Bill Maher at the Huffington Post:
Or take the health care debate we're presently having: members of Congress have recessed now so they can go home and "listen to their constituents." An urge they should resist because their constituents don't know anything. At a recent town-hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his Congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," which is kind of like driving cross country to protest highways.
I'm the bad guy for saying it's a stupid country, yet polls show that a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is….
Nearly half of Americans don't know that states have two senators and more than half can't name their congressman. And among Republican governors, only 30% got their wife's name right on the first try.
Sarah Palin says she would never apologize for America. Even though a Gallup poll says 18% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth. No, they're not stupid. They're interplanetary mavericks….
People bitch and moan about taxes and spending, but they have no idea what their government spends money on. The average voter thinks foreign aid consumes 24% of our federal budget. It's actually less than 1%….
And I haven't even brought up America's religious beliefs. But here's one fun fact you can take away: did you know only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity? That's right, half of America looks at books called the Old Testament and the New Testament and cannot figure out which one came first.
And these are the idiots we want to weigh in on the minutia of health care policy?
Very funny. If only it were not true.
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99% of Americans think democracy is a good idea. Sheesh.
By the way, I wouldn’t worry about Health Care. The masses will be “educated” soon enough. The press coverage is basically a “Goofus” and “Gallant” cartoon.
Goofus hoots and hollers and wears swastikas at the town hall meeting.
Gallant eats authentic szechuan chili crab.
When I read Maher’s article I thought that it amounted to him being very irritated that the people were not devoting more time to the state, and therefore less to the living of their lives, by learning about it so that they could serve it better. Maher wrote, “stupid,” but of course meant, “ignorant.”
So perhaps the electorate are incurably ignorant. What then?
….sigh…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJuNgBkloFE&feature=PlayList&p=734F6589F450E415&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=41
If we for a minute stop raging against the “undemocratic” or “elitist” underlying implications of Mahers message, then isnt it true that the sad state of Americans “general knowledge” about both distant and near subjects is a problem (including a democratic one). If I have learned anything as an economist it is that knowledge and ideas are in the end (all) what matters for incomes and hence generalk advancement. If the US wants to maintain its self image, it better start doing something serious about (primary) education.
I am not sure, Mister Valgreen, that education is at fault as we can teach the people every single fact, trivial or vital, about the world and our institutions of government, but we cannot guarantee that they will learn them or remember them if they do learn. To most people in the daily conduct of their lives, these things matter little or not at all, so there is scarce incentive for learning them.
Bill Maher said:
I’m the bad guy for saying it’s a stupid country, yet polls show that a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is….
I don’t think Bill Maher can explain what the last tenth of the Bill of Rights is.
Hmmm…
1. Free and stupid people governing themselves, or
2. Stupid people governed by a genius elite voted in by the stupid people.
I wonder which is more dangerous… I certainly know who I’d prefer to live amongst.
One thing that strikes me is that both Maher and Obama have seized on the line about “keep your government hands off my Medicare” as a Gotcha! moment, but is that really any stupider than pretending that they don’t understand what’s being expressed is “I don’t want you newcomers to change the rules to make me worse off”? Or for that matter, is it stupider than pretending that Medicare is simultaneously the run-away budget busting monster that justifies urgent, even hasty, action and living proof that the government is competent to provide affordable health care?
Dan,
Well said, I should have made the distinction between ignorance and stupidity clearer myself.
Of course, if the people are ignorant, it rather points to the inability of the state to run even an educational system, let alone a healthcare one.
But for the most people seem to be capable of taking care of themselves. They seem to know their own business much more that they know the business of politics.
“I’m the bad guy for saying it’s a stupid country.”
Bill Maher is an expert on the subject, being himself an idiot… Jokes aside, it’s really quite remarkable how he excoriates other Americans for their ignorance while knowing very little himself. How much economic training has he had? Not much, I bet. Yet he pontificates about economic policy with a certainty even Paul Samuelson or Milton Friedman never matched.
What justifies the guy’s confidence? Why does anyone listen to him?
William, CLOSE YOUR TAGS!
More proof Maher’s a comedian, and a mean-spirited one at that.
It’s health care. It’s a very big, very personal issue which also involves corporate fortunes. How could one not expect the edges of the debate to get colorful?
Very funny. If only it were not true.
lol – he cites a bunch of stats, in print no less, without even a hint that these results exist.
Not to mention the fact that simply because people might disagree with him on religion means they can’t necessarily decide for themselves how health care should run or whether they should take on a huge burden for their grandkids under the auspices of “reform”.
I love your blog – but the only people that believe this dribble are thinking with their emotions and not using their logic.
Yet we have politicians asking the public for their opinion about various social issues
William, your poor fool. Do you honestly think people can’t have an opinion on the social issues that affect our society?
Honestly William – if the people can’t decide upon these vaulted social issues for themselves, who will?
You?
Basically you, and Bill Maher, are using scare tactics… “Oh No!!! Stupid rednecks in charge of policy!!! Whatever will happen to the utopia if we let average people exercise their rights???”
If you weren’t so scared of losing, you might be able to resort to… well, you know… arguing the actual point, instead of the intellectual capabilities of your opponents.
William,
Thank you, if I’m going to miss a point, I like to make it appear effortless. And you’re quite right, we’re not assessing him, or others, on maths.
We’re assessing something far harder; a citizen’s right to influence the actions of their rulers, on how government spends their money, or whether they should be allowed to speak at all.
How would we assess Mr Maher’s competence, or mine, or yours on this? Do you know your Locke from your Rousseau? Name all the Presidents, and what distinguished them? Understand economics to the level of Krugman, or Mankiw? Could you match Krauthammer on history ? Or even debate a philosophy graduate in ethics? And do you have a sound enough grasp of Public choice, accountancy, and the structure of health bureaucracies to design optimium (for whom?) solutions?
We all fall short of the ideal man-of-letters. (Being exceptional, I fall further short than most
) If we get to counting out people who aren’t “informed” enough to participate we impoverish ourselves as a civic, for even the wisest make mistakes. Yet worse, such a road rapidly becomes tyrannous; the temptation to declare your opponents “incompetent” irresistable. I wouldn’t trust myself with the power to select “valid” contributions, and I surely would not trust Mr Mahers.
No, my friend, I would rather suffer the honest assembly of fools than the wisdom of those who think themselves most wise. Until then, I beg leave to remain, your’s in general ignorance.
- Alistair
Bill Mahr likes to shock. I don’t listen to him, so I don’t have a clear idea on his real views.
However, I am not shocked that we often elect poor political leaders. Heck 25% of the public will vote for Obama until he starts to date white women. Is that stupid? No. It is a choice, a believe, that Obama represents something important to them. A choice they are free to make in this country, even if Mr Mahr might be snide about it.
Ask Bill Mahr how many of the super rich Hollywood types who pushed huge sums of money into the Obama campaign can pass Mr Mahr’s civics exam. Or can the ignorant super rich elect politicians who are destructive to the common good while the rest of us must stay mute.
But let’s give IQ tests to political leaders. Can they do basic math? And if a member of Congress or the White House fails the test, they are no longer allowed to take part in the debate on any topic. Poor Maxine, Waxman, Kucinich, Pelosi, Bernie Sanders, Frank, etc would have nothing to do. Or how about not allowing any member of the Progressive Caucus to vote on issues until they can pass the high school AP test in micro and macro economics.
I think most people who oppose the heath care plan are correct to oppose it. They understand that the Obama group just wants to do whatever they need to do to get a super structure in place. They don’t care that the numbers don’t add up. But supporters know that history shows us that once such a large structure is in place it will sustain itself and grow. The average citizen understands this.
I am told that Mr Mahr claims to be Libertarian. If he is, why isn’t he nervous about big government and big business getting together to control heath care.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5jbjzPEY0Y3bvRD335rGu_Z3KXoQw
Alistair,
your viewpoint is exactly what’s wrong with the state of affairs in this country now.
Take the case of a patient deciding between drug A and drug B for a particular disease. I think people like Bill Maher (and me) has no problem with people making their own decisions about whether to have drug A or drug B as long as they are WELL INFORMED about the pros and cons of various options. The key words are WELL INFORMED. But instead, if all the patient has are misinformation about the drugs, don’t you think that is a very serious problem?
No doubt, Bill Maher may not be the most informed guy in the world, but what’s wrong with the statement he made? All I see are ad-hominem attacks about how he is not the most educated in the issues at hand, and therefore his statement about people’s ignorance is not true or that he should not make statements about healthcare reform.
(hoping the tag will close…)
Anyway: I think Michael Foody is correct. What bothers me is that Maher (and others, naturally) aim to belittle the ignorant, not educate them.
Of course Bill Maher doesn’t understand the irony of his belief that a critical failure of our universal socialized education system is why Americans are too “dumb” to see the superiority of a universal socialized medicine system.
all you smart group people shut up and enjoy being smart, ok?
you think it’s _funny_ being dumb?
smart people don’t get paid more for nothing.
Oh, please sir, can we have literacy tests now? (just trolling)
Tsk and tsk–requisite specificity, please!
1) Native South Carolinians who value their intellectual equilibrium daily recite the sage observation of native son James L. Petigru: “South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum.” As true today as in 1860, and probably more so.
2) Maher’s complaint about America’s long and proud tradition of anti-intellectualism is sound, but his proffered prescription is not a clever or even humorous wielding of populist anti-intellectualism fit for wallowing and wrestling in the mud (a la Twain) but a high-flying rebuke observable only from the airy summits of academic and corporate towers (with internet connectivity, naturally).
3) To the extent that “religion” has fostered American ignorance and stupidity: we can get at least as specific as “Protestantism” and begin to investigate specific American Protestant contributions to the fostering of American anti-intellectualism, woeful ignorance, and rank stupidity. (This is the “Christian” nation that has spawned Unitarianism, Mormonism, Transcendentalism, the Ku Klux Klan, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Christian Science and so can hardly be said to have given much public attention to matters of Christian orthodoxy.)
4) Mr. Maher’s medium of television has itself ably fostered American stupidity and ignorance over the last fifty years; it certainly has failed to compensate for the maladies born of American piety and public education over the same period. And insofar as American piety and public education are now commonly conducted in the festive spirit of entertainment . . . .
Does it make sense to point to the stupid people the national education system produces, and then advocate for a national health system? Seems like a disconnect to me.
Lee Arnold,
(1) is impossible to calculate accurately.
(2) is subjective.
(3) depends on which costs you’re referring to.
It is my *personal belief* that using insurance companies as a 3rd party between suppliers and demanders adds very little value and keeps costs high. To what degree, as I said, is completely immeasurable. You would first have to have some kind of idea as to what “true costs” are in health care economies, and I don’t believe that’s ever been accurately calculated. In fact, I wouldn’t even know how to do it. In health care, there are a lot of “back door” deals that no one talks about. Each insurance company, drug company, etc. uses their market power to affect a favorable outcome. My belief is that this market power would greatly diminish if it were PEOPLE paying instead of insurance companies. But I concede that there are other takes on that issue…
That takes care of (1) and (2).
As for (3), public options involve complex rationing policies. One such rationing policy is called “evidence-based research.” The objective of such research is to find health care funding policies (in government) that result in funding ONLY those practices that benefit the greatest number of people at the lowest cost. This diminishes the value of personal care and creates a system in which doctors and patients have very little stake or say in the matter. The reduction in available options that results can be called rationing or it can be called monopsony, the choice is yours…
Another form of rationing is waiting lists. Another form of rationing is doctor referrals, where a patient is asked to make a separate appointment with another clinic in order to get a 2-minute blood test. All of these are absolutely necessary for a public option to function feasibly – these are the brutal realities of government-paid health care, and patients in the VA system are already fully aware of this.
On the other hand, government health care can result in lower costs for brand drugs by use of monopsony power. It can result in greater transparency of costs for certain kinds of health care services (although the exact opposite in other kinds of services!). I will stress that the biggest cost saver in socialized care is rationing of one kind or another. That’s really just a supply restriction, not a true reduction of the cost of services. That’s important to remember. For example, Canada is currently considering restricting the number of diabetes test strips people can consume in one week. That will save costs, but does that help patients? That’s another value judgement, too…
Does this answer your questions?
We want individual Americans weighing in on the minutiae of their own health care, and we want our most central authorities weighing out, but we’re so far from this ideal now that it’s practically unrealizable. Somehow, when the balance of power tilts too far in the direction of more central authorities, it just keeps falling in the same direction inexorably.
I can’t remember the actual name of my Congresswoman, but I remember what her outfits look like. Good enough?
Why do people treat polls like a scientific measurement? When some stranger calls you in the middle of an evening and asks a bunch of stupid questions, many people just make up answers to amuse themselves.
And any physicist can explain to you that it is just as valid to say the sun revolves around the earth as the earth revolves around the sun.
Borealis,
I am sure most of the people who does not think that the earth revolves around the sun use the same reasoning as the physicists you are talking about.
Also, the “sun revolves” question is much more likely a confusion about the assignment roles of the verb “revolves” rather than confusion about the substance of the question.
The best thing about that passage is that in a writing where he is criticizing others for being stupid, he manages to misuse the singular “minutia” where he should have used the plural “minutiae” and would have been far better off just using the pedestrian English word “details.”
The day HBO stops wasting valuable broadcast time with his lousy and aging show will be a happy day in my life.
“And these are the idiots we want to weigh in on the minutia of health care policy?”
And those are the idiots who elected Barack Obama.
Very funny indeed.
Borealis,
If we consider the Earth-Sun system in isolation, we might as well say that the Sun circles the Earth, but the heliocentric theory pictures the Sun at the center of the Solar System, not only at the center of Earth’s orbit. This simpler, Copernican picture gives us Kepler’s laws and Newton’s Gravity, while the Earth centered picture only gives Ptolemy a headache.
The presumption behind his op-ed is that congressmen are intelligent and can make better decisions than their constituents. I would argue that is not the case.
Actually, if you understand Covenant Theology and the book of Genesis, the case can be made that Christianity *does* pre-date Judaism. To wit: Christianity stems from the Covenant promise of Genesis 3:15, while Judaism stems from the Covenant promise of Genesis 15:13ff. [Not that I would expect Maher to understand that 3 is less than 15.]
It is a debatable point, I admit. But if Maher surveyed the Founders with the same question, he might be surprised at the answer.
Publius, Your answer wouldn’t surprise Maher at all.
Maher is basically correct- most Americans are woefully informed and educated. Unfortunately for Maher, that includes most of the supporters for Obama’s plans, too- not a point I think Maher would agree with. In any case, by Maher’s standards, we should ignore him as well.
“No one is asking Bill Maher for his opinion on math. Why? Because he probably doesn’t know jack about math.”
Maher demonstrably does not know jack about most things on which he opines. Why the f*ck is he even being quoted here? Why on god’s green earth is this man _any_ sort of voice in politics? The fact that people like Maher are given _any_ remotely serious audience is one of the most depressing things about the state of discourse in this country. Beck or Bill O, Limbaugh, Coulter, Begala, Olbermann, Maher – none of these people have anything sound, intellectual or reasonable to offer. Period. They are all showmen (or women) and nothing else. How is it that in a nation with the most vaunted higher education system on the planet, stuffed full of people who actually know what they’re talking about because it is their career, their life’s passion, something for which they are steeped through and through, that it’s people like _this_ who have their voices heard above all others?
I’ve got to say I’m really surprised at the extent of the vitriol here. Maher is an entertainer, and as such is not an expert in public policy, but he’s smart and incitement and well informed as a citizen.
Some people on both sides of the debate are poorly informed or misinformed, this wouldn’t be that big of a deal if they weren’t so loudly passionate about the veracity of the misinformation. It would be nice for the majority of the people who are neither experts or imbeciles not to deny the votes of people who are dumb, but not to make the public debate a freakshow by including people with demonstrably false priors.
Ryan, thanks for taking the time to answer those. If you ever get a chance:
(4) Since no one knows the true cost of healthcare, what about a different question: what is the ratio of private health insurance industry total receipts, to total payments for medical services?
(5) What do you mean by “subjective?” There is no quantified value added by private medical insurance?
(5) Since a public option is likely to ration at least as much, in its own way, as the market, (if not more) — isn’t doing it non-profit a good way to lower the long-term cost curve? Because we will be reducing reliance on unnecessary procedures in a fair and responsible way, i.e. by the personal choice of an individual taking the public option, which he or she is made to understand is baseline. In other words, we would be incorporating Robin Hanson’s complaint (and that of thousands or millions of others) that a lot of medical procedures really aren’t doing much good?
1) To be fair, the who do show up to such meetings are selected for being knowledgeable about what’s going on–for example, they probably know their representative’s name.
2) Politicians probably listen to their constituents about as much as constituents listen to politicians–which is, they put up a show of being involved and then do whatever they think is right.
Dear Thomas
I take pride that being exactly wrong is much harder than approximately wrong, so I hope I can address the concerns we both share with a bit more work.
We are clearly agreed that it is desirable for a patient to be well-informed rather than ill-informed about healthcare consumption. It is also desirable to have more sunshine than rain, to be fed apple-pie rather than sawdust, and to be confronted by a properly structured argument rather than an enthymematic strawman.
If I could, at the risk of misrepresentation, state Mr Maher’s argument as it appears to me:
1) Consumers are generally incompetent in the area of healthcare consumption
2) The Government (or some public body), in the form of some expert bureaucracy, can make consistently “better” (to be defined…) consumption choices
3) Making better consumption choices is a moral imperative.
Conclude: The Government (or some public body) should make choices on behalf of consumers
Even if I grant, for the sake of argument, 1), I profoundly disagree with you about the truth of 2) and 3). I’d point to the general literature on collective choice, Hayek and the problem of information, and the far-from-benign record of “impartial” government experts and the efficiency of their burauecracies. I would suggest that Mr Maher’s (and your) faith in such systems is not remotely supported by evidence of success in equivalent large government programs. Do you think it is reasonable to expect the success you anticipate? Can you give examples of equivalent purchasing bureaucracies that worked well?
The British experience with NICE is, for good or ill, a decent illustration of what to expect from what is, ultimately, a rationing approach. Ralph has already hinted at the complexity of healthcare economics and how it defies easy nostroms. If you expect to get utopian improvements from simple “reforms”, I’d suggest you are being unrealistic. Perhaps even “ill-informed”.
Incidentally, it appears to me that your experts will be making decisions for a great many people, not just your “ill-informed”. Can someone opt out of this system (including paying for it) if they are well-informed? How, exactly, will you test if people are sufficiently “well informed”? Please be specific, and include criteria, so we may separate the sheep from the goats. I’m afraid I lack the wit or courage to do so, but I’m sure Mr Maher and yourself are equal to the challenge.
Afterwards, of course, I’m sure we can entertain ourselves by thinking of other areas where government experts can correct the ill-informed choices of the populace. We might start with food and nutrition, perhaps, and move on to voting and civic participation. I’m sure we’ll have an end to ill-formed disagreement in no time!
- Alistair
I think he was taking about the socialists…
Allistair, your restating Maher’s argument is unrecognizable to me. I think Maher’s argument is that many people who are vocally critical of healthcare reform are ill informed about it so politicians should not take their criticisms seriously. He calls these people stupid.
Now you are welcome to disagree with this argument too. I expect you would. But it is less absurd than the argument you crafted for Maher. Maher’s argument is not actually an argument for a more socialized healthcare system. It is instead an ad hominum attack against many of that plan’s most vocal critiques. I think it is an important difference.
Um, Andrew, 50% of voters are of below-average intelligence. Kind of by definition.
Maher consistently confuses a sample with a population. Shocking.
If I didn’t know better, I might think Maher was another mouthpiece. He may be a tool, but I’m sure he thinks he’s an independent voice. If he were being run by the party, here would be his motivation to cover for this debacle, to protect the regime and its decision makers. He is after all speaking directly to Obama’s constituents. “It’s not our fault, THEY are too stupid to let us do the right thing, so we may have to dial it back a notch, again, it’s THEY’RE fault, because they aren’t as smart as you.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/us/politics/16emanuel.html?_r=3&hp
” Seven months after moving into his office in the West Wing, Mr. Emanuel is emerging as perhaps the most influential White House chief of staff in a generation. But with his prominence in almost everything important going on in Washington comes a high degree of risk.
As the principal author of Mr. Obama’s do-everything-at-once strategy, he stands to become a figure of consequence in his own right if the administration stabilizes the economy and financial markets, overhauls the health care system and winds down one war while successfully prosecuting another.
If things do not go well — and right now Mr. Obama’s political popularity is declining, his health care legislation is under conservative assault, the budget deficit is at an eye-popping level and Afghanistan remains volatile — it is Mr. Emanuel whose job will be on the line before Mr. Obama’s.”
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