Fresh from watching Mr. ManiacalSpend announcing his support for "Pay-Go," or pay-as-you-go government spending. Of course, he couched his remarks in such as way that, God forbid, he has no responsibility for the monstrous debt. Evil goblins crept into the White House at night and jacked up the budget, forging Mr. ManiacalSpend's signature on the Stimulus Package and the Pork Bill. Mr. ManiacalSpend himself had absolutely nothing to do with it. He was overseas, currying favor with the Social Democrats, or someplace....
What is a president to do when he sends his Treasury Nerd to the Peoples' Republic of China to ask for money and they laugh it off, sincere in their belief that he must be joking?
But let's look at this again. Mr. ManiacalSpend still wants socialized medicine, he still wants to own the UAW and for them to own all the rest of us, he still wants to grind US industry into the dust with cap-and-tax... He just wants someone else to figure out some way to pay for it.
For my money, he's got his fingers crossed for some monumental tax increase. Of course he'll say, "If you-all want socialized medicine and horrendous electricity bills, it's going to cost you."
Never for one moment considering that no one with a damn brain in their head wants any of this, except Nancy Pelosi, maybe, or Harry Reid, or some bozo in San Francisco who spends most of his time eating lotuses.
I'd love to think Mr. ManiacalSpend would use this opportunity to rein in his own gargantuan schemes for government expansion, but knowing him as we all do, I totally doubt it.
Yeah... more like he's saying in that inimical and lovable way -- wait until next April. You guys are gonna be royally screwed.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Europe loves Obama?
Rather interesting results of the European elections. Most nations moved somewhat to the right -- the "right" in Europe being anything less than total state ownership of absolutely everything. So I'm wondering: Where is the love for Obama?
You'd think they'd all be jumping on the bandwagon for even higher taxes and government spending and all those other Obama-related things.
I guess you can love the sinner but not the sin. (sigh....)
Saw British MEP Daniel Hannon on TV tonight talking about this. Has anyone else noticed that he has beautiful eyes?
And wasn't Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg supposed to be a liberal? And yet she questions the wisdom of stiffing the secured bondholders in the Chrysler-Fiat deal? Seems this is such an extraordinary violation of property rights and the spirit of the law in the US that the honest people who remain in government just can't let it pass unnoticed. About time, isn't it?
Read a commentary on this deal on Bloomberg, and I'm sorry but I'm not sure who wrote it. The author noted, rather too quickly, that shafting the secured bondholders will have a chilling effect on the investment of private capital in American businesses. Gee, do ya think?
But we don't need no stinkin' private capital when we have Treasury bail-outs, do we?
(I always think of the Frito Bandito: We can just print more!!)
And it's all to support UAW retirees' health care benefits. Why can't they use Medicare like everyone else? Medicare already is such a drain on the economy, and it's already socialized medicine, I'm surprised that the UAW and those-in-government-with-whom-they-are-in-bed aren't jumping up and down at the opportunity to collect big-time on Medicare. Just to show us all how terrific the system is and that it's something we all want when we retire. Or hell, when we retire?? Why not right now?? For everyone!! You'd think it would be the UAW's civic duty.
But no-o-o-o, they'd rather go to the health care providers and insurers they know in the private sector. No hypocrisy there.
So Obama's trying to speed up the Stimulus spending. Not enough inflation yet or what?
Hm-m-m-m-m what else?
North Korea continues to rant and foam at the mouth. They just handed down a 12-year sentence of hard labor for two journalists arrested there for crossing the border. The journalists work for Al Gore's TV station. What the heck were they doing in Korea? Trying to measure the pollution? I mean, really.... Sorry for them, though. Apparently Kim Jung Il (or whatever his name is) is certifiably batty. Although I must say, I think it would be a hoot to just arbitrarily shoot off missiles whenever the mood struck.
I've worked with many Koreans. One guy, Jimmy, worked on a night shift with me and he took me out for a late lunch a couple times after we got off work. He was a nice guy, and I think looking for an American girlfriend. He was also all alone -- no family here. A Korean girl used to give me rides part-way home on yet another night shift job. I don't think I've ever met people who were harder working or more entrepreneurial. Or, actually, better-natured. No matter how many jobs they had, how exhausted, how crummy the company policy, they just kept plugging away. I wish I was so dedicated to my own goals.
'Course it doesn't do to generalize. Used to live in an apartment complex, and my family were about the only people there who were native English-speakers. On one side of the building was one Korean family who must have had about 16 people living in that apartment, all of them with three or four jobs. Their kids used to race each other down the hallway. They didn't speak really good English, so I didn't know them well, but one of the kids asked me once if I would write her a check for a college entrance application. She gave me the cash for it right away; she just needed a check to send in with the application. Hope she was accepted.
On the other side of the building was another Korean family. They had a daughter who was a complete lunatic. She was really a pretty girl, about 20 years old or so, and had a few boyfriends. Seems she was most attached to one who wasn't as into her as she was into him. They used to have these fights in the middle of the night right below my window, which overlooked the parking lot.
You'd hear this screaming -- and I do mean screaming -- then often her footsteps slamming up the stairs and down the hall, then a stream of objects flying out her window. In the morning the lawn would be littered with cans of hairspray, the odd cowboy boot, cassette tapes, etc. One night apparently her boyfriend was trying to simply go home, this accompanied by the raging and screaming. Then she threw herself down in front of his car. Someone else called the police.
So there go the stereotypes. That crazy O'Rourke guy -- wrote for Rolling Stone, now a conservative and very funny -- once said that Koreans were "the Irish of Asia." Maybe he had a point.
Don't know how I got here from where I started, but here we are....
But anyway, looks like the tide is turning as people all over the world are beginning to see what all this government-run crap is going to mean in real terms, and no more USA to carry the load for them.
Socialism is no longer a supposedly "high moral" platform from which to bitch and whine at those of us who are mere self-absorbed money-grubbers. Socialsim is starting to look a lot like the rough-shod looting of the productive. And that view is closer to reality.
You'd think they'd all be jumping on the bandwagon for even higher taxes and government spending and all those other Obama-related things.
I guess you can love the sinner but not the sin. (sigh....)
Saw British MEP Daniel Hannon on TV tonight talking about this. Has anyone else noticed that he has beautiful eyes?
And wasn't Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg supposed to be a liberal? And yet she questions the wisdom of stiffing the secured bondholders in the Chrysler-Fiat deal? Seems this is such an extraordinary violation of property rights and the spirit of the law in the US that the honest people who remain in government just can't let it pass unnoticed. About time, isn't it?
Read a commentary on this deal on Bloomberg, and I'm sorry but I'm not sure who wrote it. The author noted, rather too quickly, that shafting the secured bondholders will have a chilling effect on the investment of private capital in American businesses. Gee, do ya think?
But we don't need no stinkin' private capital when we have Treasury bail-outs, do we?
(I always think of the Frito Bandito: We can just print more!!)
And it's all to support UAW retirees' health care benefits. Why can't they use Medicare like everyone else? Medicare already is such a drain on the economy, and it's already socialized medicine, I'm surprised that the UAW and those-in-government-with-whom-they-are-in-bed aren't jumping up and down at the opportunity to collect big-time on Medicare. Just to show us all how terrific the system is and that it's something we all want when we retire. Or hell, when we retire?? Why not right now?? For everyone!! You'd think it would be the UAW's civic duty.
But no-o-o-o, they'd rather go to the health care providers and insurers they know in the private sector. No hypocrisy there.
So Obama's trying to speed up the Stimulus spending. Not enough inflation yet or what?
Hm-m-m-m-m what else?
North Korea continues to rant and foam at the mouth. They just handed down a 12-year sentence of hard labor for two journalists arrested there for crossing the border. The journalists work for Al Gore's TV station. What the heck were they doing in Korea? Trying to measure the pollution? I mean, really.... Sorry for them, though. Apparently Kim Jung Il (or whatever his name is) is certifiably batty. Although I must say, I think it would be a hoot to just arbitrarily shoot off missiles whenever the mood struck.
I've worked with many Koreans. One guy, Jimmy, worked on a night shift with me and he took me out for a late lunch a couple times after we got off work. He was a nice guy, and I think looking for an American girlfriend. He was also all alone -- no family here. A Korean girl used to give me rides part-way home on yet another night shift job. I don't think I've ever met people who were harder working or more entrepreneurial. Or, actually, better-natured. No matter how many jobs they had, how exhausted, how crummy the company policy, they just kept plugging away. I wish I was so dedicated to my own goals.
'Course it doesn't do to generalize. Used to live in an apartment complex, and my family were about the only people there who were native English-speakers. On one side of the building was one Korean family who must have had about 16 people living in that apartment, all of them with three or four jobs. Their kids used to race each other down the hallway. They didn't speak really good English, so I didn't know them well, but one of the kids asked me once if I would write her a check for a college entrance application. She gave me the cash for it right away; she just needed a check to send in with the application. Hope she was accepted.
On the other side of the building was another Korean family. They had a daughter who was a complete lunatic. She was really a pretty girl, about 20 years old or so, and had a few boyfriends. Seems she was most attached to one who wasn't as into her as she was into him. They used to have these fights in the middle of the night right below my window, which overlooked the parking lot.
You'd hear this screaming -- and I do mean screaming -- then often her footsteps slamming up the stairs and down the hall, then a stream of objects flying out her window. In the morning the lawn would be littered with cans of hairspray, the odd cowboy boot, cassette tapes, etc. One night apparently her boyfriend was trying to simply go home, this accompanied by the raging and screaming. Then she threw herself down in front of his car. Someone else called the police.
So there go the stereotypes. That crazy O'Rourke guy -- wrote for Rolling Stone, now a conservative and very funny -- once said that Koreans were "the Irish of Asia." Maybe he had a point.
Don't know how I got here from where I started, but here we are....
But anyway, looks like the tide is turning as people all over the world are beginning to see what all this government-run crap is going to mean in real terms, and no more USA to carry the load for them.
Socialism is no longer a supposedly "high moral" platform from which to bitch and whine at those of us who are mere self-absorbed money-grubbers. Socialsim is starting to look a lot like the rough-shod looting of the productive. And that view is closer to reality.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Cloward-Piven Strategy
Been watching Glenn Beck, notably the show about Acorn and the Cloward-Piven Strategy. Check it out here:
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6967
Cloward-Piven is based on an article two radical left sociologists published in The Nation in 1966, suggesting that the most effective way to do away with capitalism is to overwhelm the system with demands for entitlements, busting the economy and forcing a redistribution of wealth. Rudy Giuliani believed it was this strategy deliberately implemented, that was responsible for throwing New York City into bankruptcy (or near-bankruptcy) a few years back. David Horowitz also is aware of all of this. It's not a lunatic conspiracy. Well, yes it is; what I mean is, it really does exist.
To me, this sounds like Barack Obama's blueprint for America.
The prez has noted that the US is out of money now, and that the current level of debt is unsustainable. And he continues to propose mind-bogglingly expensive social programs. Entitlement programs that will surely drive the nation only more irretrievably into debt.
Am I missing something here? I mean, if socialized medicine is bankrupting the economy now, how is this situation going to get any better by adding a couple hundred million more people onto the subscriber rolls?
Cap-and-trade is designed primarily to ensure that the US economy cannot recover. It has no other useful purpose and will have no other perceivable impact.
Anyway, Cloward-Piven spawned many followers, including Acorn, the amorphous conglomeration of left-wing "activists-for-hire," for want of a better word. Apparently Acorn is sort of an umbrella for a couple hundred other activist groups. And they don't function as overtly political organizations advocating one point of view or another, but work almost as contractors for the federal government and other organizations. They do things like voter registration drives, petition campaigns, community organizing, and apparently they're currently being recruited to take the 2010 Census. And to hop on a bus and terrorize AIG executives at their homes in Connecticut.
Who paid for that? You know, George Soros is one of the big-money donors behind all this. What the hell is his problem? Not enough democracy in America? This man should be in jail.
Don't know if anyone but Acorn's organizer, or board, or parent organization -- or whoever runs this octopus -- really knows how extensive this organization's reach is, but they do get federal money. And they will probably get at least $1 billion (with a b) from the Stimulus package. Your tax dollars at work.
This is like some "B" movie from the 1960s, where you rob a bank (attack capitalists) to fund the bombing of a draft board office.
So the lunatics really are running the asylum. No surprise there. Who needs al-Qaeda? Just hire Acorn. They're already inside the borders.
Change the subject a bit....
Watched Obama's speech in Cairo the other day, where he likened the displaced Palestinians to the six million Jews Hitler gassed, and implied that women in the US have much in common with muslim women who are stoned in the streets for talking to men-who-are-not-their-husbands.
He was trying to establish common bonds with "The Muslim World." I doubt it worked very well.
You know, people resort to violence when:
1.) They can't get a fair hearing;
2.) They don't have a convincing argument.
What is the case of nations like Iran, do you suppose? Their Prez Abracadabrajab actually was allowed to speak at the U.N. a couple years ago, and launched into an anti-US, anti-Israel diatribe and, if I recall correctly, promised even in that forum that he was working actively to kill all the Jews in Israel.
The U.N. gave him a fair hearing, so it must be the other thing.
How do you imagine he'll respond to Obama's sweetness and light? (Incoming!)
Abracadabrajab is right now involved in an election campaign in Iran, and apparently his opponent, who is more moderate, blasted the hell out of him in a televised debate. So maybe Iranians will reject this nutjob on their own.
To me, Abracadabrajab looks like an extra from the stage production of Oliver, a street-thief working with Fagan, but that's just me.
Anyway, I've been busy and I'm tired, so that's it for now.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6967
Cloward-Piven is based on an article two radical left sociologists published in The Nation in 1966, suggesting that the most effective way to do away with capitalism is to overwhelm the system with demands for entitlements, busting the economy and forcing a redistribution of wealth. Rudy Giuliani believed it was this strategy deliberately implemented, that was responsible for throwing New York City into bankruptcy (or near-bankruptcy) a few years back. David Horowitz also is aware of all of this. It's not a lunatic conspiracy. Well, yes it is; what I mean is, it really does exist.
To me, this sounds like Barack Obama's blueprint for America.
The prez has noted that the US is out of money now, and that the current level of debt is unsustainable. And he continues to propose mind-bogglingly expensive social programs. Entitlement programs that will surely drive the nation only more irretrievably into debt.
Am I missing something here? I mean, if socialized medicine is bankrupting the economy now, how is this situation going to get any better by adding a couple hundred million more people onto the subscriber rolls?
Cap-and-trade is designed primarily to ensure that the US economy cannot recover. It has no other useful purpose and will have no other perceivable impact.
Anyway, Cloward-Piven spawned many followers, including Acorn, the amorphous conglomeration of left-wing "activists-for-hire," for want of a better word. Apparently Acorn is sort of an umbrella for a couple hundred other activist groups. And they don't function as overtly political organizations advocating one point of view or another, but work almost as contractors for the federal government and other organizations. They do things like voter registration drives, petition campaigns, community organizing, and apparently they're currently being recruited to take the 2010 Census. And to hop on a bus and terrorize AIG executives at their homes in Connecticut.
Who paid for that? You know, George Soros is one of the big-money donors behind all this. What the hell is his problem? Not enough democracy in America? This man should be in jail.
Don't know if anyone but Acorn's organizer, or board, or parent organization -- or whoever runs this octopus -- really knows how extensive this organization's reach is, but they do get federal money. And they will probably get at least $1 billion (with a b) from the Stimulus package. Your tax dollars at work.
This is like some "B" movie from the 1960s, where you rob a bank (attack capitalists) to fund the bombing of a draft board office.
So the lunatics really are running the asylum. No surprise there. Who needs al-Qaeda? Just hire Acorn. They're already inside the borders.
Change the subject a bit....
Watched Obama's speech in Cairo the other day, where he likened the displaced Palestinians to the six million Jews Hitler gassed, and implied that women in the US have much in common with muslim women who are stoned in the streets for talking to men-who-are-not-their-husbands.
He was trying to establish common bonds with "The Muslim World." I doubt it worked very well.
You know, people resort to violence when:
1.) They can't get a fair hearing;
2.) They don't have a convincing argument.
What is the case of nations like Iran, do you suppose? Their Prez Abracadabrajab actually was allowed to speak at the U.N. a couple years ago, and launched into an anti-US, anti-Israel diatribe and, if I recall correctly, promised even in that forum that he was working actively to kill all the Jews in Israel.
The U.N. gave him a fair hearing, so it must be the other thing.
How do you imagine he'll respond to Obama's sweetness and light? (Incoming!)
Abracadabrajab is right now involved in an election campaign in Iran, and apparently his opponent, who is more moderate, blasted the hell out of him in a televised debate. So maybe Iranians will reject this nutjob on their own.
To me, Abracadabrajab looks like an extra from the stage production of Oliver, a street-thief working with Fagan, but that's just me.
Anyway, I've been busy and I'm tired, so that's it for now.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
The missing link
Something I find disturbing is that so many people -- most notably those who support the current US regime -- disconnect the actions this administration is taking from their inevitable consequences. They're missing that link: that actions have consequences; that we will all pay for all of this, and not only in dollars.
That is, they believe the US is not becoming a socialist nation because Obama scoffs when anyone calls him a socialist. Rather, he just wants to run all the industry and control about 60% of every citizen's personal income and spending. But it's for their own good. It's not that nasty-nasty unworkable, totalitarian "socialism."
Hey! Wake up! Obama's program is socialism. By any definition. No matter what else you call it.
Or there's the other thing.... "Well, it's not his fault. He inherited this mess."
So, he inherited it. He's also taken certain specific steps to make it worse by massively expanding the role of the government in the private sector -- against the advice of some and in opposition to the lessons of history.
Here's something to think about: You cannot be both an independent person and a government dependent at the same time. That's a contradiction in terms. It can't happen, despite the fact that so many liberals seem to think the US government can construct a "safety net" that is there when we need it but invisible otherwise.
I believe I mentioned in an earlier blog, about a college class I had that was run by two feminists. They advocated that women "overthrow" the oppression of their husbands and substitute it with government support. Like government support doesn't come with any strings or a whole new set of rules to follow. The professors were well-educated and sophisticated people, but so totally blind....
On a personal level, Obama and his fellow travelers may not want to run everyone's life, but they can't provide us all with health care, ensure we drive environmentally-correct cars, work in "green" industries, and all achieve college degrees without taking us by the hand and walking us through all that. Whether we want it or not. They determine what our values will be and then compel us to uphold them one way or another. Whether or not we agree.
There's no wiggle-room in there for "living by your own lights," which was the very basis for establishing the USA 233 years ago.
The alternative to following government directives is.... What do you think?
What do you think government is? It's a method of making decisions for the society as a whole. Any decision the government makes for you has the force of law. And I do mean "force." If you don't agree to uphold the law, you suffer the consequences. Mao Tse-Tung said all government power grows out of the barrel of a gun. He was right. The guns come out when people fail to uphold the law voluntarily.
Government can be a positive force, can keep us from robbing and killing each other, can enforce property rights so that what we each earn we keep; it can create an orderly and peaceful social environment to encourage human growth and achievement.
But by its very nature, government also can be very destructive of individual liberty, private property, and everything else. George Washington once said "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
He was right, too.
Here's something else to consider:
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/107459-0
Yeah, this an opinion column from the Russian newspaper Pravda. This author very clearly sees where we're headed, even if we refuse to. And apparently he's been there and done that. Maybe he knows a little something about it that American liberals are not yet willing to admit?
Maybe people should start paying attention before we're so far gone, there's no way out of it.
That is, they believe the US is not becoming a socialist nation because Obama scoffs when anyone calls him a socialist. Rather, he just wants to run all the industry and control about 60% of every citizen's personal income and spending. But it's for their own good. It's not that nasty-nasty unworkable, totalitarian "socialism."
Hey! Wake up! Obama's program is socialism. By any definition. No matter what else you call it.
Or there's the other thing.... "Well, it's not his fault. He inherited this mess."
So, he inherited it. He's also taken certain specific steps to make it worse by massively expanding the role of the government in the private sector -- against the advice of some and in opposition to the lessons of history.
Here's something to think about: You cannot be both an independent person and a government dependent at the same time. That's a contradiction in terms. It can't happen, despite the fact that so many liberals seem to think the US government can construct a "safety net" that is there when we need it but invisible otherwise.
I believe I mentioned in an earlier blog, about a college class I had that was run by two feminists. They advocated that women "overthrow" the oppression of their husbands and substitute it with government support. Like government support doesn't come with any strings or a whole new set of rules to follow. The professors were well-educated and sophisticated people, but so totally blind....
On a personal level, Obama and his fellow travelers may not want to run everyone's life, but they can't provide us all with health care, ensure we drive environmentally-correct cars, work in "green" industries, and all achieve college degrees without taking us by the hand and walking us through all that. Whether we want it or not. They determine what our values will be and then compel us to uphold them one way or another. Whether or not we agree.
There's no wiggle-room in there for "living by your own lights," which was the very basis for establishing the USA 233 years ago.
The alternative to following government directives is.... What do you think?
What do you think government is? It's a method of making decisions for the society as a whole. Any decision the government makes for you has the force of law. And I do mean "force." If you don't agree to uphold the law, you suffer the consequences. Mao Tse-Tung said all government power grows out of the barrel of a gun. He was right. The guns come out when people fail to uphold the law voluntarily.
Government can be a positive force, can keep us from robbing and killing each other, can enforce property rights so that what we each earn we keep; it can create an orderly and peaceful social environment to encourage human growth and achievement.
But by its very nature, government also can be very destructive of individual liberty, private property, and everything else. George Washington once said "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
He was right, too.
Here's something else to consider:
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/107459-0
Yeah, this an opinion column from the Russian newspaper Pravda. This author very clearly sees where we're headed, even if we refuse to. And apparently he's been there and done that. Maybe he knows a little something about it that American liberals are not yet willing to admit?
Maybe people should start paying attention before we're so far gone, there's no way out of it.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
The mantle of Abraham Lincoln
Someone sent me the link to a USA Today story from May 28 about how every household in America now "owes" somewhere in the neighborhood of $660,000+ for the national debt and ongoing cost of governmment. Of course, that's just federal.
In Illinois, the state assembly is voting as we speak to raise the income tax from 3% to 5% because of the traditional, historic incompetence of legislators to live within their means. Our illustrious US Senator Dick(head) Durbin visited the state house to encourage stage legislators to stick the residents of Illinois with the greatest tax burden possible.
"We can make Illinois howl!" Durbin said, paraphrasing Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman and enthusastically punching the air with his fists. (No, really, I just made that part up.)
Meanwhile, a gang of apparently able-bodied self-proclaimed Victims huddled in small pathetic groups around the state house, wearing t-shirts announcing their intention to cry and go homeless unless they can continue to suck the public teat. They're all suffering from that epidemic illness called I-can't-get-up-off-my-lazy-ass-except-to-beg-for-more-freebies.
Gee, I feel for them.
It doesn't occur to state legislators that businesses that are now in Chicago can very easily move to places more business-friendly, like Indiana, and carry on with nary a hitch in their operations. Do they really believe that Illinois residents and businesses are just going to sigh to themselves and say, "Yeah, well, I guess we do owe the government more than we're paying. After all, they do so much for us...."
Remember that micro-economic, supply-side graph, the "L" with the diagonal line connecting the long and short ends -- what costs more you will get less of. Raise taxes once again on citizens, you will have fewer citizens.
I kinda feel sorry for Illinois farmers, who are pretty much stuck here with their acreage. Too bad they can't just move their whole kit-and-kaboodle to Iowa or someplace that's more human-friendly. Pretty soon, they'll be the only people left to tax.
On a more positive note, yet another show -- this one on MSNBC, no less -- told the story of a group of homeless teens in California who were venturing to Arcata, California, to carry out some kind of plan to make a big killing selling dope. So I guess the entrepreneurial, innovative American spirit still resides within them, even if it's left the vast middle class of qualified voters.
Where does this end?
I may start practicing injured expressions and a limp to get myself on the gravy train. I just don't see much point in working anymore. Being an independent contractor, my taxes aren't automatically withheld... I see every goddamn penny that goes to government, and have to go out and drum up business for payments that go strictly to one level of government or another. It's getting to be that I spend more than half my time just to fund socialism -- something I object to on moral and other grounds. In the truest sense, this is slave labor.
So this is how Barack Obama and his cohorts have donned the infamous "mantle of Abraham Lincoln": Where Lincoln ended slavery, they have resurrected it. They believe they've made it "fair" though -- we are all slaves, regardless of race, religion, gender, age, or national origin.
I feel like I'm being invited to watch Marie Antoinette eat breakfast. (see the blog for 5/12, An instructive historical anecdote.)
And it occurred to me, watching the local ABC-TV affiliate report on our incompetent State Assembly, that raising taxes is simply the line of least resistance for these assholes in government. They don't want to go line-by-line through the state budget and figure out what doesn't work. They have no idea what works or doesn't. They have no idea which state-funded projects to cut. They don't want to take the time or invest the effort in finding out. They don't want some fat-cat contractor parking his limo in front of their sorry local office and reminding them that that $5,000 they contributed to the election campaign didn't come without strings. Raising taxes to pay for all this bullshit is just the easiest thing for legislators to do. It protects them from thinking.
Watched part of George Stephanopoulos' Sunday show -- maybe last week? (All this political crap is becoming just a blur....) E.J. Dionne suggested that California's problem is that the citizens passed a referendum that made it very difficult to increases taxes in California. To his credit, George Will kinda looked surprised and bemused at this, almost like he was ready to burst out laughing.
Yeah, what a hoot! And Dionne's is a typically liberal perspective. Let's never consider spending cuts. Let's just make it easier to raise taxes.
But you know what? I'm tapped out. I've been cashing in my IRAs over recent months partly to preserve their value in anticipation of the massive inflation coming our way, mostly because it's the only way I've been able to pay my mortgage. Once again, thanks to incompetent government mismanagement of the economy, work is getting harder to find. And the policies they're putting into place now will only make it harder.
What really ticks me off, though, is that my fellow citizens actually voted for the bozos who've been actively working to 1.) annihiliate our liberty, and 2.) wipe out any hope of material prosperity in the US.
They got exactly what they voted for. Obama is working very hard to deliver on all of his promises, even if he kills us. So who are the biggest morons in this scenario?
In Illinois, the state assembly is voting as we speak to raise the income tax from 3% to 5% because of the traditional, historic incompetence of legislators to live within their means. Our illustrious US Senator Dick(head) Durbin visited the state house to encourage stage legislators to stick the residents of Illinois with the greatest tax burden possible.
"We can make Illinois howl!" Durbin said, paraphrasing Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman and enthusastically punching the air with his fists. (No, really, I just made that part up.)
Meanwhile, a gang of apparently able-bodied self-proclaimed Victims huddled in small pathetic groups around the state house, wearing t-shirts announcing their intention to cry and go homeless unless they can continue to suck the public teat. They're all suffering from that epidemic illness called I-can't-get-up-off-my-lazy-ass-except-to-beg-for-more-freebies.
Gee, I feel for them.
It doesn't occur to state legislators that businesses that are now in Chicago can very easily move to places more business-friendly, like Indiana, and carry on with nary a hitch in their operations. Do they really believe that Illinois residents and businesses are just going to sigh to themselves and say, "Yeah, well, I guess we do owe the government more than we're paying. After all, they do so much for us...."
Remember that micro-economic, supply-side graph, the "L" with the diagonal line connecting the long and short ends -- what costs more you will get less of. Raise taxes once again on citizens, you will have fewer citizens.
I kinda feel sorry for Illinois farmers, who are pretty much stuck here with their acreage. Too bad they can't just move their whole kit-and-kaboodle to Iowa or someplace that's more human-friendly. Pretty soon, they'll be the only people left to tax.
On a more positive note, yet another show -- this one on MSNBC, no less -- told the story of a group of homeless teens in California who were venturing to Arcata, California, to carry out some kind of plan to make a big killing selling dope. So I guess the entrepreneurial, innovative American spirit still resides within them, even if it's left the vast middle class of qualified voters.
Where does this end?
I may start practicing injured expressions and a limp to get myself on the gravy train. I just don't see much point in working anymore. Being an independent contractor, my taxes aren't automatically withheld... I see every goddamn penny that goes to government, and have to go out and drum up business for payments that go strictly to one level of government or another. It's getting to be that I spend more than half my time just to fund socialism -- something I object to on moral and other grounds. In the truest sense, this is slave labor.
So this is how Barack Obama and his cohorts have donned the infamous "mantle of Abraham Lincoln": Where Lincoln ended slavery, they have resurrected it. They believe they've made it "fair" though -- we are all slaves, regardless of race, religion, gender, age, or national origin.
I feel like I'm being invited to watch Marie Antoinette eat breakfast. (see the blog for 5/12, An instructive historical anecdote.)
And it occurred to me, watching the local ABC-TV affiliate report on our incompetent State Assembly, that raising taxes is simply the line of least resistance for these assholes in government. They don't want to go line-by-line through the state budget and figure out what doesn't work. They have no idea what works or doesn't. They have no idea which state-funded projects to cut. They don't want to take the time or invest the effort in finding out. They don't want some fat-cat contractor parking his limo in front of their sorry local office and reminding them that that $5,000 they contributed to the election campaign didn't come without strings. Raising taxes to pay for all this bullshit is just the easiest thing for legislators to do. It protects them from thinking.
Watched part of George Stephanopoulos' Sunday show -- maybe last week? (All this political crap is becoming just a blur....) E.J. Dionne suggested that California's problem is that the citizens passed a referendum that made it very difficult to increases taxes in California. To his credit, George Will kinda looked surprised and bemused at this, almost like he was ready to burst out laughing.
Yeah, what a hoot! And Dionne's is a typically liberal perspective. Let's never consider spending cuts. Let's just make it easier to raise taxes.
But you know what? I'm tapped out. I've been cashing in my IRAs over recent months partly to preserve their value in anticipation of the massive inflation coming our way, mostly because it's the only way I've been able to pay my mortgage. Once again, thanks to incompetent government mismanagement of the economy, work is getting harder to find. And the policies they're putting into place now will only make it harder.
What really ticks me off, though, is that my fellow citizens actually voted for the bozos who've been actively working to 1.) annihiliate our liberty, and 2.) wipe out any hope of material prosperity in the US.
They got exactly what they voted for. Obama is working very hard to deliver on all of his promises, even if he kills us. So who are the biggest morons in this scenario?
Friday, May 29, 2009
Race to the bottom
Given all the hoopla over Sotomayor's nomination for the Supreme Court, it occurs to me that I haven't talked about racism on this blog.
Well, despite my sympathy with the Tea Party crowd and Janine Garafalo's irrational delusions, I'm not a racist. I have been accused of it fairly recently, though, mainly because I've always opposed Barack Obama as president. However, to my way of thinking, the fact that he's a socialist is such a huge turn-off I never got beyond it. After looking at his policies, his color comes in a sorry last as something to think about.
I didn't vote for McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, or Clinton, either. They were white.
I don't really believe, deep in my heart, that there are any significant differences between blacks, whites, asians, Hispanics (are they a different race or only a different language group?) or southsea islanders -- or whatever the politically correct subscriber groups are, per the federal government. When asked for my race, I usually write down "human race." That's all anyone needs to know. Anything else isn't anyone's business.
Cultural differences do exist, but this is learned behavior, not based on physiology. Like Germans raised in the US have different attitudes from Germans raised in Germany, or in Brazil or anyplace else. Skin color doesn't really matter.
I knew a couple of Africans in college and they had different approaches and perspectives than most American blacks I know. One Nigerian woman kept telling the Americans that once we graduated, we should go to Nigeria because everyone has a college degree in America, but in Nigeria, we'd really stand out and could get all the good jobs.
I don't believe social divisions are based on race so much as they are based on whether or not a person actively works to adopt a certain set of characteristics, attitudes, etc., that he or she assigns to a particular group. Like if you believe Group X are over-achievers, and you class yourself in that group, you will probably be an over-achiever. If you sincerely believe you haven't got a chance for a job because you're black, Hispanic, or for any other reason, you probably won't get that job.
I was discriminated against once because I'm caucasian. I applied for a job at a Chicago publishing company, went for the interview, and was told frankly that the company really would prefer a black employee. OK. Funny, it never even occurred to me to file a complaint with the OEO. No hard feelings, either. It's their company, they can hire whomever they want for whatever reason they want. In fact, I half-suspected the inteviewer only told me that to be nice to me, and that I really just wasn't qualified for the job.
In contrast to real race issues, I tend to lump the perennially self-pitying along with the merely lazy and/or criminal into a distinct cultural group called "Victims," regardless of their age, race, religion, or nation of origin. These are people who always have good reasons for failing or for not even trying. They are often also alcoholics or have strange and debilitating addictions or one kind or another, and tend to develop the symptoms of whatever ambiguous mental or physical illness was recently discussed on some TV show. They volunteer for this role, the same way people volunteer to be fire fighters or mothers. At some point, personal choice is involved.
It's even hard to argue a case for ignorance anymore, as in: "He was raised like that. He just doesn't know any better."
Here we all are, sociologists and psychologists actively trying to measure the impact of being relentlessly bombarded by information in American society, and some people just don't know any better. Oh well, maybe their parents locked them in the basement until they were 35. I suppose that could happen.
Eddie Murphy did this bit on "Saturday Night Live" one time where he dressed up very Brooks Brothers and went out in "white face" makeup. He stopped at a news stand and picked up a newspaper, left money on the counter. The news seller looked at him with surprise and pushed the coins back, saying, "We don't charge white people for that." He stopped to get a shoe shine, same thing. It was a lot funnier than I'm presenting it... One reason Eddie Murphy makes a whole lot more money than I do.
Anyway, I think what Murphy was getting at in this sketch is that the supposed privileges of being white in America are very often wildly exaggerated, or are almost entirely non-existent, except in the oratory of people like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson and others who exploit this kind of thing for political and other kinds of gain. Playing the race card, you know. Or the Democrats' class warfare.
And it's easy for a bunch of snot-nosed punks to behave in a totally obnoxious way and when people object, to claim everyone hates them because of their color, their accent, or whatever. No.... really.... it's your rude and insulting behavior.
Which brings us to Sotomayor. In regard to the New Haven, CT, fire fighters.... Apparently New Haven had hired some professional organization to develop a race-neutral civil service exam to determine who would get promoted to lieutenant. The high scorers were all white except for one Hispanic. No blacks -- or anyone of any other color, I guess -- had test scores that would warrant their promotion. So rather than promoting only whites and one Hispanic, New Haven threw the whole thing out. No one got a promotion.
One of the white fire fighters, Ricci, filed a civil rights suit. (Actually, his name sounds Italian. Shouldn't he be considered Mediterranean or something? Or should we assume he's mafioso?) The case wound its way to the Court of Appeals, where Sotomayor reviewed it and threw it out. That is, she determined that it wasn't worthy of review and the Court of Appeals wouldn't hear arguments about it. The decision of the preceding court stood, and that court had backed the City of New Haven.
Other Appeals judges, including another Hispanic, took a second look at the case and disagreed. The case is now in front of the US Supreme Court. Sotomayor won't hear it even if she joins the Supremes. The case will be disposed of before she's sworn in.
Anyway, hearing about this struck me that that's exactly what happened in Dred Scott in the 1850s. Scott was a slave who'd lived most of his life in free states because that's where his owner had a business and lived. Scott petitioned for emancipation because he'd spent so many years in free states where slavery was illegal. (An owner from a slave state could bring slave into a free state temporarily, and the slave remained a slave. Scott's case was based on his having spent much more time in free states than in slave states.)
Scott actually won his case in the lower courts, but the decision was reversed on appeal. Scott petitioned for a hearing in the Supreme Court. Justice Taney reviewed the case and threw it out -- that is, refused to let it be tried in the Supreme Court. Taney's reason (and other judges dissented) was that Scott was a slave, slaves had no constitutional rights, so Scott had no right to sue anyone. So the decision of the last court held -- Scott could not be emancipated. The Dred Scott case set the precedent that in the US, if you were born in slavery, you could never be a citizen, not even if you were free.
Sotomayor did the same thing -- just refused to hear the case. It's really sort of a cowardly act, a way for a judge to sweep a matter under the carpet and refuse to think about it. It's a way to avoid controversy and/or attaching something to your reputation that you don't want attached.
Apart from cowardice, the effect of Sotomayor's actions in this particular case seem to indicate her belief that white people can't be discriminated against.
How could whites suffer discrimination? According to the Victim myth, white people own everything. White people get everything free. White people are invincible and, apparently because they're superhuman, they don't need the protection of the law -- not the same way Victims do. And apparently Sotomayor's background as a Victim, or overcoming her Victimhood, has made her actually more superhuman than even white people. In a separate statement, she talks about "the wisdom and richness of the experiences" of Hispanic women giving them the ability to make better judgments than white men.
So maybe we should just do away with the expense of paying legislators and just let Sotomayor make up the law as she goes along, based on the wisdom and richness of her experiences.
OMG, another omnipotent Messiah in this administration? We seem to be collecting a regular pantheon in Washington.
Well, despite my sympathy with the Tea Party crowd and Janine Garafalo's irrational delusions, I'm not a racist. I have been accused of it fairly recently, though, mainly because I've always opposed Barack Obama as president. However, to my way of thinking, the fact that he's a socialist is such a huge turn-off I never got beyond it. After looking at his policies, his color comes in a sorry last as something to think about.
I didn't vote for McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, or Clinton, either. They were white.
I don't really believe, deep in my heart, that there are any significant differences between blacks, whites, asians, Hispanics (are they a different race or only a different language group?) or southsea islanders -- or whatever the politically correct subscriber groups are, per the federal government. When asked for my race, I usually write down "human race." That's all anyone needs to know. Anything else isn't anyone's business.
Cultural differences do exist, but this is learned behavior, not based on physiology. Like Germans raised in the US have different attitudes from Germans raised in Germany, or in Brazil or anyplace else. Skin color doesn't really matter.
I knew a couple of Africans in college and they had different approaches and perspectives than most American blacks I know. One Nigerian woman kept telling the Americans that once we graduated, we should go to Nigeria because everyone has a college degree in America, but in Nigeria, we'd really stand out and could get all the good jobs.
I don't believe social divisions are based on race so much as they are based on whether or not a person actively works to adopt a certain set of characteristics, attitudes, etc., that he or she assigns to a particular group. Like if you believe Group X are over-achievers, and you class yourself in that group, you will probably be an over-achiever. If you sincerely believe you haven't got a chance for a job because you're black, Hispanic, or for any other reason, you probably won't get that job.
I was discriminated against once because I'm caucasian. I applied for a job at a Chicago publishing company, went for the interview, and was told frankly that the company really would prefer a black employee. OK. Funny, it never even occurred to me to file a complaint with the OEO. No hard feelings, either. It's their company, they can hire whomever they want for whatever reason they want. In fact, I half-suspected the inteviewer only told me that to be nice to me, and that I really just wasn't qualified for the job.
In contrast to real race issues, I tend to lump the perennially self-pitying along with the merely lazy and/or criminal into a distinct cultural group called "Victims," regardless of their age, race, religion, or nation of origin. These are people who always have good reasons for failing or for not even trying. They are often also alcoholics or have strange and debilitating addictions or one kind or another, and tend to develop the symptoms of whatever ambiguous mental or physical illness was recently discussed on some TV show. They volunteer for this role, the same way people volunteer to be fire fighters or mothers. At some point, personal choice is involved.
It's even hard to argue a case for ignorance anymore, as in: "He was raised like that. He just doesn't know any better."
Here we all are, sociologists and psychologists actively trying to measure the impact of being relentlessly bombarded by information in American society, and some people just don't know any better. Oh well, maybe their parents locked them in the basement until they were 35. I suppose that could happen.
Eddie Murphy did this bit on "Saturday Night Live" one time where he dressed up very Brooks Brothers and went out in "white face" makeup. He stopped at a news stand and picked up a newspaper, left money on the counter. The news seller looked at him with surprise and pushed the coins back, saying, "We don't charge white people for that." He stopped to get a shoe shine, same thing. It was a lot funnier than I'm presenting it... One reason Eddie Murphy makes a whole lot more money than I do.
Anyway, I think what Murphy was getting at in this sketch is that the supposed privileges of being white in America are very often wildly exaggerated, or are almost entirely non-existent, except in the oratory of people like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson and others who exploit this kind of thing for political and other kinds of gain. Playing the race card, you know. Or the Democrats' class warfare.
And it's easy for a bunch of snot-nosed punks to behave in a totally obnoxious way and when people object, to claim everyone hates them because of their color, their accent, or whatever. No.... really.... it's your rude and insulting behavior.
Which brings us to Sotomayor. In regard to the New Haven, CT, fire fighters.... Apparently New Haven had hired some professional organization to develop a race-neutral civil service exam to determine who would get promoted to lieutenant. The high scorers were all white except for one Hispanic. No blacks -- or anyone of any other color, I guess -- had test scores that would warrant their promotion. So rather than promoting only whites and one Hispanic, New Haven threw the whole thing out. No one got a promotion.
One of the white fire fighters, Ricci, filed a civil rights suit. (Actually, his name sounds Italian. Shouldn't he be considered Mediterranean or something? Or should we assume he's mafioso?) The case wound its way to the Court of Appeals, where Sotomayor reviewed it and threw it out. That is, she determined that it wasn't worthy of review and the Court of Appeals wouldn't hear arguments about it. The decision of the preceding court stood, and that court had backed the City of New Haven.
Other Appeals judges, including another Hispanic, took a second look at the case and disagreed. The case is now in front of the US Supreme Court. Sotomayor won't hear it even if she joins the Supremes. The case will be disposed of before she's sworn in.
Anyway, hearing about this struck me that that's exactly what happened in Dred Scott in the 1850s. Scott was a slave who'd lived most of his life in free states because that's where his owner had a business and lived. Scott petitioned for emancipation because he'd spent so many years in free states where slavery was illegal. (An owner from a slave state could bring slave into a free state temporarily, and the slave remained a slave. Scott's case was based on his having spent much more time in free states than in slave states.)
Scott actually won his case in the lower courts, but the decision was reversed on appeal. Scott petitioned for a hearing in the Supreme Court. Justice Taney reviewed the case and threw it out -- that is, refused to let it be tried in the Supreme Court. Taney's reason (and other judges dissented) was that Scott was a slave, slaves had no constitutional rights, so Scott had no right to sue anyone. So the decision of the last court held -- Scott could not be emancipated. The Dred Scott case set the precedent that in the US, if you were born in slavery, you could never be a citizen, not even if you were free.
Sotomayor did the same thing -- just refused to hear the case. It's really sort of a cowardly act, a way for a judge to sweep a matter under the carpet and refuse to think about it. It's a way to avoid controversy and/or attaching something to your reputation that you don't want attached.
Apart from cowardice, the effect of Sotomayor's actions in this particular case seem to indicate her belief that white people can't be discriminated against.
How could whites suffer discrimination? According to the Victim myth, white people own everything. White people get everything free. White people are invincible and, apparently because they're superhuman, they don't need the protection of the law -- not the same way Victims do. And apparently Sotomayor's background as a Victim, or overcoming her Victimhood, has made her actually more superhuman than even white people. In a separate statement, she talks about "the wisdom and richness of the experiences" of Hispanic women giving them the ability to make better judgments than white men.
So maybe we should just do away with the expense of paying legislators and just let Sotomayor make up the law as she goes along, based on the wisdom and richness of her experiences.
OMG, another omnipotent Messiah in this administration? We seem to be collecting a regular pantheon in Washington.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Macro-fiction
Think I mentioned before that I question the value of making decisions for the whole nation based on the "macro" perspective. Macro means looking at the nation as a whole, the economy as a whole, health care spending as a whole, etc. It's an extremely useful aggregate for scholars or historians (sometimes) but I'm not so sure it's useful for developing policy.
For example, wasn't it 2005 that Katrina hit? So looking at data from that year and ignoring everything else, you'd have to conclude that Americans spend one hell of a lot of money on repairing water damage. Should we mount a socialist program for that?
The same principle applies to health care and insurance. Of course, insurance adjusters and statisticians have finely-sliced demographics on which groups get the most money and benefits, at what age, and why -- apparently more money is spent on people in the last years of their lives than at any other time.
Surprise, surprise. People get sick, they may recover in part and stagger along for a time, and then they die. I don't think we even need insurance adjusters to figure that out.
The funny thing is, Obama seems to be looking at these high-cost groups in order to find some way to reduce what's spent on them.... apparently so he can offer this money to another group that has less use for it. This way, the Macro statistics on socialized medicine will look better.
Yeah. Kill all the sick people. That's a sure way of reducing health care costs. And that is fundamentally what Obama has planned.
Anyway, the macro view is, as I said, very useful for scholars as a means of number-crunching or something. But it isn't a useful or practical way of developing a general policy. You just can't lump people all together. You end up eliminating the cost of cancer treatments for a 70-year-old woman in order to guarantee insurance to a 24-year-old gymnast who probably has very little use for it. It looks good on the books, but it isn't a practical or reasonable way to provide health care. You're only taking it away from the people who need it.
And I guarantee, if health care becomes "free," suddenly many more people will believe they need it. Rather than sitting in the bathroom with the shower going hot, making steam, to break up chest congestion from a cold, people will be lining up at the doctor's office, demanding their fair share of attention and antibiotics. That part is entirely predictable.
And this applies to not only health care, but to everything else as well.
Anyone remember a while back when the federal government for some reason had a huge inventory of cheese? Apparently they'd bought tons of excess cheese from US dairies to support the price of cheese in the supermarket. The government floated the idea of redistributing this cheese to people who were getting welfare and food stamps in place of some of their cash benefits.
I don't know, although the scheme does seem convenient, is this a plan that works? People are hungry, so let them eat cheese? What if, instead of cheese, the government had purchased an excess of pine tar to support that industry? Would the feds be passing out barrels of pine tar and a booklet of recipes for making it palatable?
That's the trouble with the macro view.
And wouldn't it be better to let the dairies suffer a bad year and learn how much cheese to make instead of supporting their dreams of huge cheese demand? After all, the time and money they invested in making cheese might have been better spent making sour cream or yogurt. They should know that and make the adjustment.
The only way you can even try to get macro economic management to work is to take complete control of everything. And heaven knows, that doesn't work. Like, would there be some kind of Standing Fashion Committee in congress, determining what kind of shoes should be made in the US? The way congress operates, by the time they reached a decision, they'd have shoe factories making sandals in December and boots in April. That's pretty much the way it worked out in the USSR. But maybe the Commissars did manage to balance their books.
I doubt it, though. I knew some Russian Jews who were allowed to leave the USSR way back in the 1970s -- before the USSR collapsed -- and what I heard from them was that the black market was pretty much a way of life. No one even believed there was anything wrong with it. You had to cheat the system just to survive.
One of these Russians, actually he was Ukrainian, told me that somehow about three-quarters of all the produce raised in the Ukraine managed to fall off the truck before it reached Moscow. No one could figure it out.
And just to add... I had both macro and micro economics in college. In the micro class, one of the first things we learned was this graph of an apparently cast-in-stone principle. Picture a graph, more or less an "L" shape. Now draw a diagonal line from the top of the tall stem to the end of the short base. This illustrates what happens to nearly any kind of enterprise when you raise prices. That is, you'll make more money on fewer goods. Net gain -- zippo. Except you do stand to lose customers long term.
That's a given. Cast in stone.
Think about that in terms of tax increases.... on anything. The only way you can get around that kind of result is if you put a gun to the buyer's head and force him to pay the higher price. Or put a gun to the producer's head and force him to continue to produce. Etc.
This is another way of explaining why socialism doesn't work.
For example, wasn't it 2005 that Katrina hit? So looking at data from that year and ignoring everything else, you'd have to conclude that Americans spend one hell of a lot of money on repairing water damage. Should we mount a socialist program for that?
The same principle applies to health care and insurance. Of course, insurance adjusters and statisticians have finely-sliced demographics on which groups get the most money and benefits, at what age, and why -- apparently more money is spent on people in the last years of their lives than at any other time.
Surprise, surprise. People get sick, they may recover in part and stagger along for a time, and then they die. I don't think we even need insurance adjusters to figure that out.
The funny thing is, Obama seems to be looking at these high-cost groups in order to find some way to reduce what's spent on them.... apparently so he can offer this money to another group that has less use for it. This way, the Macro statistics on socialized medicine will look better.
Yeah. Kill all the sick people. That's a sure way of reducing health care costs. And that is fundamentally what Obama has planned.
Anyway, the macro view is, as I said, very useful for scholars as a means of number-crunching or something. But it isn't a useful or practical way of developing a general policy. You just can't lump people all together. You end up eliminating the cost of cancer treatments for a 70-year-old woman in order to guarantee insurance to a 24-year-old gymnast who probably has very little use for it. It looks good on the books, but it isn't a practical or reasonable way to provide health care. You're only taking it away from the people who need it.
And I guarantee, if health care becomes "free," suddenly many more people will believe they need it. Rather than sitting in the bathroom with the shower going hot, making steam, to break up chest congestion from a cold, people will be lining up at the doctor's office, demanding their fair share of attention and antibiotics. That part is entirely predictable.
And this applies to not only health care, but to everything else as well.
Anyone remember a while back when the federal government for some reason had a huge inventory of cheese? Apparently they'd bought tons of excess cheese from US dairies to support the price of cheese in the supermarket. The government floated the idea of redistributing this cheese to people who were getting welfare and food stamps in place of some of their cash benefits.
I don't know, although the scheme does seem convenient, is this a plan that works? People are hungry, so let them eat cheese? What if, instead of cheese, the government had purchased an excess of pine tar to support that industry? Would the feds be passing out barrels of pine tar and a booklet of recipes for making it palatable?
That's the trouble with the macro view.
And wouldn't it be better to let the dairies suffer a bad year and learn how much cheese to make instead of supporting their dreams of huge cheese demand? After all, the time and money they invested in making cheese might have been better spent making sour cream or yogurt. They should know that and make the adjustment.
The only way you can even try to get macro economic management to work is to take complete control of everything. And heaven knows, that doesn't work. Like, would there be some kind of Standing Fashion Committee in congress, determining what kind of shoes should be made in the US? The way congress operates, by the time they reached a decision, they'd have shoe factories making sandals in December and boots in April. That's pretty much the way it worked out in the USSR. But maybe the Commissars did manage to balance their books.
I doubt it, though. I knew some Russian Jews who were allowed to leave the USSR way back in the 1970s -- before the USSR collapsed -- and what I heard from them was that the black market was pretty much a way of life. No one even believed there was anything wrong with it. You had to cheat the system just to survive.
One of these Russians, actually he was Ukrainian, told me that somehow about three-quarters of all the produce raised in the Ukraine managed to fall off the truck before it reached Moscow. No one could figure it out.
And just to add... I had both macro and micro economics in college. In the micro class, one of the first things we learned was this graph of an apparently cast-in-stone principle. Picture a graph, more or less an "L" shape. Now draw a diagonal line from the top of the tall stem to the end of the short base. This illustrates what happens to nearly any kind of enterprise when you raise prices. That is, you'll make more money on fewer goods. Net gain -- zippo. Except you do stand to lose customers long term.
That's a given. Cast in stone.
Think about that in terms of tax increases.... on anything. The only way you can get around that kind of result is if you put a gun to the buyer's head and force him to pay the higher price. Or put a gun to the producer's head and force him to continue to produce. Etc.
This is another way of explaining why socialism doesn't work.
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