Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.
Thomas Paine, Rights of Man (1791-1792).
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Thomas Paine
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March First Firsts
March 1st Firsts (and a 17th and a 37th):
| The first United States census was authorized, in 1790.
| Ohio was admitted as the 17th U.S. state, in 1803.
| President John Tyler [pictured above] signed a bill authorizing the United States to annex the Republic of Texas, in 1845.
| The state of Michigan formally abolished capital punishment, 1847.
| Nebraska became the 37th of the United States, in 1867.
On March 1, 1781, the Continental Congress of the United States adopted the Articles of Confederation. With this, the governing body became known, officially, as United States of America in Congress Assembled, more commonly as the Congress of the Confederation. The first session of this newly styled Confederation Congress took over without a break from the Second Continental Congress, adjourning on November 3. Samuel Huntington and Thomas McKean served as presidents during this first session.
Social Security was never designed for sustainability. The “Ponzi” element was there at the beginning: early recipients received HUGE benefits over their contributions, but as the population matured, that ratio of what working taxpayers put in compared to what they received in benefits decreased.
Further, because there never was a “lock box” much less any investment of funds — it was always a transfer scheme — as the system matured it hit the point of financial default. Back in the 80s this was fixed by raising the taxes on working people.
And then the kicker: with the rate of reproduction in the U.S. falling like Sisyphus’s rolling stone, the ratio of taxpayers to subsidized retirees went in the wrong direction. The folks assigned to keep track of the system’s finances predict that a major insolvency moment occurs about a decade from now, a few years ahead of earlier predictions.
So what does Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman, of The New York Times opinion page, advise?
While we fret about the devastation that benefit cuts and tax hikes would cause, Reason’s Eric Boehm notes that Krugman doesn’t think the cuts are necessary. “First, Krugman says the CBO’s projections about future costs in Social Security and Medicare might be wrong. Second, he speculates that they might be wrong because life expectancy won’t continue to increase. Finally, if those first two things turn out to be at least partially true, then it’s possible that cost growth will be limited to only about 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) over the next three decades and we’ll just raise taxes to cover that.”
Hope over reason! And the progressive’s blithe acceptance of always-increasing tax burdens.
Serious people should confront facts . . . and avoid Krugman.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Gustave de Molinari
The State of War is in absolute opposition to the right of free choice of nationality, of accession or secession.
Gustave de Molinari, The Society of To-morrow (1899).
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Common Sleeper Struck Back
On February 28, 1646, Roger Scott, of Lynn, Massachusetts, was tried for sleeping in church. Awakened in church by a tithingman’s long, knobbed staff hitting him on the head, he struck back at the man, and garnered a whipping as punishment, as well as the dark designation as “a common sleeper at the publick exercise.”
When will we learn to distrust big government?
While readers of this Common Sense have been tracking the Wuhan Lab Leak story for two years now, most people are still behind the curve. Fortunately, another government agency has weighed in on the Lab Leak side, as reported by Michael R. Gordon and Warren P. Strobel in the Wall Street Journal: “Lab Leak Most Likely Origin of Covid-19 Pandemic, Energy Department Now Says.”
No wonder there’s disagreement and confusion, though: “The Energy Department made its judgment with ‘low confidence,’ according to people who have read the classified report,” Gordon and Strobel explain.
There remains much we do not know, of course. But we should understand that is largely because China’s totalitarian regime has purposely hidden information from the world. With the full assistance of Dr. Anthony Fauci and Big Government Science in the U.S. . . . and evasive coverage by our media.
Then consult Brett Stephens’ “The Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons Be Learned?” in The New York Times last week.
Now, many of us embraced masks early on, when little was known, bascally advising mask wearing as a signal of hope. We can do something. But soon the masks themselves masked something other than hope: the raw powerlust of the elites in their lockdown tyranny over the masses.
But for actual reduction in the contagion of a virus, Stephens reports, masks are useless. Citing an Oxford epidemiologist with the great name of “Tom Jefferson,” not even N-95 masks do the trick: “Makes no difference — none of it,” said Jefferson.
What about those studies we were informed proved the case? They were “nonrandomized,” “flawed observational studies.”
Yet lots of politicians and bureaucrats — including “the mindless” Centers for Disease Control — keep pushing masks.
It’s not that we cannot learn. It’s that they don’t want us to.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Angelina Grimké
The time to assert a right is the time when that right is denied.
Angelina Grimké, Pastorial Letter, as quoted in Stephen H. Browne (January 1, 2012). Angelina Grimke: Rhetoric, Identity, and the Radical Imagination. MSU Press. p. 128..
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The XXIInd!
On February 27, 1830, American economist and free trade advocate Arthur Latham Perry (pictured above) was born.
The Twenty-second Amendment (Amendment XXII) of the United States Constitution, which sets a term limit for election and overall time of service to the office of President of the United States, was ratified by the requisite 36 of the then-48 states of the union on February 27, 1951.
Congress had passed the amendment on March 21, 1947.
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Watch: Betrayal?
This podcast covers two weeks of Common Sense stories. And quite a bit more:
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Sarah Grimké
I know nothing of man’s rights, or woman’s rights; human rights are all that I recognise.
Sarah Grimké, Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman (1837), Letter 15 (October 20, 1837).