Just curious what your views of overpopulation are.
Let’s not talk crazy, here. 
As for things that Bush has done right, I suppose you could argue that he’s given hope and inspiration to C-Average students from wealthy families.
Sam, I respect the thought and effort you put into most of your posts, even when I disagree. I have a question about this, though. You say
Now I have problems with multiple parts of that declaration, but I’ll stick with your objection to government telling us “where our kids must be educated”.
Since the thread is about Bush and much of it deals with the U.S., I’ll assume that your statement about education has relevance to the U.S.
It strikes me that Americans can send their kids to school most anywhere there are qualified teachers, and to home-school in myriad situations. So I’ll further assume that your statement has to do with support for school vouchers, and opposition to the idea that tax money for public education should be devoted to public schools. A little further on, you said this:
So, there’s the impression you believe that it’s unfair for parents not to get tax dollars to send their kids to private schools they cannot currently afford, but at the same time you believe in personal responsibility and the “freedom to fail”, i.e. the freedom to fail to make enough money to afford private schools.
If I am misstating your beliefs, let me know…but I see a basic conflict here.
Jackmanni: I was thinking of opposition to vouchers as well as things like forced busing (not so much an issue any more). But you’re right, this is the weakest part of my list, especially when talking about George Bush - after all, he’s increased funding for the Department of Education by 43% since he came into office. And I’ll also agree with you that the educational system in the U.S. is nowhere near as restrictive as some Libertarians would have you believe. The main problem is that the middle class cannot really afford private schooling while still paying public school taxes. In addition, public education has crowded a lot of private education out competition for low-income and middle income kids, leaving expensive private prep schools and the like. That gives the illusion that private schooling must be very expensive, which I don’t believe to be the case. But we’ll never know, because we’ll always have a large public education system.
But really, I wasn’t talking about specific U.S. policy - My little rant there was more of a statement of general principles.
Well, since the education system is totally distorted by a huge government monopoly, I don’t see the contradiction.
But I was thinking more about income equalization in general - heavy taxes if you succeed, and a strong social safety net if you don’t. This removes the incentive to excel, and the risk of failure. The U.S. still retains the most competitive yet risky environment in the first world, which in my opinion is why it does so well economically.
If you want to see a perfect natural experiment to illustrate what I’m talking about, compare and contrast Atlantic Canada with its counterpart in the northeastern U.S. In Canada, our Atlantic provinces have high unemployment, high rates of welfare, and a very dissatisfied population. Our population never learned to diversify away from seasonal fishing, because the government supported them in the off-season. In Maine, you find a much, much healthier economy that is diversified, where the fishermen have developed winter industries, with lots of entrepreneurship, etc. The Canadians receive major government support - the Maine fishermen, almost none. The Canadians are much more dissatisfied in spite of that (or actually, because of it).
It’s a perfect example of what goes wrong when government protects you from all hardship - you built a culture of dependency. You can see the same thing in inner cities, on native reservations, and other areas where there is extensive government welfare. You can see it today in Europe. Trash your wealthy classes enough, burden them with high enough taxes, and they’lll either flee the country or stop striving to achieve. Protect the people from bad decisions with overly generous welfare and unemployment protection, and you get people who don’t care about their jobs. Give them full childcare benefits, and they have more children and don’t look after them.
Sam Stone, I find it extremely offensive that you hold out Guantanamo Bay as one of the things that Bush deserves credit for/has done right. Guantanamo is a legal black hole, unprecedented in US history, where captives are denied the most basic civil rights that most of us happily take for granted. That people are held there by the US government without charge and without access to families, friends, legal advice/representation or courts is an utter outrage and an affront to even the most basic concept of natural justice. And you have the temerity to call yourself a civil libertarian! Unbelievable! Give us a break.
Guantanamo is a very difficult solution to a very difficult problem. In a conventional war you can take prisoners of war and release them when hostlities end, because they are just instruments of their government. End the war, and they no longer want to hurt you.
With massed terrorist organizations, this is not true. We have a quandary in dealing with them. They are at war with you. Release them, and they’ll just try to kill you again.
The legal system isn’t quite up to speed on this, in my opinion. Guantanamo is the temporary solution until we sort this out. And from what I understand, the prisoners there are treated very well.
If you’ve got a better solution, I’d like to hear it. Cause I’d like a better one too.
No, it doesn’t. It lowers the incentive to succeed monetarily and lowers the a variety of risks, not all of them of “failure.” E.g., you could lose your job because you get really sick, not just because you get fired.
Yeah, the safety net sucks and probably hurts development as much as helps it. I intend to become and entrepreneur in the next several years, but I don’t know what I’m going to do about health insurance. Here in Japan it just isn’t an issue. I heard on the news recently that health care benefits cost a company on average $7000, which is also working to depress employment.
I’ll take you at your word, but I’d love to see something to back up that claim of “dissatisfaction.”
In order for this example to have any real teeth, we’d have to get into the nuts and bolts. By the same token, I’m sick of hearing the rhetoric that socialized medicine sucks as a concept because the system in Canada sucks. And Britain. While in fact the systems of France, Germany, and Japan work rather well. Same thing with your example: I have no way of knowing how cause and effect is working in that situation. I know for a fact, however, that our system in the US is not working overall (45M uninsured, etc.).
Right, like that awful culture of dependency in Japan, which has national health insurance and employment insurance. And what government protects its citizens from all hardship. Too much hyperbole in your arguments.
It would be nice to have some facts and numbers. Perhaps you’d like to comment on the effects of Clinton’s welfare initiatives.
You back this up with nothing. I worked for a Japanese company that has a Finnish subsidiary. I visited there. The president of that company makes only about $60k! But he’s no underachiever, and the country itself is beautiful, cultured, and (for all I could see), quite happy. Europe also has countries that are doing poorly. The causality of why one country does well and another doesn’t is a complicated matter.
Ah, but you might also get a system in which people don’t have to care about their jobs excessively. Face it: most people in the world just want a job-job to pay the bills. They are not aiming for a great career. In the US we waste untold resources making kids go to college (i.e., hypercompetition) when that education has little to do with what they eventually will be doing. It’s a waste. Then we put people in a hypercompetitive ratrace that does little to improve GDP. Less competition and more stability would be better for the country and most of its people.
Yeah yeah. Let’s just stick with the current system–it’s workin’ great!
It’s not that everyone who receives benefits become lazier - the changes happen on the margins. Reduce the cost of something, and you’ll get more of it. Reduce the price of risk, and people will take more risks. Reduce the reward for excellence, and you’ll get fewer people going to the effort. Of course there will always be people who are self-motivated and excel regardless, or who raise their kids responsibily. But there are those who are this close to deciding to quit their job because they’re tired of it, and that added amount of UI insurance pushes their decision over the edge.
Any decision about social policy which doesn’t take into account the disincentive effects of various policies is incomplete. You can always argue for something if you only tout the positive effects and ignore the bad stuff. But government brings with it a huge bag O’ bad stuff.
How do you feel about the war on drugs? Good idea? Do you think that enforcement of drug laws just drives up the price of the product, which stimulates more production? Or that if you lower demand the price of the drugs will fall, becoming more attractive? Most people on the left that I know tend to believe this.
If so, why won’t you believe the same mechanism exists for other parts of the marketplace? Why doesn’t it make sense that if you lower the cost of bad decisions you’ll get more of them?
Government subsidies and controls in the market may have positive social benefits which we can discuss, but they always come at a price, which must also be discussed.
Sam:
That’s an interesting turn of phrase, “culture of dependency.” From my experience there is some merit to your characterization, but I also think you tend in these discussions to exaggerate the size and effect of that “culture.”
This is a standard argument from the political right over here, even in Sweden. As a member of EU, Sweden is being forced to introduce so-called “structural changes” in response to the “convergence demands” of EU membership. In essence, “structural changes” are basically reductions in welfare programs – which, by American standards, are incredibly generous. It appears that most economists agree that overly generous welfare payments, early pension benefits, sick leave and so forth do actually act as an economic disincentive.
This is also the case from my personal experience of many people who lived “on the margins” here and sought to drain the system for all it was worth (when I first came to Sweden). However, most of them were young, and they were in a distinct minority. Almost all of them have gone on to gainful employment of one kind or another after a couple of years of blowing around, living off the state.
Your analysis fails to take account of important social factors, in my opinion. There is a disincentive to work connected to the welfare state, but Swedish culture (and German as well, from my experience) also places a high premium on working and supporting oneself. These values derive from a very strong Protestant/ working-class ethic. In Sweden, if you have no job, you have no status. If you have a job, even a menial one, then you also have a modicum of status. These values tend to counterbalance the welfare disincentives, but I’ll grant you that they probably don’t compensate for them completely.
Well, of course, they “flee the country” because there are places where taxes are lower, naturally. That doesn’t say much about what a “morally appropriate” level of wealth taxation should look like, so to speak. I also don’t think the wealthy stop striving to achieve just because of the high taxes: despite taxes there are some enormously wealthy people in Sweden.
I simply disagree with this, and it doesn’t jive with my experiences over here at all (except, possibly, on “the margins”). For the overwhelming majority of working-class Swedes, employment is incredibly important and quitting a job a gut-wrenching decision.
By this logic, Sweden would be overflowing with babies; it would probably be one of the world’s fastest growing countries. Instead, they’ve been dealing with a serious demographic decline. A couple of years ago the Prime Minister was openly encouraging Swedish families to have more children. I kid you not.
I agree. I think we diverge primarily in terms of our cost-benefit analysis. To me, the benefits of some government subsidies are decidedly worth the price. I’m glad that the overwhelming majority of the taxes I pay goes to various social welfare programs and so on, rather than being pumped into the US War Machine. I’m really glad that I was able to take paternity leave (paternity leave!) for almost a full year, and spend that time with my new-born son. Now that I’m back at work, I’m more than willing to bear a heavier tax load so that other fathers can have the same opportunity. I concur that there is a price tag – the high taxes are a drag on consumer demand – but it’s a price I’m willing to pay. YMMV.
Lack of government subsidies and controls also comes with a price, albeit a social price (in some ways a hidden price); and that also must be discussed.
He’s not executive ordering further anti-gun legislation. Nor is he supporting more than the Assault Weapons Ban renewal. Hopefully it won’t make it to his desk.
As much as I trully hate Bush. I would vote for Kerry for dog catcher. Kerry is clearly a greater threat to gun rights.
I would NOT vote for Kerry for dog catcher.
“Will you heal the lepers, Jesus?”
“No. If I heal the lepers, that would create a culture of dependency, and they would have no incentive to avoid leprosy.”
No, I’m against it 100%
It seems that demand for drugs is pretty inelastic, as it was for alcohol. Hence, people prepared to circumvent the law (gangs) get involved. So now you still have the same high levels of drug use, but now more organized crime. Bad deal.
It depends on the elasticity of demand for bad decisions, haw haw! What kind of welfare are we talking about, anyway? I just think we should have national health insurance and a working welfare program (with childcare). Maybe employment insurance. The basics.
Yeah, well, no doubt.
LOL! Jesus should have considered the long-term economic consequences of his mercy…
That is scary that you would compare Jesus Christ to a Socialist Government. Since Jesus did cure the Lepers, you are expecting that the same type of miracles are capable from a government entity. Of course, it doesn’t make sense either, since you are a proclaimed Atheist (like myself), but also love Socialism.
Jesus was a liberal, despite attempts by the Republican zealots to insist otherwise.
Spare a talent for an old ex-leper?
With respect, a very simplistic response, Sam Stone.
When you say “the legal system isn’t quite up to speed on this”, do you mean you wish all those pesky lawyers and (real) civil libertarians would pipe down and stop reminding you of the gross civil rights abuses currently being perpetuated by the Bush government at Guantanamo, how the Bush government is trampling all over centuries-old, fundamental legal rights such as the right to the presumption of innocence and the right to liberty? Defend Guantanamo and you are comfortable with the indefinite detention of a person without charge . Why do you think Guantanamo or its equivalent was not set up in the US? Your government has gone well out of its way to ensure that Guantanama detainees, despite being held by the US government, do not have access to US courts and are denied the rights which your Constitution guarantees to the US’s worst mass murderers. Whether or not they are being “treated well” (yeah, right) is not even close to the issue. If they were treated badly, you wouldn’t be defending it? You’ve already decided the detainees have killing you as a priority, so its hard to imagine you take much comfort from the thought that they are being treated well.
But don’t worry, cos this is “the temporary solution until we sort this out”. Please tell me you are joking. How will “we sort this out”? Sort what out? Surely you are not suggesting that there will be an end to the so-called “war on terror”? That would be when we have caught or killed all of the terrorists around the world, I am guessing. Kind of like the so-called “war on drugs”. One day, we will have caught all the drug dealers and users and they will all be locked up. Then there will be no more drugs and we will have won the “war on drugs”. :rolleyes:
For that matter, how does one differentiate between the “war on terror” and the “war on drugs”? Neither is actually war, of course. By making the self-serving declaration of “war” against terror, the US has handed itself what it (and Sam Stone, among others) would say is a licence to detain terror suspects indefinitely without charge. What I’m wondering is how anyone attempting a defence of this madness might not apply the same logic to the “war on drugs”. If we declare “war” on drugs, why not simply throw all drug crime suspects into Guantanamo and leave them there to rot? They can be classified prisoners of war by reason of the fact that there is a (similarly never-ending) “war on drugs” in progress. You don’t even have to charge them with a crime. Just think of the savings to the US courts and prison system.
Three biggies, lots of small things.
- War on terrorism. He has led us through a dark time and done a good job.
- Tax cuts that restarted the economy.
- Regardless of what the liberals say, I think he has been very straightforward with the American people.
I do disagree with the Medicare plan, and he really, really needs to close off our borders. However, I think the border shutdown is going to happen in his second term. I’m hoping it will, at any rate.
He is not a moron. And I really think you need to look at why you “hate” him. It sounds to me like you have bought into the liberal lies about how he is stupid, he’s just a puppet, he stole the election, etc. It’s time to start thinking for yourself, IMNSHO.
So we are winning this “war” on terroism? Could you cite me two examples?
Tax cuts…economy…2.5 million jobs to go.
Straight forward? Did you find the WMD??? Bushco sure hasn’t.