Fire insurance transfers wealth from people who don't have house fires to people who do. Car insurance transfers money from people who don't have car accidents to people who do. This is the basic concept of insurance. It protects people from bad events, transferring money from people who don't have bad events to those who do. In other words, this quote is telling us that Japan's health insurance system is operating like a health insurance system.

The article is also quick to tell readers that Japan's system may be unsustainable. Its subhead is: "Aging population could strain system." It is worth noting that Japan's population is already far older than the U.S. population.

"If the United States had the same age distribution as Japan," writes Baker, "its healthcare costs would almost certainly already be above 20 percent of GDP, compared to the current 17 percent." Listen to the FAIR radio program CounterSpin: "Trudy Lieberman on Healthcare Reform" (8/14/09).

In his August 24 broadside against what he dubs Barack Obama's "Rail Boondoggle," Samuelson trots out the tired argument against "almost $35 billion in subsidies into Amtrak" that "the federal government has poured" in the last four decades--with the usual corporate pundit omissions, like the fact that, as long ago as 1994 it was determined that "hidden subsidies for drivers amount to well over $2 for every gallon of gasoline sold."

Beyond that, "Samuelson tries to tell us that trains might be useful in Japan and Europe, but they won't work in the United States":

He tells readers that:

Densities are much higher, and high densities favor rail with direct connections between heavily populated city centers and business districts. In Japan, density is 880 people per square mile; it's 653 in Britain, 611 in Germany and 259 in France. By contrast, plentiful land in the United States has led to suburbanized homes, offices and factories. Density is 86 people per square mile.

The density for the United States as a whole would be relevant if the plans were to build a train network going from Florida to Alaska, but that is not what is on the agenda. Instead, the issue is about deepening and improving the network in relatively densely populated parts of the country, like Ohio (277 people per square mile), New York (402) and New Jersey (1,134). The population densities of much of the United States are very comparable to the regions in Europe through which high-speed rails travel.

Baker then tells how "Samuelson also bizarrely compares long-distance train with the 140 million daily trips to work each day," even though "most people do not travel between cities every day, so it's not clear what the point of the comparison is."

Recapping, Baker writes that "Robert Samuelson doesn't like trains. He told us that this morning in his column." However, "he didn't tell us anything else."

See the FAIR magazine Extra!: "The Railroading of Amtrak: Trains, Planes and Automobiles Held to Different Standards" (7–8/02) by Christopher Ott.

Instead, Baker writes "readers got to see the comment of Robert Profusek, a lawyer at Jones Day who is identified as having advised major banks on compensation matters," and Linda Rappaport, "head of the executive compensation practice at the firm Shearman & Sterling"--both of whom unsurprisingly argue for maintaining high executive pay in order to attract "talent" that will "make the money for the shareholders."

Baker voices the unspoken aspects of this assertion:

If the Post had solicited the views of a populist, or an economist, they might have told readers that much of what the banks earn comes directly at the expense of consumers and businesses....
The public has no obvious interest in subsidizing traders to speculate in financial markets. If the speculators win, then the loans that Goldman and the others receive will be repaid, but this repayment will only be a portion of the higher prices paid by consumers and lower profits earned by producers as a result of Goldman's speculation.

And, "moving beyond the world of speculation," Baker doubts that "if most of these individuals were replaced by the person next in line...the bank's profits would suffer in any big way." Which means that "these high salaries are just a drain on the bank, its shareholders and the taxpayers. But you won't see this argument presented in the Post."

Listen to the FAIR radio show CounterSpin: "Robert Johnson on AIG Bonuses" (3/20/09).

Careful to say that "the problem was not that the website had plagiarized the piece"--indeed, the "story was credited and even linked to by the website, which was a major source of readers for the original article"--Baker tells us that the Post "is upset that the website may have made money off his work, because it sells ads based on viewership."

The Post "wants 'news organizations' to have the right to sue others that use their work without permission and profit from it"--even though, as Baker writes, "if people opt to read the piece on another website rather than the Post, then there must be some reason. Obviously they prefer something about this alternative venue":

If the protectionist measure advocated in this piece succeeded in shutting down the competition, then there would be a clear loss to readers. This loss would likely dwarf the loss to consumers that the Post routinely whines about so loudly when anyone suggests a tariff on imports or any other barrier to trade. After all, those forms of protection rarely add more than 10–15 percent to the price of a product. In this case, the Post's proposal may make the product unavailable altogether. Yet again, we see that protectionism is just fine with "free traders." The only issue is who is being protected.

Finally, let's consider what the enforcement of the Post's measure looks like. First, who is a "news organization?" Is this a title that one registers for with the government? Does the Post get the title but not its website competitors? I suppose those big bucks dinners with lobbyists and policymakers really are worth something.

As a practical matter, it would be an incredible affront to the First Amendment if the Post and other major newspapers and established news outlets were given any special ability to sue under such an act, compared to websites, or for that matter think tanks.

Going with his usual inclination to "think this one through for a moment," Baker finds the whole argument somewhat moot, considering how the paper's reporter "does not even know that he was harmed by the website piece." In fact, "it is entirely possible that more people viewed his piece on the Post's site as a result of the version appearing on the website."

Read lots of related content in the special Future of Journalism issue of FAIR's magazine Extra!: "Did Google Kill the Newspaper Star?" (7/09) by Peter Hart.