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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SilentZ who wrote (161745)	2/20/2003 3:14:28 PM
From: i-node	Respond to of 1578097

Well, it all depends... I'd like to have a bit of both. Liberal social programs always fail. This is because of what Davidson & Rees-Mogg have termed an "incentive trap"; that is, where the incentive is for the poor to spend more of the rich's wealth. Assume an American Express card with the following limitations: a) 500 people have use of the card; b) You can spend all you want to each month on the card, but you are required to pay 1/500 of the bill at the end of the month. This is analogous to the situation where the government provides handouts, from money taken from the wealthy, and gives it to the poor. The incentive for the poor is to spend their time figuring out how to spend more of the wealthy's money. And this accounts for the commonly seen situation (at least in the local grocery store) whereby a person is purchasing expensive grocery store items with food coupons only to walk to the parking lot and get in a new $40,000 Cadillac. I'm not opposed to helping the truly needy; however, government's involvement must be highly restricted (it isn't currently, nor has it been since the Great Society began) and self-curtailing (so as to not be subjected to political manipulation). Thus far, I've not seen such a program.