Not every event with two outcomes is 50/50, you know :) And the article does point to both the subject of the bet - unemployment indexes, which are known to all participants and it's kinda the job of the economist to know what they mean - and why Caplan thought he would win. It may be, of course, that he won randomly and his theory is still wrong - but in general people that successfully predict real world outcomes are regarded better in most scientific endeavors than people that predict wrongly.
1) The fact that there are two possible outcomes does not make the odds 50/50.
2) As others have pointed out, he has a history of winning the bets he makes, well above 50/50.
That's more like 1000-1 against.
His so-called smugness derives from betting: putting his ideas on the line and winning. I think he's the opposite of smug because he's humble enough to put his ideas to the test. Maybe he gloats, but I think we should socially encourage victors gloating (in fair competitions).
What's the hypothesis? Where's the valuable data gotten from this?
My idea of equivalent action: Me stating "the president 10 years from now will be the first 3rd party president ever."
Why? Who knows! And if I was right, and make a blog post that says "See, I was right!" And then point to a bunch of things that happened after my prediction that led to this result, what did we learn? Anything at all?
I choose free healthcare over employer supplied health insurance every day.
You pay for, it but the insurer is less cynical.
But almost more importantly, the healthcare isn't being delivered by companies trying to make a profit but from central funding instead. Sometimes that means making really difficult decisions such as NICE refusing to fund a cystic fibrosis drug because the US pharmaceutical company wants to charge $138,000[1] per patient per year.
But those difficult decisions mean the limited funding (and no funding can be infinite) can be targeted and spent to deliver the most benefit as a whole. Heart-breaking for those with children with C.F. but hopefully the U.S. drug company will soon back down. If it weren't for brexit they likely would have done so already.
This article explains NICE's QALY (Quality adjusted life year) methodology: https://www.nice.org.uk/news/blog/carrying-nice-over-the-thr...
One of the most important reasons to resist the privatisation of healthcare is because it would actually lead to worse outcomes for the same money spent as the decisions of where to direct funding would be less evidence based.
You're right, it's not free, and in fact needs more investment to prevent it being privatised. Britons spend less on healthcare than most, even in fact spending less per person than the US does through taxation alone[2].
[1] https://www.bmj.com/content/364/bmj.l1094 [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42950587
They have flexi- but they also have -security.
> workers might be much happier in countries where they can work without the possibility of being fired at any moment
The reason why this is an issue is nothing to do with actually being fired, it is due to the difficulty of getting rehired...which is a bigger issue if labour markets don't function (and in most European nations, as the higher unemployment has risen, the more desperately the privileged few have clung onto their protections worsening the issue).
This is why Denmark went the other way: the logic for inflexible labour markets is only consistent when labour markets are not flexible. Remove that and target spending where it is actually needed i.e. on meeting the needs of the market.
The idea of stronger safety nets is also not particularly true (the idea of strong/weak never made sense to me). Social security is not universal as in the UK or US, it is based on contributions. And the reasons unions work, again in contrast particularly with the UK, is that they collaborate with employers (Denmark's union participation rate is anomalous but even compared with somewhere like Germany).
> Most of the harm of unemployment is psychological, not material. Holding income constant, the employed are much happier than the unemployed.
This doesn't factor in that employed workers might be much happier in countries where they can work without the possibility of being fired at any moment for no reason hanging over their heads.