Studying London 2008 for Washington 2009. 
There are large clues about our US future in the budget chat that the dynamic duo PM Gordon Brown and Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling (right), performed before Parliament in the last news cycle in the wondrous ceremony called "Question Time." My
reasoning for reading the already dusty details of a foreign country's monstrous budget is that, since Gordon Brown led the world in fashioning a bank rescue plan back in September -- a plan that Hank Paulson started to imitate until he changed his mind -- then this new Labor budget may very well be be a guiding light for the Obama administration plans in January/February 2009. The chief fact of the Labor budget is that it is a "gamble within a gamble" -- so says Financial Times chief financial guru Martin Wolf. Not only does the budget combine higher taxes for the rich with huge borrowing by the government into order to pour money into the public sector, but also the budget is built upon rosy expectations that a return to growth in 2010 will allow London to slow the stimulus, the giveaway. Some call it Big Government. Out of date. What I read is the Colossus of All Correct Decisions Will Be Made For You Government. (Some also call it Old Labor, marching to a red flag, socialism, central planning, command economy, but it's too trendy and arbitrary and cobbled together make-believe to be old-fashioned anything.) Forclosed mortgages supported for ninety days, to be extended willy-nilly. Make work jobs provided at the Royal Mail and other unbusy establishments (delivering catalogues?). VAT cut 17% to 15% for the average bloke buying tools and housing items but not for the stuff the average bloke buys, such as petrol, alcohol and tobacco (that's how they get to claim they are cutting taxes while raising taxes). High arbitrary new tax bites of 45% on the official 300,000 rich people left on the islands (over 150,000 pounds/annum) and a shopping list of sin taxes that define how Mother Britain wants folk to live -- much higher taxes on petrol, alcohol, tobacco, big cars, airplane travel. If you walk to work and at work, eat soy and local eggs, live in a burrow with a roomie, use no electricity and do not ever consume alcohol or tobacco or elective pharmaceuticals, and you are only likely to fly in an airplane once a year and holiday by mass transit, then you can expect to find contentment. The surprise is that the Tories were so surprised (or were they) that Brown/Darling now aim to run the national debt to trillions, and that the best case scenario is that the national debt stops at a trillion. No one much mentioned the rosy scenario as the knee slapper du jure. A recovery by 2010, a balanced budget by 2015? Dystopian fiction. I am studying the reaction of the major commentator figures -- decided rolling eyes and gulping air before somber tones -- because this looks to be how to behave when we get a copycat blueprint of Brown/Darling for the Obama stimulus package/Mother America policies. You will pay more taxes if you drive the wrong vehicle, fly too many airplanes, consume the wrong products and live in a large house in the wrong state. And somehow taxing the rich smokers who own two addresses or more will return Britain (and the US) to growth? And how will Britain and the US pay for these guidelines while we are waiting for the smokers to buy too many cars and start the consuming of houses again? The Bank of England printing presses are at Debden. The U.S. Treasury printing presses are virtual on-line manufacturing centers. The shape of things to come is unstable but musical (below).
What peaks my curiosity is that the witless environmentalists continue to babble on about how green jobs and alternative energy will lead us out of the economic wilderness if only we inaugurate draconian green agendas, with ruthless CAFE standards, and cavalier cap and trade regimes, and Kyoto-based commitments. If we were Europe, which ballyhoos rosy green commitments they have no intention of adhering to, I wouldn't be concerned. But we're not. We're America. If we put it into law, by God the law will be enforced regardless of how insane it is.
My wife got back from a two-week visit to England and they seem to be very happy with their lot in life (which is much as John describes it). Brits' key to happiness is greatly lowered expectations. What was that a congressman once said, all they want is a pair of shoes and a warm place to ....
The biggest cloud on their horizon right now is that they can't afford to pay their garbage collectors to haul away the trash on a regular basis, and people have taken to dumping their trash in other people's dumpsters, and city councils that armed themselves with hidden cameras (as part of the "war on terrorism") are now using their hidden cameras to catch these roving trash-dumpers and bring them to a swift justice. Oh, yeah, the Sun never sets on the British Empire. Right.
John, by the way, I read your piece on The Daily Beast and I wanted to verbally punch some of the people who commented on your very nice article, but was too lazy and paranoid to log in. So I'm doing it here instead.
Meanwhile, in India...
I submitted the following on the Change.gov Web-site. I recommend this to anyone with an opinion on where our country needs to go in the next four years.
The Economy
---Reduce tax rates, corporate and individual. Credit is tight (and should be, it was too loose and a bubble formed). Retained earnings are the key to business growth. Reduced taxes are the best available source.
---Reduce government spending. Once the credit markets loosen, too much public debt will squeeze out private business borrowing.
---Loosen environmental and other regulations on the Energy industry. "Drill here, drill now, pay less" is not your slogan, but it will work and should be implemented, as should loosened restrictions on coal and natural gas exploration and development. Tar Sands and Shale Oil need to be developed.
---Smash regulatory barriers to the development of atomic power plants. The priority should be replacement of remaining oil and natural gas fired power plants.
---Government grants should go to alternative energy research, but there should be a realistic appreciation that the results will be meager in the near term.
---Can a coast-to-coast private passenger rail system be profitably be developed? Can AMTRAC be privatized?
---Consider repeal of New Deal Era Legislation, such as Federal Minimum Wage Laws, that discourage employers from hiring.
---A strong SEC encouraging transparency in financial markets is critical for promoting stable, sustained growth. There are no free markets in the absence of the rule of law and a rational scheme of regulation.
---Market-based universal health care coverage should be enacted. Similar Republican Legislation in the House indicates a potential for success. The major sticking point will likely be Heathcare Savings Accounts ("HSA").
---Creation of a more national regulatory scheme for the practice of Medicine and for Insurance will be critical for market based reform. (State corporate practice laws doomed Physician Practice Management Companies, like PhyCor, for example.) Federalism will complicate the problem.
---Lots of covered lives = lower premiums and co-pays. If they are low enough, do we need Medicaid or State Child Health Plus ("SCHIF")? Does not need to be employer based. Could this be a new role for unions, as in Germany?
---Role of healthcare costs in the crisis facing American Auto makers indicates the centrality of the problem.
---I think bailouts should not be the norm. How can we ask people of limited means to pay more in taxes to invest in businesses no banker would lend money and no venture capitalist or money manager would invest in?
---Never forget that every dollar you take out of a business is money they can't use to hire someone or invest in Plant Property and Equipment ("PPE").
---Never forget that every dollar you take out of some workers paycheck in taxes is money they can't use to buy their spouse or child a Christmas present.
National Defense
---Study the British occupation of Iraq under the League of Nations Mandate in the 1920s and the difficulties that the Brits had maintaining bases there in the run up to World War II. History does not repeat itself but it does show capabilities, motive, intent and propensities and the characteristics of the battlespace.
---Likely, the best course is to expeditiously withdraw conventional forces from Iraq, while keeping diplomatic and development efforts and Special Operations Force support to Iraqi counter-terrorism efforts on the front burner.
---Do we need to "win" in Afghanistan or is it enough to make AQ's Salafists (Islamic Fundamentalists) our Salafists? The same is true of the Horn of Africa.
---The real threat from failed states is who restores order and on what template.
---The strength of AQ is not suicide bombers. It is lawyers, preachers and engineers. They are the "stem cells" of the insurgency.
The Supreme Court
---The ideal is not to appoint "empathetic" judges. The ideal is to appoint judges who appreciate that the cases before them are real cases and controversies that involve real people, businesses and not-for-profit entities, rather than some Platonic abstraction. Any judges appointed should understand, as Justice Jackson said, that "they are 'supreme' because they are 'final,' not 'final' because they are 'supreme.'"
---The template for such a judge would be state high court judges, such as Judge Kaye of New York's Court of Appeals (unfortunately retiring), who have this experience of finality.
As the lady said at the end of Primary Colors (dir. Mike Nichols, 1996), "Don't break our hearts."
60 minutes had a piece on the happiest people in the world and it was the Danes. Seems they have very low expectations of themselves and think that the American dream is non-sense. I look at it as a result of two world wars and socialism, not to mention the highest tax rates around. I think the tax rate in Denmark is over 50%. That's insane, and to think people are ok with that just blows my mind, but I guess they are enculturated to it.
John,
History shows that the more government involvement you have in the health care delivery and financing system, the more everything costs. Your proposed cure is precisely analogous to trying to put out a raging fire with gasoline.
Also, I respect your right to voice your opinion; however, there's nothing in what you're calling for that hasn't been tried already to some degree or another, and without success.
Finally, food is a necessity, so why not nationalize food? Clothes are a necessity so why not nationalize the clothing industry? Etc. Healthcare is arguably not even a necessity to the extent that some other things are, because if you take reasonably good care of yourself, odds are you won't need much of it. There's very little a doctor can do for you that you can't do for yourself. So, calling for universal, government-mandated healthcare is just calling for socialism using the "cause du jour" as a rallying cry, as far as I see it.
The nationalized healthcare is so good that 70% of the english have secondary private insurance so they can get service more quickly.