| This passes for serious thought among Dems today. I'm not sure why. |
John Edwards says if he's elected president, he'll institute a New Deal-like suite of programs to fight poverty and stem growing wealth disparity.
 I'm not sure why the same measures that were deemed appropriate in a time of unprecedented unemployment and widespread poverty are just as appropriate in a time of near-full employment and record low levels of poverty. My inability to do so is probably why I'm a -- temporarily -- unemployed computer programmer rather than a trial lawyer with a house that has over a half acre of floor space. I'm obviously missing something, unless we're looking at a case of one tool, to whit, the sledge hammer, being appropriate for all occasions.
That being said, I guess we can always use another Hoover Dam. It'll be interesting to see the show Breck Boy's Green supporters put on when that one comes up. |
To do it, he said, he'll ask many Americans to make sacrifices, like paying higher taxes.
You'd expect that being asked to sacrifice would result in an ultimate return that would leave us all in a better position than we are now. But we're already in a desirable position economically. Sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
The tax increases, on the other hand, are the standard Dem solution to all problems, based on that assumption that higher taxes produce more revenues. More revenues is another way of saying "more money." Money is power. It doesn't matter if it's your money, as long as it's your power. And more power is better, isn't it? |
Edwards, a former Democratic senator from North Carolina, says the federal government should underwrite universal pre-kindergarten,
This is the measure of the man's brilliance. Universal pre-K has been shown to have indifferent results, but the sight of all those fresh little Sesame Street-aged faces is enough to warm the cockles of most anyone's heart.
At the pre-K age it's probably still better to have the kiddies home with Mommy, but since in the Dems' theoretical world the Mommies of This Great Nation™ are back battering against the glass ceiling by the time their offspring reaches age 5, the babysitting aspect outweighs the educational utility. |
| Universal pre-K is the hallmark of a 'just' socialist society; the goal isn't to free Mom for work but to ensure that the little darlings start getting indoctrinated at a suitable age. Can't leave them with Mommy for 5 years, they might learn to love their families more than they love the State ... |
create matching savings accounts for low-income people,
I'd be real happy if someone matched every nickle I was able to put away for a rainy day. If I put 50 cents in and got a dollar back without waiting for the vagaries of compound interest to kick in that'd be real handy.
In fact, what I'd prob'ly do would be to put my 50 cents in on Monday afternoon. That way I could sleep in on Monday morning. Tuesday morning, bright and early, I could draw out my dollar, and Tuesday afternoon put it back in. Wednesday morning I could withdraw two dollars in the morning, which could be put back in that afternoon. Thursday morning I'd have four dollars and Friday morning $8.00. Saturday morning I could withdraw $16.00 and spend $15.50 on a case of beer. After spending Saturday night and Sunday drinking beer, I could show up at the bank Monday afternoon, after having slept in, to start saving for the next special purchase. |
mandate a minimum wage of $9.50
Edwards is an obvious piker when it comes to minimum wage. I think the minimum should be at least $27.50.
When I was a tad, a fast food hamburger cost 15 cents and the minimum wage was $1 per hour. Today the minimum wage is $6.50 an hour, I believe, and a fast food hamburger costs about a dollar. The fact that you can multiply the cost of that 15 cent hamburger by 6.5 and come out with a cost of 97 and a half cents for a burger is, of course, coincidental. There's no way that a $9.50 miniumum would result in paying $1.43 for that same greaseburger, is there? Or that my $27.50 idea would result in a burger that cost $4.15. Elementary economics just isn't that linear, is it?
The rubes never catch on, do they? |
and provide a million new Section 8 housing vouchers for the poor.
| If you've never been close to a Section 8 housing development, don't bother rectifying the situation. The words "stench and pestilence" are inadequate in most cases. Breck Boy wants more of it. More section 8 is convenient for the police, since it concentrates most of the crime in a central area, but for the rest of society it sucks. We have a problem with housing being priced too high for the first-time home buyer -- and now for the first-time renter -- but more Section 8 as a solution is like proposing more tuberculosis as a solution to public health problems. |
| We in Chicago have used Section 8 more creatively -- Da Mayor used it to push a lot of poor people out into Republican areas of suburban Cook County, turning them into Democratic areas. Wonder if that's what Johnny E has in mind? |
He also pledged to start a government-funded public higher education program called "College for Everyone."
 "College for everyone" makes sense. Of a sort. I guess. If you look at it from just the right angle. In Breck Boy's theoretical world, all the children are above average and everybody likes liberal arts. That has to be the basic premise.
You cannot, in today's world, go to college and major in plumbing or carpentry, though there are programs that will lead you to an electrician's ticket. I think I'm actually frightened at the thought of living in a country where you'll be able to get a master's degree in auto mechanics or steelwork. But even that would be preferable to living in a world where everyone was college educated and constructive work involving manual labor was beneath us all.
I'd like to ask Mr. Breck: "What do you have against plumbers, carpenters, electricians, mechanics, factory workers, welders, linemen, truck drivers, cowboys, and fishermen? Or do you merely want to force all of them to have a college degree? Enquiring minds want to know." |
| Johnny E's plan also guts the work necessary to get a college degree by many, and by work I mean working to come up with the money. Lots of young people work part/full time to make ends meet while in school; it's an object lesson in how real life works. Johnny E wants to pay for their 'universal college degree', thus cheapening it, while also removing the satisfaction one gets from truly earning something that required hard work and sacrifice. |
| I'd also add that even if Johnny E promised and delivered $50K per year per student, the college tuition bill would serenely rise to $85K per year per student... |
| ... and if a 'B' average was required to get that $50K, no student would ever again get a 'C' ... |
"It is central to what I want to do as president to do something about economic inequality. I do not believe it is okay for the United States of America to have 37 million people living in poverty," he said in a meeting with Monitor reporters and editors this week. "And I think we need, desperately need, a president who will say that to America and call on Americans to show their character."
 Poverty has hung around that number since at least 1959, the difference being that in 1959 the population was closer to 180,000,000 than to 300,000,000. That'd say that the level of poverty today is very roughly half what it was about 50 years ago, which was in fact a pretty prosperous period.
This is borne out by the drop in the rate of poverty, which has dropped in that same period from about 23 percent to 12 and a fraction percent. |
At every stop, Edwards said, he tells voters he'll ask them to sacrifice.
| And at every stop I'll bet everybody hollers "Yeah, buddy! That's fer me!" |
| Some of them might be hollering, "you first!" |
Asked to describe what he means, he described his plan for increases in capital gains taxes, saying taxes on "wealth income" should be in line with those on work income. "I think if we want to fund the things that I think are important to share in prosperity, then people who have done well in this country, including me, have more of a responsibility to give back," he said. Later, he added: "There are no free meals."
| Right. But there are lotsa meals somebody else has to pay for. |
Like other Democrats, Edwards named his top three priorities as ending the war in Iraq, enacting universal health care and overhauling the American energy system. "Those are three things instantly I would do," he said.
We have a healthcare system that actually works better than anyone else's, precisely because it doesn't work systematically.
Europeans have a hard time understanding that in the U.S. no one goes without health care unless it's by choice. Old folks -- over 65 -- fall under Medicare. People under a certain income level fall under Medicaid. Virtually all children fall under Medicaid to age five or six. Hospitals are forced to treat the uninsured, and they get lower (but still ruinous) rates than do those who're insured. The problem isn't one of lack of availability, but one of too many institutional payers and too many lawyers inflating healthcare prices. If you're a bum, literally a bum living on the street and cadging drink money, and you're diagnosed with cancer, you'll go into a hospital and you'll receive care. The taxpayers will end up stuck with the bill. And if the same bum ends his days homeless, he'll shuffle off the mortal coil in a hospice, again at taxpayer expense. The hospital that's forbidden to turn him away is forced to place him in housing before they can discharge him. |
Edwards also ripped fellow Democrat Sen. Hillary Clinton, who leads most polls nationally and in New Hampshire by a wide margin, for taking campaign contributions from federal lobbyists and for her recent vote in favor of naming Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group. Edwards barely mentioned Sen. Barack Obama.
| There's more. You can read it at the link. It's tiresome. |
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Poverty has hung around that number since at least 1959, the difference being that in 1959 the population was closer to 180,000,000 than to 300,000,000. That'd say that the level of poverty today is very roughly half what it was about 50 years ago, which was in fact a pretty prosperous period.