Creativity represents a miraculous coming together of the uninhibited energy of the child with its apparent opposite and enemy, the sense of order imposed on the disciplined adult intelligence.
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Author: Redactor
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Society’s Interest
“Shame on Republicans for blocking the resumption of long-term unemployment benefits for 1.3 million Americans,” writes Democratic Party cheerleader and Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson.
“And shame on Democrats for letting them,” he adds, meaning that talking-head Ds on your TV set aren’t currently bloviating enough about this R treachery to suit Mr. Robinson . . . as if more is even frighteningly possible.
Robinson calls the GOP resistance to the extension of benefits paid beyond 52 weeks an “exercise in gratuitous inhumanity.” He tells of folks who lost good jobs during the ongoing economic unpleasantness, who have been looking for work unsuccessfully for over a year. “They are people whose lives have been buffeted by forces beyond their control,” he explains.
True enough, agonizing enough. Only a fool wouldn’t consider that, as I so often heard growing up, “there, but for the grace of God, go I.”
Robinson then asks, “Isn’t it in society’s interest to give them a chance?”
Well, what is that chance? A functioning, diverse job-creating market economy — not a politician-centered redistribution regime.
Robinson argues that (a) unemployment benefit payments will create jobs (so that unemployment, in a roundabout way, creates employment?), (b) it’s been done before (compelling, eh?), and (c) that the $25 billion dollar price tag is “little more than a rounding error.”
Which brings us back to the Democrats.
Republicans demand that Democrats prioritize spending — since money doesn’t grow on taxpayers — and find enough cuts to offset this itsy-bitsy, teensy-weensy “rounding error.”
The answering silence? Profound.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Paul Feyerabend
Variety of opinion is necessary for objective knowledge.
On January 15, 1777, New Connecticut (present day Vermont) declared its independence.
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Jan 14 New Years Day
January 14 is New Year’s Day according to the old, Julian Calendar. On January 14, 1514, Pope Leo X issued a papal bull against slavery. On the same date in 1639, the first written constitution to create a government, the “Fundamental Orders,” was adopted in Connecticut.
One of the great things about the Obamacare fiasco is that we get to revisit many of the left’s talking points for the last half-century and more — and hand the points right back, underlined.
How many times have we heard about market failure? A relentless litany.
Today’s topic? Government failure.
How many times have we been told that markets aren’t as important as we think, since what really matters is managerial know-how? The “visible hand” and all that. It was a book, if not a movie. And its basic message was that a few college-grad experts — highly trained technocrats, all — mattered more than competition. Government experts have the information. They have the skills. The techniques are known. Don’t give us any of that “free market” mumbo-jumbo, they say.
And yet, while the federal government’s efforts to build a usable healthcare.gov website proved feckless, lame and wildly expensive, Obamacare’s increasingly unbelievable proponents kept the patter going. Some states were doing just fine, they offered. Maryland, for instance.
Well, no.
The Old Line State has had just as much trouble in its new line of pushing online medical insurance policies as other governments. Biggest problem? You mean, other than not being able to put up a usable website on schedule? Or getting only four people signed up on launch day?
The Washington Post informs us that state officials ignored warnings that “no one was ultimately accountable for the $170 million project and that the state lacked a plausible plan” for its scheduled launch.
The evidence is in. Want a new market “exchange”? Don’t turn to government.
Rely, instead, on folks competing in the real market.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Paul Feyerabend
Science is neither a single tradition, nor the best tradition there is, except for people who have become accustomed to its presence, its benefits and its disadvantages. In a democracy it should be separated from the state just as churches are now separated from the state.
Is taking bread from the mouths of those who labor to feed the appetites of able-bodied adults who decline to work your idea of economic justice?
Or of injustice?
A recent Cato Institute study by Michael Tanner and Charles Hughes found that welfare benefits exceed the minimum wage for workers in 35 states. In 15 states, welfare benefits top $31,200 annually — equivalent to the $15 an hour minimum wage that SEIU and other unions are promoting for fast-food workers.
In short, at the lowest rungs of the economy, one can make more money not working.
The Washington Post’s Charles Lane advances another aspect of economic justice in a recent column suggesting that while some wealth is merited, the bulk of the wealth swirling about in the nation’s capital is not earned, but wrested from a system where insider politics meets crony capitalism.
And Lane notes that “too many of our public institutions — from Congress to big-city school systems — have been captured by rent-seeking interest groups,” warning broadly that, “Various societies have grown free and prosperous by many different methods; dividing up existing wealth according to political connections is not one of them.”
Yesterday at Townhall, I embraced the idea of economic justice, calling for a healthy dose of it, namely:
- Stop making welfare pay better than work;
- End government subsidies to cronies, farmers, everyone;
- Let people create new businesses by ending licensing laws and regulations that serve only to block needed competition.
That’s economic justice.
Not futzing about trying to make us “equal,” but making the basic rules equitable.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Paul Feyerabend
The progress of science, of good science, depends on novel ideas and on intellectual freedom: science has very often been advanced by outsiders (remember that Bohr and Einstein regarded themselves as outsiders).
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Townhall: Embracing Economic Justice
Ah, it’s a hot topic, because the President wishes it so — because, above all else, he must deflect attention from his failures regarding Obamacare and everything else. So of course it deserves our attention.
Maybe even embracing! Click on over to Townhall; return here for some more links to click, for background.
- Washington Post: “Washington Cashes In,” by Charles Lane
- Cato: “The Work versus Welfare Trade-Off: 2013,” by Michael D. Tanner and Charles T. Hughes
- CRP: Millionaires Club
- Common Sense: Against Innovation in Ohio
- Common Sense: Copper Tubes in Alabama
- Common Sense: You Ignorant Fool
- Common Sense: Unlimited Entitlement