Envisioning a new world
Bookworm on Apr 06 2006 at 7:50 pm | Filed under: Welfare
It was always the Left that had a lock on envisioning a new world order, while the Right stood there, desperately trying to maintain the status quo. That, of course, is no longer the case. The Left is mired in the 1960s, and the Right is trying to rejigger the world, for better or for worse. Jonah Goldberg, in discussing this reality, brings to my attention a Charles Murray idea for doing away with the entire welfare state, freeing up lots of capital and, most importantly, getting the government out of the business of babying people. (And we know from Germany and France that, not only does government do a lousy job at babying people, it also destroys the people's collective backbone in the process.) Anyway, here's Goldberg:
So where are the real radicals today? Who are the folks who want to rethink the status quo and truly liberate the masses? Pretty much where they've always been: on the libertarian right. Witness Charles Murray's exciting new book, "In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State." It's an elegant little tract that makes a sustained, sober and fact-driven case for scrapping the whole calcified edifice of the welfare state.
Under Murray's plan, all transfer payments would vanish, from Social Security and Medicare to corporate welfare and agricultural subsidies. In exchange, every low-income American over the age of 21 and not in jail would get $10,000 a year from the government. And everybody else would still get at least $5,000 a year from Uncle Sam. The only hitch is that people would be required to take out a minimal health insurance policy, and the tax code would stop favoring companies that offer health insurance.
In a flash, the working poor would be richer. Work even for a half a year at minimum wage, and the extra $10k would put you above the poverty line. The whole bloated, nannying welfare state would be a memory. Market forces would finally be introduced to the health insurance industry, driving down the absurdly high price of healthcare. Women who choose not to work so they can raise their kids would get the full $10,000 no matter how much their husbands earned, supporting families more than the current system and with less paperwork. Charities and local communities would be revitalized, enjoying a flexibility denied to traditional bureaucrats. Those who wanted to walk on the wild side would get pocket change to do so but would have to live with the consequences. The old problem of subsidizing out-of-wedlock birth would become an anachronism.
Obviously, removing all government safeguards, particularly for the severely disabled, is hardly going to satisfy everyone. But at least Murray is thinking big, while liberals scoff at the idea that the welfare state isn't permanent. And that's the point. The liberal imagination is weighed down by the leaden status quo.
For all that they scoff at the rich and money generally, the Left's solution to every problem is to throw money at it. Bad schools? Throw money at them. Crumbling health care system? Throw money at it. Intractable homeless problems? Yup, more money. The collapse of black families? More welfare. And the Lefties are utterly undeterred by the fact that, after almost 40 years of this, with more and more money pumped into these systems, the systems are getting worse, not better. If the social welfare system were a house, it would be a tear-down.
Talking to Technorati: Welfare, Welfare Reform
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One Response to “Envisioning a new world”
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I do wonder how he is going to pay for the 10,000. But that’s not what really worries me. If he is going to remove the taxation on corporations, he has one enemy he has to eliminate. And that is big business, the big businesses that doesn’t want competitors because big businesses have higher capital funds to pay for those taxes and higher marginal profit lines while smaller businesses have a much harder time sustaining 50% corporation taxes.
Not all big businesses are this shortsighted, but the ones that are, have a lot of money, a lot of power, and a lot of friends in Hollywood to back them up. Breaking that political strangle hood requires power, not just ideas. That’s always been the problem in human history. The people with the right ideas almost never had the power to go with it. The people who had the wrong ideas, however, always tended to have the power. The United States is an abberation in this historical dynamic, in that we actually had the right ideas AND the power to go with it. This was not true of anywhere else or anyone else in the rest of the world.
I have always believed that the flat tax thing is well supported and will bring in more taxes than 50% corporation taxes would. But ideas are never enough. It wasn’t enough for Iraq in 1993, and it ain’t enough for the world’s only superpower either.
In a way, America will benefit more from India and China and Japan’s economy than the socialist practices of Roosevelt. In that, it will force us, eventually, to either match their growth or eventually be overrun like the hare and the tortoise. But right now, there is little incentive to radically overhaul a failing system. why? Cause nobody’s going to die, if we don’t do it. People dieing, tends to concentrate the mind.
The one thing that can break the power strangle hood of Hollywood, the socialists, and short sighted businesses is competition. The urge to be better than your foes. That has always been the underlying principle of a good economy. To get people to do things better, you just show them a competitor and have them race. India and China are not up to our standards, obviously. Either economically, militaristically, or culturally. So I wonder what you can supply in the meantime as a motivator for change, without these external and internal forces.
France and Canada has failed us in this respect. I think we always thought Europe would be a competitor for America, someone we can feel motivated about beating. But what kind of a fool would feel pride in beating Europea and Canada now a days? We’re like Tiger Woods. There’s nobody to beat. Why do your best when there’s nobody better for you to beat? Kind of removes some of the fun of the game.