To Spend Or Not To Spend

Right now, that really is the question. The question. If you read the polls, read the articles, and read the comments, it is obvious that the American economy is the single leading question mark in the current political debate. The two sides can be nicely summed up with comments I saw today: "Any businessman knows you have to spend money to make money," and, "If I cut the budget at home, it works."
Neither side seems to understand that those are both oversimplified. You have to spend money to make money, but you also have to be careful where you spend your money and I've never worked for a company that didn't spend as much time cutting spending as it did spending. Cutting the budget is great and often necessary, but you do have to eat and pay the bills. You are liable to dislike the results if you decide the utilities bill is something you can cut from your budget.
That nicely sums up the problem with the ongoing debate. We'll ignore, for the moment, the fact that America is not a business (we'll come back to it though) and simply take the two sides for what they are. The first statement does still apply. While we do not often think of it the same way, you do still have to spend money at home in order to make money. You have to spend money on the gas to get to and from work (even if you work from home, there is still an effective travel expense in higher utilities or internet bills). You probably have to spend money on eating away from home. In most careers, you have to spend money on having the proper clothes and grooming. You may have to spend money on child care. Yes, even at home you have to spend money to make money.
However, you do not spend money on that fancy three-piece suit and claim that it is an expense to make money if you work at the local grocery store (maybe, if you hold a few specific positions at that store, but that is unlikely). You don't spend money on that shiny new game console and claim that is spending money to make money. You don't spend money on a brand new F150 and claim that is spending to make money when you work a minimum wage job six blocks down the street.
You have to spend money to make money, but you have to spend money the right way. In your home budget, when your spouse questions your extravagant spending, you don't get to dismiss those concerns by simply saying, "I'm spending money to make money." If you can't show how you're spending money to make money, the next bit of money you spend might be on a divorce lawyer.
Likewise, you can't just cut spending anywhere you want in order to save money. You have to eat. Even if you grow your own food, you will probably still have to spend money on basic supplies and tools. Unless you prefer the Stone Age (and can somehow get your family to play along), you probably do not have the choice of cutting the electric bill from the budget and, if you live in town, you won't be cutting the water bill either. There is a certain amount of spending that cannot be cut, though most of it can possibly be reduced (use less electricity, eat cheaper foods, etc.). You cannot, however, reduce expenses to zero and still be a household. Reducing expenses to zero results in homelessness, quite the opposite of a household.
A nation is not a business (told you we would get back to that). That is, a nation is not in the business of making a profit. A nation does not do things for the purpose of making money. A nation makes money for the purpose of paying required bills and providing required amenities, like a household. A nation is a very large household. Aside from removing the profit motive, however, we have seen that the rules don't change very much. They do change in one significant way, though. A nation does not get to say that it requires a certain tax because that tax would generate a certain revenue. That is the province of business. A nation must say that it needs this revenue to cover this expense. That is the province of a household. I have no sympathy when I see those budget reports that say the government is losing X amount of dollars by not charging X tax or fees. Too bad! It's my money, not yours. You are the employee, not the employer. Show me why you deserve that extra pay and then we can discuss it.
As long as our nation is spending extra money on unnecessary Playstations, F150's, and three-piece suits before paying the basic, required bills, though, I don't want to hear any crying about how it can't afford to pay the basics. There is a certain kind of person who answers every budget discussion with, "You want this but you don't want to pay for it," and then believes the discussion is over. No, I want this and don't want to pay for a Playstation and this. If this basic, necessary expense can be covered by eliminating the cost of the Playstation then why should I pay more before the cost of the Playstation is eliminated? Don't tell me you need more money while you're still spending to play before you've paid the bills. I have to pay the bills first and the government should be no different.
You have to spend money to make money, but you have to spend the right money in the right way. Right now our government spends so much money on extra bells and whistles that there is absolutely no point in even discussing raising taxes on anything until those bells and whistles have been addressed. We on different sides of the debate will no doubt disagree on what constitutes an extra bell and whistle, and we should be discussing that, but most of us agree that there are extra bells and whistles, which are costing us a fortune. Yes, we need to spend and cut but, like any household, we need to look at where we can cut before we start looking at where else we can spend.

What's So Hard To Understand About Rights?

I was reading a review this morning on Michael Moore's new film Capitalism: A Love Story. (I won't go there. I've never seen a Moore film and probably never will, so I am not qualified to comment.) What interested me was the fact that the reviewer was a self-professed Republican and was not, as might be expected, simply bashing the movie. It was a balanced review with many points the author liked and many others he did not like. At one point in the review, the author stated that he did not believe, as Moore apparently does, that FDR's proposed "second bill of rights" was the solution to our problems and this statement resulted in the comment which resulted in what I am writing now. The commenter asked why the author disagreed with this concept, which the commenter referred to as an "economical bill of rights", and then quoted the following as a demonstration of said bill:

"The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad
The right of every family to a decent home
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment
The right to a good education"

I freely admit that I only got as far as the second line before convulsive shuddering made me stop and then have to go back and read more slowly and cautiously so as not to blow a gasket.
In a nutshell, the right of everyone to a good job where he or she makes a good living and, thus, can live a good life. Sounds great, right? Who could be opposed? How about anyone with a rational understanding of the concept of rights and/or freedom?
The fatal flaw in just about this entire list is that none of these so-called rights can exist without someone being forced to give them to you. How can you have a right to a job unless someone is required to hire you? How can you have a right to a certain renumeration unless someone is required to fulfill that renumeration? How can you have a right to sell your products at a certain rate unless someone is first required to buy them and is then required to buy them at that rate?
Let's take it a step further, shall we? What right do you have to a job if you are not qualified to perform that job? What right do you have to a particular level of renumeration if you do not perform work that someone paying believes to be worthy of that renumeration? What right do you have to sell a product that no one wants?
Do you begin to see a problem with this idea? It's a nice dream. Yes, wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone were happily employed and could afford a quality life without having to make do or settle or cut corners? I think it would be wonderful if everyone could fly to any point in the world to visit any loved one you choose at any time you like, but that doesn't make it my right to get on a plane and zip off to Texas every other week unless I can somehow come up with a way to afford that airfare. Just because something is a nice idea doesn't make it a right and erroneously labeling it a right doesn't improve your position.
No right can be in conflict with another and no right can require the active participation or contribution of someone else. This is a very simple, easy to use formula to help determine whether or not that nice idea you are considering is actually a right. The fact that your idea meets this criteria does not automatically make it a right, but you'd be amazed how many "nice ideas" can't even get past this starting gate.

Disingenuous Questions And False Statements

Part of my relative silence lately has been due to simple overload. There is so much I want to say that picking and choosing becomes difficult. Also, I have been reluctant to allow this blog to be dominated by health care or climate change debates, yet those seem to be the two subjects dominating the portions of the news that I would normally comment on. Oh well, you play the hand you're dealt, right?
I'm pulling from comment sections again today, but I'm not going to use direct quotes. As you should easily see, there won't be any need. Instead, I am distilling questions and comments that are seen constantly among the various blogs and news comments but which are, themselves, a considerable distance away from being honest. I'll distill the question into its most common form and then try to give it an answer.
For example:
"If you are opposed to socialized medicine, why don't you refuse to accept Medicare?"
You mean these people should refuse to accept services for which they have already paid in full? You do realize, of course, that Medicare is essentially an insurance program that uses the strength of government to force you to pay premiums for decades before you are even allowed to use it. Of course you do. If you have ever received a paycheck, you have seen these forced premium payments for yourself. The people who are using Medicare have spent all or most of their lives expecting that this is how it would be because this was the only choice they were allowed. They planned accordingly and now your brilliant suggestion is that they fix someone else's problem by ditching their lives' plans at the last minute and just accepting that the money which was taken from them for years has disappeared into a black hole instead of coming back to them in any useful manner. I have a hard time believing that anyone uttering this particular question doesn't fully understand what they are suggesting.

"If you oppose health care reform for fiscal reasons, why didn't you oppose the unnecessary Iraq war for those same reasons?"
This one is wrong on so many levels. First of all, it assumes that everyone who is fiscally opposed to the current health care reform ideas was for the Iraq war, which is demonstrably false. There is a large number of fiscally conservative Libertarians who screamed bloody murder about the waste and uselessness of the Iraq war and who are also less than pleased with the current round of waste. I have no doubt that there are many Republicans and Independents who fall into the same camp. More importantly, though, this question assumes that everyone shares the belief that the Iraq war was unnecessary - a belief that even a semi-bright child can easily see is not shared - and, even more importantly, it assumes that everyone shared that belief from the beginning. Shall we do a reminder list of the people on the Left who supported the Iraq war at the beginning? Those people who supported the Iraq war did so precisely because they believed it was necessary, negating the entire "logic" of this question.

"Where were you for the last eight years when Bush was spending so much?"
Where were you, living under a rock? There were fiscally conservative Republicans howling against Bush's spending policies every single day! Just because they weren't the majority or the loudest voices doesn't mean you get to claim they weren't there. Are there more of them now? Of course there are! In case you hadn't noticed, spending has gone up exponentially. Those who were uneasy about Bush's spending - but not enough so to make a big stink - could easily be pushed over the line by doubling and trippling the spending. There is nothing sinister or inherently partisan about this. It's pretty normal. Most of us behave in the exact same way in our every day lives. We might wince at certain household expenses but decide not to make an issue just yet, and then hit the roof when the household budget goes through the roof. Can you honestly try to claim that this is unusual behavior?

"If you're so anti-socialism then we should make sure the police and fire departments never come to your aid since they are government funded."
Pure hyperbole, and stupid hyperbole at that. Can you even imagine a Republican anarchist? Because I can't and, for the record, there is nothing in Libertarian principles that would support this idea either. Socialism is the economic theory of public ownership of the means of production and allocation of resources. Defense - including domestic defense, ie. law enforcement and fire brigades - is not a part of the socialism theory. It isn't even covered. One has nothing to do with the other. Defense and how it is handled would be covered under political theory, not economic theory - yes, for those of you who don't know any better, you actually do have to be able to juggle multiple theories at the same time in order to successfully have this conversation - and most fiscal conservatives subscribe to political theories that do include defense as a natural and proper function of government.

I could go on like this all day, but I think you get the idea. I'll let you chew on these for a while and maybe we'll come back to this idea another time. If you see similar questions or statements that don't quite seem to make sense, feel free to send them along and maybe we'll include them next time.