Posted on 12/01/2013 8:47:43 AM PST by whitedog57
I fondly remember the days of Milton Friedman with his book and PBS series “Free to Choose.” That was in 1980 at the end of Carter-era and the beginning of the Reagan Revolution.
Fast forward to 2013. We now have less freedom of choice, thanks to Congress and the Administration.
Take for example healthcare insurance. Now, everyone must have healthcare insurance, even if you don’t want it. I went to healthcare.gov and saw that my choices were slim and my insurance premium rose to $1,366 per month. And no subsidy. Plus, I get to pay for sex change operations, Sandra Fluke’s condoms, mammograms, and other procedures I don’t want. Doctors and hospitals are bowing out of Obamacare, leaving fewer doctors and potentially millions more standing in clamoring for care.
What kind of choice is that?
The same holds true for housing finance “reform.” Dodd-Frank and the Consumer Financial Protect Bureau essentially protect consumers by limiting their mortgage choices. Gone are the days of high point loans, exotic mortgages like pay option ARMs. They have been replaced by fee caps and plain vanilla mortgages. And raise costs of mortgage lending which get passed through to borrowers in the form of higher rates.
What kind of choice is that?
This brings me to the Corker-Warner housing finance reform legislation. It does nothing to increase choice for borrowers. Rather, it will result in less choice since the model switches to a government-run insurance corporation (Federal Mortgage Insurance Agency). And Corker-Warner maintains the obsession with preserving the 30 year fixed rate mortgage:
“We have designed thoughtful reforms that will protect taxpayers from future downturns while responsibly preserving the availability of the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage for homebuyers.”
As Michael Lea and I argued in our paper entitled “Do We Need The 30 Year Fixed Rate Mortgage?”, the US is one of the few countries in the world with such a high concentration of 30 year fixed-rate mortgages. Furthermore, the 30 year fixed-rate mortgage has an embedded option to refinance even if you don’t want to. Sort of like paying for health care insurance and receiving the option to have a sex-change operation.
In addition, adjustable-rate mortgages are typically 80-90 basis points less expensive that their fixed-rate cousins (5/1 ARM versus 30 year fixed rate mortgage). So, you have a fixed rate for 5 years that produces large savings to the borrower. True, rates may raise in the sixth year, but there are generally caps (or limits) on the increase in mortgage rates over the life of the loan and within a year.
Why isn’t Corker-Warner pushing for risk-sharing between borrowers and lenders (ARMs) when Corker-Warner’s theme is risk-sharing between lenders and the Federal government?
Where is the choice? As Dennis Leary said in Demolition Man, “”I’m the enemy because I like to think. I like to read. I’m into freedom of speech and freedom of choice. I’m the kind of guy that could sit in a greasy spoon and wonder, gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecue ribs or the side order of gravy fries? I want high cholesterol. I would eat bacon and butter and buckets of cheese. Okay? I want to smoke Cuban cigars the size of Cincinnati in the nonsmoking section. I want to run through the streets naked with green Jell-O all over my body reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I might suddenly feel the need to. Okay, pal?”
Not any more, Dennis.
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I remember years ago, we had a monthly "shopping cart report". The three big network news programs reported it every month. There was a standard list of groceries that never varied. They shopped at the same eight or ten sites around the country, every month. The broadcasts showed a grocery receipt and announced how much groceries had increased over the month and the year.
Why can't we go back to that?
Isn't it about time to reclaim our right and freedom as individuals to choose and DISCRIMINATE?
Federal laws prohibiting discrimination by private people or organizations are unconstitutional. Among other things, laws against "discrimination" are too vague. The word "discrimination" is not mentioned in the Constitution (BTW neither is "separation of church and state" - another issue).
The 14th amendment of the Constitution forbids STATES (not individuals) from denying any U.S. citizen their right to life, liberty, or property without due process. The original understanding and intent of the amendment was targeting RACE, specifically BLACKS (former slaves made citizens by the 13th & 14th Amendments). Therefore, the laws SEGREGATING blacks from state facilities were/are unconstitutional.
The Civil Rights Acts beginning in the 60's, however, go too far and are unconstitutional. All that was needed was to enforce the 14th amendment by forbidding state segregation laws. Integration is another story and IMO is not covered in the 14th Amendment. Segregation laws by a state violates the 14th amendment. But the 14th Amendment does not call for forced INTEGRATION. If someone isn't "integrated" into a group, no one's life, liberty, or property is violated as long as there hasn't been forced segregation (ie. non-integration by mutual consent, etc.). Also, homosexuals and other groups were simply not contemplated in the 14th amendment and should, therefore, not be considered in an issue regarding state segregation.
You and I have the God-given liberty and freedom to choose, or "discriminate", as long as it doesn't interfere with another's life or liberty. Further, the Constitution does not forbid a private party or group from denying another's life, liberty, or property without due process (STATE laws forbid murder, theft, etc.). So a private organization may segregate another on the basis of race without violating the Constitution. I personally think unwarranted and prejudicial racial segregation should be avoided by private people and groups, but I defend their right against the Feds to do so.
Freedom of choice? That goes along with America's founding principle of "freedom of individual enterprise," doesn't it? See below:
That principle underlying our Constitutional protections brought America from the crude tools of ancient Europe to the most free and prosperous destination for oppressed peoples. See the following essay excerpted from "Our Ageless Constitution," a 292-page history of the ideas of liberty in America, again available after 20 years of being out of print.
Freedom Of Individual Enterprise
The Economic Dimension Of Liberty Protected By The Constitution
"Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise." - Thomas Jefferson
"The enviable condition of the people of the United States is often too much ascribed to the physical advantages of their soil & climate .... But a just estimate of the happiness of our country will never overlook what belongs to the fertile activity of a free people and the benign influence of a responsible government." - James Madison
America's Constitution did not mention freedom of enterprise per se, but it did set up a system of laws to secure individual liberty and freedom of choice in keeping with Creator-endowed natural rights. Out of these, free enterprise flourished naturally. Even though the words "free enterprise' are not in the Constitution, the concept was uppermost in the minds of the Founders, typified by the remarks of Jefferson and Madison as quoted above. Already, in 1787, Americans were enjoying the rewards of individual enterprise and free markets. Their dedication was to securing that freedom for posterity.
The learned men drafting America's Constitution understood history - mankind's struggle against poverty and government oppression. And they had studied the ideas of the great thinkers and philosophers. They were familiar with the near starvation of the early Jamestown settlers under a communal production and distribution system and Governor Bradford's diary account of how all benefited after agreement that each family could do as it wished with the fruits of its own labors. Later, in 1776, Adam Smith's INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS and Say's POLITICAL ECONOMY had come at just the right time and were perfectly compatible with the Founders' own passion for individual liberty. Jefferson said these were the best books to be had for forming governments based on principles of freedom. They saw a free market economy as the natural result of their ideal of liberty. They feared concentrations of power and the coercion that planners can use in planning other peoples lives; and they valued freedom of choice and acceptance of responsibility of the consequences of such choice as being the very essence of liberty. They envisioned a large and prosperous republic of free people, unhampered by government interference.
The Founders believed the American people, possessors of deeply rooted character and values, could prosper if left free to:
- acquire and own property
- have access to free markets
- produce what they wanted
- work for whom and at what they wanted
- travel and live where they would choose
- acquire goods and services which they desired
Such a free market economy was, to them, the natural result of liberty, carried out in the economic dimension of life. Their philosophy tended to enlarge individual freedom - not to restrict or diminish the individual's right to make choices and to succeed or fail based on those choices. The economic role of their Constitutional government was simply to secure rights and encourage commerce. Through the Constitution, they granted their government some very limited powers to:
- assure that the ground rules were fair (a fixed standard of weights and measures)
- encourage initiative and inventiveness (copyright and patent protection laws)
- provide a system of sound currency with an established value (gold and silver coin)
- enforce free trade (free from interfering special interests)
- protect individuals from the harmful acts of others
Adam Smith called it "the system of natural liberty." James Madison referred to it as "the benign influence of a responsible government." Others have called it the free enterprise system. By whatever name it is called, the economic system envisioned by the Founders and encouraged by the Constitution allowed individual enterprise to flourish and triggered the greatest explosion of economic progress in all of history. Americans became the first people truly to realize the economic dimension of liberty.
Footnote: Our Ageless Constitution, W. David Stedman & La Vaughn G. Lewis, Editors (Asheboro, NC, W. David Stedman Associates, 1987) Part III: ISBN 0-937047-01-5
See how easy?
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