From: hira@cme.nist.gov (Ron Hira)
Newsgroups: alt.culture.us.asian-indian,alt.individualism
Subject: Re: = Opportunity etc.
Date: 11 Jan 93 23:02:13 GMT
Reply-To: hira@cme.nist.gov
Followup-To: alt.culture.us.asian-indian
Organization: National Institute of Standards and Technology

In article <8JAN199321505673@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: 9 Jan 93 02:50:00 GMT

|> >What extent of gov't do you approve of? 
|> 
|> As little as possible.

Ok. I wish that the economy would grow at 7% with low unemployment and
inflation. :-)

|> >What gov't spending is ok?
|> 
|> For things that the business of governing requires:
|> 	national defense
|> 	police, courts, etc

Who determines the amounts? 

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

What about education? Medicine is charity, eh? What do you tell people
who carry contagious diseases?
 
|> 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;

Is this really true? How much did the head of United Way earn last year?
How does one 'police' these charitable organizations? I for one don't
care to write individual checks to umpteen charities, as it would be 
pretty burdensome. I guess you don't believe in economies of scale.

|> 	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?

This is media hype IMO. I think that most polls support the fact that 
the majority of Americans support some kind of welfare. Many do not 
approve of the current system. This is partly because of poor policy 
implementation, and mainly because the media will always hype on 
negative stories.

|> 	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.

When one's belly is full, one is apathetic.

|> 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.

|> >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.

Huh? What is the military budget, 24% as you claim? Social programs were 
just 14%. Be careful about lumping in social security as a social program.
I'd say that the $300 bill / year budgets are lining some people's 
pockets, namely the defense industry. 

|> >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.

Maybe. Where would that leave all of those workers? On the dole, I would
guess. If the Japanese & Europeans are unwilling to trade fairly, why
should we? Ever been to Pittsburgh? What happened to the steel industry 
after the quotas were cut?

|> >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.

Don't follow your factor of 5? HUD's budget off the top of my head was
about $8 bill/yr in 1988, considerably less than the $28 bill in 1980.
Hey, funny thing is that I don't recall a major homeless problem in 
1980. 

Can't believe that you would discount what *1* man stole from the country
and innocent people!!!! Remember that this is just one of *many* cases 
where *deregulation* failed.

Ron