Psst. Nixon trashed the family farmers in the name of cheap food a generation ago. We really don’t rely on the free market for food production in this country.
I agree. I support full-on socialized insurance because it is maximally portable. Hard to beat that. More personal security for the working man means more personal liberty to strike out on one’s own & be one’s own boss. And the experience of the 1950’s shows us that very high marginal tax rates don’t really hurt the economy the way the tax protestors want us to think.
This has everything to do with it being a new technology.
True in se, but it could be misleading. While Objectivism discourages altruism, it encourages philanthropy. The difference, as Rand painted it, is that altruism is the deflation of one’s self or one’s property (wealth) with no self-interest in mind, while philanthropy brings about the growth of society as a whole. It is viewed as a waste of money, versus an investment (in future economic growth, through education, work training, or what-have-you). This is how Harry Binswanger explained it to me.
In fact, in her book, Atlas Shrugged, there is a scene where an old man — a bum — encountered Dagney Taggert (the protagonist). She sensed in him that he was simply a man who was capable but down on his luck. They had some conversation over dinner, and the ways he comported himself, his demeanor, etc., were all clues to her that all he needed was a hand up.
So she hired him on the spot (he had had railroad experience), let him use her facilities to clean himself up, and then announced to the workers that he was their new boss. And then, to top it all off, she reasoned that a man must have some wealth to have the confidence necessary to do the job she assigned to him, so she gave him a crisp one-hundred dollar bill (at that time, quite a stash). And then she got back on the train and rode away.
There was an excellent thread a few years back which discussed this irony. Summary: Fattening “junk” food is substantially cheaper than lean meat, fresh fruits and vegetables. If you’re extremely poor it’s a matter of survival that the highest calorie per dollar food is the one that gets eaten. Being fat does NOT mean that you’re getting proper nourishment.
Crafter_Man, you ignorant slut! Cell phones are actually quite cheap these days, especially the prepaid ones. And if you’re a homeless beggar and do want to get a job, it’s essential that you have a way for a potential employer to contact you. Foregoing a cell phone isn’t going to help them get off the street and would actually be counterproductive.
How many enterprising Americans have been unable to take their idea for a superior product and start a company that employs a thousand people simply because they cannot take the first step of quitting their existing job because they cannot afford to lose all their health care benefits? My BIL quit his job to start his own company, and lost his employer-provided health insurance, but, since he is Canadian, this meant he now had to pay the full cost of his eyeglasses and upgrade from shared to private hospital room, not that he and his family can no longer afford to get sick or be injured.
To expand on **Liberal’s **example from Atlas Shrugged, an Objectivist example of philanthropy would be a corporation giving scholarships to particularly entrepreneurial or industrious kids from disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Those are really just excuses, aren’t they? Quitting your job and starting a new company is always a risk. Some people live with the risk. Others wait until they have saved up enough to live off of for a year or so (including health care costs) or they work on their idea in their spare time.
Anyhow, Objectivists would probably be pretty disappointed by our modern health care system.
Most experts seem to think the economy has leveled off and is starting to improve. Unemployment rates always tends to be a trailing indicator of economic conditions.
If my wife and I quit our jobs to start a company there is no way in the world we could afford health care for ourselves, let alone our kids. She and I, and the kids, have pre-existing conditions, so if we let our insurance coverage lapse we’d be considered uninsurable in the current US framework. Even if an insurance company would talk to us the premiums would be astronomical. How are we supposed to afford health insurance at the same time we’re scratching up capital?
Taking a risk is one thing, setting on a course where we could count the days to either a bankruptcy from medical bills or a death in the family is quite another thing indeed.
He doubtless became EnemyOfTheState, or whatever it is.