From: Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Holt)
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: 9 Jan 93 22:51:30 GMT
Organization: University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, NE1 7RU

doctor1@cbnewse.cb.att.com (patrick.b.hailey) writes:
>Cliff Chaput <chaput@ils.nwu.edu> writes:
>>You're forgetting something, though: supply and demand.  If taxes were
>>eliminated, and the average net income rose accordingly, demand for all
>>items would also rise, since they are now more affordable.  As the demand
>>rises for a product, so will its price.

>Yea, we see that now with computers, don't we?  There once was a time when a
>slow IBM PC with 256K RAM and two floppies cost $3,000.  Now that demand is
>so high, the same machine is selling for $250,000.

>Not.

Yeah, and in the same period the prices of services like education
and medical care, and products like bread and water, also fell by
orders of magnitude thanks to technological innovation.  Right.

>*You're* forgetting something: an expanding economy.  Also, the efficiency
>inherent in people paying for things they value, instead of forcing them
>to pay more for what they absolutely must have.

???  Like loaves of bread...

>I just don't understand people arguing *against* the idea that Americans
>should be free to make the best bargains possible.

Because *some* people making the best bargains possible means that
lots of others end up a lot worse off.

>>Instead of these things being distributed to the masses, they will go to the
>>highest bidder, and will therefore be designed to benefit those who can pay
>>for it.  The end result: a highly polarized society consisting of the
>>privileged very rich and the oppressed very poor.  (History will back me up
>on this, I believe.)

>I don't believe.  Convince me.

>From 1750 to the early 1900s, the U.S. experienced unprecedented economic
>boom.  It absorbed millions of imigrants, and had the 'mechanism', if you
>will, to give them a better life than they had at home, and give their
>kids a better life than most any other people on the planet.  During this
>time, there was minimal government intervention in markets, minimal
>government intervention into private life, no federal reserve, no drug
>prohibition, no charity beyond private charity, no income tax, no minimum
>wage, no government schools, etc etc etc.

There was, of course, massive government intervention to provide
cheap property (and the natural resources that go with it).

>The literacy rate was high,
>the poverty rate (*real* poverty, like homelessness and starvation) was
>low, there was little crime, there were recessions but no depressions.

I suggest you recheck your history books.  No depressions?  What do
you think panics were?  Little crime?  There was as much in the way
of fraud and corruption in e.g. Grant's administration as there was
in Harding's.  Homelessness and starvation?  High literacy?  It would
be interesting to see your figures, anyway.

>The closest thing ever to a libertarian state, and it was an unprecedented
>success.  Not perfect, but so amizingly good that people all over the world
>slaved there lives away in the hope of coming here one day.

Because of cheap land.

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 Chris.Holt@newcastle.ac.uk      Computing Lab, U of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
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 Some ideas are frost giants: pouring cold water on them helps them to grow.
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian