来。　

媒体也许不会在乎，但奥巴马这种不顾历史经验教训，以个人意识形态为指导美国国内外事物所表现出来在政治上的幼稚和业余水平，会被美国的敌人所利用。

美国人民将为此付出惨重的代价。

Disaster in the Making?
Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, July 28, 2009

After many a disappointment with someone, and especially after a disaster, we may be able to look back at numerous clues that should have warned us that the person we trusted did not deserve our trust.

When that person is the President of the United States, the potential for disaster is virtually unlimited.

Many people are rightly worried about what this administration's reckless spending will do to the economy in our time and to our children and grandchildren, to whom a staggering national debt will be passed on. But if the worst that Barack Obama does is ruin the economy, I will breathe a sigh of relief.

He is heading this country toward disaster on many fronts, including a nuclear Iran, which has every prospect of being an irretrievable disaster of almost unimaginable magnitude. We cannot put that genie back in the bottle-- and neither can generations yet unborn. They may yet curse us all for leaving them hostages to nuclear terror.

Conceivably, Israel can spare us that fate by taking out the Iranian nuclear facilities, instead of relying on Obama's ability to talk the Iranians out of going nuclear.

What the Israelis cannot spare us, however, are our own internal problems, of which the current flap over President Obama's injecting himself into a local police issue is just a small sign of a very big danger.

Nothing has torn more countries apart from inside like racial and ethnic polarization. Just this year, a decades-long civil war, filled with unspeakable atrocities, has finally ended in Sri Lanka. The painful irony is that, when the British colony of Ceylon became the independent nation of Sri Lanka in 1948, its people were considered to be a shining example for the world of good relations between a majority (the Sinhalese) and a minority (the Tamils). That all changed when politicians decided to "solve" the "problem" that the Tamil minority was much more economically successful than the Sinhalese majority. Group identity politics led to group preferences and quotas that escalated into polarization, mob violence and ultimately civil war.

Group identity politics has poisoned many other countries, including at various times Kenya, Czechoslovakia, Fiji, Guyana, Canada, Nigeria, India, and Rwanda. In some countries the polarization has gone as far as mass expulsions or civil war.

The desire of many Americans for a "post-racial" society is well-founded, though the belief that Barack Obama would move in that direction was extremely ill-advised, given the history of his actions and associations.

This is a president on a mission to remake American society in every aspect, by whatever means are necessary and available. That requires taking all kinds of decisions out of the hands of ordinary Americans and transferring them to Washington elites-- and ultimately the number one elite, Barack Obama himself.
 
Like so many before him who have ruined countries around the world, Obama has a greatly inflated idea of his own capabilities and the prospects of what can be accomplished by rhetoric or even by political power. Often this has been accompanied by an ignorance of history, including the history of how many people before him have tried similar things with disastrous results.

During a recent TV interview, when President Obama was asked about the prospects of victory in Afghanistan, he replied that it would not be victory like in World War II, with "Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur." In reality, it was more than a year after Japanese officials surrendered on the battleship Missouri before Hirohito met General Douglas MacArthur for the first time.

This is not the first betrayal of his ignorance by Obama, nor the first overlooked by the media. Moreover, ignorance by itself is not nearly as bad as charging full steam ahead, pretending to know. Barack Obama is doing that on a lot of issues, not just history or a local police incident in Massachusetts.

While the mainstream media in America will never call him on this, these repeated demonstrations of his amateurism and immaturity will not go unnoticed by this country's enemies around the world. And it is the American people who will pay the price.

Thomas Sowell (born June 30, 1930), is an American economist, social commentator, and author of dozens of books. He often writes from an economically laissez-faire perspective. He is currently a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In 1990, he won the Francis Boyer Award, presented by the American Enterprise Institute. In 2002 he was awarded the National Humanities Medal for prolific scholarship melding history, economics, and political science. In 2003, he was awarded the the Bradley Prize for intellectual achievement.

[unix]

死亡小组：曲解了字面，却抓住了要害

作者:辉格
2009-09-06 16:50:27
发表评论 [1] 推荐本文 正体

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美国社会围绕医改法案的争论已进入了白热化状态，由于关系到切身利益，各方关注和参与的热情不亚于大选；根据公共意见战略（POS）上周发布的调查结果，法案的支持和反对者各为25%和37%，与94年克林顿医改相比，支持和反对率都上升了2个百分点，可见这次人们表达立场的欲望更强烈；医改也给奥巴马带来了他上台后最大的反对和抗议声浪，支持率降至最低点，如果国会中的民主党人扛不住民意压力，奥巴马将遭遇与15年前一样的失败，那曾是克林顿总统生涯的最大败绩，而当时民主党同样控制着国会两院；面临政治险境的奥巴马已开始表现出焦躁，他抱怨媒体偏离主题，还罕见的宣称为了医改成功甘愿只做一届总统。

就在这场争论日趋激烈之时，前共和党副总统候选人佩林扔下了一颗炸弹，她把法案中一项允许政府支持的医保用于支付临终意愿咨询服务的规定，解读成了最终导向由政府指定的死亡小组来裁定是否听任某些病人不治而亡的可怕结果；死亡小组这一简练鲜明的说法，立刻传遍全国，成为热议话题，并在各种针对医改的基础会议上占据了焦点位置；佩林成功运用了一度成为奥巴马竞选利器的网络新媒体，她的文章发表于自己的facebook，然后又通过twitter迅猛扩散，在医改反对者尤其是保守派选民中掀起一波又一波的怒火，对奥巴马政策的种种不满，很可能因这一浪潮而得以聚集和展示。

从字面上看，佩林无疑是曲解了法案的意思，所谓临终意愿咨询，是为医保客户解释未来可能面临的临终医疗的代价、效果和治疗中的痛苦，以便客户斟酌是否接受那些代价高、效果差而又痛苦的治疗，斟酌之后，他可以在医保合约上签字放弃这些治疗；咨询服务提供的只是信息和建议，决定还是由客户自己做，况且是否接受咨询也是他自己决定的，这里谈不上什么死亡小组；但是，如果我们从奥巴马医改的整体内容和主要指向来看，死亡小组这个字眼，尽管十分夸张，却准确的抓住了政府在健康和生命问题上，深度介入和干预了个人价值判断这一实质要害。

医改争议的背景是，美国人医疗开支的高得离谱，总额占GDP的16%，达OECD平均水平的两倍，且仍在以高出GDP2.5个百分点的速度快速增长；联邦医保计划（Medicare）的无准备负债高达36万亿美元，在许多州，联邦医疗补助计划（Medicaid）开支占据了州税收收入的3/4，而雇主和个人支付的保险费，常常花掉一个中等家庭收入的1/4；这样的系统显然难以为继，因此任何改革计划成立的首要前提是能够控制医疗开支。

同样由政府提供医疗福利，美国开支却比欧洲高得多，原因是，美国采用的是需方补贴：穷人看不起病或买不起医疗保险，政府掏钱替你买单或给予补贴，美国政府大约负担了43%的医疗开支，法规还要求雇主为雇员购买医保，并为个人医保开支提供税务减免，这三方面措施大大提高了医疗需求，而对供给方则不予控制，相反，国家卫生研究院（NIH）每年300亿预算创造了大量新型医疗供给；而欧洲国家则通过公立医院系统，包办了医疗供给，医疗服务由计划系统平等分配给国民，所以，尽管医疗服务近乎免费，但开支是可控的，其典型的结果是英国诊所里漫长的令人绝望的排队。

美国的系统尽管代价高昂，但因为供需双方都得到了额外激励，国民确实获得了充裕而优质的医疗服务，美国人更频繁的看门诊，更多使用新药和新技术；医疗消费的独特之处在于，消费本身会自动创造出新的需求，当更多更好的医疗服务不断延长寿命的时候，老年人的医疗需求也随之而急剧增长，随着寿命从65岁延长到 75、85、95岁，每位美国老人的医疗开支分别为30万、40万、55万和81万美元；多花数十万美元来多活几年，是否值得？这纯属个人价值判断，你可以把毕生节俭下的储蓄用来维持最后几年甚至几个月的生存，也可以趁年轻尽情享受，生了大病就潇洒一蹬脚，旁人无从置喙。

然而奥巴马方案正是要在这方面替个人做判断，通过严格限制保单设计，禁止保险商对客户区别定价，推行社区统一价，个人按自我价值取向而选择适合自己保单的自由，很大程度上将被剥夺；那些情愿放弃昂贵的老年慢性病和临终治疗的人，那些拥有健康饮食和生活习惯的人，原本可以低廉的价格获得日常医疗保障，而新法案将把他们强行拉入标准化保单和统一定价的行列，因为没有这些低成本客户，全覆盖的医保系统将无法负担留下的高成本客户；而同时，即便拉进低成本客户，政府还是必须对永无止境的医疗需求做出限制，否则，随着日益昂贵的新技术不断涌现，医保仍难免被拖垮。

这样，一方面必须压制需求，一方面又必须惩罚低需求者，至于什么才是对待健康和生命的“恰当”方式，政府会告诉你；由此，政府将不可避免的背上这个沉重的道德包袱，称之为死亡小组并不为过。



－－原载：《辉格Blog》，2009-09-01
http://www.bullogger.com/blogs/whig/archives/317029.aspx