Minor details

As part of my job, I'm supposed to read newspapers, blogs, etc. and essentially take the good ideas, and ridicule the bad ones. Well, in one of my blog perusals, I came across something rather interesting. It was from a democrat (or liberal, whatever you wanna say), talking about being a moderate. He gave a list of things that moderate-liberals should stand for, and it went like this:

"Forget wild-eyed leftwingery, let's say you want to stick with a reputably centrist brand of progressive politics. That means you want to see Social Security and Medicare preserved in something like their current form. You're not looking for any big cuts in defense spending. You aspire to spend a bit more on trade adjustment assistance, job training, and education. You'd like to see refundable tax credits for low income families made a bit more generous. You'd like to get health care for all America's kids. And you want the budget to be in something resembling balance."

Fair enough. At least it's not the 'wild-eyed leftwingery' he mentions. But there are just a few logistical problems in his desires. First of all, Social Security is NOT salvagable in its current state. Working at a newspaper, I'm fully aware that the average American doesn't give three and a half lumps of crap about the issue right now, but it IS going to be a problem in the future, and it CAN'T be saved the way it is. It's just economically impossible.

Secondly, 'trade adjustment assistance' is just another word for 'protectionism', which is just another word for 'socialism'. If you wanna sit here and buy goods that are of poorer quality and more expensive, be my guest. However, I thought the whole idea of free trade was to encourage people to produce better products at a lower price. If Americans can't do that, that's our own fault. Government subsidies encourage inefficiency. Think of any government subsudized industry, and then compare it to any private industry, and see which one produces the better product with the lower price.

Third, aren't 'job training' and 'education' supposed to be the same thing? What's the point of 'education' if you're going to need 'job training'? Plus, giving more money to these institutions will solve nothing. Trust me. I've had a front row seat for the public school system for as long as I can remember, and money isn't the problem. It's the spending of the money. When a school gets more funding, and decides to increase its office staff rather than hire another teacher, it does nothing to make our kids smarter, but does wonders for making administrators lazier. If we want better schools, we need to spend our money more wisely and dispense on this whole 'No Child Left Behind' crap. As one of my brother's teachers once said, 'no child is ever left behind because the train never leaves the station.' Because the bar is lowered so much to make sure all the dumb kids pass, the kids that end up getting left behind are the smart ones, because teachers have to focus so much attention on the dumb kids, otherwise they'll get fired. What a brilliant plan that is. If you can't tell, I have utter disdain for our public education system. More on that some other time.

Forth, 'tax credits for low income families' is another word for welfare. I've talked about this before. Poor people in America d NOT pay income taxes. So, giving them a 'tax credit' for a tax they never paid, is giving them money for no reason, which is also known as welfare, but without the line. Again, socialism. Boo socialism.

Fifth, healthcare for all America's kids. Aw, how sweet. Hmm...I smell socialism. Again? Geez. Since when is healthcare a right? I've read the constitution quite a number of times, and no where in there does it say citizens have a right to nationally funded medicine. Again, that would only make the industry more inefficient. When there's no incentive to improve quality, research will stop, new treatments will not be discovered, and we'll all die of something that could've been cured with just a little more research and development. Don't think that people will just do that stuff out of the good of their hearts, because they won't. They gotta eat too.

Finally, and perhaps the most humorous part of the whole thing...'the budget to be in something resembling balance'. Since when is that a liberal idea? Don't get me wrong...I'm all in favor of balancing the budget. In case this guy doesn't know, which he doesn't seem to, our government is already running a massive deficit, and all without his flower-power policies. How in the hell does this guy expect to fund all of those lovely programs he just mentioned AND balance the budget? Oh, that's right...liberal policy #1 -- raise taxes...a LOT. Good luck running on THAT platform.