Letters to the Editor
MacK..
Published Letters: 477 Editor's Choice: 49
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-- TwinBotXenu, you need to do your research
[Read the article: "Hillary equals France"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You say that " France's ranking as number one in health care comes at a significant cost ... high taxes." Uhh no. Yes the French have high taxes, but not because of the healthcare system. First, the healthcare system is primarily funded by mandatory insurance, not taxes. Second, and here is the shocker, it costs less than the US healthcare system for universal coverage. Yep, the French system costs less than the US system -- mainly because (and to people familair with France this is a bizarre fact) the French system is simpler and spends therefore about 2-5% on administration, while the US and UK spend more than 50%
"They also have a significantly smaller population to provide for." As compared to? France has 60 million -- Ireland has about 4 million or so, Ireland is now the richest non-petro-economy and non-banking driven economy in the world and has no problem attracting investment; also look at Singapore or Iceland -- size is not the issue.
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Monopoly and oligopoly, monopsony and oligopsony
[Read the article: You can't stop a tidal wave with a fork]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Monopoly is well understood, and oligopoly is where there are very few competitors. A monopsony is a market where only on buyer exists, an oligopsony is market where only a small number of buyers exist.
The last 24 years have coincided with a nadir for antitrust and merger enforcement, especially the Reagan and Bush (2) adminstrations. In that time antirtrust and competition law has come to be dominated by a view-point that market forces will create competition, and that therefore the harm from mergers, etc. will rapidly go away.
Bullshit. Some markets will remain competitive, others not. The school textbook market is a strong example of one that does not; new textbook companies have not materialised to replace those merged into one -- the textbook market is in fact relatively price-insensitive. There are strong structural reasons why this does not happen to do with the book selection and pruchase process. Mergers are allowed today that would have inconceivable 20 years ago and many of them taregt industries where customers find it hard to switch. This is almost completely in the US the result of a process of appointing conservative judges -- when will people realise that there is more at stake than just abortion rights or the death penalty. At this point toughening antitrust enforcement will require legislation, because judicial activism has simply gutted the meaning of US antitrust law.
You now have a bizarre situation -- for 70 odd years foreign (i.e., non-US) politicians railed against the extraterritorial impact of US antitrust law, its ability to prohibit even mergers of non-US companies if it impacted the US too much. Now you have US senators and congressmen having shit-fits on Capitol Hill every time the European Commission blocks a merger by a US company (one that would in the past not have been allowed) or chases Microsoft.
Who knows if this company could have survived, but if it had not been facing the monosony that the total spinelessness of the DoJ and FTC allowed to form it might have had a chance.
Moreover, the result of all the industry consolidation is that employers need to compete for employees less. For any given trade there are fewer employed that someone can work for, a fact that makes the employer position stronger.