question for you: if our country just dropped all entitlement programs, what do YOU think would happen, practically?
and yes, the individual is a minority, but the business is not. business has no inherent rights, imo. regulating business is for the good of the people, do you want to buy tainted milk, do you want to die from an unregulated product? why not let the oil companines continue to self regulate their rigs? i understand the idea of less gov't, and gov't sometimes goes too far. but should heroin be legal?
as the middle class shrinks, please enlighten me as to how exactly we have equalized society. in fact, we haven't.
Poverty in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Response to the question regarding entitlemen t programs:
Yes, doing away with ALL entitlement programs could be fatal for some elderly and disabled people. Usually, they'd have to be pretty isolated and without a stable family to support them. I am not for doing away with ALL welfare programs, just most of them. I think we could have a system where the taxpayer covers the misfortune of certain individuals. However, for the most part, welfare and the like are self-defeating to those who benefit from the programs. I believe personal responsibility should take precedence over general welfare. I'm not a total social darwinist. I believe in a safety net, but the liberal's idea of a safety net resembles a hammock.
Question for you: What do you suppose politicians do about the escalating deficits, unfunded liabilities, and rising costs associated with the sleuth of entitlement programs? Take the biggest programs, Social Security and Medicare, and tell me how is America going to continue to afford these programs when the demographic shift leaves us with three retirees for every one working individual. It is absolutely impossible to sustain in its current format, even if you tax 90% of the richest 1%. As a young twenty-something year old, I will end up paying, in my lifetime, far more than my parents or grandparents paid in taxes to sustain those who are retiring now...and I'll end up receiving less when I retire (due to inevitable cuts and higher taxes, not to mention extended borrowing, higher inflation, and an increased standard of living). What is your solution to these looming problems? No one is arguing to completely eliminate the governmental safety net, because that's a non-issue. THIS is an issue, and a fairly large neglected issue at that.
2) Businesses are associations of individuals who come together spontaneously by virtue of their own free choice. Government should not be regulating them anymore than they regulate your neighborhood get-togethers.
3) It is already possible to buy tainted milk. Regulation does not protect us from disaster, contrary to popular opinion. We should be able to buy the products and services we wish to buy without government restriction. The government's issue with making information more readily available to the consumer is all well and good, but it is no more efficient in getting out the message than Angieslist, Consumer Report, BBB, or a host of other informative network. With the invention and expansion of the internet, there's no longer an excuse to rely soley on the government for information. Is it ok for the government to restrict certain experimental drugs to terminally ill patients, because of side effects?!
4) Self-regulating oil rigs are possible without government oversight. First of all, out of all the billions of unregulated oil being pumped out of the deep sea ground, it might actually be safe to say the oil companies have been doing a fabulous job of avoiding this sort of catastrophe. Of course, it is still going to happen with or without intensive governmental regulation. The only thing the regulation will do is it will put smaller companies at a disadvantage, and it will rise the cost of oil, across the board (and with a higher price of oil, you get a higher price of EVERYTHING). But what about the federal government's role in the disaster? They were, after all, the ones who *own* the waters, and they leased the seabed to BP where the explosion took place. MMS is a scandalous, reprehensible, and failed regulatory agency. And also, the fed capped the amount that companies are liable for spills at $75 million. How many billions of dollars has the spill caused? If the government got out of the situation, and allowed a market to exist where every company was 100% responsible for all liabilities, perhaps the companies would behave a little more cautiously. Instead, we have a system where the government wishes to bail out every failing business in order to save jobs. Do you see the canundrum?
5) We should at least decriminalize drug punishments. I know legalization is too far of a reach, but we should at least be legalizing marijuana and decriminalizing all drugs and prostitution. The drug wars are caused because of the illegality of the drugs. Perhaps the level of drug users would increase if we legalized drugs. But I'm far more sympathetic to the inner-city child who gets killed as an innocent bystander in a drug war versus some individual who poisons himself over a period of a lifetime.
6) The middle class is not shrinking. Times are tough, but the shrinking middle class is a myth. The only thing that has changed over the years is our materialistic expectations. People assume that it requires two incomes to maintain a comfortable household, but that's only because they expect two cars in the garage, a larger house, a couple dunebuggies, etc. The good times are not behind us. Try being an optimist and looking at what your ancestors had to sacrifice and go without in order to provide you with a world of opportunity and invention. The middle class in America live like Kings and Queens did back in the 1600's. We live longer, we have more leisurely time, prices of things go down, etc.
And by the way, I said that we have ATTEMPTED to equalize society. You say we haven't, as if that's a bad thing. Maybe you would enjoy life in North Korea where everyone makes the same wage despite their meritous achievements. Maybe you're searching for some grand utopia that will resemble the Eloi lifestyle of the H.G. Wells's Time Machine. The sort of equality that you seek is something I so desperately wish to avoid. Equal protection under the law is fine. But equality of results is not.