Greg Mankiw, who argues that healthcare reform will be less efficient than the free market because poor people will get a better deal.

Seriously, even though the US spends more per capita, and more as a percentage of GDP than any other nation on earth, and even though the outcomes are worse than the developed worlds, and efficiency is results divided by resources, healthcare reform will make us less efficient.

He argues that higher marginal tax rates shrink the economic pie, even though the historical numbers belie that.

You see, he thinks that “fairness” means “reduced work incentives”, which, I guess is why we have to pay bankers hundreds of millions of dollars to screw up our economy.

At the end, he suggests that improving healthcare will result in, “future generations of Americans will likely spend more time enjoying leisure.”

What is going on, of course, is that people are terrified of losing a job and healthcare, and, you know, dying, and so are less likely to take part-time jobs and/or tell their employer to go Cheney himself.

We already know that our healthcare system is deterring people from becoming entrepreneurs, but people like Mankiw just want wage slave drones.

You know, with ideas like this, you’d think that he would have been a part of Bush’s Evil Minions^™….Oh…Right…He was.

He was head of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors.