Illness has taken its toll recently and I am just getting back up to speed after several months of my wife's health issues and mine.
With that said I want to point out that the name of the blog has changed and I am working on writing about issues related to poverty and how society might work to overcome some of them. Tomorrow evening I hope to have a new piece to publish.
Thank you.
Reducing Poverty
The Free Market philosophy is
built on Self-ownership and Respecting
your rights. Don’t hurt others or take their property. Poverty can be reduced by cutting unnecessary
spending and by reducing regulations in markets, such as housing, urban
transit, and healthcare, that are now heavily regulated.
Bring all the troops home from overseas:
Would you pay your neighbor’s electric bill if they wanted your job? Today the U.S. has approximately 200,000
troops stationed around the globe in about 170 countries on some 800 bases at a
cost of $150 billion annually or roughly $450 for each American man, woman and
child. Many of the countries we are defending are also our economic
competitors in the global economy. The
cost of the wars thru Jan. 2020 is $19,000 per each man, woman and child.
More choices in education; schools in poor neighborhoods are often poorly
funded, get poor results and harm the students. End the government’s control of
the schools. Open the market to new ideas
and give students an opportunity.
End the Federal Reserve: Stop the
erosion of our wages by government inflation.
One 1913 dollar has
the same value as $26.29 today. We need a stable currency.
End the drug war: The drug war was born in racism
and has heavily targeted Blacks and Hispanics.
Young people who get arrested carry that burden for life. It costs $51 billion annually.
Repeal all restrictions on health care providers
such as midwives, nurse practitioners, and others. In most states today the
laws deprive an expectant mother of a choice in birth attendants. Abolish the
Certificate of Need Program. Abolish the FDA.
An estimated $1 to $1.5 trillion is wasted annually on healthcare.
Abolish land use laws and other
housing regulations: These laws cost the
nation about $1.6 trillion annually or almost $3660 per worker. Zoning laws have their roots in the nation’s
racist history and now everybody pays the price. While these laws harm
almost everyone they are especially harmful to renters and low income workers,
especially young families. Boarding houses that once were home to about
30% of the people in cities have been outlawed in most cities. In 1901 the average family paid 23% of their
income on shelter. Today many low income, families spend twice that.
Open the transit marketplace
to alternative providers. City politicians outlawed competition from private
businesses in the early 1900s. Today you
pay about 17% of you income for transportation compared to 8% in 1930
thanks to regulations. Regulations that limit your right to own and operate a
private transit business need to be repealed. Elderly women, working mothers
and members of minority groups are the victims of the lack of services. As one
government study reports, “The lack of
personal mobility has economic, social and human costs, such as higher
unemployment, reduced tax revenue, greater welfare and medical costs, and
limited social potential.” Six
percent of white households do not have a car. 14% percent of minority households don’t have
a car, and for Blacks specifically, it is 18%, or three times that of
whites.
Abolish occupational licensing laws:
In our nation these laws have been used to restrict competition especially
between blacks and white after the Civil War. In 1950 about 5% of jobs required some license, today 35% of jobs do.
Abolish business licensing laws
including Cottage Kitchen laws: We engage in trade to provide food, shelter and
clothing for ourselves and families. When the government requires a license,
they are selling your right to engage in that trade. END/ mhw
The Military
The U.S. government has over 200,000
military personnel stationed on over 750 bases in more than 75 countries. This
is a drain on the American economy and is a subsidy to our global competition. This
does not include those in Iraq, Afghanistan or related theatres of operations.
When we include such items as military pensions, the Veterans
Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, the C.I.A, Department of
Homeland Security and other related items the budget to defend the United
States comes to over $3,000 for every man, woman and child in our country.
Since the end of World War II the American taxpayers
have helped protect the nations of Western Europe from a possible attack from
the Soviet Union but the Soviet Union is no more and the Cold War has ended.
But now that
the nations of Western Europe are back on their feet the transfer continues and
is detrimental to the American worker who is competing in a world market.
We have 53,000 troops in Germany, 50,000 in Japan
and 28,000 in Korea. Each of these countries spend about one-fourth what the
U.S. does on defense for each man, woman, and child. From each of these
countries Americans buy cars, electronic gadgets, steel and other products from
companies that compete against American workers
We maintain roughly 9,000 troops in
England. Who are we protecting the
English from? Do they expect the Normans
to come across the Channel again? The
last time they did was 1066.
Then there is Italy where we have roughly 9,000 troops. Italians spend about $600 each for defense.
The deployment of U.S.
troops abroad could be like a tripwire where a misunderstanding drags us into
war as almost happened in 1983 with the Able Archer military games in
Europe.
Approximately 48% of the world’s military spending is from the
U.S. Estimates place the cost of our
defending other nations at one-fourth our national defense budget, at least
$250 billion annually, or almost $750 for each American
citizen. This is more than the nations where we have troops
stationed pay to defend themselves!
The political leadership in America has failed to explain the
costs of this deployment to the taxpayers, nor do we have an understanding of
the consequences of this long-term commitment.
Is it wise for these foreign nations to depend on the U.S. for
this commitment?
What will happen should the U.S. have to withdraw from these
commitments due to crisis elsewhere that is of a military nature, or a
financial one in America?
Some sources estimate the U.S. has used
the military to intervene in the affairs of other nations over 100 times since
1900. That does not include WWI & WWII
Major
General Smedley D. Butler USMC, retired, now deceased and twice a recipient of
the Congressional Medal of Honor had this to say about war:
“WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly
the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only
one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are
reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”
When was the last time your
Senator or Congress person explained how much it costs to keep our troops
overseas? Call them and ask!
It makes no more sense to pay the defense bills of those we
compete with in this global economy than it does to pay the electric bill of
your neighbor.
Draft/mhw 579 words
A new Effort
Because of some health problems I have not posted anything here for the last few years. I wasn’t sure what the outcome was going to be so I stopped posting here in 2017 and took my amateur efforts to another spot where I spent a significant amount of time, much of it wasted, and am returning here in the hopes of producing a better product than what I previously had. Thank you.
Mike
