[ExI] Medical Costs

Stathis Papaioannou stathisp at gmail.com
Wed Feb 20 08:47:42 UTC 2008


On 20/02/2008, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:

> Yes, in many ways it really is hard to compare different countries.
> For one thing, there are profound demographic differences. For
> another, the differing tax structures of the nations probably plays a
> big role: if a small enough percentage of the people pay almost all
> the taxes, then I have yet to hear of any mechanism---I repeat,
> my interest is in ideas, processes, incentives, etc.---that prevents
> a runaway self-immolation of the economy.  Unless, of course,
> the rich simply corrupt the process and hire the politicians directly,
> running roughshod over the electorate (but doing so covertly).

Don't forget that many poor people aspire to be rich and would support
government policies that they think would make this more likely even
if it could be shown that their expected gain from such policies is
negative. It's why gambling is popular.





-- 
Stathis Papaioannou



More information about the extropy-chat mailing list