Riedl Returns

Senior Manhattan Institute fellow Brian Riedl joins Jonah on The Remnant for an uber-wonky discussion of economic ...

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Senior Manhattan Institute fellow Brian Riedl joins Jonah on The Remnant for an uber-wonky discussion of economic policy. Fresh from testifying before the House Committee on Financial Services on President Biden’s madcap “infrastructure” plan, Brian provides insight on all manner of economic fallacies peddled by Republicans and Democrats alike. What’s to be done about infrastructure? Are inflation and debt really a big deal? And why is everyone turning on free markets? Also, take a shot of your favorite alcoholic beverage every time the words “infrastructure” and “buy gold” are uttered. You’ll soon realize how Jonah felt at the end of last week’s Mike Gallagher episode.    

Show Notes:

–Brian Riedl – The Manhattan Institute

–Brian’s recent House testimony

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  1. Avatar photo
    Jason Gibson

    Great great. One of Jonah’s best podcasts. And the drunken podcast was the best ever. Quite a winning streak he’s got going. Declan would do well to follow jonah fan club instead of Chicago sports team so he can know what a winning streak is! ;)

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  2. Mary Stine

    While there is a longstanding business concept that you have to spend money to make money, we should still ask this question: Are we spending big on projects that will actually pay off bigger in the future? I am deeply concerned if no accountability or flexibility is planned into this from the beginning. This is especially important with the amounts of money (gasp) being proposed.
    However, we have been ignoring infrastructure problems for far too long, so now the cost of catching up and even repair is far greater.
    The good news is that several scientific advancements may actually help us save money, especially money that is now going to unemployment and road repair.
    Two things that might really help lower income people through infrastructure would be better, more fluid and faster non-ICE public transit (so the expense of a car is unneccessary) and the ability to rent or lease an electric vehicle for those needing longer transits. Both of these free up money now spent on automotive maintenance (by both individuals and cities), as well as improving air quality and thus health. We have made vast strides in energy efficiency in buildings, especially in insulation and air flow. We now have a white paint that can reduce heat substantially and improved solar panels that can reduce our energy use.
    Every little bit counts, but many cities, especially smaller ones, have been hamstrung by reduced budgets, some of which are the direct result of reduced taxes on corporations.
    We have to start somewhere, but we need to be clear about our plan and what the realistic costs and gains might be.

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    Ben Connelly

    I like the “hope over optimism” idea. Maybe because I’m young, I am not depressed about these problems even though I agree entirely with Riedl’s depressing assessment. I guess I hope that in my lifetime there’s something I can do about it. But in 30 years if we’re living in some kind of socialist workers paradise, I’m going to have to go Galt.

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  4. Donnie Winningham

    Well, I no longer want to live forever. The future doesn’t sound too great.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Richard Maxton

      I know, right?

      After this one, I was ready to hit the bottle as hard as Jonah did last week. . .

      Don't get me wrong, it's good stuff to know, but the inability of our "leaders" to look past the ends of their noses when it comes to fiscal stuff is SO worrisome.

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  5. Avatar photo
    T.K. Small

    This might have been one of my favorite Remnant podcasts, especially the part related to home care/long-term care. As a fiscal conservative, any and all attention brought to the national debt is welcome in my eyes.

    As for the "caring economy" part of the discussion, this issue sits directly in my wheelhouse, both professionally and personally. I'm the director of policy for a not-for-profit, Medicaid-funded company that provides a unique type of home care. In our program, the person receiving care makes all of the traditional hiring and supervising decisions about who, how, when, and where care will be performed. Additionally, I have a neuromuscular condition and receive 24/7 care myself.

    The 400 billion attached to this proposal, basically comes from SEIU, and it is my belief that the union simply wants to grow its membership, taking in fees and power along the way. When it comes to how this proposal will impact the people doing the work, or those receiving care, the union is not all that concerned.

    I do not think that all people receiving "Home Care" should be subject to the same rules. An elderly person with dementia is very different than a younger person with a lifelong complex disability as is present in my situation. Navigating the social safety net is about as complicated as understanding ERISA or the US tax code.

    For me, I think a better way to go is to vest more control with the individual (or designated representative) receiving care as to how healthcare dollars will be spent, much like a "block grant" to a state. In short, I would like a budget for healthcare spending, and let me decide what works best. Such an idea would cut out multiple layers of bureaucracy and hopefully introduce elements of a market-based system. Under the current system, I have no say over who gets paid what and when, which is the essence of a broken marketplace.

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    1. Mary Stine

      "vest more control with the individual (or designated representative)" is really the answer.
      Like the ad says "only pay for what you need". This would also, as you note, free the truly
      caring to give their best service and be compensated.

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  6. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Caleb or Jonah or whoever reads these comments, is there a way for paying subscribers to not hear the part about “please subscribe to the Dispatch?” If it’s too much trouble, I don’t really care. I know I can just skip it. If it’s an easy fix then I think it would be nice. At the same time, I do enjoy hearing Jonah make comments about the future of the Dispatch and the goals you could achieve with more members (ie science correspondent!). So maybe it’s a wash. (Also I actually liked the advertisements with the funny transitions).

    On a related note, is there a way for paying subscribers to not see the “subscribe” button or the “30 day free trial button” on the free articles? Again it really is not a big deal and I’m not complaining. I’m a huge fan of the Dispatch. But if there’s an easy way to take those out it might be nice.

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  7. Paul A Sand

    So I learned that I've been mispronouncing "Mancur" for a few decades. (With a hard C.) Entirely in my head (I hope); you'd be surprised at how little he comes up in everyday conversation.

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      Ben Connelly

      And I always thought Keynes rhymed with jeans not canes or however Jonah said it.

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  8. Joe Curtis

    The only thing that's shovel ready in Washington is the metabolism byproduct of intact male Bovinae, and there's plenty of it. If it's to be shoveled, it will take many shovels and will employ many people.

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  9. Avatar photo
    Jonathan Crymes

    I would really like to hear a wonky, right-of-center look at long term care instead of complaining that it isn’t really infrastructure. Democrats/liberals are making a real argument for investing in long term care and quibbling over what we call it isn’t the most interesting take.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Tracie

      As one who works in a facility with a long-term care unit, I can tell you that staying home, or in an an ILF or ALF (residential facilities that provide limited services short of round the clock RNs) with a part or full-time caregiver is almost always less expensive, and an existence most people prefer. I believe most people who sell off / transfer their assets to go to a medicaid facility would be better off with a home caregiver. Those incentives definitely need to be discussed.

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      1. Mary Stine

        As one who had to shuffle my aging parents through applications for VA homecare and then Medicaid supported care facilities, I am quite familiar with the shortcomings of both. A better alternative would be small resident care homes with no more than 8 residents (or 4 couples). These care facilities have a rotating caregiver present 24/7, with additional support as needed. Healthy meals are prepared on site in the home's kitchen, the group shares a real living room, but there are 4 bathrooms. Most homes have a walkout garden the residents can enjoy, as well as room for small pets.
        This is a much better alternative for people with only mild disability who are too frail to live entirely alone. It is a better alternative for those with mild cognitive decline, as stimulus is better and the environment is more homelike.
        Because real houses are often repurposed for this, every neighborhood could support one. I would suggest that Americans consider a special savings account for this purpose, similar to an HSA, that would be tax free and portable. In addition, if a group HSA was set up for specific neighborhoods, all residents could make tax free donations, along with support from local churches. This would allow people to age in place, still be close to family and longtime friends and still participate in local events.

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      CynthiaW

      A first step would be to find out what the recipients or potential recipients of long-term care and their families prefer. Further steps would be to evaluate the obstacles to achieving the preference of those most involved and attempting to remove the obstacles.

      "Investing," if necessary, would be a late step. We can see from the results in the education system that additional funding is often not what is needed in order to benefit the purported beneficiaries of the system. As funding for education has increased, the greatest benefit has been to administrators and bureaucrats, not to students or student-contact employees.

      That is to say, it is easy to see how spending on long-term care could double or triple without, for example, increasing the level of resident-care staffing in nursing homes or the wages of the resident-care staff.

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        Tracie

        I think part of the idea is that if you better fund home healthcare, people would have options other than nursing home care (which for all but the wealthiest, requires forfeit of most assets to qualify for Medicaid.) Granted, I don't know the details of how this bill does that.

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          CynthiaW

          I agree that more home care should be a goal. The point, then, would be to identify the incentives and constraints that result in people's being in nursing homes when they would prefer not to be, and then specifically target them.

          It is easy to see how spending on long-term care could double or triple without increasing the availability of home-care staff or the wages of home-care employees. One mechanism to accomplish this would be to make home-care workers, including family members, be members of SEIU, deduct union dues from their stipends or subsidies, and allow union work rules to be imposed on them.

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          1. Avatar photo
            Tracie

            I can't think of more than one home caregiver I've met, in eight years of work as a SNF therapist, who is not an immigrant. This is the same population that works as nannies, but they trend older. Not all of them work for agencies. Many prefer to be paid under the table, so they keep more. Not sure you could easily unionize this scattered workforce.

            What you *could* do, is let people use Medicaid to hire home care. One of the problems there is that people typically have to sell their home in order to qualify for Medicaid.

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    CynthiaW

    It's a good thing all these numbers are incomprehensible to the human brain, because otherwise, a person could get worried.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Victor Clairmont

      Why must I comprehend it then?!

      Omg let me live in blissful ignorance....

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        CynthiaW

        It got even worse by the end. As Susan Ivanova said, "One day, BOOM!"

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          Victor Clairmont

          Right so...this is something best surmised the following two ways:

          You have a friend. They jump off the Empire Stating building with a radio. As they are falling about halfway down, they radio up to you and say, "Everything's fine! You should jump too!"

          The second is everyone knows that borrowing what you cannot pay back is a recipe for disaster. Except, when it comes to the US, no nation in history as far as I know, has ever been in...

          28 trillion in debt.

          When banks and other lenders realize they are not going to get the money back through interest rates that they think they will get (Hearing Japan and China is not buying anymore debt and haven't for the past 10 year was wowzers for me, I am surprised I missed this), why will they keep lending us money?

          That's when the crap hits the fan. When you go to the bank one day and you cannot withdraw any money, like when Greece hit their financial crises for being hundreds of billions in debt (Germany and the EU bailed them out).

          The question then is:

          Who on earth is going to bail out the US at 28 trillion in debt?

          Bleh, the more we kick this can down the road....forget about gold. Buy some land and start farming in the middle of nowhere. I'm too poor to own a home though (T_T)

          This culture war takes us away from so many other problems. And yet, the culture war needs to end somehow.

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            CynthiaW

            I was surprised by the information that China's and Japan's amounts (not percentage) of our debt has not increased. Mr. Riedl said most U.S. debt is held by U.S. citizens, probably mostly through mutual funds, pension funds, etc.

            Mr. Riedl said that the alternative to selling more low interest debt would be "the printing press," and I wondered exactly what he meant by that. Devalue the currency? Hyperinflation, so fun.

            Tax the rich? Good luck. They didn't get rich by being easy marks.

            You're right. It has never happened before on this scale, and therefore, the people in power can pretend it never will. Things can just continue the way they are indefinitely because ... we don't have a Plan B.

            BOOM.

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