Liberty Pen: Milton Friedman- Free To Choose: Thomas Sowell: Welfare (1980)

Source:Liberty Pen- Professor Thomas Sowell, as part of Professor Milton Friedman's 1980 Free To Choose series, talking about Welfare.

"Thomas Sowell debates the dynamics of welfare with Pennsylvania Secretary of Welfare, Helen O'Banion (1980:Liberty Pen" 

From Liberty Pen

I've been writing a lot about poverty lately and how I feel we can as a society finally win the so-called War on Poverty that we as a country declared in 1965. Long time ago, there were actually Gen Xers born in 1965, so if your getting tired of hearing my thoughts on poverty, I apologize but its been in the news a lot lately and I've seen a lot of things about it. 

Plus, I really care about the subject and this is a so-called war (similar to the War on Drugs) we shouldn't be losing as a country as great as we are. If we are capable of an unemployment rate 4.5% which we had just three years ago before the Great Recession of 2008/2009, we can have a poverty rate of 4.5% as well. Other developed nations have poverty rates of that level and with our wealth we can definitely achieve that as well. But I'll try to be as original as possible with this post as I can but no promises. 

Libertarians and Democratic Socialists who read this post will disagree with it but for different reasons: one side thinking government (especially the Federal Government) has no role in addressing poverty in America. And one side will disagree with me saying that your approach isn't government centered enough especially from the Federal Government. 

Debate is great and since we live in a Liberal Democracy and people can agree and disagree and have a constitutional right to do so. And they can tell me why they think if I'm right or wrong and how or not say a thing their choice. Small preview this post will again be centered around freedom. 

Education reform, temporary financial assistance, and job placement, and not exactly in that order. Again in the 1930s when the Federal Government officially took on poverty in America. It was very government centered especially from the Federal Government. 

The 1930s FDR New Deal vision behind it that these people are poor, can't take care of themselves and don't have the skills to take care of themselves. So society (meaning the Federal Government) has a moral responsibility to literally take care of these people and there were religious feelings behind this. And that you help low-income people by giving them Welfare checks and let them be and this approach if anything was expanded in the 1960s with the Great Society. 

This is the approach that Democratic Socialists prefer, government giving low-income people money so they can support themselves. Well, seventy-five years later, we've seen how this approach has worked. If anything poverty in America is a bigger problem in America today, then it was back then. 

The New Deal and Great Society if anything created a "culture of dependency", making low-income people the working poor and unemployed if anything more dependent on public assistance, because instead of empowering these people to get out of poverty and again if gets back to temporary financial assistance so these people can survive in the short-term. 

Education, empowering these people to go back to school and finish their education and go on and further their education, so they have the skills that they need to get themselves a good job and become self -sufficient. And then finally job placement helping these people find good jobs. 

 Going forward to finally winning the so-called War on Poverty, we need to empower adults to get the skills that they need to get a good job and become self-sufficient, so they can have as much freedom as middle class people or better. 

But then for the future we need to empower their kids that they need to get a good education that they'll need to get good jobs in the future. And I believe thats centered around holding educators and schools accountable for good and bad. As well as paying them well up front so they have enough incentive to go into and stay in the education profession. And then public school choice, so parents will have the ability to send their kids to the best school possible, as well as charter schools. 

We can win the so-called War on Poverty in America, but to do that, we have to empower people who are in poverty so they can finally get out of poverty. Not just giving them Welfare checks.

Rob Bluey: Lou Dobbs Tonight- 'The Rise of the European Superstate'

Source:Rob Bluey- Sally McNamara, is a foreign policy analyst for the Washington based right-wing political action network The Heritage Foundation.

"Lou Dobbs Tonight, CNN, June 18, 2007"  

From Rob Bluey

Europe in some ways at least East of the United Kingdom West of the Slavic states and perhaps South of Scandinavia (and this will be the end of the geography segment of this post) have been somewhat at least moving to a United Europe (whether its called the European Union or something else) for about sixty years now. 

After World War II with the creation of the European Union (Europe's own version of the United Nations) partially in response to the Soviet Union and the Cold War but also for economic reasons, Mainland Europe East of the United Kingdom and West of the Slavic states (I'm sorry) is a region of around 400M people with a total GDP approaching the United States with similar living standards. 

So Europe 60 years ago figured they would be better off working together including a single currency that started around 2000. Instead of several countries that are small compared with the biggest countries in the world both physically and population working by themselves. 

Europe figured if they worked together and traded they as a union would have a bigger say in the world, then if they were all by themselves. France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc could all be states or provinces in America, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, China, Russia etc,  but together they would be a huge country both physically about the size of Mexico. And in population, together they would be bigger than America. And by in-large the European Union has been a huge success. 

Europe does have a bigger more influential say in the world united than they would separately. And all of the large States in the European Union are all Economic powers. The question is how far down this road of unifying would the European Union go. 

I personally would like to see them come up with a unified defense force that could take a lot of pressure off the U.S. Military as well as a unified foreign ministry and see both of these organizations run by the E.U. Executive for the same reasons. But how much farther down this road of unification would Europe go, because they already have a President, an executive branch, and an elected legislature, as well as a high court. 

Personally I don't see the United Kingdom ever becoming part of the European Union as one Nation. I believe they'll always hold on to their independence. But I could see France, Germany, perhaps Ireland and economic boost they would get out of that as being a state instead of a tiny country of around 4M people. I could see Spain, Italy and a lot of the smaller European nations. 

Another issue would be borders, how far would a United Europe go, economically most if not all the Slavic states aren't ready to be in the European Union. And they all have questionable human rights records that the EU takes seriously, which is why Turkey has never made it into the European Union. 

I could see a United Europe that lets say included South Ireland, but not Britain and then went from western mainland Europe to the Baltic States, perhaps even Poland thats moved quickly down the road of being a liberal democracy or a social democracy. And then going as far south from Portugal to Italy, with the Balkan States not ready for the EU yet. 

European unification would make Europe a super state of 400M people or so and about the size of Mexico physically. And perhaps the largest economy in the world. But if this were to happen, it shouldn't be forced on Europeans and they should have to approve it. 

Personally a United Europe would be great for the United States when it comes to our foreign policy and national security, because we would have another strong partner on our side that could take a lot of pressure off of us. But we would also have another economic competitor with a lot of money that would be able to invest it all over the world. This wouldn't be for us to decide but the European people to deal with and decide one way or the other.

Liberty Pen: Walter E Williams- 'Civil Rights Assumptions: No Perfect Society'

Source:Liberty Pen- Professor Walter E. Williams, talking about civil rights and poverty in America.

"Professor Williams dissects the fundamental assumptions of the ethnic grievance industry:Liberty Pen." 

From Liberty Pen

America will never get past its legacy of racial. ethnic, religious or gender bigotry, that will always be with us. And no matter what we'll ever do, we'll never have a perfect society with no discrimination and where everyone is equal economically or anything else. 

We are all individuals with our own skills and abilities and its really up to us as a society to decide for ourselves what we do with our skills, whether we live up to our full-potential or not. 

That doesn't mean we should have the goal to having the best society that we can with as little bigotry as possible, knowing we'll never have a perfect society but that we shoot for this goal that we'll never achieve, to build the best society as possible. 

Just because some people's in society haven't done as well as others, doesn't mean we should say: "Look, they've been down for so long. That must mean there's no hope for them, they are destined to be on public assistance for their whole lives and generations after them. We might as well just leave them there." And use the American legacy of bigotry to make our case that we care about them, argue more social insurance programs that we'll leave them down, but with a little more money. And we'll also use this message to stay in power so we sound like we care and to raise more money in the future. 

I don't mean to sound partisan if this sounds like I'm coming from a slanted position on this, but this is how I feel. The last thing that we should do with people who are down because they don't have the skills to get up, is to leave them there. And make the bogus (to be kind)  argument as old as it is, that they are destined to fail because of bigotry. 

What we should do instead, is first have strong civil rights laws, that would prevent bigotry from happening in the first place. And then justly punish bigotry when it happens, for one to give the victims of bigotry justice but also to prevent bigotry from happening in the future. 

And then what we should do is have the best available education possible for the whole country. That has the best teachers possible, holds them accountable for good and bad. Pays them well enough to go into education in the first place and then give the parents as much choice as possible as to where to send their kids so they aren't forced to going to bad schools. 

And then also give the parents of low-income students the ability to finish their education and further their education so they to can get a good job. 

The American legacy of bigotry is a horrible evil thing that we'll never live down, just like Germany will never live down Nazism. But that doesn't mean because of this fact that we just give up and accept it. That certain groups of people aren't doing as well as others and that they will always be destined to be worse off than other groups. We should do is empower these people instead to be able to live up to their full- potential as well just like other groups of people in society.

CNN: The Newsroom With Randi Kay- Representative Ron Paul: 'CNN Official Interview: Ron Paul discusses solution for US debt'

Source:CNN- U.S. Representative Ron Paul (Libertarian, Texas) talking to CNN anchor Randi Kaye.

"Presidential candidate Ron Paul discusses debt talks and his decision not to run for re-election." 

From CNN

Bringing the troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq especially, are already on the table and will be part of any grand bargain if one is reached in raising the debt ceiling and getting our debt and deficit under control. 

As far as laying off public workers who aren't doing a good job and are a waste of tax payer money: I'm all for that, but it's not that easy. You have to figure out what public workers aren't doing a good job and in what agencies and departments. I mean we're are talking about a Federal public service of around 8M people, in a Federal budget of 3.7T$ where we borrow 40% of that to finance the Federal budget. But another problem would be that some of these employees and probably a lot of them, actually do a good job like in the military, FBI, Justice Department, FDA, the Health Service, State Department, and others. 

If you want to lay off low-performing public workers, I would start in Congress , in both Chambers and in both parties. Then I would work my way to the White House, the President and Vice President could stay. They still have eighteen months left on their terms and then I would work my way to the Supreme Court. 

Just saying you're going to lay off Federal workers, is way too broad, you should be more specific and put more thought in to it. And if you're talking more about laying off more departments and agency's, then you should also be more specific and lay out exactly where. I don't believe the old Ronald Reagan: "Cut and run or slash and burn" strategy is the most appropriate here.

A lot of times you can make government less expensive and more efficient by simply reforming it. For example do we really need hundreds or thousands of Federal programs, public welfare programs for the less- fortunate and others? Or do we need all of these programs to be run out of Washington?

I and Senator Tom Coburn who at times I've agreed with on these issues. Even though he's a Conservative Republican and I'm a Liberal Democrat, but Senator Coburn is a good fiscal Conservative who believes we simply don't need all of these programs and can no longer afford them. And we should look at block granting (sorry, thats a Washington term meaning turning them over to state and local government"s and giving them money to run them) programs like Welfare Insurance, Unemployment Insurance, Food Stamps, Medicaid, Public Housing, Medicare, Children's Health Insurance, etc. CHI is funded with tobacco tax by the way, hoping people would smoke and hurt their lungs to pay for health insurance which is good for people, but thats a different story. 

This would be a better approach in my view instead of the Federal Government trying to manage all of the social insurance programs all over the country and having them all report to Washington. My problem with it, is you would end one headache and start another. Because then the Federal Government would be left to regulate state and local government's to see how they are spending Federal taxes.

What I would like to do is see all of these social insurance programs reformed in a way, including Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, Medicare and Medicaid. Where they would become non-profit independent services, not fully privatized at least not in the short-term, but they would have their own management and board of directors that they would select. With their own financing up front and then their clients would pay them back once they become self-sufficient. Like with Unemployment Insurance, Welfare Insurance, Food Assistance. (To use as examples) Social Security and Medicare are already essentially fully funded, but both need to be reformed. 

These other programs would need their own revenue sources but this can all be done. This type of reforms would save taxpayers and the Federal Government, state and local government's, around a trillion dollars a year in appropriations. Because they would no longer have to collect the taxes to fund them and to manage them. And this is just the savings in our social insurance programs and I haven't gotten to the Defense budget yet. 

And the Federal Government can concentrate on what at least its done well historically, national security, Foreign Service, Health Service, law enforcement, and regulating, instead of trying to be everything to everybody.

The "cut and run slash and burn" strategy has proven not to work in the past, for one thing it just angers a lot of special interest groups. And another there are people who actually depend on these programs to help them to survive and you leave them with nothing. But what we can do is reform them in a way to make them more cost-effective and efficient.

TIME Magazine: Richard Stengel- Bill Gates: 'How To Fix Capitalism'

Source:TIME Magazine- talking to Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

"Microsoft founder and philanthropist, Bill Gates, talks to TIME Magazine editor Richard Stengel about creative capitalism & much more. Subscribe to:TIME."

From TIME Magazine

America isn't in the bad economic shape that it is in today because of capitalism or American capitalism. All developed nations in the world and some developing nations in the world, have their own version of capitalism or their own aspects. 

What they all have in common at least the developed nations, is they all have large private sectors. But the American economy isn't failing because of American capitalism, but our economy is failing right now with a lack of economic and job growth and massing debt and deficit, because we've moved away from American capitalism and aren't doing the things that we used to be great at, if not the best in the world. The institutions in our economy that made our economy the largest in the world, are no longer working. 

What made our economy great, was our people and our institutions and are people being able to use those institutions successfully, but those institutions are currently failing. What made our economy strong, was a package of vast economic freedom that was well regulated. Not over regulated or under regulated but well -regulated to prevent people from abusing each other unfairly in the economy and punish them when they do. 

Low taxes to encourage people to get a good education, get a good job and be productive and successful. But where everyone pays their fair share of taxes, with the wealthy paying more than everyone else. But not at such a high rate that they aren't encouraged to be productive and earn a good living. 

A good education system both public and private so our future workers could get the skills that they need to get a good job. Write now our public education system is failing to the point where we are no longer producing enough high-skilled workers and we now have to import high-skilled to fill these good jobs. We used to have one of the best public education Systems in the world if not the best and now we are ranked like 39th in the World. 

And a safety net that caught people who fell through the cracks and helped them back up on their feet. Instead of keeping them on public assistance indefinitely. 

 The last ten years or so we've been in a period of what's been described as Cowboy Economics where the wealthy no longer are required to pay their fair share of taxes. Where companies are encouraged to send jobs out of America, where regulations aren't enforced, where government borrows money instead of paying for their operations. 

Hopefully we are moving away from Cowboy Economics, but we won't get there over night. Even if we returned back to American capitalism tomorrow, it would be ten years before our economy is as strong as it was in 2007 before the Great Recession, because we've piled up so much debt, our living standards have fallen so far and we've lost so many jobs. Several million and now have an unemployment rate at 9.2% which is twice as high as it was in 2007. But we'll get there if we just get back to what we do best and start making things in America again.

Idea Channel: Free To Choose (1979) 'Milton Friedman: The Power of Choice'

Source:Idea Channel- Professor Milton Friedman, from part of his 1979 documentary, Free To Choose.

"An excerpt from the biography of Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman." 

From the Idea Channel

The power of choice: what does that mean exactly and I'm being serious at least for a second? Well, if you look at that phrase, the answer is in that phrase: choice is the freedom to choose, the Freedom for people to choose for themselves how to live their own lives. Put all the options on the table and let people decide for themselves what's best for them and their families. 

Freedom to choose is anti-monopoly (public and private) but its pro-unlimited, open free and fair competition. Don't let anyone control too much of the market and prevent and punish unfair abuses in the system. This is a concept that not only real Libertarians (not Anarchists) believe in, even though they may of invented the phrase, but something that Liberals and Conservatives believe in as well and I'm not talking about Democratic Socialists or Christian-Fundamentalists,  but the real things. 

The freedom for people to live their own lives as they see fit as long as they are not hurting any innocent person with their freedom to live their lives. At risk of sounding partisan: a concept thats not popular with Socialists and other authoritarians. Their faith in people is lacking to put it mildly, especially compared with these other political factions. They essentially believe at least in some cases that people can't be trusted with freedom to live their own lives and that they essentially need to be taken care of by the central government, with a vast welfare state and in authoritarians case restrictions on how people can live their own lives. Even if they aren't hurting people with what they are doing. 

I recently got in a debate online with a Socialist on health care reform and this person was obviously in favor single payer health insurance. And I support a system of unlimited free and open competition thats regulated properly. And this person asked me what type of health insurance system I'm in favor of. And I said which I am and if you read this blog on a regular basis, you know that I'm in favor of a health insurance system that has freedom of choice for the patients to decide for themselves where they get their health insurance and health care. And that there could even be public health insurance as well as health care in this system. But the people would decide for themselves where they get their health insurance and health care. 

I basically laid out the French health care system in this discussion which is the main difference between a system like this and a single payer health care system. The person I debated literally did not understand the concept of freedom of choice and I explained it to them, but I did it in a humorous way, saying think about freedom of choice the freedom to choose, the answer is literally in those two phrases. 

One problem that I believe Socialists have with this phrase, is how simple it is. That they are used to complex things and policies, where people who are more in favor of individual freedom. Understand this phrase very well because its something they've always believed in.

Reason Magazine: Michael Moynihan- Interviewing Norway Progress Party Leader Siv Jensen: 'Norway's Myths & Realities'

Source:Reason Magazine- Siv Jensen, the Leader of the Progress Party, in Norway.

"In a country of exceptionally high rates of personal taxation and home to one of the world's most generous welfare states, Norway's Progress Party, which describes itself as a "classical liberal" organization committed to "personal freedom," is something of an anomaly. But it is an increasingly powerful anomaly, now ranking as the country's second biggest political party.

In August, Progress Party leader Siv Jensen sat down with Reason senior editor Michael C. Moynihan and explained that Norwegians are growing tired of "regulation, bureaucracy, and high taxes" and why the Scandinavian health care model is bad for America—and Scandinavia." 

From Reason Magazine

I'm glad to hear that there's another type of political party in Norway. That it's not just a country thats dominated by Democratic Socialists. That there is another choice, political party, ideology that people can choose. 

Norway has a ruling Socialist Party, but the opposition party is a Conservative Party called the Progress Party. So Norwegians definitely have a political choice, between Socialists and Conservatives and I'm sure other choices as well.

Either socialism or conservatism is definitely a choice. Interesting enough that a Conservative Party would call itself the Progress Party. I would think a party called the Progress Party would be a Socialist Party or a an actual center-left Progressive Party, but of course they can call themselves anything they want. 

Norway is not the only Nordic state in Scandinavia thats reexamining its welfare state and its democratic socialist policies. Sweden in 2010 elected a Conservative Party or conservative coalition (at least by Swedish Standards). In a country where the Democratic Socialists have been in power for a long time. And Scandinavia especially Sweden, is the socialist utopia the place that Socialists look at to make their case for socialism in their country.

Norway is lucky in a sense that they do have a clear choice in who they want to run their government. The ruling Socialist Party (or whatever they call themselves) and the opposition Progress Party. Which is actually a Conservative Party. Because they really do a get a real choice between democratic socialism and conservatism.

Where Democratic Socialists essentially believe and this might be putting it simply in collectivism. Where you essentially put all of the resources in a country all in one pot. Where no one is allowed to have "too much more than anyone else". And you do this with high taxes basically on everyone to finance a large welfare state for the whole country. Where the Central Government plays a big role in providing goods and services for the country. 

And then with the opposition party Conservatives who believe the best way to provide these goods and services for the country, is to give the people as much freedom as possible to get these services for themselves. So there's a clear choice for Norway.

I'm glad democratic socialism is alive and well in Norway, because Democratic Socialists are definitely democrats. And they believe in democracy and freedom, even though I disagree with them a lot on economic policy as well as foreign policy. But I'm also glad that there's another choice for Norway. And conservatism definitely represents a clear choice for Norwegian voters.