[lit-ideas] Re: The Welfare State vs the Individual
- From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 16:34:54 +0900
Lawrence,
You have provided a textbook example of swallowing right-wing talking
points whole.
So you are willing to put up with less liberty if Welfare entitlements are
more extended and pervasive.
Let's see now, I live in a nation with national health care and strict
gun and drug laws. So my recent prostate exam (clean bill of health by
the way) cost me less than US$30, and while we're not as tough and
agile as we used to be, my wife and I feel safe walking virtually
anywhere in the city where we live. Freedom of speech, assembly,
guarantees against unlawful search and seizure, no one prying into our
religious or sexual preferences, the right to own property and start a
business and enjoy a tax regime that is far more easy on the small
proprietor than the IRS insanity our friends in the U.S.A.
endure...got all that. Looks to me like you've created a straw man or
know little about what you're talking about.
Consider the idea of people being able to invest their social security money
(liberty) being opposed by welfare oriented politicians (order). What about
being able to choose; so that those who won't to invest their money can, but
those who don't have to? The welfare contingent opposed that as well. They
don't trust ordinary people to do the right thing. They don't want them to
have the liberty to make that sort of choice because they are higher up the
welfare hierarchy and know what is best for the common people. This is an
example but I don't think it is an unfair example.
The main difference is that some of us have enough to invest and
financial advisors to help us make sound decisions (like the one that
put me into that hedge fund that tripled in value I mentioned). The
number of people I know who know enough to play the markets on their
own and enjoy actually doing so is relatively small. That's why,
before Social Security, the majority of old folks lived below the
poverty line. Social Security addresses that issue and has done so
quite successfully.
Now as to American poverty, I have been reading lately about how poorly the
European countries are doing economically compared to America, but
guaranteeing more entitlements their over-all economy doesn't fair as well
as America's. Thus, the unemployment rate is consistently better than the
European unemployment rate. I have done most of my research on France;
which rarely has an unemployment rate below 10%, but Europe as a whole has a
worse unemployment rate. I don't recall how well Sweden, Denmark & Norway
compare to the U.S. The current unemployment rate in the U.S. is about 4.5%
which is considered full employment for some reason I can't recall.
Oh yes, the gross indicators for the U.S. economy are rising,
including the GINI coefficient that measures the spread between the
highest and lowest incomes. Some of us are doing very well, indeed.
But the median income of ordinary American workers is falling in real
terms, over 40 million of us have no health insurance, too many kids
are growing up in bad third-world conditions. The rich are getting
richer and the poor? They're screwed.
This isn't to say that Europe doesn't have problems. But I've traveled
enough to know that life there can be very pleasant. You rant about
liberty, but a Frenchman with six weeks vacation a year quite properly
thinks that his American counterpart chained to his ratrace job is a
slave without the job security.
The agencies that actually track poverty don't consider the relatively poor
in the U.S. to fit into their statistics. Our GDP per person was the
highest in the world except for a couple of small countries – I think
Luxembourg was one – can't recall the other.
See above. If you organize a society like a basketball league in which
Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls are constantly playing pickup teams, no
doubt about it, the totals scored will be astronomical. But winner
take all is not only nasty....it's boooring. Sports leagues do it
right, giving losing teams the first draft picks to keep the game
interesting. (An estate tax that prevents the endless perpetuation of
great fortunes serves much the same function.)
What economists are seeing is that our increased liberty encourages
entrepreneurs more than in nations where the emphasis is upon entitlement.
Thus, other nations, even European nations, have difficulty competing with
us.
Competing with who? Last time I looked Ford and GM were near
bankruptcy while Toyota and Honda, home-based in one of those
less-free-but-a-bit-more-caring societies you can't seem to get your
head around are doing real well. China and India are already
graduating more engineers every year than we are, have plenty of
entrepreneurs and plenty of cheap labor, too. And you'd be surprised
how many "American" companies turn out to be owned lock, stock and
barrel by, oh dear, Europeans? (Food Lion, for example, is a Belgian
company.)
Now we do have some enclaves here and there where people have difficulty
getting off welfare and getting jobs, but that situation is worse in Europe
especially among the immigrants (read Muslim immigrants). In some European
cities above 40% of the immigrant men of working age are unemployed.
This bit is, unfortunately, true. Systems in which the majority are
guaranteed jobs and comfortable retirements don't cope well with
newcomers, either their own young or immigrants, and especially with
immigrants.
All evidence points to increased economic liberty being better at providing
higher percentages of GDP per person than more oversight and guaranteed
entitlements enabled by increased taxes.
But, as indicated above, higher GDP per capita doesn't mean shit if
GDP distribution is radically unequal. In the words of that
lefto-pinko-doesn't-know-what-he's-talking-about world-famous
financial commentator Lou Dobbs: "Profit doesn't equal prosperity."
I think we're going to have to move you closer to the order end of the
spectrum and me closer to the liberty end.
Me, I'd call it the civilized end and the war of all against all.
John
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
US CITIZEN ABROAD?
THROW THE RASCALS OUT!
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