From: ag167@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Don Pavlish)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.amateur-comp,soc.culture.usa,alt.activism
Subject: Re: [misc.activism.progressive] Clinton Office Requests Comments
Date: 5 Jan 1993 03:59:34 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Distribution: inet
Reply-To: ag167@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Don Pavlish)
NNTP-Posting-Host: slc10.ins.cwru.edu


In a previous article, mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben) says:

>In article <1ia720INNm2j@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> ag167@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Don Pavlish) writes:
>>>a wonderful summing up!  libertarianism as the ideology of the
>>>frustrated children of the elite.  [...DRIBBLE DELETED...] they aren't
>>>quite prepared to admit that in a libertarian society there'd be
>>>no school loans, scholarships, etc. for people like them and so
>>>they'd be preaching the religion of the mighty and asocial
>>>individual while sweeping up the shit in the rich folks' back yard.
>>
>>Actually, as a Libertarian I am quite prepared to admit that a
>>Libertarian government would -not- offer loans, scholarships, etc.
>>for college tuition. However, a Libertarian government wouldn't be
>>stealing and wasting such a huge chunk of my family's income, rendering
>>government aid necessary in the first place. Cause and effect, see?

>No, we don't see.  Because we can no more see libertarian governments than
>we can see heaven.  You sound just like a communist promising the withering
>away of the state, or a Christian promising heavenly rule, or a cargo-cultist
>propitiating the great silver birds.

Don't look to heaven. Look back to the United States before socialism took
over, before Great Society or the New Deal, before the income tax took
hold... Perfect? No. Better than today? Probably...

>Considering that room, board, and tuition at most top-notch universities costs
>close to the median family income in the US, its pretty obvious that
>Libertarianism would tie quality of education to family wealth as closely as
>it is tied in most third world nations (and used to be in most modern industrial
>nations.)

Explain why quality of education necessarily depends on attending
one of the "top-notch" universities that run $20-$24,000 a year.


>If your family could have afforded to send you to an unsubsidized, top-notch
>college on the perhaps 20 to 30 percent of their income that is paid in taxes
>(never mind that some of that money would be needed to buy services that you
>currently receive from the government), then you clearly place yourself into
>the "frustrated children of the elite" class so clearly described.

We are middle class, hardly elite. The frustrated part is accurate.
With both my sister and I heading to college, the family budget will
become quite strained. The 20-30 percent chunk that gets sent to
Washington would certainly go a long away towards tuition, no matter
what classification you place me. Further, please detail what services
we receive from the government that equal the value of the income
stolen from us... and which we couldn't buy for ourselves much cheaper
in a true free market system.


>My parents were impoverished immigrants.  They, my sisters, and I could
>never have afforded our educations which propelled us into the middle class
>without substantial government loans and subsidies.  I defy you to point to
>a nation that creates and perpetuates a large middle class without such
>subsidies.

Let's look at the issue from a different point of view: What right
do you have to enable our government to take X's wealth and give it
to you for your benefit?

As for our middle class, check out how we're faring in this economy...
check out who's going to get even more swamped with taxes as
federal entitlement programs skyrocket on exponential trajectories.


>Mike Huben
>
>"Utopias now appear much more realizable than one used to think.  We are now
>faced with a different new worry: How to prevent their realization."
>						Nicolas Berdiaeff

Don Pavlish

"Society cannot have its cake and eat it, too."
                         Cambell R. McConnell &
                         Stanley L. Brue, /Economics/


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