Single-Payer Health Care in Colorado?

This article consists of two blogs I wrote elsewhere last year about the proposal for a single-payer health care system in Colorado. I am republishing them for the convenience of my friends in Colorado. 

Please read this article keeping in mind that the texts were written one year ago.

PART 1

Regardless of whether one wants more entitlement programs, or would like to do away with the welfare state entirely, one cannot escape economic realities. Opponents of the welfare state tend to ignore the enormous economic instability that would follow if they got their will and could shut down tax-paid entitlement programs overnight.

Should Welfare Really Pay Living Wage?

Three years ago Michael Tanner and Charles Hughes at the Cato Institute published an excellent update of a 1995 study of the actual value of welfare in America. Tanner and Hughes went to great length to explain how a person could live on the many welfare programs that the federal government and the states offer for people who are defined as living in deprivation one way or the other.

Among their findings (p. 3):

Mainstream Economics Has Failed, Part 3

[Full disclosure: this blog is the very first draft - a sketch - of an article submitted to a peer review journal. A reference will be added upon publication.]

In graduate school, most economics students are discouraged from reading anything that is older than five years. The reason for this is that modern-day economics has evolved into a heavily technical profession where methods are more important than methodology, even theory. Applications are often closely limited to what good old Friedrich Engels would refer to as "eclectic flea killing". I emphasize "often", because this is a general trend, not an absolute fact.