From: bzs@ussr.std.com (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: ne.politics
Subject: Re: Smaller government means MORE money for the poor
Date: 28 Aug 92 00:30:08 GMT
Organization: The World


From: cory@enigami.mv.com (Cory Kempf) [responding to me but lord knows why]
>>The problem is you cannot so easily, as you seem to represent,
>>separate your personal needs from those around you.
>
>Perhaps not in every case.  There are many cases though, where the
>government is making transfer payments.  In otherwords, the government
>takes about 40% of our income.  There is very little left for charity.

Charity is a red herring, why did you respond to my note which had
nothing to do with charity.

What I was talking about was who drives the buses, who builds the
roads, the buildings, etc. Charity cases? We were talking about
EDUCATION, not charity. We are talking about how modern economies come
to be, where the labor force comes from, where the consumers come
from.

Unless you are some sort of royalist and consider anything a commoner
gets to be "charity".

>Further, than without thousands of over paid mouchers between the
>giver and the givee, the contributions would be MUCH more effective.

And all the "mouchers" [sic] would be out of work, etc, round and
round it goes.

>(e.g. has it occured to you that the current welfare state pays people
>to run it?

No, really? I thought it was people like yourself willing to donate
your time for free to work the BCH emergency room and the dept of
motor vehicles etc. Or does the govt take your time too?

>And that these people have a vested interest in expanding
>the system?  That these people may not have any real concern for the
>recipients?  That perhaps they might not be acting in the best interests
>of the aforementioned downtrodden?)

That's a reform issue. That the world is less than perfect is not
fixed by anything you're proposing, it just retargets the problems.

>>You don't drive the bus you ride to work, you most likely didn't build
>>your house, or the roads you ride on, nor grow the food you eat, etc.
>
>Actually, we do.  Not directly, but by exchanging our labour for the
>labour of those who provide those goods and services.  Money is a
>media for making such exchanges more efficient, but barter would work
>almost as well (I will help build your house if you help build
>me a car).

You really don't understand a word that was being said and just want a
soapbox...

But what good would that be if no one was educated enough to hold
those jobs, build those goods, buy those goods, etc.?

We were talking about the value of EDUCATION to the average person,
you're all over the place here.

>>Do you see any value in public health measures (i.e. tax dollars
>>spent) to eradicate rats, tuberculosis and other health hazards from
>>poor neighborhoods?
>
>Is this necessarily a justification for a large government?

Large? Did I say large? What's large?

Sounds like a cheap shot at sensationalism to me.

>Or perhaps
>a good justification for a small one that can contract out large jobs
>(such as hiring a piper to eliminate the rats :-) ?

What's small?

Most people I hear spout like this use the following definition,
implicitly, of small/large govt:

	Large:		A govt which does anything I do not personally
			need.

	Small:		A govt which only does what I personally need.

i.e. people w/o a rat problem would consider hiring that piper a
morbid symptom of large govt.

>Eliminate all of the pork
>projects (like the entire state of W.Va. :-(  )

there ya go...

>What remains should be national defense (to protect us from outside
>threats) and a police / judiciary system (to protect us from other
>members of the populace).  I would probably include the public health
>portion (with very strict limits as to what it can / should do) to
>a portion of the national defense system (which already has those
>functions).

What about sewer systems, product fraud, immigration, piers/harbors,
disaster response, fire department, education, printing of money,
statistics gathering, I could go on?

>I don't think that these goals are too extreme:  Personal Freedom:
>the freedom to do what you want, so long as it does not harm another
>person and Economic Freedom: the freedom to earn a living, to make
>a better life for oneself, the freedom to make money.

And to save a few bucks on taxes...?


--
        -Barry Shein

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