From: secsu@ariel.lerc.nasa.gov (Ralph O. Clark)
Subject: Re: = Opportunity etc.
Followup-To: alt.culture.us.asian-indian,alt.individualism
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: NASA Lewis Research Center
Date:  8 Jan 1993 21:50 EST  

In article <7889@dove.nist.gov>, hira@cme.nist.gov writes...
>In article <7JAN199315002844@ariel.lerc.nasa.gov>, secsu@ariel.lerc.nasa.gov (Ralph O. Clark) writes:
>|> From: secsu@ariel.lerc.nasa.gov (Ralph O. Clark)
>|> Subject: Re: = Opportunity etc.
>|> Date: 7 Jan 93 20:00:00 GMT
> 
>[Manish's argument deleted]
> 
>|> According to the back of my tax form booklet, the breakdown is as follows:
>|> 	30% medicare and similar programs
            ^^^^^^^^
Oops! a think-o! That should have been "Social security".
The point still stands.

>|> 	14% social programs
>|> 	__________________
>|> 	44% total
>|> 
>|> 	24% defense
>|> 
>|> This is from memory. The 14% and 24% I am sure of, the 30% may be larger.
>|> It seems to me that there was another category that would fall in with
>|> medicare and social programs, but I don't have the form with me here.
>|> 
>|> Maybe you are thinking of the fraction of money spent by the bureaucracies
>|> in charge of the social programs that actually gets where it is supposed to.
> 
>The gov't is inefficient in delivering money, and you don't want 
>the bureaucrats to waste all of *your* money. 
> 
>What extent of gov't do you approve of? 

As little as possible.

>What gov't spending is ok?

For things that the business of governing requires:
	national defense
	police, courts, etc

Not for things that fall under "really nice things for someone to do
for somebody", i.e. charity. This includes
	welfare
	medicine
	disaster "relief"

The reasons for this are numerous. If you read alt.individualism (where
I found this thread and am posting) or alt.politics.libertarian, you would
see the arguments in gory detail. A short summary:
	1) private charities or businesses can provide the same services
		with much less overhead and much better accountability to
		the donors;
	2) If the government provides a service (necessarily funded out
		of the pockets of the taxpayers), it essentially becomes
		the RIGHT of all (qualifying) citizens to obtain it.
		E.g. welfare checks are looked on as "owed" by the government
		to the poor/indigent/unfortunate. Sure, some (maybe most,
		MAYBE even all) of the recipients need money in order to
		survive, but I don't see any morality in FORCING everyone
		else, under threat of imprisonment, to give what the
		government decides is a fair share.
	3) When the taxpayers are forced to pay taxes in order to support
		"charitable" causes, their attitude rapidly turns against
		the recipients, who are seen as taking their hard-earned
		money. Where is the charity (= love for fellow man) in
		that?
	4) The whole thing encourages the notion that it takes some sort
		of government institution to solve any problem. The real
		reason we have problems with pollution, poverty, poor
		education, etc., is that, at a grass roots level, people
		don't care enough to work toward a solution. It's so much
		more comforting to throw money at the government and try
		to believe that it can solve them.

> 
>Until you answer these questions, its pretty hard to discern where 
>your argument is coming from.
> 
>What is your opinion of the 'democracy' that we have in America?
>How do we change it to be more responsive to individual wants.
                                              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I'm not sure what you mean by this. I think that the problem is that people
expect government to be responsive to individual wants:
	"I want X, so the government should give it to me."
	"We all want health care, so the government should give it to us."
Uh-huh. And with whose money?

The government should keep its hands out of our pockets and its nose out of
our business.

> 
>|> Abuses of anything abusable always show up everywhere. Under the current
>|> "social-justice-influenced system", 30-50% of income is spirited away, with
>|> only a small percentage actually getting to the people who need it.
>|> If the government could steal our money and actually use it for good purposes,
>|> people would shout a lot less about it. In fact, the government only uses
>|> it to strengthen its hold on the people, tossing a few well-gnawed bones
>|> to the poor to buy their support.
> 
>I agree with much of this paragraph, but could we not just substitute the
>"military industrial complex" for "social-justice-influenced system."

Except that, as noted above, the social programs amount to considerably
more than the military ones.

> 
>|> Without managed trade, GM and the rest would not have taken 20 years to
>|> catch on to the fact that Americans like good-quality cars.
> 
>Perhaps, or maybe they (Chrysler) would be out of business.

Or maybe they would have decided to compete with the Japanese car makers
*before* they took over the market. If Chrysler was so short-sighted as
to not see what was coming, they should have gone belly-up.

> 
>|> The American Revolution was started and led by English citizens, mostly
>|> mid-to-upper class, who were tired of their rights as Englishmen being
>|> trampled on by the English government.
> 
>Sounds pretty similar to the Sandinistas.

I'm not familiar with the state of Nicaraguan law before the revolution.
As I understand it, Sandino, and later the Sandinistas, were fighting
a dictatorship supported (with American taxpayers' money) by the American
government for the benefit of American businesses. I have no objection at
all to such a struggle.

> 
>|> Exactly what part of making money to you object to? When does it become
>|> immoral? And when does theft become moral? What we need is a government
>|> that deals with all equally, not looking the other way when the rich
>|> DEFRAUD the poor, but also not looking the other way when the poor steal
>|> from the rich. Justice is justice.
> 
>Yeah, and I'm damn glad to see Keating getting convicted. How much did
>he lose? $2.6 billion? Let's see what % of the HUD budget that is?
>Anybody happen to know?

Figuring the 14% "social programs" figure as comparable (within a factor
of 5, say?) to the HUD budget, in a roughly $1E12 (!) budget, that's
$2.6 billion out of something like $140 billion (or as little as $28 billion,
using the factor of 5). A lot of money, but nothing like what the government
throws away.

> 
>Ron

Ralph Clark
Newsgroups: alt.culture.us.asian-indian