Dental care is part of the body and should be free for everyone, just like healthcare should be. Dental and medical care are real needs of the people and an investment that increases production in society through better health and quality of life. When reduces the risk of inflation. Despite this, the government chooses to reduce the dental support for young people and lower the grant for young adults - while claiming that this creates room for tax cuts. The same misconception applies the deterioration of high-cost protection for medicines.
The real purpose
But the purpose of fee increases in healthcare and dental care is not about lowering taxes. The real goal is to steer people toward financing their health and dental care privately. By making dental care more expensive, more people are forced to borrow money to pay their expenses, which benefits the banks. These policies reinforce inequality and shift costs to those who are already struggling – young people, low-income earners and families.
The state can create the money for free dental care
Both the government and many debaters have misunderstood how the state's finances work. The state does not finance dental care through tax revenue, but through money creation. There is therefore no real financial limitation to making dental care free for all. Savings in dental care is a political priority – not an economic necessity.
Fee increases benefit the banks, not the people
By making dental care a wallet issue, you create a market where private financing becomes the norm. It forces people to take out loans for their health, which brings huge profits to the banks but lowers the quality of life for ordinary people. This is not a matter of saving money or creating efficiency – it is a deliberate strategy to weaken the common welfare and direct resources to private capital. At the same time it increases the risk of financial crises and makes it difficult for society to maintain its competitiveness and affording a green transition.
Free dental care an investment in public health
Making dental care free for everyone is not only fair, but also financially smart. A healthy mouth reduces the risk of other health problems, which reduces healthcare costs in the long term. In addition, good oral health strengthens people's ability to work and quality of life. It is therefore short-term and ineffective to continue to run dental care as a separate system with high fees.
A better alternative
Instead of raising fees and forcing people to borrow money, we should invest in dental care that is free and available to everyone. This would reduce class gaps, improve public health and create a fairer society. The government's current policy does not benefit the people - it benefits the banks and private capital.
It is time to prioritize people's health over profit interests and ensure that dental care becomes part of the common welfare.
As one of my favorite bloggers Stumbling and mumbling stated a year or so ago, it's not a lack of money - on the contrary, it's a lack of staff in the medical and health care sector. More money there could possibly attract additional staff who would then have to be taken from elsewhere.
In general, we should stop talking about money in collective contexts like this and instead talk about real resources in terms of people, skills and tools. What do we want more people to do, and what do we want fewer people to do? And how can we make sure that happens?
My belief is that far too many people deal with finances - not least in healthcare, by the way. However, getting them over to healthcare is not an easy thing because they probably have no interest in that direction.
The idea of lack of money is a myth because people should not understand how societies' economies really work. It is the labor force and its health as well as natural resources that we pay with and to some extent we pay with the needs of the people as these give us true reason to do something. Money is only for accounting and not financing.
Dillow's argument can be found at https://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2022/12/its-not-about-the-money.html. Or, in translation:
"Which poses a problem for the left. If we want more builders, home insulators, solar panel makers, care workers and NHS staff, where will we find them?
Immigration, of course, must be part of the answer. Another part of the answer is that Labor may well take government when unemployment is higher than it is now, and so these workers can be taken off the unemployment queues without raising inflation.
But what if these answers are insufficient? Then we may need higher taxes to force capital and labor to move from parts of the private sector to healthcare, the greener economy and house building.
However, not all taxes would do this. Wealth and profit taxes could in principle bring in billions. But if these billions would otherwise just be hoarded in bank accounts, economic activity does not decrease and thus neither capital nor labor is freed up and thus no more potential house builders or nurses. The ugly fact is that if we want more health workers or more people working to decarbonize the economy, we need the kind of taxes that reduce economic activity elsewhere.”
Dillow's argument is based on a simplified view of how the economy works and how labor can be directed to the shortage force. Here is a question and an alternative perspective from a fiat currency and productive investment perspective:
Problems with Dillow's reasoning:
1. Misreliance on taxes: Dillow argues that higher taxes are needed to shift labor from less desirable sectors to prioritized ones like healthcare and the green transition. This ignores that in a fiat currency economy the government does not need to "finance" public investment through taxes, as it can create money directly for these purposes.
2. Negative impact on economic activity: Raising taxes that reduce economic activity can hurt sectors where the working and middle classes depend on consumption and jobs. This can create a domino effect of lower demand and employment, especially in the private sector.
3. Overestimation of the controlling effect of taxes: Higher taxes do not necessarily affect the workforce's choice of sector. Many people are governed by wage levels, working conditions and educational opportunities rather than where taxes draw resources from.
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Alternative strategy:
1. Direct creation of money in priority sectors:
The state can create money to finance jobs and investments in healthcare, green industries and house building. By offering higher wages, better working conditions and training in these areas of shortage, these sectors can become more attractive without harming economic activity in other sectors.
2. Governance through incentives instead of punishment:
Raise wages and improve working conditions in the shortage sector rather than punishing other sectors with taxes. People are more likely to move to sectors that offer stability, security and opportunities to develop.
3. Flexible workforce:
Many unemployed people with secondary education can be flexible with work, as long as they see decent working conditions and wages. Investments in publicly funded training and trainee programs can provide these individuals with the skills required for the shortage.
4. Immigration as a supplement:
Immigration can help, but is not the solution in the long term as it impoverishes the mother countries from which the immigrants flee. It is important that labor immigration is combined with strong labor law protections.
5. Economic balance without inflation:
To avoid inflation, the state can balance new investments with measures that strengthen productivity, reduce resource waste and direct money to productive purposes rather than speculation.
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Summary:
Dillow's solution based on higher taxes reducing economic activity is not necessary in a fiat currency economy. The state can direct labor to priority sectors by creating money for investment, improving conditions in the shortage area and training the unemployed. This strategy strengthens the economy, increases productivity and avoids unnecessary conflicts between sectors.
The point is that there may be real flaws, e.g. on people, or skills, or tools. If there is unemployment, there is an abundance of people, but not necessarily the other needs. They may have to be transferred from other industries that are considered less important for political reasons – I would e.g. suggest the financial industry and, in general, the businesses Graeber calls bullshit jobs.
But in a society where the state cannot order people to work with A instead of B, this must be done by starving the industries you want to reduce, e.g. through taxation. At the same time as newly created money, the industries you want to benefit are added.
Otherwise you create inflation. Which in and of itself doesn't have to be bad, South Korea had inflation of 30% per year during the time it developed into an industrial country. But still.
Or do you have some other way to transfer resources – real resources ie people, competences and tools – from A to B?
It's mainly people who can be tricky to transfer, but most people can tolerate a lot as long as there is some degree of decent conditions in the profession. These decent conditions newly created money can create. Then you can offer free or subsidized training and retraining programs for the unemployed and young people. Combine theoretical education with paid internships to provide practical experience and make professions accessible to more people. I think your reasoning feels like an austerity policy trap where previous austerity policies make it impossible to leave austerity policies due to the damage from previous austerity policies. There is always inflation after wars like those in Israel and Vietnam in the 1970s. Had we taken five years of inflation before production started again and developed MMT as Grassmann was close to in the idea, we would have escaped 50 years of austerity policies. Should we opt for 50 more years of austerity policies, just because the first few years can be lumpy after the save-in-the-barns.
Det är ingen åtstramningspolitisk fälla så länge de nya medel som skapas är likamed eller större än de som dras in.
Sålänge vi har arbetslöshet kan de nya medlem mycket väl vara större än de som dras in (men inte gärna längre än så). Då är det ett samhällsekonomiskt slöseri att inte sätta dessa arbetslösa i arbete. Men så mycket resurser läggs idag ner på meningslösa eller skadliga verksamheter, se https://gemensam.wordpress.com/2018/08/28/siffrorna-pekar-uppat-men-samhallet-blir-alltmer-improduktivt/ and https://gemensam.wordpress.com/2019/06/07/vilka-ar-de-egentligt-narande-respektive-tarande/. Så mycket som egentligen borde läggas ner på något bättre.
Jag håller med om att det behövs mindre bullshit jobs. Dock menar jag att kommunikatörer och museitjänstemän inte är bullshit occupations. Men det vore konstigt att ha straffskatt på ett visst yrke. Dock kan ju staten minska anslagen till bullshit jobs och öka anslagen till närande yrken.