What’s Wrong with the World

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Steyn on our Decline

Got caught in cold drizzle for two hours while hiking around the Etruscan Necropolis in Cerveteri a couple of days ago. Since I don't have the sense to come in out of the rain, I'm now laid up in my hotel in Naples with an awful cold. Fortunately, I brought along some audiobooks, so I'm not entirely at the mercy of Italian television (which, to the very limited extent I'm able to judge, is, per impossibile, even worse than the American variety).

Gibbon's Decline and Fall seemed a bit heavy duty for my present fuzzyish state of mind, so I started with Mark Steyn's latest venture in cheerful declinist fear-mongering, After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. Great fun, and frequently insightful - though there's no denying that he's a bit given to exaggeration; I can personally testify that, as of last Friday night, there were hardly any traces of graffiti at the Trevi Fountain. (His larger point, about the ubiquity of graffiti in Europe and its dispiriting effect, is right on target, though.)

My very favorite bit came in the Epilogue, where Steyn tackles the mawkish letter written by a certain Ty'Sheoma Bethea of Dillon, South Carolina, which Obama invoked in his first State of the Union speech, to general, teary-eyed, applause:

"I think about Ty'Sheoma Bethea, the young girl from that school I visited in Dillon, South Carolina - a place where the ceilings leak, the paint peels off the walls, and they have to stop teaching six times a day because the train barrels by their classroom.* She has been told that her school is hopeless, but the other day after class she went to the public library and typed up a letter to the people setting in this room. She even asked her principal for the money to buy a stamp. The letter asks us for help, and says, 'We are just students trying to become lawyers, doctors, congressmen like yourself and one day president, so we can make a change to not just the state of South Carolina but also the world...'"

Steyn's riposte, in a nutshell: this kid's idea of the way to bring change to the peeling paint and leaking pipes in her school is to write to Washington, begging for a handout? And we're supposed to be deeply moved and inspired by her aspiration to bring change "to the world?"

And what sort of "change" do you suppose that might be?

Well, let me take a wild stab in the dark: I think it might just possibly involve an even greater diminution of individual responsibility, and an even greater aggrandizement of The State than what we're already stuck with.

Feh.

*A total lie, it seems - the train runs about 300 yards away from the school.

Comments (33)

Steve, roofing is dangerous work that has to meet code standards and a kid who can't afford a stamp isn't going to be able to afford paint and other materials. The Federal government can currently borrow for five years at negative real rates ang put people to work doing useful things. Governments are supposed to do things like keep the schools in repair.

No. Governments are not supposed to be in the education business. Governments- is it not terribly, terribly obvious, even in Obama's narrative, that government does education terribly? Is it a private school, then, in which the paint peels and the roof leaks? How is it that a Groton or a Woodberry Forest keeps its classrooms dry and paint-chip free if it's unable to borrow at artificially low government rates? The sturdy obliviousness of the supposedly 'free' mind of the liberal is as amazing as those deep-sea vent worms that are hydrogen sulfide based. Not as pretty, though.

"How is it that a Groton or a Woodberry Forest keeps its classrooms dry and paint-chip free if it's unable to borrow at artificially low government rates?"

I think this tops anything yet posted on this blog. Groton? Really?

"Groton's 385-acre (1.56 km2) campus encompasses rolling forests, expansive meadows, a portion of the Nashua river, and various athletic fields, as well as academic buildings and dormitories. Most of the buildings on campus are situated around the Circle, which is the School's common green shaped like a circle."

"At the start of the 2009 school year, there were 372 students enrolled."

"In 2007, the median SAT I scores were 690 reading, 700 writing, and 690 math. Between 2003 and 2007, Groton graduates attended the following nine colleges most frequently (in order): Harvard University, Georgetown University, Brown University, Trinity College, Princeton University, University of Edinburgh, Yale University, Vanderbilt University, and Tufts University."

"Groton is an intimate community as 90% of students are boarders and most teachers live on campus in dorms or faculty housing. Classes are small, ranging from 12 to 14 students. There are regularly scheduled sit-down dinners during fall term and during spring term; at sit-down dinner, faculty and students dress up formally and sit down for a proper 45 minute dinner and are served by students assigned as waiters. On the school's birthday in the fall, sit-down dinner features a jolly singing of "Blue Bottles" (the tune is similar to "100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall")."

Oh, and we shouldn't forget that, "according to the school's 2006 calendar year tax returns, the endowment is worth over $368,000,000 today."

One might ponder the fact that the total assessed value of property in Dillon County is just under $68 million.

Education is, at root, a parental responsibility. How parents ought to carry that out is open to a lot of variation: some parents are fine doing it at home, others couldn't find the business end of a piece of chalk. It is fine for parents to seek assistance in the task from others more qualified, just as they seek assistance from doctors for healthcare, from mechanics to fix the car, and so on. Nothing about this can possibly imply that education is at root a community responsibility.

When a community full of parents decides that an efficient way to deliver education to a large number of children is to provide a community-based school, that too should be OK, but it should be wholly optional: there is a fundamental injustice in the community expecting parents who are fulfilling their education through other means to ALSO pay the tab for the community-based school. Calling that "optional" is a stretch of the imagination.

And when the parents choose to use the services of a school to meet their responsibility of educating, the TASK is carried out by the school, but the fundamental responsibility remains the parents'. And so at every step that the decision-making is removed from the immediate community that the school serves, each such step further unravels the proper familial relationship to the educational choices and goals being made, further destroys family bonds because it makes impossible proper parental responsibility. By the time you get to federal education mandates, you have shredded the family's proper sphere of responsibility, activity, and (in large measure) integral life. Getting the feds involved in a local school like that in Dillon means that local communities like Dillon will cease to function as communities, and instead will become mere passive appendages of the federal bureaucracy.

Getting the feds involved in a local school like that in Dillon means that local communities like Dillon will cease to function as communities, and instead will become mere passive appendages of the federal bureaucracy.

Here's the rub: I wouldn't be surprised if Dillon has already ceased to function as a community. At that point, having it become a passive appendage of the federal bureaucracy is a very natural next step, from a liberal perspective, because that at least guarantees _money_. To be sure, money either from the tax revenues of people far, far away from Dillon or else money borrowed from later generations of Americans even farther away from Dillon (in time as well as in space), but money. And money is the bottom line. The liberal, believing that there _are_ solutions, not merely tradeoffs and compromises, sees a community in which children are not being well-educated and assumes that there is a solution and that that solution is more guaranteed money from some government entity. Since the local entity and state entities aren't doing it, that means that the solution (because there _are_ solutions) must be guaranteed money from the federal government.

In some ways, the mind of a liberal is very simple.

"I wouldn't be surprised if Dillon has already ceased to function as a community."

Based on what besides idle speculation? A couple of federally backed loans that creates jobs and builds something is destructive? Based on what besides blind ideology?

It seems the good citizens of Dillon are still there, have their own Facebook page, and wish you a Merry Christmas. Here is the town card courtesy of third grader Kim Rowland

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150486266586509&set=a.382568506508.162986.315302831508&type=1&ref=nf

"*A total lie, it seems - the train runs about 300 yards away from the school"

Based on what? It looks a bit closer but trains do make noise. I once lived way more than 300 yards from a runway at LAX and the noise was disruptive at times. The city had to close a school down that was the same distance w\away. Summer before last there was some logging going on just over the south ridge which is over 300 yards from here. The guys hooking up the downed trees signal the guy operating the yarder with hand held air horns. A series of beeps stopped normal conversations as did the chain saws sometimes. Perception of sound depends on more than distance.

Based on the fact that they can't repair the local leaky school roof themselves but must needs appeal to Washington to do so basic a task. But I can think of a couple of other possibilities, viz: Perhaps some stupid state regulations would prohibit the goodmen of Dillon from coming in with hammers and shingles and repairing the roof. It's even possible that they would have to pay some ruinous union scale to anyone to repair the roof. Or, similarly, perhaps the teachers' unions are sapping the local community funds to such an extent that there is no money left for roof repairs. These would also explain the phenomenon.

"Based on the fact that they can't repair the local leaky school roof themselves but must needs appeal to Washington to do so basic a task."

They voted a bond issue but due to the economy they couldn't get a loan until the Feds underwrote it.

"Perhaps some stupid state regulations would prohibit the goodmen of Dillon from coming in with hammers and shingles and repairing the roof."

How do you know its a shingle roof? What if its a hot mop or torch down? What if it was beyond a little Henry's here and there? What If one of the "goodmen of dillon" fell off the roof? I take it you've never seen someone have their homeowner's policy cancelled and have to go on the assigned risk pool? (
don't let anyone on your roof who doesn't have a current workman's comp cert. mailed to you.)

I note the continued speculation using the standard glass-is-half-empty conservative boilerplate. The reality is that you don't know anything about the community. All I know is that they wanted new schools, were willing to tax themselves to get them, and thanks to good president Obama and federal loans and grants are now getting them. Oh, and I also know that they celebrate Arbor Day and that third grader Kim Rowland of Dillon, South Carolina wishes us a Merry Christmas.

al, you're beyond parody.

"...a kid who can't afford a stamp..."

Surely you can't be stupid enough to swallow *that* singularly egregious bit of agit-prop!

Or is it just that you think *we're* all stupid enough to swallow it?

In other words, are you hopelessly naive? or aggressively malevolent?

Gotta hand it to you, though: whatever else you are, you're full of passionate intensity.

In Maria von Trapp's autobiography, she tells the following story about Stowe, Vermont, during World War II. The local school had a leaky roof and no funds to fix it. So a friend of the von Trapps, who had recently moved there and were trying to build a house for themselves before winter, came and asked if the von Trapps would give a benefit concert to raise money to fix the school roof. They immediately agreed. The people all came up and shook their hands after the concert, welcoming them to the community. A few days later, two truckloads of young boys from the school, led by their carpentry teacher, showed up on the von Trapps' property and said, "Now we have come to help _you_." In a minute they were up on the roof hammering, and they did the same each Saturday for a couple of weeks. The house was weatherproof, at least, before the Vermont winter came down.

That's how these things _should_ be done in a community. If they can't be, something is certainly wrong, but somehow, I don't think that what is wrong is "not enough government money."

Look everywhere; this isn't just a public school phenomenon. For whatever reason, government funded projects never have enough money--chronic shortages are a regularity.

Perhaps it could be because they're propping up artificial industries that simply lack demand, which are essentially just sinkholes for depriving the private sector of resources it would more efficiently put to use.

It has nothing to do with the people in power, yet I hear it all the time. If 'I' was in charge, we would have all the funding we needed!

Al:

A couple of federally backed loans that creates jobs and builds something is destructive? Based on what besides blind ideology?

Jonah:

Perhaps it could be because they're propping up artificial industries that simply lack demand, which are essentially just sinkholes for depriving the private sector of resources it would more efficiently put to use.

Al, the idea of government-loan based project "creating" a job is generally just a shell game. In a well-run market, the money would have been used somewhere else for productive use (or, if not, then that would have reduced interest rates on other productive loans). Generally, the government just drains out a portion without actual benefit. Even in a badly run market, there is no general basis for believing that the government knows better where to put the money to use than private enterprise does.

Although we think of a lot of infrastructure development as intrinsically governmental, that is not the case, private enterprise can do roads, airports, hospitals, utilities, etc. And it is unclear that other than using the power of eminent domain to grab land for roads and the like, the government can be expected to achieve such infrastructure build-up more efficiently than private industry would under the right incentives. (Cost overruns seem to be endemic to gov projects, for example.) As for other activities, the government isn't going to spend money more efficiently than other agents in directly producing new wealth. And it isn't really supposed to be in the business of producing new wealth anyway; if it is, then it is interfering with some other party doing so.

That's under the ideal scenario, that is - when the project itself is a good idea. But with government, often enough it isn't. (Can I sell you a bridge to nowhere?) Then you get government inefficiency along with bad ideas about what to accomplish or who ought to accomplish it.

Tony, Ricardian equivalence doesn't operate when demand is lacking, unemployment is at present levels and we are at the zero bound. Jonah needs to explain how there is a lack of demand when the folks in Dillon voted to tax themselves to build new schools. When the demand is for risk free assets, the US Treasury can borrow at will out to thirty years for little or nothing. Under those circumstances it makes sense to move expenditures up and taxes back. Keynes was right, you know.

"As for other activities, the government isn't going to spend money more efficiently than other agents in directly producing new wealth. And it isn't really supposed to be in the business of producing new wealth anyway"

The Civil War, the transcontinental railroad, WWII, the cold war, Reagan's tax cuts and fiscal stimulus in the 1980s; just a few counter examples.

"if it is, then it is interfering with some other party doing so. "

Back to Ricardian Equivalence which isn't operative just now.

"Can I sell you a bridge to nowhere?"

No, as it was never built but you can buy all manner of housing that was built by the private sector at bargain prices.

Tony and Jonah, this might interest you,

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-boom-in-shale-gas-credit-the-feds/2011/12/07/gIQAecFIzO_print.html

The Trapp family has done well,

"A short time ago we set aside 62 semi-secluded acres and began building a luxury vacation home community - The Villas at Trapp Family Lodge. The Villas are spacious, luxurious 3 bedroom duplexes, with plenty of room for extended families. Villa owners need never worry about repairs, maintenance or housekeeping – all those concerns are taken care of by Trapp Family Lodge management, and included in a single, annual fee."

In Al one beholds the stereotypical liberal's insistence on wondering why jails are full, because, see, crime is down, so we don't need more jails. Groton is wealthy because it is successful at education. The public schools are failures, but the roof isn't a problem, it's a symptom. Rather than see that failure, trace it to its root, and decide that education is too important- our children are too important- to be left to government, Al says 'let's borrow more money, 'create' 'jobs', and fix the symptom!'

Yes, if we just throw federal largesse (and note, Al insists that this federal money is 'free' because the whole world is somehow required to accept the rubber the feds write, and the interest rates the fed chooses to set, free free free. What heartless conservative could say no to free government money? It's freeee!) at the symptoms, that will solve the problem.

No leaky roof: see, government is necessary for education! (And jobs!) {Note to Secretary of Education: need plan to force closure of Groton, ASAP!}

Seems the evil federal government did some meddling,

"When Mt. Mansfield’s first trails - the Bruce Trail followed shortly after by Nose Dive - were cut by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1933 during the Depression, Stowe’s love affair with skiing officially began to get serious."

Moving on. Lydia, while the story is nice and no doubt warms the cockles of the conservative heart, you really need to think it through.

Are you proposing that the model we should use in 2012 to fund school construction and repair nationally is that which the residents of a small (~1,700), rural (the nearest real city, Boston, is 160 miles distant), town in a nation that had suffered over 10 years of the Great Depression and was then (1942) involved in a world war, used to fund the roof repair of what was likely a one room schoolhouse?

You might consider that if they were able to raise the necessary funds with a local concert then the money existed in the community and the only issue was how to obtain it. Benefit concerts in a small community are a great way to encourage volunteerism and community spirit but are better suited to funding optional extras like new marching band uniforms not necessities like sound roofs. The proper means of funding necessities that benefit the whole community is to use the taxing power of the government. That, by the way, is what the citizens of Dillon did.

As for the reciprocal gesture, that was then and this is now. It was nice and I would assume that the instructor was happy to have a real project for his students and that he was using sound judgment in who he let go up on the roof.

On the one hand, for better or worse, like it or not, times have changed and concerns over safety, insurance, and litigation have modified our behavior. On the other hand, we are a far richer nation than we were in 1942 and we aren't, of necessity, focused on national survival. Folks around the world want to give us money and we have things that need doing. In a world where other nations routinely best us educationally, telling ourselves just-so stories from 70 years ago isn't going to be useful.

Hope you are feeling better Steve, I understand that nit-picking is the only way conservatives can get traction on things but maybe she was just a little short that week.

OK, al, so that would be "aggressively malevolent."

Jonah needs to explain how there is a lack of demand when the folks in Dillon voted to tax themselves to build new schools.

When I said artificial demand, I didn't necessarily apply it to the school system, which would exist perfectly fine in the private sector, because it's a continuing demand that we constantly hear about. If the government controlled all food production and distribution and had all the problems that follow, we wouldn't say that there would be shortages if the system was privatized. However, when the government engages in projects for which there would _almost certainly_be no demand for in the private sector, they would cease to exist, since they satisfy only the desires of a few bureaucrats and the extreme minority who benefit at the expense of everyone else.

Besides, demand is not just the willingness to buy something, but the ability, that is, the corresponding purchasing power. The fact that people are looking to taxes to fund an unstable scheme just perfectly illustrates my point that as the public school system stands _now_, there is no private sector demand for it.

Benefit concerts in a small community are a great way to encourage volunteerism and community spirit but are better suited to funding optional extras like new marching band uniforms not necessities like sound roofs.

Except when it works.

The proper means of funding necessities that benefit the whole community is to use the taxing power of the government.

So Al's downright _bothered_ when the citizens of a small town manage to find the money in the community by way of a benefit concert for a necessity like roof repair. That's not "the proper means" of funding it. Ain't that just the liberal spirit in a nutshell? "Darn, those self-reliant small-town citizens found the money locally from voluntary giving and paid for their own school roof! How improper. We can't have _that_."

Wonder what Al would say if Dillon had managed to pay for fixing their school roof with a benefit concert.

The Civil War, the transcontinental railroad, WWII, the cold war, Reagan's tax cuts and fiscal stimulus in the 1980s; just a few counter examples.

And you don't note the ways in which those things actually helped produce wealth. For example, virtually all of the major contributions to the US economy from the government in the Cold War came from that boogeyman whose budget your side always wants to gut, the Department of Defense. You can scarcely pick a technology which you wish to give the government credit for helping along without giving credit to the military. You can't even credit the Department of Transportation with the national highway system because it was created specifically to support the military.

So where are the people on your side calling for a $30B budget for DARPA and IARPA if you think government is the answer (since DARPA has the best track record of any federal agency)?

WWII likewise was only a "wealth-producing event" for America because every single rival of ours on the global stage had their industrial capacity bombed out to the point they almost resembled third world countries. So obviously, that means we should launch a few nukes against Shanghai and other Chinese industrial zones!

"And you don't note the ways in which those things actually helped produce wealth..."

Mike, it's a blog comment, not a book. However your addition of the interstate highway system is correct. You are also correct in pointing out the role of political and military considerations in the calculus that drove these ventures. You fail however when you lapse into wingnut boilerplate (too much Fox?).

However, I never tire of pointing out just how radical (and anarchic, nihilistic, and downright insane) the American right has become so thanks for yet another opportunity. Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford weren't conservatives, they were moderates and liberals. Based on his actual record, Reagan (and Goldwater, for that matter) wouldn't even make the cut today (and don't forget that Eisenhower was a "conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy").

Mike, the really dangerous parts of the cold war were handled by liberals. Containment was a liberal strategy.

"You can't even credit the Department of Transportation with the national highway system because it was created specifically to support the military."

Eisenhower's vision was driven by his experiences in running WWII but so what (also there was no DOT at the time)? It was a worthy project and it also defeats your comment on WWII as Europe and Japan were well into recovery as the interstate project was undertaken and it was never restricted to the military. Infrastructure spending on useful things will always have a multiplier. (I have to note that Steve and Lydia's notions of how to do the interstate highway system would likely involve school children in each community along the way holding bake sales and pounding rocks into gravel,)

Anyway, I have no problem with legitimate defense spending and especially basic research but we also get useful research for all sorts of public institutions from the Department of Energy to state supported universities (which also get a lot of federal funding). I always find it somewhat ironic that we have conservatives earnestly posting on the internet that the government can do nothing useful.

"Wonder what Al would say if Dillon had managed to pay for fixing their school roof with a benefit concert."

Depends. It would be a nice gesture but, as they are currently building new structures, it is likely that the current structures were beyond economically efficient repair and anything beyond
de mimimus efforts would be a waste of money.

Back in the days when we were an agrarian nation education beyond basic reading, writing, and doing sums was more of an option then it is today. The foolishness of funding the military with concerts and bake sales is apparent and no one would even suggest it (recall that it was a scandal that families were having to send soldiers in Iraq protective clothing at their own expense). Education is as critical today and shouldn't have to rely on precarious funding schemes.

As a conservative, Lydia prefers a cheap high from things "turning up" to the hard work of formal commitment and responsible planning. The problem is all the schools (and kids) who lose out when things don't "turn up". Just south of here on Jeff's post on downsizing the government there is a comment by one Chris who relates the problems associated with having to deal with a bunch of Tea Party types who refuse to pay taxes for good schools and who seem to not want to volunteer either. I don't think we can afford to let human potential fall through the cracks. Its great if you are a small rural community and, in the middle of a world war, a world famous family of entertainers decides to settle in your town and is willing to help out but do we want to depend on things like that?

to the hard work of formal commitment and responsible planning.

Well, no, I just don't identify "hard work of formal commitment and responsible planning" with coercive taxation and government funding, _much less_ with these things done from and at the federal level.

"Well, no, I just don't identify "hard work of formal commitment and responsible planning" with coercive taxation and government funding, _much less_ with these things done from and at the federal level."

This is an important difference. Nothing is done without some level of coercion. As Chris pointed out some locals don't want to fund their schools at any level. Should that be their choice or should larger considerations control? Do they get to make their kids disposable. If we defaulted to the most reactionary elements in our towns, states, and nation, what would that world look like?

Planning a concert or bake sake is falling off a log easy; writing effective legislation and doing things like dams, highways, canals, and world wars are hard. Inter-generational projects require formal commitments and intensive planning not just-so stories rooted in times past.

It is a sign of maturity and progress when folks are able - at any level - to come together and agree on common goals and the common good. That gets us sewer districts, water districts, school districts, roads, bridges, and an effective military. Funding needs to happen at the appropriate level and when we are in a depression that level is going to be at the level of government that controls the currency. A deeply internalized, value free, aversion to this or that level of government is interesting when isolated but suicidal when it infects enough of the population to gum up the works.

"OK, al, so that would be "aggressively malevolent."

Well, I guess you're feeling better.

"...Al insists that this federal money is 'free' because the whole world is somehow required to accept the rubber the feds write, and the interest rates the fed chooses to set,.."

David, this might explain things,

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2011/12/05/778301/

Nothing is done without some level of coercion.

There speaks the totalitarian in embryo. Wow, it's a wonder _anything_ important gets done without the government forcing it, then.

Lydia, I don't know of any election for any bond measure that has passed unanimously. This means that those who disagreed with the measure are still taxed to pay for it. Likewise, folks who move in after the election and never even had a chance to vote are still taxed to pay for it. Some crank is always going to disagree with even the most obviously necessary things. Is there a speed limit on your street? Would you care to name the society in which everyone agrees all the time (humans only, no ants or bees)?

For that matter, do you really believe that everyone at every corn husking and barn raising really wanted to be there? When cooperation is necessary for survival and the penalty for non-cooperation is that no one will help you, then you show up, like it or not.

Even mountain men needed to come to terms with the native Americans and the companies with which they traded as well as the odd grizzly bear.

The issue isn't whether or not important things can be done on a purely voluntary basis - of course they can. The issue is that some things need to be done in a timely manner and the costs of letting others slip through the cracks are so great that we can't rely on volunteerism to get them done.

Funding needs to happen at the appropriate level and when we are in a depression that level is going to be at the level of government that controls the currency.

And there we have the nascent totalitarian. Local government during a depression becomes a national matter.

I tell you, there is no debating this stuff. It's so far out in left field that it has to use pulsars to signal home. For Al, nothing is a local matter of its own nature, the ONLY POSSIBLE determining factor is where is the greatest efficiency right now, today, and be damned to how that sets things up for ineffectiveness tomorrow.

It's so far out in left field that it has to use pulsars to signal home.

Now that is quotable. I'm going to go quote it somewhere else right now.

"I don't think we can afford to let human potential fall through the cracks." In how many private schools do young humans fall through the cracks? In how many government schools do kids fall through the cracks? Under the liberal regime controlling government schools, generation after generation plunge through the cracks. Yet liberals delude themselves into thinking that conservatives are the ones who hate children. Rinse, photo op. Repeat, sound bite.

"It's so far out in left field that it has to use pulsars to signal home."

"And there we have the nascent totalitarian. "

Tony, this is a perfect example of why one can't take your invocations of subsidiarity seriously. First you asserted that the reason not to engage in stimulus programs was the due to Ricardian equivalence. I pointed out why that didn't fit our current situation and you respond with name-calling, snark, and a fall-back to our old friend subsidiarity.

"Local government during a depression becomes a national matter."

OK, now you need to explain how subsidiarity is advanced by cash strapped state and local governments having to lay off firemen, policemen and teachers while the national government literally has folks begging it to take their money at quite advantageous rates and all the while our infrastructure is old and falling apart?

Your view seems to be Andrew Mellon's,

“Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate.”

Or we could take the advice of that ur-Keynesian, Joseph ben Jacob:

"Now therefore let Pharaoh look out a man discreet and wise, and set him over the land of Egypt. Let Pharaoh do this, and let him appoint officers over the land, and take up the fifth part of the land of Egypt in the seven plenteous years. And let them gather all the food of those good years that come, and lay up corn under the hand of Pharaoh, and let them keep food in the cities. And that food shall be for store to the land against the seven years of famine, which shall be in the land of Egypt; that the land perish not through the famine."

(Note that there is no advice to borrow during times of plenty and give to the wealthy or engage in unnecessary wars, but I digress.)

Moving on, tell us how giving grants to state and local governments is totalitarian? Since these folks will collect unemployment anyway, the cost of keeping them is marginal. When these folks lose their jobs, they spend less then others, in non-government employment, lose their jobs. Explain how moving necessary expenditures forward and the taxation necessary to pay for them back is a problem when there are no carrying charges to speak of?

David, there are plenty of public schools that doing just fine. Private schools can pick and choose who they accept while the public schools have to take all comers. We aren't going to solve the problem of failing inner-city schools with thousands of mini-Grotons and Choates. BTW, the term "government schools" is wingnut-speak designed to reinforce the pathologies common to those on the far right.

An additional comment on the everything-can-be-handled-with-a-bake-sale theory of funding public goods: I think its safe to assume that not everyone would make that their first choice. Some may actually prefer a predictable levy to getting hit up for time and money on a random and often unpredictable basis (think - every office has at least one annoying type who is always hitting their coworkers up with a collection for this or that). Some may prefer a few predictable extra bucks a year to ensure free evenings and weekends for valued leisure activities.

Also the coercion inherent in many, if not most, of these things is real and needs to be factored in to the mix. None of you have ever been "volunteered" for something you loathed and dreaded? None of you have ever forked over a few bucks because not doing so would have carried too high a social cost?

Explain how those who have a strange (to say the least) view of government prevailing over those who would just prefer to pay their taxes and live their lives unencumbered by a tangle of social obligations isn't coercive in its way?

Explain how those who have a strange (to say the least) view of government prevailing over those who would just prefer to pay their taxes and live their lives unencumbered by a tangle of social obligations isn't coercive in its way?

Yes, telling, isn't it? Social obligations are on the view of the Als of the world at least as coercive as taxation levied by a government with the power to take your house (for unpaid property taxes) or throw you in jail (for unpaid federal taxes). How preferable to pay one's money up-front to a faceless, impersonal government and thereafter to "live one's life unencumbered by a tangle of social obligations."

Merry Christmas, all!

Sorry for my scarce participation in this thread - but I've been sick, and my hotel has terrible wifi.

A word of advice, regarding our al: HE'S A TROLL. He isn't arguing in good faith. He's just trying to waste your time. Believe me - I've been around the block with him before, on healthcare issues.

If you must engage with him, I strongly suggest that you adopt the following approach: keep a rough count of (a) the words you address to him, and (b) the words he addresses to you. If (a) is greater than (b), you're losing. If (b) is greater than (a), you're winning.

"I've been around the block with him before, on healthcare issues."

I reread your original post and, given Steyn's tone, perhaps he had a bad cold too. I guess snark and name calling is one way to handle folks who point out the rather obvious flaws in ones cherished beliefs... or one could deal with serious issues like a decaying infrastructure, a deep recession, and an unsustainable health care cost curve in a manner that doesn't depend on outdated, irrelevant examples and bad economics.

I don't recall the healthcare discussion that so traumatized you but if you refresh my memory I'll certainly be happy to review it for any unfairness on my part.

As for this thread, others can make up their own minds as to the wisdom of depending on volunteerism as the best way to fund necessary social goods. For example, most of us, myself included, don't live in the small villages where freeloading is harder to get away with.

Steve also provides us with good negative example in his submission just north of here. This is from the full story,

"Quain was hospitalized for two days with a broken jaw, a cracked skull and nasal cavity injuries. He still has headaches and memory problems but was finally able to return to work earlier this month. Hundreds gathered in November for a fundraiser at the restaurant where he works, Joanie's Pizza, but he still doesn't know how he'll pay the medical bills.

Note that the poor guy is still likely to go bankrupt despite the well attended benefit. It was a nice gesture but simply not adequate to the actual need. (As Steve brought up healthcare, I would be remiss in failing to note that this wouldn't be the case in any other industrialized nation as they have some form of universal health care.)

Tony, as luck would have it we have a timely post which may be of interest.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/a-note-on-the-ricardian-equivalence-argument-against-stimulus-slightly-wonkish/

Hope you are on the mend.


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