There was a time when teachers were examples of the better parts of our society. They were generally kind, articulate and selfless. They worked for little pay compared to their education level and often took tutoring in the evenings and summers to bring their pay up to that typical of their communities. We held them in high regard for their job choice and insisted that our children treat them with the highest respect, often more than elders and family members. Something changed, in us or the profession or those attracted to it. Somewhere along the line we coined the phrase, “Those who can, do, and those who cannot, teach.” We claim that public teaching is the fall back occupation for some people seeking an easy occupation, recognizing they work alongside those well suited to and proficient at the task of preparing our children for the future. I know this because I have met some amazing teachers, mine and those of my children. With an increasing percentage of our population getting degrees in subject areas unsuitable to any other profession, (gender studies?) it is predicable that teaching would begin to look like a more representative cross section of our good and bad society than the better-among-us of the past. What happened to the days when parents looked at school as a path to a better life for their children than their own?

But I called them crazy and I’m sticking to it. If you look at the two extremes of teachers in the profession, you would have an example of the typical government bureaucrat on the one end, and the consummate professional on the other. The stereotypical bureaucrat is not more interested in being a teacher than any other government profession. This person could have as easily applied for a Postal job but teaching opened up full-time first and the local municipal staff are expected to work summers for less pay, so teaching it is. Some of these are capable of being good at most anything but didn’t like their private sector prospects. Many are talented and can be fairly decent lecturers. Good students with mediocre drive can get a good education from such a teacher. Their main goal is to keep their head down and survive to retirement while avoiding summer duties. The worst teachers come from this group, but rarely the exceptional ones.

On the other end are the committed teachers. (Not loony committed, although it seems I am making that argument.) These take an interest in their student’s success and judge their own by it. They notice and are affected by students who do not perform to their potential. They notice techniques and seek out methods which make them more effective teachers. Students with any drive will succeed in such a teacher’s classroom, some without drive are motivated by them and excel. They are most frustrated by students and parents who treat school like day care, some place to exist, not a place of opportunity. Such frustration peaks when they see parents in jobs they hate; oblivious to the link between being able to learn and being promotable at work; living vicariously through their children. Imagine the discouragement felt in a parent-teacher conference with a parent encouraging their child to take school lightly and berating the teacher for expecting too much and not “letting a kid be a kid,” How hard would it be for such a teacher to not scream at such parents? How hard not to scream that they are stacking the deck against the kid’s future ability to compete for a job they enjoy. The best teachers almost always come from this group, although some good ones start in this group and migrate towards the other end of the spectrum as their careers beat the drive out of them. The really bad teachers rarely come from or have ever been in this group.

Obviously, we should encourage the consummate professional and at a minimum, weed out the poor performing career bureaucrat. But this is why you have to be crazy to be a public school teacher. We do neither of these even as we lament the fact. Given my previous description, which I find people generally agree is accurate, we should have no trouble noticing which type we encounter.

In Madison, Wisconsin teachers called in sick in such large numbers that their schools were closed. There is pending legislation which, among other things would require teachers to pay for part of their retirement pensions as apposed to the tax funded arrangement the teacher’s union secured previously. Further, they would have to pay a portion of their own health insurance, the details of which would be set legislatively. Also, pay raises would be linked to inflation instead of going up faster than private sector salaries and related tax revenue. Keep in mind that business owners pay all of their own retirement, and a portion of their employee’s retirement. Private employees pay more of their own insurance premiums and retirement contributions than the proposed portion Wisconsin teachers are being asked to pay. State laws and the new federal health care mandates determine the details of private insurance policies even as union employees are exempt. Pay has gone down in recent years in the private sector as taxes go up and inflation indexed raises for teachers would go up as well. The teacher’s union rep would not answer the question of how the lying about being sick would be explained to students whose lying would not be tolerated on moral grounds. It appears that the Madison school system will allow the absent teachers to use personal days to cover being away from school, contrary to policy. In the private sector, this is called fraud. I wonder if the ones who showed up for school on time will have to loose a personal day as the school was closed? I am certain that those parents who had to come home from work when their kids were sent home when the school closed, did not get paid for their time or lost vacation days. I know that some had to hire sitters as they cannot leave work with such short notice. The school system is supporting the absent teachers, despite the children’s education being adversely affected, with tax revenue from the working people who paid for their absence and additional child care.

Meanwhile, Natalie Monroe, a Philadelphia suburb teacher, was suspended pending dismissal proceedings for writing in a blog where she called some students, “lazy.” Specifically, “My students are out of control, . . . They are rude, disengaged, lazy whiners. They curse, discuss drugs, talk back, argue for grades, complain about everything, fancy themselves entitled to whatever they desire, and are just generally annoying.” Please note that she did not use her full name or the names of any of her students in her blog and in the life of her blog, very little of the content had been about her students or even being a teacher. Her blog could have been written by any teacher in any school about any students, anywhere in the country. It could have been fictional, but she was suspended immediately. She is not being called out for lying about her students, no one is even suggesting that what she said is not true, simply that it is inappropriate for a teacher to say such. I should think that students should be encouraged to critically evaluate such a claim and determine if it has merit. I should think that a teacher should be obligated to speak the truth as often as possible, not to avoid it whenever it is contrary to the bureaucracy narrative.

It seems obvious to me that teachers’ mass lying to students and their employer is acceptable to the Madison Wisconsin school system, even when the student’s education is suspended and the community is disrupted in support of the bureaucracy. It seems apparent to me that the Philadelphia area school system is not concerned that a discouraged teacher speaks in generalities about the state of student entitlement. They are however concerned that a teacher would comment on current culture in which she has intimate professional knowledge. They are not concerned enough to investigate if they are true, or if changes in that culture could be brought about by changes in the bureaucracy and lead to better performing students.

These are stark, perhaps extreme, examples of the state of public education in this country. But it seems to me that similar situations arise and play themselves out in school systems across the country every day. Most are small, almost unnoticeable exchanges to those outside the system. It seems that good bureaucrats are more valued than good teachers. It seems to me that good bureaucrats can lie about their absence and allow students to go unsupervised and untaught for days in the pursuit of monetary gain. It seems that firing a teacher for expressing her personal opinion on her personal web page, on her personal time is acceptable even if the opinion would be permitted by any other member of society. A person would have to be crazy to devote themselves to teaching students who do not value them, be berated by parents who want them to lighten up on school workload and complexity, while reporting to bureaucrats who will not support them except when lying about their motives contrary to their work agreement.

I for one am thankful that such insanity exists.

I think the answer to the first one is simple. No, it is not the answer Lisa Jackson, EPA Administrator gave. Her reason was the agreed upon, previously released response, the evidence is overwhelming, the EPA is obligated to do something about it. My answer is that carbon is the most dangerous “pollutant” left to regulate, and public opinion has not swayed to the liking of the warming lobby, Congress has refused to pass Cap & Trade because the electorate kicks those Congressmen who threaten to do so, out of office. Just like the cleanup of the Gulf Coast beaches, lots of people are needed early on. As the worst of it is cleaned, fewer people are needed until eventually, only a few are “needed” to check out reports of places that are not cleaned. The EPA, like all government agencies, will not send the early cleaners home, and their ranks continue to grow. Their budget grew 35% since President Obama took office. There are too many people. They are obligated to clean something up. The EPA only remains relevant so long as there is an environmental pollutant not being cleaned up.

The second is simple as well, if you simply apply poli-logic, the logical assessment of a policy’s outcome. The EPA asserts it is obligated to regulate carbon, for the purpose of reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, for the purpose of relieving the earth’s fever. Assume for a second that the earth has Al Gore’s fever, and that reducing carbon will accomplish this cooling. The question is reduced to the simple form: Will carbon in the atmosphere be reduced as a result of EPA limits on it? I suggest it will not. Simply, global warming suggests a global phenomenon. The air we clean (or don’t pollute) circles the globe. The EPA does not. When it costs too much to operate a factory here, because the electricity costs too much, the factory will move to China, or close and be replaced by one opened there. The Chinese electrical generation is not as clean as ours was then the EPA was formed, much less EPA obligation “clean.” The end result is more carbon in the atmosphere than there is now, and more of other pollutants like sulfur that are all but eliminated in U.S. electricity production. If the EPA, or anyone for that matter, wants to reduce air pollution, they should do everything possible to bring as much industry to the U.S. as possible. The dirtier, the better.

While we are at it, lets look at another assumption that must be true in order for the EPA assertions to hold water, ( . . . um . . . air?), specifically that the science is settled. I can remember when floppy drives came on the scene. I can remember the news talking about global cooling in the ‘70’s and the impending next ice age. One thing I have noticed, scientists talk about the current understanding, or the current theories, not settled science. If Lisa Jackson had testified that tests have produced results consistent with the current theories, raising confidence that the theories accurately describe the natural phenomenon, I could check her assertion. I could concur, or at least find people who had done so and concurred. If she had said what scientists say, that the theory is not perfect and new refinements are being discovered each time the tests are repeated, I would have more respect for her opinion. But she did not. She said what politicians say, the subject is settled, because the Supreme Court ruled that the Clean Air Act could allow the EPA to ignore public will and the will of Congress and act on their beliefs as apposed to mine. To paraphrase one comment made during the hearing: The Supreme Court said the Clean Air Act COULD be used to regulate airborne carbon, the EPA staff thinks it SHOULD be so used, the Congress will decide if it WILL be so used.

Scientists do not claim to know all of the consequences of a political scheme and would generally not offer what should be, one would simply state what is known, and what the predicted outcome will be. A scientist knows that she will one day be proven wrong concerning some “settled” scientific truth, and would not want to be held responsible for spending billions of dollars and sending away millions of jobs and increasing the pollution in the air. So even if Lisa Jackson is not the climate activist she seems, and is correct in her assertion about the science, how long are we going to allow the EPA to increase the carbon in the atmosphere via China et. al.?

The EPA must be stopped to save the planet!!

If I substitute President Obama for President Mubarak, how different is the story. Does President Obama demonize revenue producing business as President Mubarak does the gift giving west, all the time relying on such funds to pay for his endeavors? Did President Obama not promise better government but deliver more government? Are the Tea Party attendees much different than the protesters in Cairo, simply without the violence? Would President Obama have attempted to physically shut down the news media and internet if such were within his power? I assert that he certainly tried to marginalize those portions of both which questioned him in the hopes that we would effectively do so. We have net neutrality, whatever that will turn out to be.  Proposals for reviving the fairness doctrine and giving the President an internet cutoff switch are ever in the Washington D.C. vernacular.

We are different from the Egyptian people in so many ways, mostly differentiating our heritage from the vision President Obama has for America. Our press will always be free as long as any of us are. We will be free to express ourselves to each other without fear of government prosecution so long as any act is without such fear. But when I saw President Mubarak arrogantly offering a 15% raise to government employees who had been told for years that the public coffers were dry, I could remember the self admitted “amused” President Obama smirking about Tea Party protests, “You would think they should be saying Thank You,” to Democrat-fundraiser applause.

Are we different from Egypt? Yes vastly. But will these differences prevail or will the vision President Obama has for us? Will we remain the shining example of what free people can do and lead Egypt by example to their new future? Or will we follow them as every socialized society before us, into the cycle of promise, tax, oppress, and collapse? We get to decide. Will we be content with borrowing a 15% raise from our kids and simply say, “Thank you President Obama”? Time will tell, but I like the odds, given the increasing size of the crowds in the streets during Tea Parties.

Oops:  In discussions about the situation in the middle east, my friends and I speculated about the state of Egypt and what affect other conditions in other countries would have if they coincided with the unrest in Cairo.  One such country that received considerable amounts of our time was Turkey.  I prepared this post well after midnight the first night, and proof read it the second and decided instead of using a generic country in the middle east, I would use the events in Egypt specifically.  I opened the document and replaced the generic language with Turkey and Turkish, instead of Egypt and Egyptian.  Those of you who know me, probably simply read in the proper language as you read, the rest of you now have a glimpse into the hell endured by the first group.  You both have my sincerest apologies.

Much political discussion involves terms and phrases used in ways contrary to their definition. The cynical call it spin. President Obama says he wants to “invest” in research, education, and infrastructure. In part, his motivation for this “investment” is to get ahead of the Chinese in the green technologies race and fabricate a “sputnik” moment. He wants us to “Win the Future.” On the surface, this sounds great, after all who would not want to “Win The Future”, which I will abbreviate WTF. Would I be a loon if I wanted to loose the future green race to the Chinese? After all, they are so interested in being green in China, they have a head start, right? They have demonstrated some technological advance on par with the Russians beating us into space to prompt a Sputnik moment, right? So what could the President possibly mean? As an attorney, he understands that words have meaning, and that reasonable people turn to the dictionary to determine the common accepted definition, so let’s start there. He obviously did not intend for us to understand a meaning different from the common accepted definition. Did he? He would not count on us reacting to our feelings about the word instead of critically checking to see if he used it properly. Would he?

I have to believe his intentions are pure, that he thinks he is doing this for our own good. But his perspective, and belief in economic salvation through government fiat makes me skeptical that he has the usual understanding of the word investment. So consider the following, recognizing my skepticism, and decide. For example, an office manager might invest in training for the staff, invest in education. But buying everyone beer one evening after a training session is spending on a consumable expense. The training should lead to improved production, team cohesion, etc., payback in excess of the costs. The beer, leads to trips to the bathroom. Similarly, truthful investment in research would be in technologies with potential for a return on that investment. Spending on research in thousand year old technology with physical or chemical limitations that limit financial feasibility, would not be investment. Do you agree? We would not, for instance invest in research in windmills or ethanol. If we are to invest in education, like the office manager, we should choose those areas in which we expect the greatest, financial, return on our investment. Such investment might be in the form of incentives to attract medical students to increase medical professionals and lessen the shortage, especially in anticipation of all the new people expected to be on Medicaid in 2014. Investment in education would not be in subjects with no practical use, except to produce future professors. Investment in education would be in science, economics, and business management. There would be no investment in educating people in trades with no market demand as there would be no return on that investment. And any investment in infrastructure would be along the lines of the Panama Canal. We would invest in infrastructure with proven economic advantage over our current methods. We certainly would not invest in more government operated railway, for instance, high speed or otherwise. It would be easy to see the evidence of sincerity and understanding of the word investment. We should not see a line waiting outside the men’s room, or hear talk of free beer.

Simple investment is made in assets which are expected to go up in value with time. This can be raw materials which are tooled or modified so as to add value to them, or it can be real estate which can be improved to add value. Investment can be in people, by increasing their ability to do such things. In other words, investment is the act of taking wealth (capital) and using its ability to produce work to create more wealth. A factory owner might invest in more efficient tools and in the education of the workers to operate them, only if it allowed that owner to increase production value and therefore see a return on that investment. Without a return, spending is consumption, or charity, not investing. A factory owner could find busy work for his employees and call it investment, for a while. But just as beer is a fools investment, his capital would soon be flushed down the proverbial toilet, and he would not long be a factory owner.

“Green” is not relevant to this discussion.. When we spend tax money on research on such limited use technology as solar panels or windmills, we are duplicating research conducted for generations by the private sector. The areas where this method of power generation is preferable to other methods is well understood and found unfeasible outside of limited, remote situations. My family uses solar powered devises and I have seen solar powered wells provide water where it was not feasible to bring power lines. For as long as there has been written record, windmills have lifted water into elevated tanks for later use. But, whenever we must rely on such devices, we must have an alternative for days when the wind does not blow or clouds persist. Any savings in the “free’ energy is lost in redundant spending on duplicate structure. When we can tolerate intermittent failure, we put up with the inefficiency and losses for the savings. But, make no mistake, energy companies have thoroughly tested known material and aerodynamic technology and continue to do so secretly. Each is desperate to be the marketer of the next nuclear fusion plant or any other fossil fuel replacing technology. Are we likely to get that kind of fanatical zeal for discovery through government-grant-investment research? Perhaps, but will the zeal be to find something economically feasible, or something popular, or the answers which bring more congressional funding?

We know how much energy reaches the earth from the sun. There is not enough energy in sunlight to power our country if we could capture it all, with 100% efficiency. Solar panels and windmills will never be 100% efficient, nor will the energy storage arrangements they charge. Anyone who suggests we could have a breakthrough to change our understanding of physics sufficiently to overcome this fact is praying, not planning. Such a person is praying for a change in the natural, physical world, not planning for an improvement in our understanding of it. They are banking on an answer existing in the realm of what we do not know, no in the overall expansion of what we know. A cynical person might attribute such folly to spin as well.

I suggest we let the private sector spend its own money when something new is to be gleaned, instead of spending the money confiscated from all of us because we wish it were so. Following the real Sputnik moment, we didn’t beat the Russians to the moon, we ran there alone. No one was following us. The world was more than willing to let us spend the resources, and watch for the occasional discovery when we stumbled onto one. The world is doing the same now that we are in the “green race”. We performed a technological feat with no financially viable use for it. The world knew it could be done, but only government would do it without answering the question of why would we. I think it is really neat that we have been to the moon, and love the romantic images of doing so with a slide rule. But I would never condone outpacing the Russians if it meant borrowing the money from the Chinese, giving our discoveries to them, and mothballing the program a generation later to rely on Russian rockets to get our satellites into orbit and our astronauts to a space station we share with them. We went to the moon to prove that American ingenuity can solve any problem, the Russians went into space to prove to the Russian people that the Russian government was the solution to any problem. Which more closely resembles the arguments President Obama makes for, “investment”? Let us not spend money we borrow from our kids to mothball another technology without financial feasibility when we can do it now for free.

When we have invested (spent) tax money on education, we got more expensive education. Don’t believe me? Why would anyone spend the tax money to educate their kids in a public school, and also spend the tuition money to educate them in a private school, (as all private school parents do), if one were not better than the other? As education spending doubled in this country, our student’s performance relative to the rest of the world did not change appreciably. When we spent tax money to help students pay for college tuition, we got a corresponding increase in tuition costs. When we use government loan guarantees, we get students studying subjects and pursuing degrees they never would on their own dime, much less if a private bank had to be convinced that demand for workers with those degrees was sufficiently high to empower the graduate to repay the loan. Only the idle rich would pay their own money for degrees in un-marketable subjects. A musician of moderate skill and disadvantaged background can get a loan and earn a music degree with no hope of being employed as such upon graduation. This is not investment, it is entitlement. We believe that this mediocre musician has a right to pursue this career path and some believe he is entitled to have the rest of us pay for it. But more importantly, is such a young musician well served in being led to believe that a music degree and loan payments provide a better future than being a brick mason, for instance?

When we spend tax money on our “crumbling infrastructure”, we are doing maintenance, not investing. Such maintenance is a consumable, not an investment. This is not to say that maintenance is not necessary, but it is not investment. I suggest a restructuring instead. I suggest that we go back to the funding scheme that built much of our crumbling infrastructure. I suggest that we use the gasoline tax for road construction and maintenance as it was originally sold to us. I suggest that we end the practice of raiding that tax to subsidize public transportation like Amtrak and city buses.

I challenge you to find any area where the government operates in even tangential competition with the private sector where the government efficiency is on the same order of magnitude as the private sector. Find any activity where the government keeps its promise of controlling costs and continuously improving customer satisfaction. There is no private concern which can survive any substantial length of time without doing just that, and paying a return on investment. There are legitimate uses for government, such as refereeing and national defense. But anytime government spending is recommended as an investment, or to control costs, or as a way to provide for those who cannot provide for themselves, there has been and by the very nature of it will be, an ever increasing collection of resources and liberties in an attempt to react to the cascade of disappointments and demands. Spending tax money on beer leads to well used toilets, not return on investment. Unfortunately, it also assures votes from the brewer’s union, big toilet manufactures, and drunks.

The Great American Experiment followed the sacrifice of, “lives . . . fortunes . . . and sacred honor” in defense of an idea. The idea that individuals, free from the tyranny of central command and control, protected their individual interests better than any unrelated protector, no matter how kind, caring or otherwise motivated. The Great American Experiment was funded, fought, and died for on the promise that freedom led to higher standards of living for everyone, greater innovation in business, agriculture, and every other aspect of life for everyone it touched, successful and failing alike. The government would be as limited as possible, the people as free as possible.

Carl Marx, believed the antithesis of these ideas. Marxism suggests that such freedom, and the fact that some people would be immensely more successful than others under such freedom, hurts the average person. Marx believed that for some people to succeed, others must fail, that the size of the pie is fixed, and who gets large pieces and who goes hungry is mostly random, except that dishonest people predisposed to fraud will skew things to their advantage. The typical honest person will suffer under the abuse of the dishonest. People are better served, in his theory, when each produce according to their abilities, and a central authority distributes according to one’s need. The average is better served when everyone follows the plan.

Every society in human existence has either answered to a central authority like a king, or had some system whereby the people chose their governors. In early history, a king who fought for the position was best able to fight to defend his people from invaders and pillagers, or to invade and pillage neighbors. Most were still farmers and hunters. Later, when technology progressed to the point where people could produce more than they consumed, trading came on the scene with the evolution of the middle man (middleous homosapien). This relied on fair play and people were hunted down and killed for foul play. Knowing who could be trusted and a person’s reputation became valued knowledge. Middleous man evolved to make a living off of what they knew instead of what they could grow or hunt. This only happened because there was enough excess produced to support people who did not directly hunt or gather food, make clothing, or build shelter, and there was efficiency in producing a couple of commodities where the climate was best suited to it and trading them for goods that could be more efficiently produced elsewhere. (This is why we raise beef and corn here, and they raise sugar cane in the tropics). It was almost unregulated. The middle men got together and formed colleges, or congresses, (groups of like minded people to serve a common end). Being a member of such could encourage producers and buyers to deal with you. The members of such groups would promise better and better prices to producers, and better and better quality to the buyers. Some would temporarily make a better living by such promises than from what they knew. They promised more than their competing middle men, until they could no longer produce and the group collapsed. They were replaced.

This system was ultimately replaced by the selection of fair play representatives (governors) by consensus. This made the selection based more on the perception of the candidate’s abilities than on actual performance. (Sound familiar?) Sometimes the selection was fair; sometimes it was coerced and intimidated. Indeed, control of all societies has been and is by governments chosen by a range of methods, with violent seizure of power after surrender on one end of the scale, and free and frequent elections on the other.

I am only concerned with the violent seizure method in that it is no more or less likely an end to any society, regardless of where their system currently lies along the scale, and is therefore mostly unpredictable. Such systems arise when the people are not able or willing to withstand its takeover. My concern is with the other end where America selects its government. Every society in human existence who chose their governors based on promises of representation have ultimately fallen to wasteful spending. The cliché is that they fell when the electorate voted themselves larger shares of the stores of grain than they were motivated to produce when fed with free grain. It is another of human’s natures. Until the mid 1900’s, these happenings were part of common education.

These are well known facts. In the pre-American world, kings tried to motivate their subjects with a system of taxes and entitlements. Prior to America’s founding, it was generally believed that anarchy would ensue without divinely inspired and chosen leaders. Many cultures still believe that today. Our founders believed that no one is more or less divinely created than the next, and that anarchy ensues without a divinely inspired population. They conceived a system whereby people could correct tyranny by choice. They conceived, debated, and persuaded the acceptance of a system that limited the power of the government to only that which the people authorize it to have. They demanded limits on government which could not be changed by the government serving those limits. They knew that human nature would compel elected officials to promise ever increasing rations from the public stores, and that once government control got sufficiently complicated, one size-fits-all policies would be the only way to manage the complexity thereby limiting innovation and individual motivation. They believed that nearly every government activity must be controlled locally, or fail.

So here we are. We stand at the cross roads where intellect faces human nature. On the one hand, intellect can rightly lead us to the conclusion that perfect management of a well motivated populace, provided for in accordance with the needs of each, eliminates suffering caused by bad decisions made by the individual. Human nature can lead us to accept Marx’s arguments without challenging the assumptions inherent in them. Marx’s utopic theory requires that human nature be resisted by the managers so that corruption does not foul the system, and that human nature be resisted by the managed so that defense of individual best interest no interfere with the common good even when contrary to individual good. Human nature explains why corruption is so common in countries with Marxist leaning systems. The self interest of the briber is provided for by the indulgence of the self interest of the bribed. Innovation is only relevant when conceived by or recognized by the managers and no incentive exists outside of ego for the innovator or the observant manager. Likewise, human nature leads us to vote ourselves larger shares of the public stores on the promises that “they” will be sufficiently taxed and sufficiently tolerant of the taxes to continue to produce grain undeterred. Human nature leads some to believe this despite the evidence to the contrary.

On the other hand, intellect can lead us to look for examples of both systems, socialist and free market, and determine which provides better conditions for the poor, or disadvantaged. Human nature would be to choose the best performing system.

Have we chosen the system whose theory stands up to rational debate when devoid of real world examples, or the system that has proven successful in practice despite being too complicated to fully explain every action rationally?

The choices, as I understand them are these: Recognize that we have the best medical system in the world BECAUSE the rich pay more than the poor, BECAUSE the rich have access to new treatment and technology before it is cheap enough for mass consumption; Recognize this it is this arrangement which makes medical care for the poor more available than it was a decade ago; Recognize that medical treatment of the poor is more available than it is in any other system in the world; Recognize that much of the medical treatment available to the world’s poor only exists as a result of the American medical system; Recognized that more treatments are available to the poor than would be if FDR had been successful in realizing socialized medicine; Recognize that a generation from now, the poor will have less access to as yet undiscovered treatments under socialized medicine than would be available if the rich continued to fund research and development; Recognize that socialism, Marxism, communism, statism, progressivism, liberalism, or however else you chose to label it, has led to the death of more people in the world than all other calamities combined; Recognize that because these systems rely on complete adherence to the common plan and surrender of the protection of individual defense of one’s best interest, violence and oppression are always used to control the population; Recognize that the wealth created by American entrepreneurs has funded the defense of most of the free world for two generations. Simply, choose to protect the rights of the individual to succeed or fail by one’s own decisions, unencumbered by agendas of social justice and wealth redistribution.

Or, choose the path chosen by every free society ever known. Choose the path dictated by emotion and human nature. Choose to bankrupt the country by trying to plan and provide an ever increasing array of goods and services, devised by a politically motivated committee that sets it own limits, provided to increasingly less motivated and demonized producers.

Will intellect win out over emotion? Am I wrong in my belief that I am on the side of intellect and not emotion? Is it arrogance that got us here in the first place, to believe that the human nature cycle of tyranny-escape-freedom-prosperity-guilt-entitlement-dependancy-tyranny can be short circuited without the pain of tyranny fresh in our minds? Are we destined to go down as the society arrogant enough to think that it manage all things for all people, just as the Romans did?

I hope not. I hope, that the success of the Great American Experiment thus far, can inspire us to not relinquish this prosperity and freedom in return for short term illusions of social justice. I hope that we recognize the success that took us from 13 colonies, too worthless to warrant the resources to control those colonies, to the most prosperous, powerful, free, and generous people in the world in less than 100 years. I hope that we collectively believe in our hearts, that the reason people immigrate here from every country in the world is freedom and opportunity and not a random coincidence. I hope that we as a country do not give in to the human nature that leads us to believe that our neighbors make poor choices at home, but perfect ones when electing officials, that these same neighbors make poor decisions at home, but perfect ones once in Washington DC.

I hope that we recognize that it is because of human nature, not despite it, that socialism and statism have always failed wherever they existed, and that free markets have succeeded everywhere they have existed. There is only so much motivation garnered from threats of fines and imprisonment, but the motivation of the hope for a better life is only limited by one’s imagination.

Would you expect one or more of the 5 to show up the next day with a stuffed animal, because they did not like doing without? Do you think that some of the kids would offer their extra stuffed animal to classmates with none? I would. I would expect one or two of the 5 who simply forgot, or didn’t take the request seriously or whatever would remember the next day. That leaves 3 who did not bring a stuffed animal because they could not, for whatever reason. I would expect some with stuffed animals to share with those who do not have a stuffed animal. I have a son who routinely shares his most prized treats with others around him. Some of those with one stuffed animal would bring in another the next day, and some would do so specifically to share with their classmates.

Imagine however if the teacher felt sorry for the 5 students without a stuffed animal and assumed they did not bring one in because they did not have the opportunity at home. Imagine that she wants to keep from embarrassing those without stuffed animals by allowing them to play without a stuffed animal or to be at the mercy of the charity of those students with multiple stuffed animals. Imagine that with good intention, she collects the “extra” stuffed animals and distributes them to the students without one. Everyone has a stuffed animal. Perfect, right?

What happens the next day? What happens if this is continued indefinitely into the future?

Will the 2 forgetful students bring in a stuffed animal the next day, or the next? Perhaps, but is there more or less incentive for them to do so than if they had been left alone?

Are the students who had 2 or 3 stuffed animals, and had the “extra” collected more or less likely to bring their 2 or 3 again the next day, to have them collected and redistributed to someone else?

When there are fewer than 30 stuffed animals brought in, is it fair for those who brought one or more in to be the one without any, so that someone who did not bring one in can have one?

Does the student’s reason for no longer bringing in a stuffed animal matter to you when answering this question? For example, does it matter that one student who brought in multiple stuffed animals just days before, only brings in one, and another student does not bring one because she cannot? Would you take the one stuffed animal from the “stingy” student and give it to the one without any choice in the matter?

Would you expect a child to bring their best or favorite stuffed animal in if they saw another student play carelessly with stuffed animals that did not belong to them? Would they attempt to protect their favored stuffed animal from confiscation and damage by leaving it at home in favor of a less appreciated toy?

If the teacher attempted to make the stingy students (who stopped bringing in stuffed animals) feel bad, would they bring in lesser appreciated stuffed animals in larger quantities to keep the count up without risking the better stuffed animals?

Would those who lack the ability (as apposed to those who were forgetful or lazy) be better off in the original situation where everyone felt free to bring their best stuffed animals and share as they felt comfortable?

How does this thinly veiled commentary on free choice relate to current events?

The Associated Press did some homework recently: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091029/D9BKMVMG0.html

http://www.cleveland.com/newsflash/index.ssf?/base/national-13/126320409066680.xml&storylist=washington et. al.

First, the jobs created were overstated. Imagine that, people competing for government grants painting a rosy picture about how well they had used the money. No surprise, I would expect any program with self reporting to have tremendous reported success.

Second, unemployment did not fair better in areas where a lot of stimulus money was spent relative to where none was spent. Transportation Secretary, Ray LaHood disagreed and said there were tens of thousands of jobs created in construction with road and bridge money. After all, how could we spend $400,000 per stimulus job and not hire anyone? They can’t all be raises for current employees reported as jobs saved. Is someone lying or stretching the truth? Perhaps, but both could also be right. Consider this:

Start with the fact that government cannot create wealth; it cannot give anyone something without first confiscating it from someone else. So, where did the jobs come from? In terms of stimulus money, where did the $400,000 dollars come from? More importantly, how many people would your employer have to lay off, to pay up $400,000? After all, that is where the money comes from, the economy. So, we borrow (from the future economy) $400,000 per job, with interest, which will have to be paid back (likely in terms of jobs lost or not created) by that part of the economy left when the new notes come due. We recently borrowed $290 billion to pay the interest on the next few months of loans we already have. This was the raise in the borrowing limit to keep the notes from coming due, presumably until the health care bill can pass.

In addition, the economy has to pay the government to operate, pay people to print/collect/borrow the money, as the government does not create anything and cannot pay for itself. And, the economy must pay for those programs and non-operational expenses of the government, like national health care, should it pass.

So, imagine that you are a potential employer, especially one over seas. Are you more likely to hire people in America, or somewhere else? Keep in mine, an employer has to have the money to pay the employee before hiring and for a long enough time for them to pay for themselves. Are you more likely to bring your best-most-favoritest bear you built at Build-a-Bear to the American kindergarten to be confiscated, redistributed, and played with by careless Americans? Or are you more likely to take your bear to China/India/Ireland/Dubai or any of hundreds of more bear friendly countries?

The problem with socialism, shared prosperity, social justice, economic justice, or whatever statist-collectivist name you want to put on it, is that it demands that human nature be ignored. This type of system is only sustainable (let alone prosperous) if the teacher can go into each student’s house and force them to bring in their bears. In other words, if there is no private bear ownership, if there are no alternatives, if there are no liberties. Such systems are only sustainable at the point of the proverbial gun. Such systems are only enforced, not upheld by informed free people.

Consider how this fits in with the current discussion of the day, where you will be forced to buy a particular government specified health insurance from companies who are forced to provide it to you without considering pre-existing conditions, at a government determined “affordable” rate, payable to Doctors who have been forced to accept this amount. Plans better than the particular “minimum” plan determined by the government (ironically called Cadillac plans, a GM brand owned by the Fed) will be taxed for re-distribution, and Doctors who do not accept the minimum payment or charge cash or provide enough care to be in the top 10% by volume, will be penalized likewise.

Will the currently uninsured be better off with the eventual outcome, or at the mercy of the current system? Will those from other countries continue to bring their medical dollars here, or will they follow the foreign Doctors to the more bear friendly counties?

Taking resources out of the productive areas of the economy, via healthcare, energy, income, or any other taxes and mandates, to re-distribute to non-producing areas, wastes resources in the re-distribution effort, and scares producers from other countries from producing here. Job stimulation spending costs us jobs and re-distributive health care reform hinders the availability of health care. The “stingy” will always have theirs, here or in China. Those who cannot produce always suffer the worse equality-of-outcome from socialism than the outcome from equality-of-opportunity of the free market.