On Economic Liberty

[Yeahman]

I know there are a couple of people here who don't care about economic liberty. But I am assuming that most Americans do care. But why is it so rarely emphasized? We talk about the terrible Patriot Act but we are silent when the government makes us pay for farm subsidies. We spend more in farm subsidies than in Iraq.
We put up with Social Security. Why does the government REQUIRE us to buy their pension?
Why should families who pay for private school, have to pay for public school? Why are poor families forced to pay for government education? Why not just cut a check and let them go to whatever school they want?

There are countless other smaller examples. Why do we put up with this? I say that the people should vote for budgets. The politicans obviously cannot be trusted with it. If the public wants to approve the $15 billion NASA budget, let them go ahead.
Sure there is the danger that the masses are too ignorant. But are greedy Washington fat cats any better?

[achtungbaby]

Sure there is the danger that the masses are too ignorant.
So what sorts of social service would you advocate paying for?

[Yeahman]

So what sorts of social service would you advocate paying for?
Stuff that actually benefits the public, not just a single lobby.
School and healthcare vouchers for everyone under 18. Expanded welfare to provide supplemental income for the working poor.
Roads, police, justice system...

I'm not saying that the government shouldn't pay for stuff. I'm just saying that the government shouldn't force us to BUY certain stuff. OK I want health insurance? If I'm poor, why does the government force me to use their health insurance? Why not just give me the money?

[Meki]

Stuff that actually benefits the public, not just a single lobby.
School and healthcare vouchers for everyone under 18. Expanded welfare to provide supplemental income for the working poor.
Roads, police, justice system...

I'm not saying that the government shouldn't pay for stuff. I'm just saying that the government shouldn't force us to BUY certain stuff. OK I want health insurance? If I'm poor, why does the government force me to use their health insurance? Why not just give me the money?

Idealistically, that would be great but currently how many people already abuse the welfare system, fake insurance claims and other gov. funded programs? You have to look at it in realistic terms. I think most Americans do care but it's hard for them to come up with a definitive solution. You’re talking about total economic reform. How feasible is that?

[Yeahman]

Idealistically, that would be great but currently how many people already abuse the welfare system, fake insurance claims and other gov. funded programs? You have to look at it in realistic terms. I think most Americans do care but it's hard for them to come up with a definitive solution. You’re talking about total economic reform. How feasible is that?
Actually it would cut down on the fraud. Take a fake health insurance claim to medicaid, for example. Get rid of medicaid and cut taxes instead and you can't have any fraudulant claims! Or if you still want to subsidize healthcare then just cut a check (or the more stealthy way, cut taxes for the poor or provide larger tax rebates for them) and let them do whatever they want with the money. If they want to buy health insurance, let them do so. If they want to buy a car, they should be able to. It doesn't cost the government any more than it does under the current system of regulating spending. In fact it would cut costs by cutting down on the bureaucracy. If you really want them to make sure they spend it on healthcare, there's still the voucher option which would put the burden of weeding out frauds on private insurers.

[achtungbaby]

Stuff that actually benefits the public, not just a single lobby.
You think that senior citizens are a single lobby...? It is a constituency that we're all destined to belong to someday ya know...

School and healthcare vouchers for everyone under 18. Expanded welfare to provide supplemental income for the working poor.
Roads, police, justice system....
I agree with ya, I think those are great things, but something as important as balancing the budget can't be given into the hands of some popularity contest. The things you mentioned above might be just as arbitrary to someone else as social security might be to you.

Why not just give me the money
Who's to say you're going to use it for health insurance?

[SunWuKong]

We put up with Social Security. Why does the government REQUIRE us to buy their pension?

i don't know the government's reason for that, but i do think that is actually a good thing. without mandatory pension, you're basically putting a lot of strain on younger people to fully support their elders financially (because there would be a lot of people that don't choose to invest in pension if it's not required). plus, it ensures that old people can be financially independent.

social security itself is another issue. i think it needs a lot of fixing. in HK, pension became mandatory a few years ago, but it was structured after the 401K plan. old people in HK at the moment basically have to rely on their children unless they worked for years at a company that had its own pension plan. it can actually put a lot of strain on the family. there have even been cases of elder abuse by family members.

Why should families who pay for private school, have to pay for public school?

i personally think families that send their children to private schools should get tax deductions per child that they're sending to private schools. or is that already done in some states? don't you get tax breaks if your children are home-schooled?

but i don't think they should be exempt from the cost of public education altogether. it's an issue of what an individual's tax money should be used for. public good of the society? or only the public good that the individual partakes in? i personally think it should be the former.

Why are poor families forced to pay for government education? Why not just cut a check and let them go to whatever school they want?

because that hardly eliminates the problem. you'd just be creating poorly funded private schools. that's not so different from poorly funded public schools. except that public schools are not for-profit. and remember, increasing the quality of your services is far from the only way to increase your profit or market share, and the goal of private enterprises is first and foremost to turn a profit, not to provide quality goods and/or services. plus, i've mentioned this before, the fact that the government requires each child to go to school would already put a monkey-wrench in complete reliance of market forces for education. it's not like a cup of coffee or even a loaf of bread, where if you don't like any that's available, you can actually choose not to buy any.

There are countless other smaller examples. Why do we put up with this? I say that the people should vote for budgets. The politicans obviously cannot be trusted with it. If the public wants to approve the $15 billion NASA budget, let them go ahead.
Sure there is the danger that the masses are too ignorant. But are greedy Washington fat cats any better?

you know if we voted for budgets, the public would probably be voting for bigger budgets for things like public education and health care. are you sure you want that? :smile: you can forget about tax breaks for families that send their children to private schools. instead of being concerned with too much taxes, they'd just vote to spend less on other things - which i'm definitely not opposed to.

anyway, there would probably be a lot of logistics problem with letting the public vote on budgets.

[Yeahman]

You think that senior citizens are a single lobby...? It is a constituency that we're all destined to belong to someday ya know...
I'm not saying we should rip them off. I saying we should end the mandatory SS contributions and just pay off what people already put in so far. Yes, it would be extremely expense, but the alternative is to continue the insanity.

I agree with ya, I think those are great things, but something as important as balancing the budget can't be given into the hands of some popularity contest. The things you mentioned above might be just as arbitrary to someone else as social security might be to you.
Perhaps it is arbitrary but I have my reasons. We can't always depend on parents to provide what is best for their kids. Thus the vouchers for those under 18. For those over 18, I'm inclined to just cut them a check that they can use for whatever they feel that they need.

And course stuff like roads are a common good that benefits the entire community with no plausible way to charge individually depending on extent of benefits received. If there was some way to clock how much road a person uses within a given state and charge them accordingly, I'd be all for it. We do it to a certain extent with tolls and gas taxes.

Who's to say you're going to use it for health insurance?
Why should I have to? That's sort of my whole point. If I think that a tutor for my kid is more important than health insurance for myself, why should I be prevented from using my allocation of medicaid money for whatever I feel that I need? It's a restriction on financial liberty. It's taking my money via taxes and then saying that I can only enjoy this certain government service.

[nola]

God if we just cut out the Iraq Wars and the billions that have we wasted on them there'd be money for ALL these things and it's overwhelmingly American conservatives not socialists who support these massive defense budgets.

[Yeahman]

i don't know the government's reason for that, but i do think that is actually a good thing. without mandatory pension, you're basically putting a lot of strain on younger people to fully support their elders financially (because there would be a lot of people that don't choose to invest in pension if it's not required). plus, it ensures that old people can be financially independent.

social security itself is another issue. i think it needs a lot of fixing. in HK, pension became mandatory a few years ago, but it was structured after the 401K plan. old people in HK at the moment basically have to rely on their children unless they worked for years at a company that had its own pension plan. it can actually put a lot of strain on the family. there have even been cases of elder abuse by family members.
That would be a better idea. Bush is working to reform SS in that direction.
But I think that if you have a pension already that meets certain minimum guidelines, you shouldn't have to contribute to SS on top of that.

i personally think families that send their children to private schools should get tax deductions per child that they're sending to private schools. or is that already done in some states? don't you get tax breaks if your children are home-schooled?
I don't think there are any such tax deductions.

but i don't think they should be exempt from the cost of public education altogether. it's an issue of what an individual's tax money should be used for. public good of the society? or only the public good that the individual partakes in? i personally think it should be the former.
Well since the tax is collected en masse, the rich will still end up paying more. The tax payment amount or percentage wouldn't have to change, just the reimbursement. I think that if you send your kid to private school, you should receive a voucher for the amount that that kid would have been allocated at a public school.

because that hardly eliminates the problem. you'd just be creating poorly funded private schools. that's not so different from poorly funded public schools. except that public schools are not for-profit. and remember, increasing the quality of your services is far from the only way to increase your profit or market share, and the goal of private enterprises is first and foremost to turn a profit, not to provide quality goods and/or services. plus, i've mentioned this before, the fact that the government requires each child to go to school would already put a monkey-wrench in complete reliance of market forces for education. it's not like a cup of coffee or even a loaf of bread, where if you don't like any that's available, you can actually choose not to buy any.
Most private schools are non-profit.
We don't have to get rid of public schools. Just offer school choice. So that if everything that you say can go wrong, goes wrong, then there's still the old public system to fall back on.

you know if we voted for budgets, the public would probably be voting for bigger budgets for things like public education and health care. are you sure you want that? :smile: you can forget about tax breaks for families that send their children to private schools. instead of being concerned with too much taxes, they'd just vote to spend less on other things - which i'm definitely not opposed to.
School vouchers would pass. Healthcare vouchers too probably. If the public wants to increase voucher amounts, I have no problem with that. We can disclose what the proposed program would cost per taxpayer. If they're still OK with it, then why not? It would be the right thing to do. Taxpayer dollars being used according to taxpayer priorities.
The public seems to be more concerned about balanced budgets than politicans (or at least the Republican variety) so I think they could make wise decisions.

anyway, there would probably be a lot of logistics problem with letting the public vote on budgets.
We do it for some things. Especially in California. It'll take a lot of work to set up but I think it would be doable.

God if we just cut out the Iraq Wars and the billions that have we wasted on them there'd be money for ALL these things and it's overwhelmingly American conservatives not socialists who support these massive defense budgets.
Neo-cons.
But we can cut out a lot of stuff like farm subsidies and pretty much every kind of subsidy you can think of (many concealed as tax breaks for the most obscure of lobbies). The Iraq war cost $70 billion or whatever it was last year. That's still just a drop in the bucket of our $2.3 trillion federal budget.

[SunWuKong]

That would be a better idea. Bush is working to reform SS in that direction.
But I think that if you have a pension already that meets certain minimum guidelines, you shouldn't have to contribute to SS on top of that.

yeah but you can't stop mandatory SS contribution before SS reforms. you would basically cause the whole thing to collapse.

Well since the tax is collected en masse, the rich will still end up paying more. The tax payment amount or percentage wouldn't have to change, just the reimbursement. I think that if you send your kid to private school, you should receive a voucher for the amount that that kid would have been allocated at a public school.

i'm not sure that that would make sense. the taxes you pay don't go directly to your own children's public education in the first place. it's to educate the population of children of the local community. otherwise it makes no sense for childless people to pay taxes that go to public education at all. it would make more sense to let the amount spent on private school tuition be tax deductible.


Most private schools are non-profit.

that would surely change if education was completely privatised. if it doesn't, then there's not much of a point for complete privatisation, is there?

We don't have to get rid of public schools. Just offer school choice. So that if everything that you say can go wrong, goes wrong, then there's still the old public system to fall back on.

i agree with school choice for public schools, and i know that some states already allow this. not sure how many states allow it though.


School vouchers would pass. Healthcare vouchers too probably. If the public wants to increase voucher amounts, I have no problem with that. We can disclose what the proposed program would cost per taxpayer. If they're still OK with it, then why not? It would be the right thing to do. Taxpayer dollars being used according to taxpayer priorities.

well, i would have no problems with school vouchers if it doesn't actually decrease funding for public schools.

the healthcare issue, i'm not so certain about. healthcare is important not so much to cover costs for your basic cold or fever, but to cover things like a broken leg and other injuries from accidents, or diseases that are expensive to treat. to have a system where the government just hands out vouchers or checks, it might not be enough money for some people because then the cost of health insurance could be as expensive as the health insurance industry wants it to be.

[Faithless]

God if we just cut out the Iraq Wars and the billions that have we wasted on them there'd be money for ALL these things and it's overwhelmingly American conservatives not socialists who support these massive defense budgets.
Shall we give the latest cost estimates on Iraq?

$50 billion here. 100's of billions there. A quarter trillion overall.

Hey, but let's fuck the farmers for this grandest of efforts, shall we? :rolleyes:

Iraq war price tag is about to rise: The Senate is expected to approve adding $50 billion to the Pentagon budget. One analyst says that will last just six months. (http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_3079730)

Article Launched: 10/02/2005 01:00:00 AM * By John Yaukey * Gannett News Service

Washington - The cost to taxpayers of the Iraq war is about to go up again, as lawmakers inch closer to adding to the 2006 Pentagon budget request as much as $50 billion - much of which will go to cover operations in Iraq.

That would push the total cost for the campaign to almost a quarter-trillion dollars.

The Senate this week is expected to approve adding $50 billion to the Pentagon's baseline allocation of $390 billion.

The House has approved adding $45 billion to a baseline amount of $363 billion.

Full congressional approval of the defense budget is expected this fall after House and Senate negotiators reconcile differences in the bills.

The additional military spending for Iraq comes as Congress already has approved $62.3 billion in hurricane relief for the Gulf Coast states hit by hurricanes.

Meanwhile, Louisiana's congressional delegation has asked for an additional $250 billion for rebuilding aid over an unspecified time.

Government spending has become an issue of bipartisan agreement lately, raising deep concern among Republicans and Democrats.

"Making the Iraq money an add-on to the defense bill as we're doing now effectively prevents the kind of debate Congress would have if it were a separate bill," said Brian Riedl, a budget analyst with the conservative Heritage Foundation.

"It's difficult with Iraq because you're there, and you have to fund your people," Riedl said.

"But Congress has not made any effort to offset those costs in areas where we can clearly make some cuts."

Riedl said that was evident in the recent passage of the $286.5 billion transportation bill, loaded with pet projects for lawmakers.

"That bill was passed to get people re-elected," Riedl said. "It had nothing to do with highways. I've never seen so many people so angry about runaway spending before."

In total, Congress has approved $350 billion in extra spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the larger war on terror since Sept. 11, 2001, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Almost $200 billion has been for Iraq. The vast majority of money for Iraq and Afghanistan has come through a series of supplemental spending requests by the Bush administration.

These have had the effect of taking much of the war spending out of the defense budget.

But financing wars this way also attracted more attention to their costs because the supplemental spending bills had to be publicly debated by lawmakers, which generated headlines.

Last year, Congress approved $80 billion in supplemental war spending that pushed total defense costs to $496.5 billion.

The current $45 billion to $50 billion add-on "will only get us through the next six months or so, at which point we'll have to come up with more," said Chris Hellman, a military budget analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

[nola]

Shall we give the latest cost estimates on Iraq?

$50 billion here. 100's of billions there. A quarter trillion overall.

Hey, but let's fuck the farmers for this grandest of efforts, shall we? :rolleyes:Almost 200 billion now. One-sixth of the US government's budget went to the Pentagon last year. Here is a link with the ongoing count of the cost of the war:

http://www.lysistrataproject.org/costofwar.htm