On a tangent on giving medical subsidy to the poor: this likely gets lumped into Medicare, yes? And Medicare is close to insolvency. The only way to prop it up is, of ocurse, taxpayer dollars.
The difference between goods and services is in the elasticity of supply. Double the demand for iphones? Apple will have it sorted in six months. Double demand for doctors? First be prepared for expensive doctors for the next ten years. Those doctors will get paid more, but there are only eight hours in a workday, so they treat the same number of patients. New doctors take a long time to train and have to contend with predicting economic conditions several years into the future. Net result: transfer of wealth from tax payers to doctors, little economic gain, worse average doctoring experience.
Tax payers including those with expertise in setting up production of goods. Who could have used the marginal money to set up new businesses and produce physical stuff. Opportunity cost is high, as always.
The difference between goods and services is in the elasticity of supply. Double the demand for iphones? Apple will have it sorted in six months. Double demand for doctors? First be prepared for expensive doctors for the next ten years. Those doctors will get paid more, but there are only eight hours in a workday, so they treat the same number of patients. New doctors take a long time to train and have to contend with predicting economic conditions several years into the future. Net result: transfer of wealth from tax payers to doctors, little economic gain, worse average doctoring experience.
Tax payers including those with expertise in setting up production of goods. Who could have used the marginal money to set up new businesses and produce physical stuff. Opportunity cost is high, as always.