Dick Cheney's daughter cited Ronald Reagan's argument against Medicare in her attack on Obamacare. The basic message is that government provided insurance is a big step away from free market capitalism and it puts us on a path to totalitarianism. There has been little evidence for this hypothesis since the introduction of Medicare. If anything, we have been moving in the opposite direction. Paul Krugman reminds us that Liz Cheney's comments on Obamacare are similar to the position that Hayec took in The Road To Serfdom. She is not any crazier than many conservatives today. Hayec has become their favorite economist.
We live in a strange world. Social welfare programs are under attack in many parts of the world. The super-rich do not want to pay for them since the collapse of communism. They are devoted to tax avoidance which has become a major industry. They prefer to justify their "freedom from taxation" by embedding it in a version of libertarian philosophy in which democratically elected governments are the enemy of freedom. Mitt Romney is the embodiment of this philosophy. He claimed that he lost the election because "moochers" voted for a president who would enable more mooching. Democracy can't serve the purposes of the super-rich as long we let moochers vote. It only works when the super-rich can manipulate government to serve their interests. If he had been elected, the moochers would have been punished, and the super-rich would have received more freedom from taxation.
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