Dilemmas. Societal problems. Socialism in America. Modern welfare state. Social security, Medicare system. Crime. Ghetto.

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Dilemmas. Societal problems. Socialism in America.

Liberalism is ruling in America. America has gone further and further down the socialistic road and more and more an all-powerful superstate is ruling our lives and telling us how to act, think, believe, feel and live. For example, consider all the anti-discrimination laws that congressional liberals have put into law in the last 50 years. What are these other than attempts to mold the mind of the populace, attempts to tell people how to think, act and feel? Consider all the atheistic, humanistic, liberal indoctrination that is occurring in our public schools and universities. Consider the very open and public way in which the federal government is supporting homosexuals and their agenda.

Liberal forces have transformed this country to the point where it is a very different one from what it was a hundred years ago. These forces have transformed our way of life and they have transformed our people, their mentality and their morals. A hundred years ago there was no government welfare or social security. People were hardworking, independent and self-reliant. They didn’t look to government for help. They took care of themselves, made it by themselves.

The country is departing from both the letter and spirit of that constitution bequeathed to us by our forefathers and the freedoms that we supposedly have are rapidly becoming more words and talk than fact. We are losing our freedom to a new superstate.

How did we as a society get into the situation we are in today? To answer this we need to face and answer some questions. Consider the following dilemmas.

Dilemma. A recently widowed woman has six children and no job. She has used up all her savings and has no money for rent or food. She is in a desperate situation. She has no food and no place to stay. She has no relatives or friends offering to take them in. What is she to do? How can they eat? It is mid January and the temperatures outside are freezing. How will they stay warm? It is naive to assume that any individual or organization will come to her rescue, especially on any long term basis. Can a civilized society simply avert their eyes and allow all of them to starve or freeze? What is to be done? It is a hard question and requires an answer. How can a humane society deal with this kind of problem?

Solution. The government takes responsibility for them, providing them with a place to stay and food to eat. To do this laws are required that authorize the government to take care of cases like this at taxpayer expense. So such laws are passed. How are they worded? How broadly are they worded? What kind of cases do they cover? Do they cover all women with children in desperate straits - women who have no money and no jobs? Are they so broad as to cover everyone who finds himself in a desperate situation without money and no job?

Dilemma. A man who has no health insurance and no savings has a sudden need of a very expensive operation (one costing over $100,000) to save his life. One cannot assume that any individual or organization will come to his rescue and save him. What is to be done? Can a humane society just let such a person die?

Solution. The government takes responsibility for him, pays the costs of the operation. To do this laws are required that authorize the government to take care of cases like this at taxpayer expense. So such laws are passed. How are they worded? How broadly are they worded? What kind of cases do they cover? Do they cover anyone without medical insurance or money who is in need of medical help?

Dilemma. A person has worked all his life but has never saved a penny and has no retirement pension. At the age of 75 he develops an illness, is no longer able to work and needs nursing care. He has no money for rent or food. He has no children or relatives to take care of him. Who is going to take care of him? One cannot assume that any individual or organization will come to his rescue and take care of him. What is to be done? Can a humane society just let such a person die? How does society deal with cases like this?

Solution. The government takes responsibility for him, pays the costs of taking care of him. To do this laws are required that authorize the government to take care of cases like this at taxpayer expense. So such laws are passed. How are they worded? How broadly are they worded? What kind of cases do they cover?

Dilemma. A person was born mentally retarded, has reached adulthood, and is unable to hold a job. Who is going to take care of him? Who is going to supply him with room, board and daily needs? One cannot assume that any individual or organization will come to his rescue and take care of him. What is to be done? Can a humane society just let such a person die? How does society deal with cases like this?

Dilemma. This dilemma involves the education of children. At one time there were no public schools in this country. All education was private and paid for by the parents. Now it is just a fact of life that if schools were not free as they now are, there are a great many parents who would simply not send their children to school. They would say they couldn’t afford it and wouldn’t do it. They would let their children grow up illiterate, unable to read or write. Now, is this right? Should not every child be given at least some chance to realize his potential? Should not every child at least be taught how to read and write? Doesn’t every child deserve at least that much help in life? How does society handle the problem of parents who don’t value education and wouldn’t send their children to school if schooling wasn’t free?

Solution. The government funds public schools and makes schooling available to all children.

If I saw some deserving person in a really bad situation through no fault of his own, I would want to help him (at least help him get on his feet so he could make it on his own). But the resources to provide honest, real help may be much more than I could provide. What would be required is the pooled resources of many people. Help from some charitable organization could be one answer. But one cannot assume that charitable organizations can or will take care of all such cases. The government, however, is an entity that would have the capability of taking care of all such cases. Still, a problem does arise. How can an impersonal organization such as the government know if a particular person is deserving or not, or if his case is legitimate? This world is filled with con artists and tricksters. How can you be sure the government and its bureaucrats won’t be conned; indeed, conned in a big way? If the taxpayer is to be forced into supporting charity cases, how can he be sure his money is being spent carefully and wisely and not being squandered? There are other questions that also arise. 1. Does a government have the right to force its citizenry to take care of charity cases? (That is what it is doing when it takes care of such cases at taxpayer expense.) 2. Does our constitution authorize governmental expenditures of this nature? Is dealing with these kinds of social problems a proper function of our government as limited by our constitution?

The above dilemmas give some perspective on how we came to where we are today. What do we have today? We have welfare programs, Social Security, Medicare, public education, etc. that cost the country enormous amounts of money and the costs just keep growing and growing and are getting way out of control. The government has created one entitlement program after another whose costs increase exponentially and they are threatening to sink the boat. In addition, most of these government programs don’t work very well. To support them the government has gone hopelessly into debt. It has borrowed huge amounts of money and owes so much that if one compared the government’s situation with that of a private person it would be nearing that critical point where he just couldn’t pay the interest costs and would have to declare bankruptcy. The country has incurred so much debt that future generations will have a very difficult time even carrying the interest load, let alone ever paying the money back. What the country is doing fiscally is nothing but criminal in regard to future generations. In addition, our government is also simply printing money at shocking rates, a highly dangerous practice that invariably ends very badly if taken too far. And no one knows how much too far is. Taken too far, it results in hyperinflation and economic disaster, as happened in Germany after World War I, Yugoslavia, and many, many other countries. Governments push their luck by doing it and end up destroying their currency. Our country is engaging in fiscal conduct that just cannot continue indefinitely. Sooner or later the behavior is certain to end in disaster - hyperinflation, fiscal and economic disaster, and social chaos. Just as with individuals, a country cannot live way above its means forever. Sooner or later a society of fools will reap the terrible consequences of all this foolishness and when this happens there will be no government help for them. For a long time the USA was the world’s biggest creditor nation. Now it is the world’s biggest debtor nation. Capitalism made us a great creditor nation. Socialism has turned us into a great debtor nation.

How has all this happened? Well, everyone who receives handouts from the government from one program or another just loves it. And this includes large portions of the population. And these people who are benefitting vote for politicians who promise more of the same. And there are always politicians who will promise people lots of free “goodies” in return for votes, politicians who care more about keeping their jobs than about the good of the country. Thus politicians buy votes through handouts. So the problem just keeps getting worse and worse. In addition, large portions of our population just come up very short in regard to understanding how things work. They don’t understand difficult concepts. Their view of the government is that it is an entity of endless resources. They view it as a kind of Santa Claus who can just give anyone anything it wishes at no cost to anyone. They don’t understand that it can only give a person something by taking the money from someone else in the form of taxes.

When did this liberal, socialistic tendency in America start? It started back at the time of the Great Depression in the early 1930's with the social programs and policies of Franklin Roosevelt. With these programs the country took a sharp turn to the left, embracing socialistic ideas and outlooks. It has followed the same leftist, socialistic, “progressive” path in the 80 years that followed, reaching a peak with all the liberal social legislation of Lyndon Johnson’s administration (Great Society program, etc.) in the late 1960's.

What is happening here? What is going on here in America? Well, our society has embraced an economic philosophy that just doesn’t work. Socialism just doesn’t work. Capitalism works. Socialism doesn’t. That has been proven in Russia, China and in many other countries all around the world. It is also being proven in the USA and in western Europe. Socialism is a set of idealistic ideas, attitudes, and beliefs that arose in the minds of various eggheaded intellectuals who felt they had invented a superior economic system - one superior to the age old natural system known as capitalism. As often happens with theories, the socialistic system just falls far short when tested in the real world. It is a highly inefficient system with all kinds of counter-productive, reverse incentives that act against it. It is like a non-self-sustaining chemical reaction. It is like a chemical reaction that just fizzles out. It just slowly degenerates into a really ugly system, a totalitarian system that reduces its citizenry to poverty and serfdom. And why is this? It is so because it violates various laws of nature, because it ignores various basic facts of human behavior. Capitalism is a tested system that does work because it is a natural system based on laws that work. To understand why capitalism works one must understand what motivates man, what inspires him, what energizes him. Making a profit does this. Having control over your own life, being free to do things your own way does this. Capitalism has in it the right kind of incentives that produce and work. Private enterprise works. Government bureaucracy doesn’t work. A bunch of bureaucrats managing all the details of your life produces a system doomed to fail. It is filled with foolishness and kills the human spirit. And part of understanding capitalism is understanding the very central, important role played by people of affluence and money in creating jobs for the general population. Anti-rich government practices and policies such as confiscatory taxation of the wealthy has the effect of killing the goose that lays the golden egg in regard to economic health and job creation. The affluent and wealthy class represents the brains and money that create production and jobs, that create beneficial change. Anti-rich governments, socialistic oriented governments, give the rich and affluent good incentive to “pick up their marbles and exit the game”. They cause money to flee to other lands, to other parts of the world where the climate is friendlier to capital. The loser is the common man. Thus envy and hatred of the rich that produces socialistic-leaning politicians and anti-rich government policies only work against the general populace. I believe the middle class in America has been becoming poorer and poorer and smaller and smaller over the last 50 years. Industry and jobs have fled the country in a big way. Life is getting harder and harder for the average person. Why? Socialism. The socialistic mentality. It is slowly destroying the country.

Let us go back now to our original questions, to our list of dilemmas. Let us consider the questions we raised.

How does one create a program that provides a single woman with children accommodations and all the necessities of life without having multitudes of single women everywhere start having illegitimate children in order to qualify for such a great deal? Such a program produces a counterproductive, perverse incentive. How does one deal with this? There are few Blacks in our country who get married. Most have lots of children but don’t get married. I wonder why? How does one create a program that provides medical assistance to people who are without medical insurance without giving the general population an incentive to forego medical insurance? How does one create a program that takes care of pennyless elderly people without encouraging people to be improvident and foolish, saving nothing? This question is not an idle one. A very large portion of the population here in America goes through life improvidently squandering all their money, saving little or nothing. They eat out at restaurants half of the time, often dropping $40 or $50 at a meal instead of eating at home where a meal would have cost them a dollar or two. They live in a big mansion, have several cars parked out in front; have cell phones, ipods and all the latest electronic gadgets; take vacations once or twice a year that cost them thousands of dollars. They indulge themselves, live high, enjoy themselves. Then they get to retirement and have a net worth that is close to nothing. The retirement income they have isn’t enough to live on and they start worrying. They get older, become in need of nursing care, and start scheming with their children on how they can manipulate things so as to make themselves eligible for government assistance. How do you deal with these kinds of people? These are the kind of people who vote for politicians that promise all kinds of entitlements. They live thoughtlessly, foolishly, imprudently and want government to be there for them whenever they need help. Should it be a taxpayer responsibility to support these kinds of people?

How does one create programs that give away really great things without devious people lying in bed at night scheming ways to defeat the system and acquire the free goodies? How does one write laws and create systems that clever people cannot pervert and take advantage of? How does one create programs that help only those few who are truly deserving and not attract and serve multitudes of undeserving? How does one create great welfare programs without large segments of the population taking advantage of them and just living off the government? Right now in this country large portions of our population are unemployed and living off unemployment benefits or government welfare programs while at the same time the most of the low level, menial work of the country is being performed by millions of illegal aliens. Without the illegals the employers claim they cannot fill the jobs. They can’t find legals who are willing to do the work. Now, I ask: Who in their right mind would leave a good welfare program to do 8 hours of hard, manual labor? In their great welfare programs, the government offers people propositions they just can’t refuse. It is just human nature. Most of us select the best deal offered.

Most of the problems that people have in life come from their own laziness, foolishness and improvidence. How does one create programs that shield people from the consequences of laziness, foolishness and improvidence without creating an avalanche of laziness, foolishness and improvidence? How does one create a socialistic society that takes care of everyone without destroying the incentive to work; the incentive to be prudent, industrious, sensible, provident, self-reliant and moral? How does one create such a socialistic system without destroying the general moral character of the populace?

Our modern welfare system does great harm to society. What do we mean? How does it damage society ? By its perverse incentives it destroys personal character and integrity. It creates bad habits - habits like laziness, idleness and dependence. It creates wrong attitudes, outlooks, values and behavior. And these bad habits, attitudes, outlooks, values, etc are passed on from parent to child to grandchild and they are passed laterally from one person to another like an infectious disease. And these things spread out in a ripple effect causing other problems that, in turn, cause other problems. What are we talking about? There is a chain. It goes like this: single parenthood - juvenile delinquency - crime. There is another chain: idleness - juvenile delinquency - crime. Consider the following quotations:

Idleness is the bane of body and mind, the nurse of

naughtiness, the chief author of all mischief, one of the seven

deadly sins, the cushion upon which the devil chiefly reposes,

and a great cause not only of melancholy, but of many other

diseases; for the mind is naturally active; and if it is not

occupied about some honest business, it rushes into mischief or

sinks into melancholy.

Burton

The first external revelations of the dry-rot in men is a

tendency to lurk and lounge; to be at street corners without

intelligible reason; to be going anywhere when met; to be

about many places rather than any; to do nothing tangible but

to have an intention of performing a number of tangible duties

to-morrow or the day after.

Dickens

If you are idle you are on the way to ruin, and there are few

stopping places upon it. It is rather a precipice than a road.

H. W. Beecher

Employment, which Galen calls "Nature's physician," is so

essential to human happiness that indolence is justly

considered as the mother of misery.

Burton

The way to be nothing is to do nothing.

Howe

Evil thoughts intrude in an unemployed mind, as naturally as

worms are generated in a stagnant pool.

Idleness is an inlet to disorder, and makes way for

licentiousness. People who have nothing to do are quickly

tired of their own company.

Collier

The modern welfare system produces ghettos and ghetto-like conditions. It produces a fruit. That fruit is juvenile delinquency and crime. And delinquency and crime impact the society. They impact our law enforcement system, court system and penal system and cost society a huge amount of money.

We have asked a few questions. Let us see if we can come up with some suggestions. Let us first observe that politicians and government bureaucrats simply don’t know anything about how to manage money. They only know how to spend money. They are really great at spending money. They always have all kinds of ideas on how to spend money. Great projects here and great projects there. They are also great at taxing. They are specialists at spending money and taxing. After all, they are Americans. How many Americans are good at saving money or at spending money only very judiciously and prudently? To deal with the above mentioned problems you need people with a different type mind-set. You need frugal type people who can get a great deal out of a dollar. You need people with sense who spend money only very judiciously and with proper measure. What I am suggesting is that a big part of the reason all our government programs cost so much is that the benefits are just far too generous. What do I mean? I know something about how people on welfare here in America live and eat. Many live in houses at least as nice as mine. They eat, in a sense, much better than I. What I mean is that their plates are piled high with steaks and pork chops while my diet is semi-vegetarian. They eat all kinds of sweets, sodas and junk food while I avoid sweets and junk food and never drink sodas. They eat anything they wish and I am very careful about what I eat. My diet is a lot healthier than theirs but theirs costs a whole lot more than mine. In addition they have cars, cell phones and about the same things most Americans have. I ask this question: If the taxpayer is asked to support a woman with six illegitimate children, should he be forced to support her in royal style? I know a couple who have a couple of retarded children. Neither work and at one time they didn’t have a home and were living in their car. Then someone advised them to check into government benefits that they were eligible for due to their two children. They did and soon they were living in a lovely new home. And more than that, the entire family started taking Caribbean boat cruises every winter. That went on for several years. I don’t know if they are still going on the cruises or not. This doesn’t sound right to me. But that is government and its programs.

I doubt that there are any government bureaucrats that could do it, but I can tell you that if I were in charge I am sure I could cut the cost of many of these government programs to a tiny fraction of their current cost. Most likely there would be a few that were aborted. My programs would keep the recipients alive, but they wouldn’t live so well that anyone was scheming to get into them. My programs would be such that there would be a strong incentive to avoid the program or get out as quickly as possible. If possible, I would put the recipients to work. Many people in this world live on a dollar a day. One can keep body and soul together on very little money.

I am not sure about how to reduce high medical costs. However, I am sure that one big reason for high medical costs is unhealthy personal habits and unhealthy lifestyles. Another big reason is excessive court awards in doctor malpractice suits that push doctor’s liability insurance rates through the ceiling.

Oct 2011