I have not posted in a long time, which may be appreciated by some of you but I just wanted to share some recent thoughts. I have been reading the Washington Post's series on inequality, which I highly recommend. The stresses of inequality are huge and I believe constitute a huge problem. Most of the solutions that have been offered focus on service specific transfers of wealth, such as Medicaid. However, there are huge distortions which come along with these types of transfers and the two markets which the government has manipulated the most in the last decades, namely education and healthcare, have seen explosive rises in cost. I think that we need to re-evaluate our methods of wealth transfer and really see how we can increase equality without causing the huge problems we currently see.
I don't have a lot of answers but some things that I would like to see are:
Transfers which encourage opportunities-not dependence. This will ultimately be much more rewarding for both recipient, taxpayers, and the economy.
Transfer which can be used to cultivate and benefit from competition. Currently much of government education spending goes directly to the institutions, why not give education dollars straight to each and every high school grad below a certain income level-to be used for any training/degree he/she sees fit and thus create a more competitive education market?
Transfers which are not burdensome to a specific industry/company. Allowing trade unions, for example, are essentially a transfer of income from producers and buyers to the workers which puts a heavy burden on the specific industries which are locked into these agreements-thus giving them an unfair disadvantage.
Transfers which encourage individuals to evaluate the cost/benefit analysis of important decisions. Universal healthcare, for example, places the responsibility of cost/benefit analysis of all healthcare decisions on legislatures. Someone must ultimately make these decisions, if individuals had to make them I think we would see much more efficient use of resources.
Anyway, these are just a few thoughts. I bring this subject up, one, because I think it is important, and two, to emphasize that we can and ought to approach this with more ideas besides the typical food stamps, government regulation, Social Security, universal healthcare, unionization, minimum wage, and other liberal policy which has been attempted. I hate the idea of living in the country where we have sacrificed opportunities for economic and personal achievement in order to achieve better equality, (such as France with it's dismal unemployment). I just hope there is a better way.
I haven't gone to mydd for awhile and I'm happy to see the nice formatting along with Benjamin Franklin's picture. I'd just like to throw down some of his great thoughts.
"It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part"
"No nation was ever ruined by trade."
"The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself."
Above Quotes taken from: http://www.lpboulder.com/quotes/
The remaining quotes are from Wikiquote
"Would you live with ease? Do what you ought, not what you please."
"No man e'er was glorious, who was not laborious."
"Jack Little sow'd little, & little he'll reap."
And my new favorite:
"the Taxes are indeed very heavy, and if those laid on by the Government were the only Ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our Idleness, three times as much by our Pride, and four times as much by our Folly, and from these Taxes the Commissioners cannot ease or deliver us by allowing an Abatement. However let us hearken to good Advice, and something may be done for us; God helps them that help themselves"
When I vote for someone I supposedly 'accept' everything they stand for, even I vote for them simply because there is no better option. My vote is not my mandate.
Political discussions never change ideas they just raise tempers.
The "your vote counts" lie. When my vote gets thrown into to a pool of 60 million for the president, hundreds of thousands for my two senators, and thousands for my one Congressman, with the rest of the House and Senate being voted by millions of other people not even in my state (not to mention that half of those base their vote on the fact that their daddy liked FDR or some other equally ridiculous reason) then my vote doesn't count.
Federalism, along with the two problems just mentioned,has made us angrier and waste a whole lot of time. We spend millions of hours and money on commentating and argueing over issues that when it comes down to it, we have no control over. We keep hoping that our representatives representing collectively over 300 million people with people from different regions and backgrounds to somehow come together to make a system of government that works best for all of them and that makes most of them happy with how their government is run. We also expect voters to be informed on a multitude of issues when given the value of their individual vote that wouldn't even be rational.
Somehow, this system is supposed to make me feel like I'm 'free'. Somehow having the majority of my tax dollars and increasingly more of the laws that regulate my everyday life being determined by this system where my individual vote is essentially worthless doesn't make me feel particularly 'free'.
Anyway, that is my rant for the day, unlikely that any of you will read it, but I feel much better.
I haven't noticed any comments on this issue so what does everyone think about the recent comments by Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
From CNN:
"He quoted a remark from Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of Iran's Islamic revolution, that Israel "must be wiped out from the map of the world."
The president then said: "And God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism," according to a quote published by Iran's state news outlet, the Islamic Republic News Agency."
How do you think the U.S. should react to this?
I have tried to maintain conservative values because I once believed that a system of government where individuals and families were primarily responsible for meeting their needs and where local communities, not federal bureacracies, were primarily responsible for those that were incapable of taking care of those needs, was the best system since it gives the individual the greatest amount of control over the decisions that effect one's life and directed people towards the best decisions for themselves and society. But since today has been particularly bad I've decided I was wrong.
I'm sick of working hard so that I can pay for health insurance for me, my wife and my daughter. I'm sick of working hard so that I can put a roof over my families head. I sick of doing the 'right things' to create a stable environment for others. Which is why I hope you liberals pass all your legislation so that I can let the government take care of my wife and daughter's housing, healthcare, food and everything else so that I can roam the country and do whatever the hell I want while collecting unemployment. So good luck you guys, I'm counting on you.
