Misinterpreting the Failures of Obamacare

With weekly revelations of new failures of Obamacare, it is tempting to join the chorus of "I told you so", but that would obscure the much broader and more important "I told you so" involved. To wit:

Obamacare did not fail entirely because it was a bad plan (though it was). It failed because no group of men and women sitting in Washington  -- no matter how smart they are (or think they are in the case of Pelosi and Reid), no matter how many MDs, PhDs or LLDs follow their names, no matter whether a D or R is appended-- can design something that will work better in complex markets than what the markets themselves evolve.

A critical adjunct to this understanding is that markets themselves do not always work well in Version 1.0 (ask anyone who tried to run Windows prior to 1998). It takes constant iteration to approach a well-functioning system. And those iterations are not without casualties. In fact it is failure itself that is the essence of the process and why government will always produce inferior results. In government, iterative failure (and associated learning) is not allowed to happen. Systems are rarely adapted to meet people's needs and desires. People must be manipulated and coerced to fit the system that has been designed.  Government's motto is:

When you try to put a square peg in a round hole, it is the responsibility of the hole to change.

It's The Household Composition, Stupid!

As the endless wailing about income disparities continues, it is useful to examine one of the principal reasons for the differences. Scan the table below from the US Census Bureau for 2011. Notice anything? Like higher earning households have more earners in the household? Now this shouldn't be surprising, but it seldom gets reported. Why? Because the solution -- i.e. get married to someone who has income earning potential -- doesn't sit well with those whose agenda is to encourage even more single-earner households. Nor does the solution probably require a massive new government intervention program.

Income range	Households (k)	Percent	Mean # earners	Mean household size
Under $5,000	4,261	3.52%	0.23	2.02
$5- $9,999	4,972	4.11%	0.36	1.81
$10-$14,999	7,127	5.89%	0.42	1.74
$15-$19,999	6,882	5.68%	0.57	1.96
$20-$24,999	7,095	5.86%	0.75	2.14
$25-$29,999	6,591	5.44%	0.85	2.22
$30-$34,999	6,667	5.51%	0.97	2.34
$35-$39,999	6,136	5.07%	1.06	2.41
$40-$44,999	5,795	4.79%	1.2	2.46
$45-$49,999	4,945	4.08%	1.32	2.55
$50-$54,999	5,170	4.27%	1.32	2.52
$55-$59,999	4,250	3.51%	1.49	2.72
$60-$64,999	4,432	3.66%	1.49	2.66
$65-$69,999	3,836	3.17%	1.58	2.75
$70-$74,999	3,606	2.98%	1.63	2.82
$75-$79,999	3,452	2.85%	1.7	2.89
$80- $84,999	3,036	2.51%	1.73	2.86
$85-$89,999	2,566	2.12%	1.8	3
$90-$94,999	2,594	2.14%	1.79	2.96
$95-$99,999	2,251	1.86%	1.87	3.09
$100-$104,999	2,527	2.09%	1.78	2.94
$105-$109,999	1,771	1.46%	2.01	3.18
$110-$114,999	1,723	1.42%	1.96	3.11
$115-$119,999	1,569	1.30%	1.98	3.06
$120-$124,999	1,540	1.27%	2.01	3.16
$125-$129,999	1,258	1.04%	1.97	3.08
$130-$134,999	1,211	1.00%	2	3.17
$135-$139,999	918	0.76%	2.1	3.18
$140-$144,999	1,031	0.85%	2.12	3.26
$145-$149,999	893	0.74%	2.11	3.21
$150-$154,999	1,166	0.96%	1.86	3.09
$155--$159,999	740	0.61%	2.04	3.11
$160-$164,999	697	0.58%	2.05	3.29
$165-$169,999	610	0.50%	2.15	3.17
$170-$174,999	617	0.51%	1.99	3.05
$175-$179,999	530	0.44%	2.09	3.08
$180-$184,999	460	0.38%	2.12	3.28
$185-$189,999	363	0.30%	2.3	3.32
$190-$194,999	380	0.31%	2.22	3.17
$195-$199,999	312	0.26%	2.3	3.28
$200-$249,999	2,297	1.90%	2.06	3.24
$250,000+	2,808	2.32%
Total	121,084