moneyblog: Ignorance and Risk

While academics are concerned that the electorate is insufficiently educated - a rather self serving bias, it appears - we, the electorate, may have a more legitimate concern that they don't know what they are doing.

This delicious quote, from The Economist, illustrates the point:

"Quizzed about the credit crunch, a politician delivers some carefully memorised remark about, say, quantitative easing. Then the guest experiences an audible moment of existential horror, as Mr Davis ungallantly presses him for details."

While I don't feel I know enough about it to write a decent crossword clue - okay if pressed, it's something to do with increasing the money supply and buying a variety of assets - you don't care, because I am not pretending I could be Finance Minister.

The flailing around on our own ACC issue has many of the same hallmarks. How many decent questions fail to be asked? Let us count only the general areas, the specific questions could run to hundreds...

1. What is ACC for? Some people think it's an important part of our social welfare system, some people think it's an insurance scheme, some people think it's about controlling legal costs, and reducing unfairness and inefficiency...

2. If we accept that part of it could be considered an insurance system, then what risks are to be covered, and what levels of cover are to be provided? Should we make different levels of cover available, or is ACC about providing only the minimum level of cover society requires and the private sector provides the rest?

3. How do we know if we're providing the level of cover that society as a whole reckons is about right?

UPDATE: I just finished listening to a bunch of goofs on National Radio as I was driving to an appointment this afternoon and they were confusing the whole issue of risk with social policy. Nick Smith is quoted as saying that an increase in the ACC levy on petrol is his favoured approach to sharing out additional cost because, broadly, the more one drives the more risk of an accident you have. After a rudimentary discussion about how true that is, while it was conceded as generally true two surprising new directions were taken by the commentators:

1) While conceding that experience rating was used for different employment categories it was considered the thin end of the wedge with a comment that 'we don't want to charge people more for hospital visits because they are overweight do we?' (wouldn't we have a whole lot less trouble with obesity if we did?)

2) Then one commentator suggested that perhaps this excusion into user pays could be excused because by making petrol more expensive we were again pricing up carbon emissions and that this would help environmental goals.

Doesn't this rather underline the assertion by Nick Smith that ACC has been seen as a welfare agency rather than a compensation and insurance outfit? Having failed in those two tasks to try and burden it with achieving environmental goals as well looks like a step into fantasy land.