i continue to be deeply troubled by the persistent agenda of the far right when it comes to women's reproductive rights. they seem illogically bent on saving the unborn, yet their policies and long-standing voting patterns with regard to health and human services for these saved former embryos and fetuses is markedly devoid of the same moral concern. i think perhaps i could even be persuaded to listen to their diatribe and take pause at their billboards, which dot the rural landscape of these midwestern states, if only they would put their money where their mouths are. instead the message appears to be "jesus loves when you save a little baby, but could care less once it sees the light of day. after that you're just an economic leech if you come to your government in need of assistance to care for your children." opponents of abortion continue to support fiscal policy and legislation aimed at withdrawing support from poor women who decide to bear and raise their children. you can't have it both ways. if you don't want poor mothers seeking financial help, then start funding planned parenthood. @supermonkey, thanks for the comments on the proposed georgia legislation. the whole idea of criminalizing miscarriage is truly beyond all logic. methinks representative franklin has no idea how commonplace miscarriage is and how much money (gasp!) and government involvement (gasp! no wait, this is morality which means of course your government should be involved) it would take to start up a "business" like that.
They get you on the other side too. The same people who oppose abortion and family planning also oppose death with dignity laws. The rationale? Because allowing people to choose to die degrades the value of human life. "You have to be born, you're not allowed to choose to die, but don't you dare ask me for anything!" seems to be the motto. I have a theory that says that what people fear most is not death, but their own irrelevance. I think what these people fear most is that one day they will wake up to find that they are not the chosen ones, created in God's image, but rather just another fat, hairy mammal. People being able to choose not to have kids or end their life reminds them of what they fear, that just being human doesn't mean anything.
You know, it sounds a bit crazy but I can see the main issue they're dealing with here. They're trying to give power back to their state. The United States of America really wasn't such a big federal government originally, it was a collection of individual and sovereign states (that were united! ). Federal government used to be small and only acted to keep these states on the same page with foreign policy and major major domestic policies. Fast forward to today and you have Federal government flat out telling states how to run themselves which goes very much against how this country was formed. I definitely don't agree with everything they stand for, but i do agree that U.S. states need to take back their sovereignty in order to: #1 reduce federal government power, #2 reduce federal spending, and #3 push responsibility for how this country is run and how it appears to the rest of the world back toward the individual citizen. I think if this does eventually happen we'll see our country begin to prosper like it once did; any other nations that are in open trade with us will obviously feel the benefits of it as well. Think, cheaper products from the U.S. due to lower taxes from decreased federal spending, better quality products made by citizens with a much higher morale because their nation is prosperous again, and because with lower taxes they'll have more money and/or the dollar will begin to hold it's value again! Understandably this is quite far fetched and somewhat exaggerated but it's to prove the point that states seeking their original sovereignty is very much a good thing for everyone (except federally funded money pits of course).
I'm rereading a great book right now that introduced a sobering fact about the trends of power in the US. From 1776 - 1927 the government never spent more than 12% of GDP except in cases of major war. And of that spending, 2/3 of the spending was at the state and local level - federal spending averaged around 3% of GDP. From 1933 to the present (the book was written in 1979 but it is still the case), Government spending never went below 25% of GDP and 2/3 of the spending was on the federal level. That is an astonishing shift of spending/responsibility in an incredibly short period of time. I agree that there needs to be a counter-balancing effort.
"Free to Choose" by Milton Friedman. It was a companion book to a 10 part series of the same name he did on PBS back in 1980 which I can't recommend highly enough if you can get your hands on it too. It also dovetails with his major book "Capitalism and Freedom" which is much more in-depth and academically economic. "Free to Choose" is like the reader's digest version and is very easy to read. I got my copy at a used book store when I was at the beach for $7 which was a bargain considering someone was using a great southern biscuit recipe as a bookmark as a bonus.
totally sound thinking. It is somewhat far fetched Taxes make up a very small amount of the cost of production in any sane developed country and are of far less importance than say swings in commodity prices or a rise or fall of the dollar in any given day on the currency excahnes, cheaper manufactured goods being a meaningful boost to the economy is something relavent to a United States of some decades ago and the morale bit ....well there are not many who enjoy going to work, are there? A strong dollar has alot to answer for really and is more a burden than a virtue. A strong currency goes hand-in-hand with an economies standing in the eyes of foreigners (well run: currency weighted on the strong side) rather than it being a necessity for good performance. It comes with the territory of being a first-tier economy, instead of it being needed for one. Furthermore a weaker dollar would pull the rug away from the thinking 'to hell with the deficit' which has been a hallmark of every administration since Regan onwards. In this current climate theres very little that can be done in the short term, and the longer the bond markets stomach the budget deficit the better, frankly. America was at the epicentre of a financial meltdown, it was a very sick patient and needed alot of life support. The bottom literally did fall out of many markets and the government had very little choice but to step in and hand out large burlap sacks of cash. The other option was to let it rot and bring on an economic wasteland, versus the heavily scarred yet still recovering land of today. In all fairness all this tea-party shenanigans will go down in history as a response by society to economic turmoil, and it's fortunes as a political movement will be the inverse of americas growth and unemployment rate. It may very well have peaked already. I think history will record it as a temporary phenomenon brought about by hard times and the frustration of conservatives with the state of the republican party, which had acted in right-wing ways with the military (foreign adventures) but not in accordance with the bulk of conservative ideoogy and tradition (letting the deficit and federal spending blow way out, even pre-obama). The current Republican party minus the tea party scene is a very sad animal indeed. The tea party has all the noise, all the profile, all the faces, and the Republican party has very little to offer anyone. Then again what was the average life-expectancy, literacy rate, and percentage of GDP spent on the armed forces during that time compared to now? What was the proportion of GDP spent on infrastructure development and maintenance? What was the proportion spent on state sanctioned research and development? What was the prevalence of economic crises in that period compared to 1927 to the present day? The western world and the life of the western individual has become a complicated thing. Federal government spent such a low proportion of GDP because there was little to usefully spend it on that was politically acceptable at the time. Some elements of modern life would always carry a publicly funded cost that cannot be wished away in any sane world. For instance air travel needs the FAA. Put it another way, in the same breath as saying "an astonishing shift of spending/responsibility in an incredibly short period of time" could you not also say that civilisation has advanced equally rapidly, if not more so, in this period? and is it not very often justified to centralise administration for things that are essential for all states and insulate from meddling and political manoeuvring of the local levels? If you take the naked figures from a long time ago, from what are for all intents and purposes ancient, antiquated times, will they not always look astonishing?
It was lower but, like all societies, it was consistently rising. I'm making the assumption that you are inferring the idea that a certain amount of life expectancy to state spending. If that were the case, the expectancy would not have been rising prior to the shift. It's worth stating too that is not written anywhere (that I am aware of) that American government at any level is charged with increasing the life-expectancy. Nor have I ever seen on any political poll the issue of "I want to live longer". According to Alexis de Tocqueville's study of 19th century America, the literacy rate was remarkably high. The trend in American education over the last 50 years would prove to make a hard argument that it is improving. Literacy rates are stagnant (which is understandable once it reaches some level) but graduation rates are pathetic and have been worsening during this time frame. During peace-time, when the federal government was posing a more appropriate role, percentage of GDP was around 3% which included military spending. The portion of military spending in that 3% was probably at a higher ratio than now but that is also because it was one of the few obligations the fed. It is around 12% just for military spending now. Are you contending that this is a good trend? If so, why not make it 50% and get even better results? Prior to ANY remarkable infrastructure spending by the fed, private enterprise had built over 100,000 miles of rail line in the country, more than all of Europe combined at the same time. Sure, individual cities built things like: subways, sewer, power and roads but all without federal level spending. The entire foundation of the electrical delivery system was developed privately and even though intervention by organizations like the TVA during the 1930's did a lot of work on building infrastructure, they never proved able to do anything better than companies like Commonwealth & Southern Corporation. This is a self-fulfilling statement. Obviously, the amount of "state sanctioned" anything would be less. The question should be about all research and development. Using that criteria, I refer you to the life-work of people like Edison, Westinghouse, Insull, Ford, Carnegie, Mellon etc, etc. Most prestigious higher education research institutions that we hold in high regard today, like Harvard, Yale, etc, were created privately literally centuries before 1935 when this critical shift happened. In short, they were less frequent and of lower degrees of severity. The largest crisis prior to this period was in 1921 and is hardly mentioned in history because of how short and uneventful it was and the unique quality of that event was the involvement of the federal government. Meanwhile, the crash of 1929 triggered an unheard of amount of government activity to "do something" which led to the largest and longest crisis in our history. Several independent economic studies have concluded that the activities of the federal government prolonged The Great Depression by about 7 years. Since the introduction of the federal reserve and the SEC, the financial landscape has been one of cycles that rise and fall almost on a decade-to-decade basis. You could employ the "but today's economies are more complex and, therefor, mandate more management" I would point out many federal influences and "fiddling" that is a large part of that complexity and any serious analysis of what it does today, and what is has done in the past since taking a more active role has lead to a more unstable condition. I have looked into this a great deal and have come to the conclusion that the centralisation of power benefits those in power most. In some cases it makes sense, but we had pretty much worked out those arrangements long ago. From the simple fact that it is exponentially easier to centralise power than knowledge, it has a detrimental effect from a management point of view. I don't get the point about meddling and political maneuvering at the local level since that is the level in which people have a more direct influence and, given the incredible amount of corruption at the federal level, I don't see how that insulation provides any proven protection. You can call them "naked figures", I call them "facts" and "history". It is astonishing because it was one way for over a century and changed in a period of around 5 years, literally standing on its head. The demands for a "civilized society" didn't just spontaneously happen in 1927, but the a small group of people with a dramatically different political ideal took advantage of an opportunity they had not had before. You could drive the same car for 10 years but the "astonishing" point of ownership in all that time is when the car swerves off the road and rolls over. That episode isn't traumatic because you chose to select the few seconds out of the entire history of your ownership of the car. It is inherently traumatic because of what actually occurred and was drastically different than your prior experience of driving. A stuntman that rolls cars on a daily basis wouldn't find the activity nearly as traumatic as you or me. Your point that these things have come about due to a political demand for such things has a lot of merit. But what do you consider the tea party movement other than just that, a political movement to change things?
Both of you make really excellent points. I definitely agree with this. On the other hand though, there are a lot of other federal organizations that we either do not need entirely, need to be scaled back significantly, or their level of authority needs toned down. Good examples would include the DoHS, FEMA, and the FDA. Not that we don't these types of organizations but that there's a LOT of potential for corruption. There are no good checks and balances for these organizations since they've been given so much authority and power. What they say goes.. and there's no real way to fight it if you happen to disagree. I really like this statement, I couldn't agree more. While there is a certain amount of power that I believe the Fed needs to have, I don't believe at all that it needs to be anywhere near what it is right now. The checks and balances that this country was founded upon seems to have gone out the door entirely. It's no longer a government by the people for the people, it's (in my opinion) a government by the government for the government.
