Posted on 06/27/2002 6:38:28 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
John Kenneth Galbraith is not a Republican guru. Try to tell President Bush and Sen. John McCain. Both are following Galbraith's political prescription for "the good society."
Six years ago, Galbraith published "The Good Society: The Human Agenda," in which the good society is defined as one politically organized to coerce "the favored" to work for the poor.
The coercion of "the favored" is not to be limited to serving the needs of their fellow citizens. The good society, Galbraith says, must not attempt to avoid its responsibility for the worlds' poor on nation-state grounds. The "favored" American citizen's worldwide responsibility requires "the setting aside of sovereignty to rescue and protect distressed and endangered populations."
Bush and McCain have answered Galbraith's call. Bush has assigned to the American taxpayer responsibility for combating AIDS in Africa. McCain, a sponsor of the "Federal Responsibility for Immigrant Health Act of 2002," wants to burden the federal taxpayer with responsibility for the medical bills of legal and illegal immigrants.
Neither Bush nor McCain is deterred from launching their bold ventures by the escalating and unmanageable cost of providing health care to American citizens. Having reached the point where American citizens cannot afford health-care insurance, much less health care itself, two prominent Republicans want to extend coverage to Africa and Mexico.
No thought is given to the American taxpayer, who is looked upon as a magic purse that never runs out of gold. House Republicans have been working through all-night sessions to burden the federal taxpayer with $350 billion to subsidize prescription medicines for the elderly.
These open-ended commitments make no sense financially or in terms of health care. Bush, McCain and the House should begin anew by reading Milton Friedman on Gammon's Law (The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 12, 1991).
Max Gammon, a British physician and health-care researcher, discovered that as more money was poured into Britain's socialized system, the output of health services fell. Gammon concluded that in a bureaucratic system, "increase in expenditure will be matched by fall in production." Bureaucratic systems are "like 'black holes' in the economic universe, simultaneously sucking in resources and shrinking in terms of 'emitted' production."
Gammon was just talking about tiny Britain. Imagine a medical black hole the size of the United States, Mexico and Africa. Bush, McCain and the House are constructing the best possible insurance policy for Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. An economic black hold this size won't leave a penny for the war on terrorism.
Designated "the favored," the 35 million federal taxpayers who bear the brunt of the personal income tax can expect no mercy. The selfish claims of the favored to their own work product are outweighed by the compassionate claims of the world's poor. Politically, federal taxpayers are a negligible force. Their numbers are matched by 35 million poor immigrants who are already in the United States, and millions more arrive each year.
The United States has constructed a society, the first in modern history, in which native-born productive citizens are the tax slaves of the welfare and immigrant lobbies. The 35 million taxpayers who carry the burden of the income tax have no more claim to their income than did medieval serfs or 19th century black slaves.
How will 21st century tax slaves react when the burdens imposed on them rise higher than the exploitation of 19th century slaves? Will Atlas shrug? Will productive citizens follow the departure of U.S. corporations to other lands that do not burden their citizens with worldwide responsibilities?
Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau believes shrugging has begun. He has announced that he will criminally prosecute corporations for tax evasion if they reincorporate in order to move their legal residence from New York.
Is the tyranny of compassion close at hand? Decades of socialist and liberal propaganda against "the rich" and "big business" have delegitimized successful individuals and companies, just as Communist Party propaganda delegitimized the bourgeoisie and National Socialists delegitimized Jews. If corporations cannot vote with their feet to leave high tax regimes, neither will government allow you to shirk your responsibility to the world's poor.
I'm more in agreement with some other FReepers around here, Bush is nothing more than Bubba-2 and our two party system is corrupt from the inside out.
I wish I could figure a way to 'go underground'. This sh*t stinks!
Good stuff madfly. My kids and grandkids could live a lot better if they were not supporting almost every Maria, Juan, or Abdullah living in America.
Don't count on this administration to curb immigration of social welfare.
Compassionate Tyranny aka Compassionate Conservatism.
Let me explain to you how this works. I will use small words and try to avoid any abstract concepts.
The FR board keeps a running tally of posts. Many of the posts on the board, depending on the time of day, may be overlooked by interested parties. In addition, a large number of Freepers have other obligations which prevent them from monitoring the board on a minute to minute basis.
In addition, many Freepers have a intellectual life, and instead of having a slavish devotion to an ideology or totem...like many Bushbots do, for example...actually read other sources for news and opinion and use their critical reasoning facilities to debunk outlandish claims made by Bushbots such as Bush is a conservative, or that under Bush, conservative ideologies like smaller government, less federal spending and regulation, etc. are in fact, being implemented. Satirical comments like mine are often used to illustrate the point. (Dear me, is satirical too big a word for you?)
On occassion, the Homo Sapiens on the board who find items of interest in the news and wish to call them to attention have the courtesy of using something called the "Search" function to see if another Homo Sapien has already found and posted the item of intellectual interest, so as to avoid duplication. The Homo Sapiens understand that timeless messages and truths, such as, oh, say, the Declaration of Independence and the Pledge of Allegience, bear repeating.
Unfortunately, I see that there are still some more primitive human species like Neanderthals on the board who do not understand such concepts.
Any questions?
I'm in total agreement with you, the crickets I was refering to was the non-response from "conservatives" to these threads.
Compassionate Tyranny aka Compassionate Conservatism bump!
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