The Foreign Gold Standard.

The Wall Street Journal argues correctly that government health care costs are part of labor costs in an economy and that Dem single-payer health care system proposals will add to those costs here.

Existing government health care costs are already part of labor costs here and those will, of course, increase dramatically if socialized medicine kicks in and the full force of government stupidity, inefficiency, profligacy, and payoffs is felt. This will bring the U.S. down to the level of European practice with the results here that obtain there:

This is where the real competitiveness argument is precisely the opposite of the one pitched by Messrs. Obama and Schmidt. Consider the European welfare states, where costly entitlements and regulations make it extremely expensive to hire new workers. The nearby table [omitted] lays out the tax wedge, the share of labor costs that never reaches employees but instead goes straight to government. In Germany, France and Italy, the tax wedge hovers around 50%, in part to pay for state-provided health care.

By contrast, the U.S. tax wedge was around 30% in 2008, according to the OECD. In other words, the costs of providing insurance would merely be converted into a larger wedge, which would itself eat into compensation. This is why Europe has tended to have higher unemployment and slower economic growth over the past 30 years.

Dem “thinking” on this seems to be that if there is another system out there that is different from ours it must, ipso facto, be a better system. Anything at all that is not our system has an immediate appeal to them. Never mind inconvenient facts like this wedge.

The same thinking courses through Mr. Obama’s fevered, Alinsky-soaked brain. To him and his far left sisters “world” opinion is enlightened and it is to it that we must suck up. We must contort our selves to make others deign to accept us and our misguided and childish ways. “Misguided,” “childish,” and “intentionally destructive” are not words that have no applicability to U.S. policies at various points, especially today, but, to the Dems and The One Who Causes the Very Seas Not to Rise, they can never ever be applied to Europeans or Muslims in their home countries.

Only we are the vile, crass, arrogant, selfish ones. Sweet and noble foreign practice and thinking should be our lode star. Just ask Justice Ginsburg.

"Health Reform and Competitiveness." Wall Street Journal, 6/17/09.