Free market = plutocratic tyranny.

So I had a reply typed up and it was ready to go, hit "Submit Reply," and it's gone. But because I like the mixed pleasure, sadness, and pain, here goes, again:

Which is why I followed it with, "There is not one set model of small government, or a set cutoff point where a government is no longer small, but it's useful when comparing countries or discussing policies and economics." Let's compare China with the United States, who would have a smaller government? What side of this small-big spectrum would government healthcare fall under?

You either knowingly or subconciously seem to be refusing to grasp this. I could just re-post, but i'll re-word it: The term "small government" is a term best used for a comparison. There is no set "small government." Imagine it a spectrum, like liberal and conservative.

You might have to enlist Google to help you with this one. Either way, to advocates of small government, a small government is the better-governered government.

Looking at the data, incomes in all brackets have been rising for the past four decades with the exeption of the past decade when taking into account purchasing power (www.census.gov "Income Limits for Each Fifth and Top 5 Percent of All Households: 1967-2008"). This is easily influenced by the starting year, since 97-07 showed an increase, while 98-08 did not. The general direction, though, is up. You could take 01-02 and say "The poor got poorer!!!!11!!!1" and you'd be 100% right, but we're looking at the big picture, not year-to-year or city-by-city.

I've seen these issues tied in with education, so I did a bit of research to check it out. Only 38.19% of Americans aged 25 and over have an Associate's or higher. 17.22% are in college with no degree. That leaves 44.58%, or 87.5 million Americans 25 and over with a high school diploma or below (www.census.gov "Table 1. Educational Attainment of the Population 18 Years and Over, by Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin: 2008").

Then I looked at the average earnings of different degress: Associate's: $39,724; Bachelor's: $56,788; Master's: $70,358; Doctorate: $103,944; and Professional: $116,514 (www.census.gov "Table 224. Mean Earnings by Highest Degree Earned: 2006")

So if I were in a lower bracket and I saw the above statistics, I would maybe, probably, most likely, want to think about leaving those 87 million Americans behind and get some sort of higher education.

In addititon, a snapshot of the distribution of incomes doesn't tell the whole story since it's just that: a snapshot. Let's use Bob as an example. He's fresh out of high school and scores himself a $31,000/year job. He decides after a couple of years that he wants to go to college and get himself a Bachelor's Degree in a subject that he's researched and found to have a high demand. He comes out a few years later and scores himself a $56,000/year job. Sally, who is now fresh out of high school, comes along and replaces Bob's position at his first job with higher starting pay.

"The study showed that, just as in the previous 10-year period, a majority of American taxpayers move from one income group to another over time. The study also recognizes that the dynamism of the U.S. economy significantly contributes to income mobility." (www.treas.gov hp-673 "Treasury Releases Income Mobility Study")

Ask the minority of the population if they should be reimbursed for their higher education, or if those who think a job that requires no more than a high school diploma should make the same amount as them.

This one I'll let slide because I didn't specify I was referring to the United States. The basic idea of our seperation of powers is so that, well, each branch can check the other branch to balance out the powers. This didn't require "regulation," it's just how our government is set up. Tack on the Bill of Rights, and now our basic liberties and rights are protected in a minimalist way without thousand-page legislation and government regulation in the markets. You seem to be under the impression that a free market would not have some sort of basic foundation such as this, which was never what I stated.

Social programs are a modern-day version of Robin Hood: "Take from the rich and give to the poor." Adam Smith had a concept called the "invisible hand" which stated that self-interest provided for everyone else. So when Wal-Mart comes to town to make a larger profit, they in turn employ a hundred people, who in turn make money to buy their apartment, car, etc. I think you're more concerned with the safety net that government provides, but who's to say the private market wouldn't find that niche and start shop? On one website I found nearly a hundred private organizations that do hurriance relief. On top of that, businesses not only make money, but give away money. Even following Hurricane Katrina, Wal-Mart, Lowe's, Walgreens, and Home Depot were seen as more efficient. Wal-Mart had shelves stocked and had a line of disaster relief trucks ready to go before the storm even hit. Look at Bill Gates and his non-profit work.

 

Cabnight
Small Government.
Quote:
Sorry but that’s just rhetoric, someone is unlikely to say their political stance would bring about a government that didn’t protect the rights and liberties of the people

Quote:
Again you’re basically saying you don’t know what a ‘small’ government is so how can it be useful?

I’m not trying to be facetious or difficult, I’m trying to explain that nothing you’ve said so far seems to explain what is meant when you say ‘small government’. I mean telling me to Google it because you are unable to explain it yourself is a case in point – basically you don’t know.

I’m also wondering why you choose ‘small government’ over ‘good governance’.

For example -

For me with my emphasis on ‘good governance’ would say China falls at the first hurdle because it has little or no democratic accountability (and don’t get me started on human rights), I don’t care if its got some arbitrary and abstract definition of ‘small’ or ‘larger’ government.

So what you’re saying is that small is you criteria for good, not what might be termed ‘good governance’, that implies that –

A bloody handed tyranny with a ‘small’ government would be seen by you as better than a democracy that protected its citizen’s rights but had what you’d arbitrarily termed a ‘big’ government.

 

Health Care

To me it depends on what you think is good of as in ‘good governance’. I would say that a government that gave its citizens a universal healthcare system was a good one. Now some might say that ‘the government’ would be ‘smaller’ if it did nothing for the health of the citizenry but to me that isn’t good governance, such a system (in a monetary economy) would favour wealth and put great burdens on those lower down the socio-economic strata.

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Why Does Health Care Cost So Much?’
By Shannon Brownlee, July & August 2008
http://www.aarpmagazine.org/health/health_care_costs.html

“By every conceivable measure, the health of Americans lags behind the health of citizens in other developed countries. Our life expectancy is shorter than that of citizens in Canada, Japan, and all but one Western European country. We rank 43rd in the world in infant-mortality rates, behind Cuba, the Czech Republic, and the United Kingdom. We are no less disabled by disease than citizens of most developed nations, and our medical care is, with few exceptions, no better at helping us survive specific diseases. For instance, the mortality rate from prostate cancer in the United Kingdom is virtually the same as it is in the United States, despite the fact that the disease is treated far less aggressively in the U.K.”
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According to the World Health Organization's ranking of the world's health systems (from 2000)

The UK is placed eighteenth with the US is 37th.

While the supposed expenditure on health as percentage of GDP in 2005 places the US at second most expensive (15.2), and the UK at 41st (8.2).

Now some people here have claimed that the UK’s health care system is an example of a ‘socialist/‘big government’ system.


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Income.
Quote:
Many economists and analysts believe that median incomes have stagnated or fallen.

That is not addressing what I said –
You can have ‘increase’ but be standing still or falling back, just because you earn more than your father or grandfather did does not necessarily mean you are ‘better off’ than your father or grandfather. Many economists and analysts believe that median incomes have stagnated or fallen.

A decade with no income gains
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/a-decade-with-no-income-gain/
One year Person A makes 10,000 dollars – person B $1000 – and person C $150

5 years later - Person A makes 20,000 dollars – person B $1010 – and person C $152

Well, as a whole, the income has increased, but has it increased evenly across the board, no. Also lets say the cost of living has gone up, by say 10 dollars, this means -

Person A has in real terms made 19,990 dollars – person B $1000 – and person C $142

So in ‘real terms’ one persons income has increase, one has stagnated and the other’s has dropped.
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Education

Quote:
I see so are you saying its OK if one group significantly if not vastly increases its wealth as long as no one else does?

Yes education is linked to income – People with higher educations have the money and knowledge, as well as the confidence in themselves and in education, to teach their children. They are more likely to produce educated kids who are more likely to achieve better results at school (positive feedback) and get the support from home. And higher income families are more likely to have connections with other higher income families breading good workplace links as well as a association between social standing and education.

There are examples of people educating themselves out of poverty but often the damage has been done before they even enter the educational system.

Imagine that a child is not read to and there are few or even no books in the home, and they don’t see their parents read either, and when questions are asked an incorrect answer is given or even no answer at all.

Compared to home where parents have read to their child from birth, where there are loads of books, early learning, picture along with a host of other reading materials and parents (nanny, tutor) around to help and encourage the child and answer questions well and with authority. A place where the child also sees their parents read for pleasure.

However good a school might be one is going to start school with an advantage over the other.

To improve that inequality and improve the situation would involve social programmes aimed not just at improving educational standards amongst children and adults but at raising the quality of life of these groups and society as a whole.



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Social Mobility

Of course a government treasury report would like to emphasis good news but it seems to be contradicted by the independent report from the London School of Ecnomics that stated

http://www2.lse.ac.uk/ERD/pressAndI...nts/archives/2005/LSE_SuttonTrust_report.aspx
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Invisible hand in the hood
Quote:
The problem for me is that the actual policies always seem to be about the closing or cutting of economic and social programmes aimed at helping average or disadvantaged people, along with tax cuts, deregulation or other measures that only ever seem to help speculators’ and the rich.

LOL

You’re on the side of ‘bad’ king John then?

The semi mythical legends of Robin Hood are set in a wealth dominated society where the elite suppress and exploit the lower classes (through forced labour and punitive taxation).

A system I warn against in the original post of this thread. If wealth comes to dominate a system they are likely to suppress and exploit the lower classes, by the cutting of economic and social programmes aimed at helping average or disadvantaged people, along with tax cuts, deregulation or other measures that only ever seem to help themselves.

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As to the ‘invisible hand’ even Adam Smith had his doubts about how far it should be taken as Noam Chomsky points out -

Noam Chomsky
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These are the main findings of a study of Wal-Mart in California

• Reliance by Wal-Mart workers on public assistance programs in California comes at a cost to the taxpayers of an estimated $86 million annually; this is comprised of $32 million in health related expenses and $54 million in other assistance.
• The families of Wal-Mart employees in California utilize an estimated 40 percent more in taxpayer-funded health care than the average for families of all large retail employees.
• The families of Wal-Mart employees use an estimated 38 percent more in other (non-health care) public assistance programs (such as food stamps, Earned Income Tax Credit, subsidized school lunches, and subsidized housing) than the average for families of all large retail employees.
• If other large California retailers adopted Wal-Mart’s wage and benefits standards, it would cost taxpayers an additional $410 million a year in public assistance to employees.

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Checks and Balances


Quote:
You claimed ‘small’ government was “very closely related to free markets” are you now saying it is not as related to free markets?

First I would say that I’m well known here for thinking the US constitution should be re-written to reflect the modern age rather than the squireocracy of more than 200 years ago.
But putting that aside.

The US constitution even the bill of rights are regulations. (Regulation: “a law, rule, or other order prescribed by authority, esp. to regulate conduct”)

It wasn’t ‘just how the government was set up’ the formers of these rules didn’t pluck them from thin air or from the hands of some omnipotent being. They are not sacred text but man made rules with all the fallibility that entails. These dictates of government conduct were picked over and scrutinised, manipulated and moulded, deals were struck, egos massaged and factions mollified.

Try reading Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson by Gore Vidal

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But just having a constitution has never been a protection against political suppression or economic exploitation, let alone time.
That is the reason why new amendments, laws and regulations are made- to plug the gaps.

Are you implying you would do away with all the protections that were found to be needed over time to ward off political suppression or economic exploitation?.

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But you’ve already implied that your criteria isn’t good governance but ‘small government’.

(And for you it seems ‘small government’ is interchangeable with ‘free market’)

So in a toss up between ‘small government’ and the protection of citizens I associate with ‘good governance’ you would seem to opt for ‘small government’.

So yes I am worried and you have done nothing to lessen that worry.

 

Came across this while researching something else -



"By the end of the 19th century, some unforeseen but serious consequences of the Industrial Revolution in Europe and North America had produced a deepening disenchantment with the principal economic basis of classical liberalism—the ideal of a market economy. The main problem was that the profit system had concentrated vast wealth in the hands of a relatively small number of industrialists and financiers, with several adverse consequences. First, great masses of people failed to benefit from the wealth flowing from factories and lived in poverty in vast slums. Second, because the greatly expanded system of production created many goods and services that people often could not afford to buy, markets became glutted and the system periodically came to a near halt in periods of stagnation that came to be called depression. Finally, those who owned or managed the means of production had acquired enormous economic power that they used to influence and control government, to manipulate an inchoate electorate, to limit competition, and to obstruct substantive social reform."
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/339173/liberalism/237347/Modern-liberalism

 

The reason a small government is better because it allows states to have more power and thus the people to have more power. It is a lot easier to influence leaders in a state then leaders in Washington D.C.

 

What do you mean by small?

How does ‘small’ confer ‘more power?’

In what way does this give people more power?

As is that doesn’t make sense can you clarify?

A discussion of small government.

Question About Operation of Small Government
http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?t=361461