Category: too much government

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Common Sense general freedom too much government

The Two Americas

Dear Reader: This “BEST of Common Sense” comment originally aired on July 4, 2007. A longer version published at Townhall.com was picked up by Rush Limbaugh and read on his radio show. —PJ

Could Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards actually be right about something? Not where to go to get a haircut, mind you, I mean about there being two Americas.

There is the vibrant America . . . and the stagnant one.

There is the America of ever-increasing wealth, innovation, creativity, new products and services. Choices galore.

And there is the politician’s America: The regulated America, the subsidized America, the earmarked America. The failing America.

In one America, it is what you produce that gets you ahead. In the other, it’s who you know.

In one America, to earmark some money means setting aside funds (into savings) for a purchase — a car, house, college.

In the other America, to earmark is to grab from taxpayers to give to cronies. It is the highest rite of career politicians: Buying their votes with other people’s money. Oh, there have been reforms, sure. But a recent bill in the House had 32,000 earmark requests.

In one America, we decide what we pay for. We choose constantly about little things and big. We call the shots. Or we walk down the street and associate with someone else. So we have some faith in those we work with.

In the other America, we vote. But we rarely get what we vote for.

Maybe that’s why the new Democratic Congress just registered the lowest approval rating in poll history.

It surely isn’t because folks love the Republicans.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

The “Confidence” to Accept a Free Lunch

Does the alleged “success” of the cash-for-clunkers program prove consumer confidence is on the rebound?

Cash-for-clunkers is the new handout program for car owners and car dealers. Bring in an old car with lower mileage than the latest models, and the government gives you $4,500 toward a new car.

It took about a nanosecond to dole out the first billion dollars. So Congress tossed another two billion into the pot.

Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman, was at the controls when the Fed’s massive credit-for-clunky-mortgages program helped create the housing bubble. So he’s an expert. He’s been in the news lately saying that although he has his doubts about the  clunkers program, its “success” shows renewed “confidence in the economy.”

Question: If the government simply threw bags of cash at people, and people stooped to pick up this cash, would this also prove “confidence in the economy”?

Observation: The clunker subsidies comes from somebody. Because the recipients didn’t directly drop by, directly put a gun to our heads, and directly compel us to write out a check for $4,500, we’re not supposed to notice. But if you had just been forced to turn over $4,500 to subsidize somebody’s new car, you’d probably say your household economy had just taken a hit.

Your confidence might even be shaken.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets too much government

Getting Jobbed on Jobs

There’s lots of talk these days about jobs. Many kinds of jobs.

First, there’s the snow job. The best known version of this is that avalanche of an idea that our federal government will “fix” the economy by creating or saving millions of jobs.

“Saving” jobs? Folks in Washington want to take credit for every one of us who happen not to get fired during their reign.

Not that the idea of politicians “creating” jobs makes much sense, either. I certainly don’t want people to be unemployed. But color me skeptical about the ways that politicians go about creating jobs — and the types of jobs thus created.

Spending trillions of dollars to stimulate the economy will indeed produce some jobs. It would be difficult to spend that much money without creating some work for somebody.

But there is a big difference between creating a job where someone produces a product or provides a service that then turns a profit and conjuring up make-work tasks by handing tax dollars over to some scheme that everyone realizes couldn’t sustain itself in a competitive marketplace.

If we want our economy to rebound — if we aim to rebuild our wealth — then we need productive jobs. Yes, jobs that employees have because of their productivity. Not jobs produced by politicians plunging us deeper into debt and grinding us down further into inefficiency.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Snappy Put-downs Do Not a Debate Make

There is a political struggle going on over reforming how Americans obtain and pay for medical assistance.

But is there a debate?

Mostly what we hear, instead, are snide put-downs. Gail Collins recently wrote in the New York Times that “members of Congress are getting yelled at about socialized medicine by people who appear to have been sitting in their attics since the anti-tax tea parties, listening for signs of alien aircraft. But on the bright side, they’ve finally got something to distract them from the president’s birth certificate.”

That’s kind of funny. But it doesn’t address anyone’s fear or reasonable suspicion. It’s just more liberal scorn thrown at people who disagree with “big government knows best.”

I’ve heard Rachel Maddow make similar sniping comments. According to her, all folks have against the Democrats’ reform ideas is that Obama wants to kill old people. She laughs. Dismisses it out of hand.

But there are real arguments embedded in such concerns. As I wrote recently on Townhall.com, it’s not that advocates of single-payer medical systems want to kill old people; it’s that, over time, budgetary demands force them to institute some sort of rationing. Older folk die by waiting in week-long, month-long lines for medical assistance in Canada and Great Britain right now.

This is a very real concern. It deserves honest debate, not snappy put-downs and sniping retorts.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

The Big “Single-Payer” Lie

Scan the history of government programs. The scope and costs usually grow much larger than originally projected.

Moreover, ham-fisted government intervention distorts markets, causing shortages or excesses of supply, leading to high prices for goods that should be cheap, and so on.

When the problems pile up one can either repeal the controls or heap on more controls.

Guess which “solution” politicians tend to prefer.

Regarding medical care, the politicians’ answer to decades of government bungling is more bungling: regulation, subsidies, rationing, mandates and a new “public option” in health insurance to squeeze out private plans.

President Obama and other public option advocates promise, on stacks of Bibles, that this is not “somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system.”

But they’re lying. Go to YouTube. Watch the videos of Obama and congressmen explicitly admitting their goal of a single-payer system. Just two years ago, Obama was saying, “But I don’t think we’re gonna be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There’s gonna be potentially some transition process. . . .”

That’s how we lose our freedoms. Not all at once, but a slice at a time.

Oh, and about employer-provided medical insurance. That’s a clumsy institution that exists because of World War II wage controls. We do have to transition out of that system. But we should “transition” towards more freedom, not less.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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too much government

The Moral of the Madoff Story

Detecting fraud is one of the most important roles for government. But our friends in power tend to be incompetent at it.

This becomes clear in light of that most costly Ponzi scheme, Bernie Madoff’s.

Before he was caught, Madoff — who now paints signs in prison — perpetrated one of the longest-running scams in investment history. It wasn’t an investment scheme that lost its way. No, it was a fraud through and through. It cost his marks billions.

Joseph Cotchett, a lawyer for some of Madoff’s victims, interviewed the fraudster at length. Cotchett calls Madoff “charming” and “no dummy.” But he noted that his fraud was not a great work of sophistication: “It is amazing how simple it was.”

Still, the regulators responsible for finding this kind of fraud didn’t see it. Early in the millennium, Madoff thought he might get caught. In 2005, the SEC sat down with him, and he thought the gig was up. Regulators, insists Cotchett, did not dig “to the next level, and the next level was not deep by his own admission.”

Lots of folks clamor, these days, for more regulation. Here’s my advice: Improve the most basic form of regulation — protection against fraud — and build on success. Leave complicated micromanagement stuff alone until governments get competent at the very basics.

If you cannot detect an unsophisticated fraud, how can you run a very sophisticated economy?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

Medical Insurance to the Max

Get everybody into a medical insurance plan, fast! But how?

Lots of “universal coverage” talk assumes that most uninsured folks are “too poor.” But look, most young people don’t buy insurance because they are healthy. And I know oldsters who have gone through life without medical insurance. When they’ve needed a shot, or a few stitches, they’ve visited the doctor and paid the bill.

Becky Akers, writing in The Christian Science Monitor, wants to know why everyone wants to force her to buy something she thinks makes no financial sense.

Ms. Akers admits that, though she is healthy and without insurance, she could get run over by a bus. But she bets she can cover most medical needs out of her savings and income.

Supporters of government managed medicine judge this irresponsible.

And yet, many of these critics are the same folks who insist that catastrophic medical insurance — the kind that is inexpensive because of huge deductibles — cover everybody, regardless of pre-existing conditions. But this turns insurance into a transfer program, workable only with high prices. Add full coverage rather than catastrophic, and medical insurance skyrockets beyond most people’s pay grade.

Yet if politicians would just stop tinkering with insurance, medical prices would come down for everyone, as Akers suggests . . . including, even the uninsurable, who would still require aid other than insurance.

If you are already sick, it’s too late to insure against sickness.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
tax policy too much government

Nowhere to Run

Back in May, before partisan warfare in the New York state legislature temporarily stemmed the spate of bad legislation, the Democrats in that distinguished legislative body did the sort of thing Democrats do. Voted in a new tax.

Of course, Republicans often do the sort of thing Democrats do, too. When I say Democrats did it this time, I mean 32 Democrats voted in favor and zero Republicans.

The lawmakers passed a so-called “Mobility Tax” on the residents of twelve counties to subsidize the Mass Transit Authority, which operates subways and buses in New York City. These include non-borough counties like Orange County. On a map of New York counties, you’ll see Orange lies near the Big Apple. But few residents there make much use of MTA transportation services.

As one of many Orange County residents put it, “Thruway drivers pay to operate the Thruway. We don’t get to tax the people of Manhattan to keep tolls down. Yet we are being asked to subsidize the MTA even more whether we use it or not.”

Public transportation should be privatized. In any case, though, passengers should pay their own fares. Hike the charge for a subway ride to four dollars, if necessary, and let riders demand better management. But don’t go after the wallets of people in the towns next door.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

Health Rations and You

Want a laugh? To keep you from crying at what President Obama and the Congress are trying to do to health care in this country?

Over the decades, the federal government’s involvement in health care has been making it harder and harder for doctors and patients to make independent, sensible decisions about care.

Many advocates of “reform” deny the destructive consequences of past “reform” and insist that the only way to solve our problems is, in effect, to make them worse: Get government even more involved, tie the bureaucratic noose even tighter around the necks of patients and doctors.

Despite all the problems in the health care industry, we often still get great care because of the freedom that still exists. But what if advocates of Obamacare get their way and government takes over? Well, that’s the scenario satirized in a new two-minute video produced by the Sam Adams Alliance, all about “Health Rations and You.”

It adopts the black-and-white style of a 1950s-era educational film. “Health rationing. What is it? What does it mean for you?” And it’s all about how the Health Administration Bureau will give you nothing but “the best” medical care.

The video is funny. Memorable. Getting a lot of hits on YouTube. And it just might help stop this socialist monster in its tracks. Give it a look-see, and pass it on.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

Slavery Is Not Freedom

There is one fact about the health care “reform” legislation being debated in Washington, DC, that is unavoidable. The fact that it is coercive.

Governments coerce. It would be great if governmental force were used only to combat criminals, not also to tell us how to live our lives. But, alas, this is not the case.

If the proposed health care legislation is passed, it will result in new orders from the federal government that everyone must obey. Everyone: Doctors; employers; patients; taxpayers. One mandate would force you to sign up for health insurance if you currently lack it. Refuse, and you’ll pay a penalty. Unless you qualify for a “hardship exemption.”

Do we all know what this means? A Washington Post report claims that the notion of penalizing Americans who decline to sign up for health insurance “has its roots in the conservative philosophy of self-reliance.” Because, presumably, the best way to encourage self-reliance is to point a gun at people and tell them what to do “for their own good.”

This is worse than messy thinking. It is the opposite of the truth. Self-reliance is a matter of making choices. It implies the freedom to make choices. Self-reliance has nothing to do with Big Brother ordering you about as if your own thinking, values, and circumstances were irrelevant. And self-reliance has nothing to do with the current health care debate in Washington.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.