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As far as the article is concerned, he is leaving out the logical ends of the argument.
When we started the "new deal" liberalism, there was little to liberal programs. Even 1945's America was greatly conservative when compared to America today, hence what I wrote earlier "today's conservative is yesterday's liberal".
Where it gets off track is that it isn't accepting the logical end to to many liberal programs. If you take away from some, more and more people will need the government help that they didn't need before. This creates a welfare state.
Some liberal idea's are ok, but we need conservative ideas now. I'm not sure how they are equating Barrack Obama as being to conservative. He has spent trillions in stimulus money, bailed out private institutions (which is straight out of the new deal), and increased the size of government dramatically with a healthcare plan.
Where it gets off track is that it isn't accepting the logical end to to many liberal programs. If you take away from some, more and more people will need the government help that they didn't need before. This creates a welfare state.
The logical "end" as you put it, isn't to place make more people dependent upon social welfare but rather to insure that wealth distribution (wages) and business regulation don't become so skewed that the economy collapses upon itself resulting in rise of illiberal movements towards either fascism or socialism.
The logical "end" as you put it, isn't to place make more people dependent upon social welfare but rather to insure that wealth distribution (wages) and business regulation don't become so skewed that the economy collapses upon itself resulting in rise of illiberal movements towards either fascism or socialism.
There is one fact that I know of.
The more you make people dependent on something, the more people who will stay dependent on it.
Sure, there are a few examples of people working their way up, but in general, when someone is on government assistance, they stay on government assistance.
This leads to more, and more, and more people on it.
The best thing a government can do is ensure that taxes flow jobs in the right direction. If money is being pooled at the top, then you make it an incentive to create jobs. 0 taxes on money that creates jobs. Businesses that hire get massive tax breaks per every employee hired.
Tax cuts only lead to money pool, and social welfare programs only breeds a society that relies more heavily on social welfare.
The true friends of business in America and the world have long been liberals, not conservatives. The propaganda of the right to the contrary, liberal thinkers like John Maynard Keynes and liberal politicians like Franklin Delano Roosevelt have never been socialists or collectivists. With the kindred classical liberals of the 19th century they have shared a commitment to individual rights, private property and limited government. However, they have believed that it was necessary to sacrifice some aspects of classical liberalism, in order to save as much as possible of the rest. Liberals have believed that limited doses of socialism would inoculate liberal society against totalitarian socialism as well as fascism and other illiberal systems. Indeed, Marxist radicals have often denounced American liberals and European social democrats for seeking to rescue and reform market society rather than replace it.
I have heard too many liberals demean and demonize the private sector and corporations and promote government takeovers, collective ownership, of everything from banking, to oil companies, car companies, and health care, for me to believe that the modern day liberal believes in the capitalist system.
We have seen it play out again and again. Bureaucrats are not the wised of economists nor the wisest of businessmen, they usually mess things up, and the unintended consequences result in worse outcomes then if they did nothing at all. They try to save the US steel unions and raise import tariffs on steel, the result is tens of thousands of lost jobs in the US for manufacturing companies who require steel, because they can no longer compete internationally with the cheaper stell prices their competitors enjoy in foreign countries.
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Originally Posted by ovcatto
Since the discussion is about liberalism vs conservatism your point is rather irrelevant, especially if you read the article. The liberal position on healthcare, since abandoned, was to establish the public option, for the very purpose of providing competition where competition did not exist. This was an anathema to conservatives. Instead a combination of neo-liberals and conservatives did nothing more than continue the dominance of an non-competitive market with a few protections for consumers. The government, by no way shape or figment of overactive imaginations "take over" healthcare.
How is a private health care provider supposed to compete with the federal government? The feds do not need to make a profit, they just raise taxes, in fact their so called private sector competitors are paying taxes to the federal government. The federal government also writes the rules and regulations, conducts the oversight, all of which favor the government system.
This would be like GM entering the market place without the need to make a profit, because they have access to an unlimited supply of taxpayer money. Then we give GM the power to write the rules and regulations for auto manufacturing standards, safety regulations, environmental regulations, and the labor regulations that the Ford Motor Co. must comply with. Then we force Ford to pay a percentage of their annual profits to GM, and we have the audacity to call this competition, much less a fair and just form of competition.
We have seen it play out again and again. Bureaucrats are not the wised of economists nor the wisest of businessmen, they usually mess things up,
At the behest of the same wise business men whose lobbyist stand over legislators you draft the regulations.
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They try to save the US steel unions and raise import tariffs on steel, the result is tens of thousands of lost jobs in the US for manufacturing companies who require steel, because they can no longer compete internationally with the cheaper stell prices their competitors enjoy in foreign countries.
You wouldn't be referring to the Section 201 tariff enacted in 2002 which was demanded by the Steel industry and imposed by George Bush, no lover of the USSWs, to counteract the surge in state subsidized steel from China would you?
[/quote]How is a private health care provider supposed to compete with the federal government?[/quote]
Considering the recent 41% rise in profits, during a recession no less, I think they could find a way. Alternately, your wise business men certainly could devise plans that even when more expensive would offer provisions which would be far more attractive than that which would have been offered by the government.
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The federal government also writes the rules and regulations, conducts the oversight, all of which favor the government system.
I guess you missed how the current health care legislation was written.
Now again, is there anything in the article that we can discuss. I'm tiring of these diversionary arguments.
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