Thursday--

Still cool and wet.  The weather people keep promising warmer temperatures and sun but someone else is laughing at them.

This is interesting.  The rationale most often used to justify co-pays in health care insurance systems is they ensure the patient has "skin in the game."  If patients bear at least some of the costs of drugs or treatments they are more likely to make more "informed" choices.  However, "informed" here means simply making the least costly choice not necessarily the most effective choice.  And those choices can be dangerous both for the patient and for society.

Another idea that sounded good but which was carried far beyond common sense.  I have seen all too many accounts of police seizing peoples money and property without ever charging much less convicting them--of anything.  Such asset "forfeitures" have become a major income stream for various police departments and an encouragement for thievery under a very thin cover of corrupted law.

I noticed Jeb! thinks it would be a good idea if Americans worked longer hours.  Echidne of the Snakes asks a good question:  work longer for whom?  The fastest growing category of jobs are minimum wage jobs which don't provide a good living for those who have two or even three of them.  As noted at the link, productivity growth over the last couple of decades hasn't yielded wage growth.  The benefits have mostly accrued to the top of the economic pyramid.