Cutting any significant amount of spending in the middle of a recovery is madness.
So, we go back to education only for people who can afford it, allow discrimination against those most unable to fend for themselves and have a food source that would make China look safe?
Would it be ok to euthanize those qualifying for ADA from a Libertarian point of view since they are obviously a drain on society and there won’t be any services for them anyway?
So, Sam, since you’ve obviously given this a great deal of careful, principled, highly-informed thought, what other talking points do you take exception with in any way?
Yes, and I would also murder all puppies and grandmothers.
Or maybe I just don’t think those outcomes would happen without a federal government doing all those things. Here in Canada, our provinces have much wider latitude than you give American states on these issues, and last I checked, we weren’t killing people with our poisoned food or euthanizing disabled people.
Why do you even bother with this nonsense? Yes, libertarians want to murder people left and right. Why, I can remember the great Libertarian purges of undesirables that happened in the 1950’s before the ADA came along. Can’t you?
What are you talking about? What talking points?
Are you being serious? You do know that FDA approval doesn’t matter in most other countries, right? That each country has its own food inspection and drug regulation process?
Right… Like those waves of diseases and poisonings that happen in other countries that don’t have big federal bureaucracies dedicated to food and drug safety.
Oh for God’s sake. You do know that herbal medicines aren’t covered by the FDA, don’t you? Does it strike you that people are staying away from them because they are unsafe? Or for that matter, how about the drugs that the FDA has given exemptions to, like certain AIDS drugs?
And I would suggest that your current government is doing a pretty good job of that already.
Sam, you’re in a modern country where the provinces actually provide a lot of the government services that you want.
In the US of A, the Feds have the pleasure. Now just maybe the 50 States could provide services better than the Fed government or not. It certainly is not clear nor proven that the States would all provide better public services than the States individually would. Or are you arguing as a Libertarian that services like universal education need to be provided but are just quibling over whether its should be done at the State level or National level?
Either way, these services need to get covered or we are just a third world country where survival of the fittest reigns. If the funding gets cut at the national level because taxes are too high, I’m challenged to see how States will increase funding for these services? Ditto for local governments or charities. Do you have some real world examples in a first world economy that would support doing this? Or am I missing the point of how a libertarian society is supposed to work in the US?
My belief is that government works best when it’s closest to the people it governs. I will tolerate a lot more government intrusion from my municipal government than from my provincial government, and I’ll tolerate more from my provincial government than from the federal government.
As a practical matter, local governance is more accountable, each citizen has a bigger impact on how it operates, and it has a better chance of meeting the unique needs of its community. The legislators are more likely to have better knowledge of local needs and conditions.
Finally, as a libertarian I have a lot more freedom to change cities if I don’t like the policies in mine. I have a reasonable amount of freedom to change provinces. I have very little freedom to leave the country if I don’t like what the Federal government is doing.
As an even more practical matter, the U.S. federal government lacks oversight because there are only 50 senators and 435 congressmen responsible for a government that spends 3.6 trillion dollars per year. So far too much political power winds up being relegated to unelected officials and industry lobbyists.
I think it would be far better if each state had complete control over education. Then even if government runs education, there would be competition between states, and we’d see more innovation.
Don’t forget - the Dept of Education didn’t even exist before the late 1970’s. Since then, educational quality in the U.S. has no improved one iota. If anything, it’s gotten worse. This despite the fact that the Dept of Ed is blowing through over 50 billion dollars per year.
The massive expansion of student loans has had a major effect of putting a lot of young people in debt and increasing demand on post-secondary education, which has pushed up prices and forced even more people to borrow. In the meantime, the quality of degrees is declining and more and more people are talking about a ‘higher education bubble’ as more and more people come out of college with credentials but little practical knowledge and no job prospects.
As for food and drugs, the FDA is becoming a major barrier to cost-effective drug treatments. It now takes on average something like a billion dollars and twelve years to get a drug approved. That’s money that has to be recouped by the drug company before the patent runs out, which is a key part of the high cost of drugs.
If the FDA was advisory only, you could still have insurance companies mandate that only FDA approved drugs be used, or doctors could decide only to provide drugs that have gone through the approval process. But if a doctor decides that a yet-to-be-approved drug is safe enough and may work, that’s a matter between him and his patient.
A less drastic reform could be to simply get rid of the efficacy requirement for FDA approval, and test for safety only. This would cut the cost of drug certification dramatically. A little-known fact is that once a drug has been approved, doctors are free to use it for anything they like, whether that particular use has been tested for efficacy or not. So the efficacy testing seems like a big waste of time and money in the first place.
The problem most people on the left have is that they believe that only government is capable of ensuring safety and quality, and without government our kids would be ignorant, our food poisoned, and our drugs and cars would be unsafe. But in fact the market is a much more powerful regulator of such things than is the government. Most of the goods we consume far exceed minimum government standards, because the market demands higher standards than does the government. It’s also easier to bribe a single government inspector than it is to fool an entire market.
On a larger societal issue, the more of our basic safety and decision-making we cede to the government, the more infantilized we become as a people. I think it’s important that we cultivate a greater sense of personal responsibility and independence in the population, and one way to do that is to stop providing a warm safety blanket protecting everyone from their own negligence or stupidity.
Sure, you have this belief but any cites for a developed country where it actually has worked or is practical? I think you’re arguing a concept and a philosophy rahter than an way of governing and providing for society.
What inherently makes a libertarian more able to change cities if they don’t like their own? You’re probably assuming a libertarian society. We’ve got plenty of examples in the US where shit towns had outright racism. The civil liberties act ought to be enough to blow this example out of the water
Competitiion between States for education would probably drive more innovation. Sucks if you happen to be in a State that’s a loser though.
Expansion of student loans doesn’t have anything to do with the Pell Grants you want to cut out. So not sure why a libertarian wants to cut out one way of making college more affordable for lower income students, as education is one way of getting ahead in a meritocritous society. That is, if you can affford the education. Not sure I buy the theory that it’s better for poor kids to not go to school instead of taking on education debt they can’t afford.
The education system in the U.S. worked without the Department of Education for all but the last 30 years. I see no sign that the Dept of Education has made the situation better - have you? I’ve seen lots of programs, and a whole buttload of spending, but I’ve yet to see an advantage. The schools in DC which are under Federal control have some of the highest per-student spending, but some of the worst outcomes.
In Canada, provinces have autonomy over how school is taught. For a long time, Ontario had a grade 13 and the other provinces didn’t. Our curriculums and policies differ as well. We work it out.
The U.S. didn’t have a Department of Energy until the 1970s, either. It was formed with the specific goal of making the U.S. energy independent. It utterly failed, so its mission changed and its scope grew. Which is what usually happens in government. In the private sector, if a plan fails funding is withdrawn and people are cashiered. In government, failure is a sign that more money is needed.
The U.S. didn’t have a Dept. of Homeland Security until 2001. It now spends around $40 billion per year. The last guy to try to blow up a plane with explosives had to be stopped by other passengers. Security audits routinely find gaping holes in security all over the place. It HAS managed to annoy people and lower productivity by requiring people to jump through all kinds of hoops, though. So there’s that, I guess.
Did you know that there is a net black migration back to the South? Have you seen how many people have fled Detroit? It now has a lower population than it did when Henry Ford opened his first assembly line.
There is a significant amount of internal migration in the states. Liberals move to the coasts and big cities, conservatives move south and inward. Black people are moving southward again.
I’ve had my opportunities to leave my province, but I like it here, so I stay. Had I been born in Manitoba or Quebec, I would have left and moved here to Alberta if I had the same beliefs I do today. Keeping political power local allows people to get away from it if they don’t approve.
Of course, this is what liberals don’t like. Taxing the rich doesn’t work if the rich leave. Setting up social programs doesn’t work if it attracts the poor and unemployed from other states. To which I say: Tough noogies. If you can’t get the people to accept your policies, you ought not to have them. The answer isn’t to restrict their movement or make them universal so the people can’t escape your machinations.
Are you contending that there are no losing states NOW? In what way is education better today than it was before the Dept of Ed showed up?
I would argue that Pell grants have increased the pressure on higher education, which has pushed prices up, making it less affordable for everyone.
I was one of those poor people that had no money for college. I worked it out. I worked for three years, I took part-time jobs to pay my way, I lived in a basement suite with a roommate, and did my first two years at a more affordable junior college.
And I also happen to think that we’re pushing too many kids into higher education - especially into liberal arts education. That’s a luxury poor people can’t afford. I saw some friends just about ruin their lives by going to college with no plan and taking a general liberal arts degree because they didn’t know what else to do but the expectation was on them to go to college.
There’s nothing wrong with learning a trade or learning a technical specialty at a junior college, then working your way into university if that’s what you want to do. I’ve got nothing against a certain amount of student loans, but I’d tie them to ability to pay back, which means I’d expect students to enter a faculty that has real job prospects and not just spend the money on four years of ‘finding themselves’.
Let’s shake this shit down.
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Eliminate corporate PACs. Period. Do it so that it goes into effect in 12 years. Otherwise no one will vote for it!
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Enact *real *universal single-payer healthcare (and eliminate Medicaid/aire + all the bureaucratic expenses with that) that pays doctors well (er, reimburses them) and eliminates a bunch of billing and coding overhead. If the gubment can (or did…) negotiate Rx prices, they can negotiate a tooth extraction just like insurance companies do. Make that a big chunk of your budget and you just enabled a whole population to be more productive.
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Elective abortions, plastic surgery, teeth whitening and certain odds are payed for by the consumer.
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Vaccinations and regular dental care (as in, more visits allowed) should be provided for all children under the age of 18 or per Surgeon General’s guidelines.
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Patients Bill of Rights
- Stop SS for those under 30 (i.e., phase it out) and keep the retirement age at 67.
+Anyone not meeting that mark (30 and under) gets a non taxable refund spread out over the course of xyz years. That can’t amount to much.
+Record earnings history for those in the 30-45 range until they hit the age of 45 and find their retirement average that way.
- Anyone who is 45-67 will see the plan as is.
That way, people have a heads up (if they were morons and thought that SS was going to be their retirement plan bwahahaha).
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And of course, the non taxable retirement account.
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Enact a food voucher program to all retirees. It would be optional. So retirees, if they somehow couldn’t afford retirement because of bad luck/poor planning/gambling/act of God, at least have food and health care. That’s more than what we had pre-SS. Oh. They can still work.
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**Repeal ALL Bush tax cuts. **
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(This will clearly have to be done over time.) Close corporate tax “loopholes”. It won’t kill us. If no one is working in America, then no one will buy anything. So if Nike really wants to do all of its business in Thailand, let 'em. They’ll have to compete with the knockoffs.
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Seriously, rework that anti trust shit.
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Place import tariffs on American businesses who produce overseas and have minimal U.S. workers here.
Corporations don’t have to worry about health care costs, their SS matching is being phased out, unions have less to complain about, and the people who get the biggest cuts are CEOs and whoever goes on those “fact finding” missions to Brazil for team-building. Import tariffs can rake in $$. -
And local communities need to get a grip. I’m tired of, “Oh, Wal-Mart will just drive all the traffic to the next town over if we don’t bend over!” Make it not even an option and WM will go where it’s needed instead of people building around Wal-Mart.
- Remove the blinding thing that is ignorance from your eyeball. Education.
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Raise teacher pay. It’s not that hard. You want genius graduates? Hire people that know more than addition and subtraction. Bring back the philosophers!
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Enact a federal law that prohibits children from dropping out of school before they are 17 if they haven’t graduated. Kids should be in schools, not on the streets. (Okay, maybe that’s stretching it. How about forcing states to put that law on the books or the gubment will withhold their school funding? :D) Mmm-hmm, Amish. You, too.
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Enact a national test for graduation. (yes, I just said that) Each state would have a slightly modified test to allow for things like state history, government, agriculture or some such. It would be like a “Colorado History” portion. Think: Verbal, Math + Part B: State. Homeschoolers: yes, you, too.
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Add an optional additional test in a field - students choose. That would be done by state or district (for the FFA type in Iowa versus the Julliard bound ballerina in NYC). It’s like a diploma + endorsement. OMGZ! Prepared for college? NO WAY.
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Keep Pell grants. Keep adjusting certain grants that meet society’s needs.
There. Now community colleges can drop their stupid “How to write in English” classes. Mother of God, if the Praxis and Praxis II can be accepted in damned near every state to be a teacher…we can figure this shit out.
You want to cut the deficit? Plenty of ways to do that…but we can’t be running a country full of nincompoops.
If this is a global economy, I’d say we are getting a stick up our asses.
Look, people used to work at the same job for 30 years. Now we have like 15 jobs. Health care should follow you. Retirement should follow you. Why is that so crazy? Also, corporations are privy to the knowledge that S.S. won’t carry many people far, so they have their own plans. The pension process will come about again.
For those of you who argue that some will never make enough for retirement: they won’t make enough for SS to mean much, either.
:dubious: Where have you been? ADA, Special Ed, Student Loans, accreditation…
Uh, yeah. Anyone who’s worked on an IEP or got a grant for college can tell you that.
First: The DoE does not determine its own budget and spending. It also does not enact law. The job of the DoE is to help enforce law + manage government loan and grant problems. And yes, they do research and review. The DoE is pretty functional. You’re just blaming the DoE for things outside of its control. 
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The DC Mayor’s entire budget is under Congressional control. DC - or their schools - have nothing to do with this. DC is a shitty place. Diplomats, elected officials, lobbyists - they send their children to good private schools, and most of them are outside of the district. All dem black folk be getting edjumicated with a piece in der pocket.
You live in Canada and you’re talking about the DoE?
Anyway, we have something called “State Boards of Ed.” and “local districts”. (:
Canadians are so happy to remind us that they’re not Americans. We’re just as happy to not be from Ontario. I promise.
Typical right wing stuff. “It failed, so scrap it.” That’s valid when it can’t be fixed or it’s not working for us. The DoEn maintains regulations. Hey, guess what! The Dept. of Energy is part of the President’s Cabinet. He is allowed a Cabinet. But they’re also a bit independent. WHO ELSE IS GONNA HANDLE THE NOOKZ?
<head/smack> I’m willing to be that the Dept. of Homeland Security has helped keep Canada secure. You know. From Americans immigrating there illegally. 
and?
We are mobile. So?
Power in America is local. It’s so local that nothing gets done because some Joe in D.C. is worried about the folk back home. Welcome to democracy.
They can leave.
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Pell grants don’t make college less affordable. Colleges make colleges less affordable. And states, too – they cut funding every year.
Oh yeah, good idea. Have gubment tell you what you can’t study.
I live in a loser state. Colorado. We have the University of Denver (hello, high ranking government officials!) and CU. Thanks to the university, I have one of the best neurologists in the region. Boulder has a high number of Ph.Ds just hanging out as residents. We used to have the highest number of people with a B.A.s per state capita, but that’s probably changed.
Our schools are shit and our spending is shit.
People move here.
This is little different from the situation in the United States. Schools are largely run at the state and local level.
I fail to see how this supports your argument that the federal government is making it impossible for individuals to make choices. Indeed, it seems to prove exactly the opposite.
Am I incorrect in believing that college tuition is heavily subsidized in Canada, far more than meager Pell Grant programs do down here?
As a practical matter, local administrators are petty robber barons, martinets, buffoons, racists, and religious nuts. As a whole, I trust federal politicians and bureaucrats much more than I do with the idiots closer to my level. Local elections are far less democratic and make local officials far less accountable because they tend to fly under the radar, unless and until something big happens.
My point exactly. So why do you need a federal Department of Education? Kill it, and save $50 billion per year.
Because if the decisions made at the local and state levels that are causing people to leave were instead made at the federal level, those people couldn’t escape them. Thus freedom is reduced.
It’s up to each individual province to decide what they will and won’t fund. Major public universities generally get provincial subsidy. Smaller private institutions do not. Tech schools and 2-year colleges may or may not get smaller subsidies. But again, most of this is provincial, not federal.
So what is the magic that happens to people when they run for federal office that suddenly makes them less stupid and corrupt than the local politicians? In what way is a bureaucrat working in a federal agency more competent than one working for your city?
You need national oversight to maintain a standard level of education across the country. With no educational requirements, some local governments would do some weird thing to their students. That is the concept behind national testing. You can find what areas give inferior education and work with them to bring it up. A strictly local educational system would be a horror.
The description at the link indicates that this is the FY 2006 budget, and only $400 billion in spending cuts and tax increases would be needed to balance the budget. Too bad a more up-to-date calculator wasn’t available.
At any rate, I had no trouble getting the 2006 budget in surplus by $200 billion: I got us out of Iraq and Afghanistan, got our Defense budget off of its Cold War footing ($250 billion), ended the Bush tax cuts for those in the top 20% and cut them in half for the next 20% ($225B), and went from there.
I’d have liked a more flexible calculator that would have shown the added revenues from tacking on some income tax super-brackets (e.g. 50% on income over $10 million, 60% over $50M, 70% over $100M), and something similar with the estate tax.
More people are paying attention to them, and the organization they are a part of is harder to pressure. It’s easy for a powerful corporation or rich man or powerful church to totally dominate a local government and to have great influence over a state government. Therefore, the Right generally likes state’s rights and local governments because lower levels of government are more easily subverted, getting around those pesky democracy and civil rights annoyances.
Boulder is a fantastic bubble world - my brother lives there and I’ve been visiting for 30+ years.
I guess one thing that really gets me about Libertarians is that most are at least upper middle class, and somehow they expect that magically all those government services won’t go away but will be done better and more efficiently at the local level. And if it doesn’t work out, oh well, most Libertarians are insulated from a lot of the effects. It’s kinda like tax cuts at top levels to increase revenue, if it doesn’t work out the higher brackets have more money to cover the reduced services anyway.
I sure as hell don’t want to leave my autistic daughter at the mercy of State or local funding. Holy Jesus, just sat through a parents night where someone was venting about being on a waitlist for 5 years and then the program got cancelled for lack of funding a few months ago. The amount of state level funding from the Department of Developmental Disabilities is pathetically small. It basically amounts to nothing in my tax bracket, and slightly more than nothing for people making half my salary or less. If it weren’t for things like ADA, it would be even smaller. Before ADA the services in public schools were much more limited than today, so I’d appreciate it if posters wouldn’t trot this out as some example of horrid government waste that local schools will step up and do better.
Do you have a cite for that, or are you just assuming that you must be upper middle class or better to be a libertarian? In any event, you’re wrong. Most libertarians are NOT at least upper middle class. In fact, only about a third of them are - about the same as liberals.
I’ve been a libertarian all my life, and I was in the bottom income quintile until I was about 30 years old. I had a lot of libertarian friends in my social strata.
Did it ever occur to you that perhaps not all poor people see government as being their big friendly protector, and that a lot of them see labor unions as a way for much wealthier people to maintain their living standards by freezing the truly poor out?
The contact that really poor people have with government is often negative. We are disproportionately singled out by the police, government social workers would be intrusive and demanding, public housing sucks, etc.
Sorry, but this just reads like your bias as to who and what libertarians are.
Do you know who’s really insulated from the effects of big government? Academics, public union workers, and young liberals who come from wealthy families.
In fact, liberals tend to be wealthier than both conservatives OR libertarians.
This study includes a table from the 2006 PEW report on political ideology. You might find this interesting:
Income Level Libertarians Conservatives Liberals
$75,000+ 31 21 29
$50,000–$74,999 10 14 16
$30,000–$49,999 18 26 20
$20,000–29,999 14 15 12
<$20,000 14 16 13
Notice that there are more poor libertarians than there are poor liberals. And that there are significantly more middle class and upper-middle class liberals.
So much for libertarians being rich people who are sheltered from the consequences of their beliefs. There are almost as many libertarians in the bottom two quintiles as in the top quintile.
Notice also that conservatives tend to have lower incomes than liberals, and that liberals (and libertarians) are more likely to be rich than are conservatives.
You do know there’s another side to the ADA, right? It adds significantly to the cost of opening a new business, it adds paperwork costs, and it puts businesses at the mercy of inspectors who may or may not take a literal reading of the very complex statutes and shut a business down for something stupid like a tap in a bathroom being 2" too high. There are a lot of ADA horror stories out there.
Another thing it does is breed resentment towards disabled people, and it kills innovation in ways to allow disabled people cope with the infrastructure. We can have an entire debate on the ADA if you’d like, but it’s not a simple one, and the assumption that the ADA is an unmitigated good is not warranted.
Any program can be justified if all you ever look at are the benefits.