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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (760)	3/20/1999 2:24:00 PM
From: Peach	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36917

My family was excruciatingly poor when I was a child growing up on a farm in central Texas. Sometimes we did not have enough for the basic subsistence level. I remember meals of fried potatoes, gravy, and homemade biscuits for days on end. A $0.25 loaf of "bought" bread was a very rare treat. <ggg> It was so white, soft, and squishy - and (unknown to us) almost totally devoid of nutrition! Anyway, during that time all the neighboring farmers collected federal money for NOT growing specific crops. I used to beg my father to apply for that federal money. He would always give me the same speech: "Absolutely not! We will support our government by not planting the crops, but we will NOT take charity money!" I was furious with him at the time, but now respect his decision. I regret not ever telling him…

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (760)	3/21/1999 10:13:00 AM
From: D. Long	Respond to of 36917

<<It would be quaint to be believe there is private enterprise and personal liberyt, but the reality of it is that we are governed by a set of laws and taxes that coerce us to behave accordingly>> You'd have to be blind not to acknowledge we have private enterprise in this country, unless youve never been abroad. The majority of businesses in the US are small, privately owned ventures, startups by very average people. America is quite possibly the only country where one can immigrate here with nothing in your pocket and open a business within five years. As to personal liberty, try living in China and then tell me that we dont enjoy extensive personal liberties. Of course we live under laws that coerce us to behave accordingly, all societies are coercive, whether that be institutional or social pressure. Its a question of rational choice, do you want to live in society where you have an institution that enforces rules that protects your special interests, or live in a society where nothing is preventing your neighbors from killing you and taking your belongings except the threat of your gun? The question is not to coerce or not to coerce, its a question of the limits of that coercion. As to corporate welfare, we're in agreement here. But then again, that is not good market economics. That is, pure and simple, government corruption. It is naive to believe that anyone, given the means, will not try to influence government to give them advantages not available to their competitors. This behavior, however, is inimical to the proper functioning of the market. That is an institutional question regarding the role of government, not one of the limits of the market. You are quite correct though, when government handouts are not in one's interest, it is called meddling. No one complains about minimum wage laws, labor organization laws, workplace safety laws, disability and unemployment insurance, "job creation" appropriations, government education loans and grants, or the curious exclusion of labor unions from the Sherman Antitrust Act, to name just a few. When you do the math, and conclude that you take home approximately 70% of your income (if you really pay taxes at all), and corporations keep approximately 10% of their profit, and you benefit from all the goods available produced by those corporations, and the corporation otherwise doesnt get any benefit but its profit, its easy to see who is the winner. Americans spend too much time envying their neighbors success to step back and realize, relative to the rest of the world, the lavish luxury in which they live. Alexis de Tocqueville was quite perceptive of the tragedy of democracy...