Dutch Treatment

June 26, 2010
Posted by Jay Livingston

My doctor poked and prodded, told me there was probably nothing to worry about but wrote prescriptions for couple of additional tests. The whole thing took a good 15 minutes.

At the checkout counter, they told me that I owed $425. I don’t know how much of that I’ll get back from the insurance company.

That same day, the Commonwealth Fund posted an update of its comparisons of healthcare quality and costs in seven countries. As in previous years, the US finished last on the overall rankings and in several of the subcategories. As for cost, literally the bottom line, we’re Number One.

(Click on the image for a larger view.)

The Netherlands won this healthcare world cup. And as Erik Voeten at The Monkey Cage writes, it’s not just about insurance. He was in the Netherlands, where, as a visitor, he had no insurance.

Last summer, I had to bring my daughter to a Dutch doctor. Not only did I succeed in seeing someone that same morning but the cost [was] less than my regular co-payment in the USA, even though I have no insurance in the Netherlands and had never seen that doctor before.

The key is that the Dutch have an extensive system of family doctors, who generally operate a practice from their homes with minimal administrative assistance. These family doctors provide basic health care, do house visits, and are the gatekeepers for (more expensive) specialized care.

House calls. Does anyone out there in the US remember house calls?

Stuff and Nonsense

June 22, 2010
Posted by Jay Livingston

Divorce among the wealthy can provide us with a tray of financial delicacies that usually aren’t passed around. In today’s Times, Andrew Ross Sorkin gives us a taste of the goodies coming out of the divorce of Elon Musk, a co-founder of PayPal who says he is now broke. Well, rich-people’s broke – he’s out of cash.

He subsists, according to court filings, on $200,000 a month and still flies his private jet.

But with rich people, it’s not about the money. I know that because I heard Maria Bartiromo a few weeks ago on NPR promoting “her”* book, The 10 Laws of Enduring Success.

Success is a feeling that we get to when we feel content. So I spoke with people like Jack Welch . . . and I asked them all about this so-called stuff in their lives and then I asked them, is that what success is? And so many people told me that purpose, knowing what matters, is so important, because it puts things into perspective for you.

In Jack Welch’s 2002 divorce trial, we learned about the “so-called stuff” – the things that purpose put into perspective for the GE CEO. (Source here.)

In the affidavit, Jane Welch claimed that her husband’s retirement package allowed him unfettered use of corporate jets (a perk valued by an expert as being worth $291,677 a month). He also had a company-owned apartment overlooking Central Park, a limousine, a cook, free flowers, country-club memberships and a charge account at Jean Georges restaurant. He was also entitled to top tickets at the Metropolitan Opera, tennis tournaments such as Wimbledon, and for games played by the Knicks, Yankees and Boston Red Sox. The affidavit revealed that he didn’t even pay for his laundry.

And that’s the retirement package – what he gets after he stops working for GE.

* Written “with” Catherine Whitney. Ms. Whitney’s name is right there on the cover, though in much a smaller font than Bartiromo. Many with-ers wind up on an inside page among the acknowledgments – in the withness protection program.

Distinction on the Velvet Rope

June 21, 2010
Posted by Jay Livingston

What do you do if you got an undergraduate degree from Yale, and your sociology PhD. from Harvard, and you’re on the faculty at the Kellog School of Management at Northwestern? You get a job as a cigarette girl and coat-check girl, of course. At least, that’s what you do if you’re Lauren Rivera and you want to do research about how people read the signs of status. And to do that, you have to gain the confidence of the guys on the velvet rope.

Bourdieu did surveys to see which tastes carried greater capital. Lauren Rivera watched distinction in action. She looked at who did, and who didn’t, get in the door at an “exclusive Manhattan nightclub” (Bungalow 8? Marquee? The Box? C’mon Lauren, you can tell us.)


It isn’t just about how much money you have. It’s about who you are, though obviously the gatekeepers don’t want to admit someone can’t pop the $600 for a bottle of Cristal. They assess identity by the company you keep and what you’ve spent that money on.

Social network mattered most, gender followed. For example, a young woman in jeans stood a higher chance of entrance than a well-dressed man. And an elegantly dressed black man stood little chance of getting in unless he knew someone special.

Know someone. Or know someone who knows someone. If you’re a guy, bring attractive women—ideally younger women in designer clothes. Don’t go with other dudes. And doormen are well versed in trendiness, so wear Coach, Prada, Gucci—but don’t show up in a nice suit with DSW shoes.

(Full disclosure: 1. I had to look up “DSW shoes.” I thought they were something like NSFW shoes. 2. I admire sociologists who do research on nightlife (David Grazian is another). I just wonder what they do about that 8:30 class the next morning.)

The Kellog Schoo’ls story about this research is here.

HT: Robin Hanson

The Market for Corporate-Bashing

June 19, 2010
Posted by Jay Livingston

Why is Hollywood so anti-capitalist?

Marginal Revolution’s Alex Tabarrok was fretting about that question in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago. Alex loves capitalism (“the most humane and productive economic system the world has ever known”), so he’s miffed that American movies frequently make capitalists the heavies. Why does Hollywood refuse to show capitalism in its true, wonderful glory?

His explanation begins with a psychological analysis of the people who make the movies – writers and directors. They have, he says, a deep personal resentment of capitalists. They see capitalists as forcing them to sacrifice their art on the altar of commerce.

Capitalists work hard to produce what consumers want. . . . . filmmakers need capitalists for financial support, and so their resentment toward capitalists is especially strong.

Capitalists are nice, hard-working folks. Filmmakers are spiteful ingrates.

Ben Stein, too, thirty years ago, was struck by the anti-business leanings of writers that the media business was lavishly rewarding. Stein put it somewhat differently.

The Hollywood TV writer . . . is actually in a business, selling his labor to brutally callous businessmen. One actually has to go through that experience of writing for money in Hollywood or anywhere else to realize just how unpleasant it is. Most of the pain comes from dealings with business people, such as agents or business affairs officers of production companies and networks.

Hard-working writers, nasty capitalists.

I don’t know whose version is closer to the truth, Stein’s or Tabarrok’s. Both are economists,* both vigorously pro-capitalist. The difference is that Stein has actually worked as a writer in Hollywood.

As his quintessential anti-capitalist, Tabarrok singles out James Cameron, director of the two highest grossing films ever, “Titanic” and “Avatar.”

Despite his commercial success, Mr. Cameron is a notorious corporate basher.

That sentence, especially the word despite, makes sense only if you assume that success is antithetical to corporate bashing. Tabarrok is an economist, I’m not. My knowledge of the field barely extends past what you get at Father Guido Sarducci’s “five minute university” – “supply ana demand.” But I would think that the success of “Avatar,” “Titanic,” and the rest tell us that Cameron is supplying what consumers are demanding, and apparently, that’s corporate-bashing.

* Some people have questioned Stein’s economics perspicacity, especially after his August 2007 New York Times column in which he dismissed concerns about the subprime collapse: “these subprime losses are wildly out of all proportion to the likely damage to the economy from the subprime problems.”