There is not Constitutional authority for either of these programs.
We're kind of stuck with SS now as some people who are depending on it are too old to change to another plan. It should be privatized (Is it Brazil who privatized their system and people are seeing much, much better results? Someone down there has done it)
Medicare is one of the cost drivers pushing health care costs up. Just about everyone I know who is on medicare is an abuser of the system. They go to the doctor for entertainment as it costs them nothing.
Taking care of the widows and orphans is the Church's job, not the government's.
Support wage and hour laws,
Direct violation of the first ammendment. (Freedom to peaceably assemble). What Constitutional right does the government have to interfere in private contracts (which do not affect any one but the parties involved)? None.
child labor laws, safety regs,
Agreed.
minimum wage laws,
See wage and hour laws.
unemployment benefits, and workers’ comp.
See social security
Basic regulations like FDA, FTC.
Agree with some, disagree with others. If the regulation is in place to insure fair trade (most FDA regs etc) then it's cool. If the reg is in place to affect behavior (most ATF regs for example) then disagree.
Tier two,for those who want to walk on the wilder side. Slowly increase minwages to livable wages.
There is no such thing as a minimum wage livable wage. As minimum wage increases so does the cost of everything else. Minimum wage jobs are not WORTHY of being paid "livable" wages as they do not produce enough to be worth that much.
You may as well arbitrarily set the minimum wage at $100/hr. The economy will adjust in a very short time and these people will find themselves in EXACTLY the same state they are in now (compared to those who are producing).
Reinstate Glass Stegall.
Far better would be to stop forcing banks to lend money to those who cannot repay it.
Raise tax rates on wealthy.
Why? Why remove working capital from people who are creating jobs with it? The only fair tax is one that taxes everyone the same. Why should people who made something of themselves be punished for it? And why should we destroy our economy even further by raising taxes at all?
Tier three, which is where even I start to have fears, stronger tariffs to support American jobs.
Smoot Hawley!! Worked so well the first time that it really should be tried again. A worldwide depression would reset the whole economy. Good thinking!
NOT
Increased power for unions.
Why should groups of employees be allowed to blackmail and steal from their employer? Again this violates 1st ammendment. The assembling of an employer and his employees is no one's business but theirs. (As long as they both honor any contract they both agree to at signing)
Revise corporate laws to prevent executives from running big companies for their own benefit.
This is impossible to do. Everyone does everything they do for their own benefit.
Where I get po’ed at the Libertarian influence is they don’t even want tier one.
I'm not a libertarian and I don't want tier one. The government has no authority to do most of that.
FWIW, I also think those who receive welfare should have to work some, period.
This I agree with. If they are physically able to work they should be working 40 hours a week for whatever they get. Even if it's just shovelling snow or sweeping streets. If we are going to pay them we should get something back from them.
You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body. - C.S. Lewis
Then with all due respect, the GOP needs to change its name to the Troglodyte Party. Your reply is a perfect example of libertarian poisoning of conservatism.
First, social security and medicare: The United States is a real live country/nation, just like Sweden or England or China. Real live (and dead) western countries have always taken care of the poor. Eskimo tribes take care of their elderly. Indian tribes fed their elderly and sick. Real live human beings, apparently from the archaelogical record, including Neanderthals and further back to the “monkey people” took care of the members of their group. Now, here comes the GOP, in the latter part of the second millenia past Christ, and think that this is a bad thing. If that ain’t Ayn Rand’s dead nutjob hand reaching out of the grave, then I don’t know what is.
A society has choices in how it does this. Charging what amounts to a 16% tax on current labor to provide for post labor survival is not that bad an idea. Prior the the War of Northern Aggression, slaveholders in some states were prohibited from freeing their slaves when they reached old age. This is because even slaveholders recognized the injustice of working some poor SOB his whole life and then throwing him or her to wolves when they were no longer productive. You, and everybody who believes like you, should be utterly ashamed of yourselves for your lack of humanity.
You should also be ashamed of yourselves as alleged conservatives. Conservatism is at heart, COMMON SENSE. It is doing the things that help make your nation safe and strong and stable. Having people fall off the food chart and housing chart at a certain age don’t do none of that. Common sense is preparing for the inevitable. It is why we have an Air Force, for example. We know some SOB somewhere is going to start some sh*t with us and we want to encourage them to have second thoughts about getting creamed after they do it. It is the same with old age. We know it is inevitable no matter how much green tea we drink or how many vitamins we take. So, using our common sense, we prepare for it. We create a system whereby when a person reaches a certain age,, their income dryeth not up. We look at it as a cost of doing business. We lay something up for the future. Now the fact that gov’t has done spent it is pretty lousy, but the laying up is not wrong or unconstitutional.
Wage and hour-minwage laws: OMG! What a stretch. First Amendment? The Constitution provides for regulation of interstate commerce. what if one state was civilized, and conservative, and had a high standard of living and the neighboring state was a wahoo “libertarian” state that permitted one dollar an hour wages and no worker’s comp, etc. Lets just call the civilized state, Arkansas, for example, and the wahoo idiot state,let’s call Texas, for example. Products from Texas would undercut the price of products made in Arkansas in much the same way that Chicom products undercut American jobs. This would not be good, so Congress would have the right to set wage floors to prevent this from happening. That way the states could compete on a fairly even basis. Not unconstitutional.
Minwages: No, the cost of labor is not 100% of a product. If minwages workers get a dollar an hour more, their cost of living does not go up $1.00 per hour. Think about it. Have you ever turned down a raise because your cost of living would go up that much???? No. You would be committed to a mental institution if you said something like that, assuming your spouse did not kill you first. Imagine coming home and saying to wifey poo-”Darling, the boss offered me a $100 per week raise today but I turned him down. Ayn Rand and Von Mises tell me that increases in wages will be offset by an increase in prices so I thought it better to refuse that raise, and the bonus he wanted to give me.” This is where “libertarian theory” meets “How fast can you run from an angry woman with a skillet?”
Use your brains. Now as to the $100 per hour wage, there is a very simple answer to that. I will let you have some time to see if you can think of the answer. I hear this all the time, and it is pretty much an absurdist argument once one really thinks about it. If the answer don’t come to you, I will tell you.
Now this I find very disturbing: “Minimum wage jobs are not WORTHY of being paid “livable” wages as they do not produce enough to be worth that much.” BASED ON WHAT? You mean some poor schmuck ought to work 40 hours a week and not be able to survive? This is not “conservative” This is aristocratic thought. Peasants should just be content to stay peasants. Sorry, but regardless of our skills, we all have 168 hours in our week. If you work, you should be able to feed yourself, house yourself, and clothe yourself.
You have gone horribly astray in your thinking. Do you notice how the GOP candidates, who probably believe just as you do, do not come right out and say this during election campaigns? They have to hide it and not come right out say it. Do you know why? It is because it is an extremist, crazy view and most Americans would throw feces and rotten vegetables at said candidate, particularly when said candidate got to the part where abortion is wrong because every human life is special. Listeners would gag.
This is why I say libertarianism has poisoned the GOP and conservatism.
“Far better would be to stop forcing banks to lend money to those who cannot repay it.” -—Revisionist history. Poor widdle bankers were not forced to make loans which caused the meltdown. A comforting fairy tale for libertarians and misguided conservatives. Rather than face the “reality” of thieving bankers, you guys can pretend it was the poor folks and gov’t that caused all this. What a smug little fairy tale land you guys live in. Should you be interested in sliding down the magic beanpole to Planet Earth, you might try these two links for starts. One is very long but very worthwhile including the links within the article. If you are not afraid of learning new things and thinking new thoughts, it is fascinating:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jan/26/road-ruin-recession-individuals-economy
http://www.crashopedia.com/index.php/Main_Page
Finally:
“Why should groups of employees be allowed to blackmail and steal from their employer? Again this violates 1st ammendment. The assembling of an employer and his employees is no one’s business but theirs. (As long as they both honor any contract they both agree to at signing)Revise corporate laws to prevent executives from running big companies for their own benefit.This is impossible to do. Everyone does everything they do for their own benefit.”
The answer is, real life don’t work that way. When you are job hunting, you are over a barrel most of the time. The field is not even. Unions in America seem to go overboard and shoot themselves in the foot, but collective bargaining seems to work in Europe. Germany I read is the biggest exporter in world and their standard of living is high. Somehow, unions and management are getting the job done there. I wish I knew more about it.
The practical reason for many of these suggestions is to have a strong stable nation where everybody has a stake in the system. When you have huge inequality of wealth, your nation suffers and splinters into class struggles. There has already been a “redistribution” of wealth in this country from the poor and middle classes to the rich. We have not become stronger or more stable as a result of this. Quite the opposite.
Higher wages are a way to redistribute wealth away from corporate profits and the rich to wage earners. This means demand is paid for with cash not increases in credit which is what has happened over the last three decades. This is not communistic or socialistic, it is simply realistic. Read Karl Denniger over at Market Ticker, or Marc Faber. Start reading articles at Naked Capitalism, These people are not commies. But they realize what happens when a nation gets off balance.
FWIW, I think we are already over the edge and the debts will have to be monetized, and there will be hyperinflation and we will each get a monthly stipend for basics from gov’t and work if we want to for extras, which most of us will do. I will be in my late 50’s then, or early 60’s. I plan on becoming a wandering poet and balladeer with young 20-something girlfriends along the way.
parsy, the conservative thinker