INTERESTING REVIEW OF ATTEMPTED LEFT/RIGHT COMPROMISE PLAN: Ramesh Ponnuru on TechCentral Station.

The subtitle of Matthew Miller’s book The Two Percent Solution promises that it will “fix America’s problems in ways liberals and conservatives can love.” …The idea is to provide high wages, health insurance, campaign-finance reform, and a decent education for all for an additional investment of two percent of GDP.

Right away, we have been taken away from neutral territory. The purpose of government has been assumed to be the solving of problems. And not just any problems, but the ones that most concern liberals. There are no chapters on how to “solve” problems of family instability or cultural balkanization. …

All of the above said, Miller’s specific proposals are interesting. His suggestion for a wage subsidy for employers makes a lot of sense, although I would prefer this to be a replacement for the minimum wage rather than a supplement to it (as he advocates).

Miller’s best chapters concern education (although his brief passages on Social Security are terrific). He wants to spend a lot more federal dollars on it, in return for teacher-tenure reform and vouchers. He elicits some great quotes from the teachers’ unions heads. …

The worst grand deal Miller offers is his proposal for universal health insurance coverage. In this area, he is not radical enough. He is not even, in a way, sufficiently hostile to the insurance industry. He would have the government stop bribing people to get their health insurance through their employers. But he does nothing to address the government’s favoritism toward insurance, as against out-of-pocket expenses, in the first place. …

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