Re: AFTERNOON SENSITIVITY

Paul Szabady wrote:
Tim Daneliuk wrote:
Paul Szabady wrote:
<SNIP>

The most commonly cited thing the government could have done during the
20's to prevent the intensity of the 29 Crash was to have regulated or
banned the margin buying of stocks.

The list you quote would better be described as govermental
activities/programs rather than strict oversight and there are numerous
ones that have worked:

FDIC
The GI Bill (post WWII)


Veterans *earned* this, it was no handout. Also, this was not a social
engineering or oversight program, but a reward for serving the country.

Call it what you will, it was a government program that worked.


Worked to do what? What was the net effect and was that a Good Thing?


ADC


A lousy program that encourage irresponsible people to have more
children than they can afford.

At least it doesn't punish innocent childen.


<chuckle> Ah, the old "innocent children" ploy. Would you accept punishing 'guilty' children? When are you guys going to give up using that classic tautology?


Social Security payments to underage children of deceased parents


You mean returning some portion of the money to the children that the
parents paid in the first place? Social Security is an inefficient
and blighted system. Even with the roller coaster of the stock
market, in the average person's lifetime, just buying the S&P 500
index with an equivalent amount of money and with the frequency
of SS deductions would return *vastly* better results than the
government run SS has.

I'm glad that sanity blocked King George II from privatizing Social Security. Ask any person in the their 50's or early 60's how happy they are with efficiency of the market and how glad they are to have to work to age 70 because their IRAs, 401K's, or other investments have gone into the toilet.


I'm in my late 50s and I'm damn *glad* that I started investing 30 years ago! The rise in market valuation since 1979 has been *prodigious* as anyone with their head on straight surely knows. And actually, now would be the right time to privatize Social Security while the market is so low! Markets always rise again, ya see.

If you were honest, you would be forced to admit that Tim Daneliuk is entirely correct, that if instead of structuring Social Security as it is, FDR had proposed a government overseen and guaranteed investment bank instead. To remain Constitutional, it would have to have been a voluntary system, and to avoid conflict with private enterprise it would have to have offered an average lower rate of return, but each workers funds would have remained his own subject to his own desire to save or withdraw.

My mother began her working life in 1939, worked until she was 66 and now draws just $1,300 per month from Social Security. Even the worst managed investment fund would have produced returns *far* in excess of that paltry amount! It's mind boggling how poorly Social Security pays given the amount of wealth created in the US since WW2. And of course, Social Security money doesn't belong to her; she can't withdraw it or get more than her monthly allotment if she needs it. She has become dependent on *more* government programs to help her pay her medical bills (or would be if it weren't for my help). A classic illustration of the principle that government programs that substitute for personal responsibility inevitably produce *more* dependency - not less.


OEO Grants


Ah yes, promotion of diversity at the expense of everyone else. Lovely.

You distort another successful government program. OEO helped an awful lot of poor qualified students attend college, as did a variety of other State-funded scholarships.


At the cost of preventing *other* qualified students from attending college. There are only so many places at the table. Furthermore, in order to grant these students a college education, money had to be seized from those who did not wish to give it. An*immoral* action with immoral results. Yep. Another "successful government program" all right! <boggle>


Unemployment Insurances
FHA loans


Yes, the Barney Frank Memorial Fund - a fabulous success especially
once blended with CRA.

I know an awful lot of responsible people who bought their first house only because FHA loans were available to them in the 70's, 80's, and 90's.


The "ends justifies the means" is the mantra of the left - provided of course, that the means are furnished with someone else's money!


WPA


An waste of money that prolonged the Depression.

Every beautiful public place I go to in Minnesota seems to have had its stucture or facilities built by the WPA. They WPA also funded numerous writing projects that resulted in recording priceless local history. Not to mention the preservation of much Appalachian music and folklore. or the Blues in the Deep South. Or various roads, paths, bridges, and buildings. None of these things would have happened without the WPA.


Well isn't that sweet! Next time, *you* pay for it!


(These are programs that either I or acquaintances have personally
experienced)


I have some familiarity with some of these, and I'd argue that many
are *failures* when viewed in context: 1) They are "successful"
for their recipients but require threat of government force to extract
the money from those who fund it. i.e., They leave a net imbalance in
liberty among different classes of citizens. 2) In many cases, they
are the least efficient/effective way to solve the intended problem
as compared to private sector and/or simple litigation based solutions.
No society can remain durable when its laws pick and choose how much
freedom different classes of citizens may have.

As a practical matter, some of the programs I've witnessed directly are
just plain frauds - they don't work well, they're a waste of money, they
perpetuate bad personal choices on the part of the recipients, and so
on. Examples include ADC and Unemployment Insurance.

So, your partner leaves or dies and your children should suffer? You lose your job because of downsizing, moving operations overseas, bankruptcy, or the re-current recessions, and it's YOUR fault because of 'bad personal choices?' Come on!


Yes, come on! The principle here is Responsibility. Individuals should not have families if they can't afford to support them. Jobs *will* come and go, ergo BE PREPARED. When government removes personal responsibility it breeds a class who no longer recognize that virtue; it breeds a class who become entirely dependent on the largesse of government agencies, further eroding the principles of freedom and dignity upon which successful societies are based.


There is no inherent reason why Governments cannot function as well as
the private sector, unless you factor in the last 30 years of
Reagan-Bush/Clinton/Bush. If you don't believe government can do
anything right and is always the problem, why run for government at all?


To protect our liberties, no more, no less.

Since they can't do anything else right, why would anyone trust them to protect our liberties? I don't know anyone who is more free because of the Bush administration.


The free people of Iraq might disabuse you of that notion!



--
"We've gone astray from first principles. We've lost sight of the rule that individual freedom and ingenuity are at the very core of everything that we've accomplished. Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives." - Ronald Reagan
.

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