Posted on 08/31/2004 5:42:35 AM PDT by OESY
...Republicans unashamedly are talking up programs to serve the interests of people who do own something, or aspire to. The promise by politicians to protect the sanctity of private property is not exactly a new idea in American politics. It just got lost somewhere back there when environmental radicals started dictating how private land could be used, municipal authorities started using their eminent domain powers recklessly and lawyers became birds of prey, hunting for deep pockets to pick. That has been a dangerous trend, because the protection of private property has been fundamental to American economic and political development....
Thanks to those beginnings, America has become a wealthy nation and one in which wealth has become widely distributed without overly invasive governmental redistribution schemes. HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson announced in July that 69.2% of American households now live in their own homes, a record percentage that figures out to 73.4 million homeowners. Americans own roughly 136 million cars.
More surprisingly, nearly 52% of households own stocks in corporations, up from 20% in 1980. And most interesting of all, a recent survey indicates that more than half of a sampling of college seniors see starting a business as their highest ambition. It's "the most entrepreneurial generation in American history," asserts Forbes magazine....
But it can be said for Mr. Bush that the thrust of some of his more innovative proposals, like health-care savings accounts and subsidies to low-income home buyers, are designed to promote the ownership society. They are a recognition that voters are grown-ups and can mostly do a pretty good job of running their lives without a government nanny, as long as they don't suffer too much interference....
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Privatization of Social Security and a return to indemnity insurance for catastrophic illness and MSAs for normal health expenditures would bring on an economic golden age in the U.S. Add an NRST and abolition of income reporting, and a return to true confidentiality of bank information, and the U.S. would sit astride the global economy for 1000 years.
Add a "Right to work" law that ensures employees are not forced to join a union and I'd be in complete agreement with you. Well, we better also add some tort reform too!
Ah yes, breaking the public sector unions is key, too.
Tort reform is the toughest one: In an efficient and free economy, tort law is actually a means of resolving conflicts without resorting to regulation. Also, lawyers and doctors seem to deserve each other's company under the current system. It will be interesting to see how liberalization of the health economy will affect tort lawyers.
It all starts with the basic human right of every human being to own the fruits of their hard work, good decisions, and responsible acts. When government owns the fruits of human beings hard work, good decisions, and responsible acts (in part or whole) society is robbed of these positive human actions upon which any civil society is based.
The simplest solution to the health care crisis is making health insurance benefits taxable to the employee. The current overinsurance will disappear, and medical care will get competitive.
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