Topic: Government Regulation
Reasons Why I Know We Live in an Awesome Country Indicators of a great societyby Christopher Espinal
(Conservative)
Sunday, January 20, 2008
1. We complain about stupid issues like political correctness or words that "suppress" women like police-man: You know that we lead awesome lives if we complain about miniscule issues other than scraping for another meal
2. We care more about countries from other parts of the world than here at home: We have poverty in the United States. In matter of fact there are some parts of this country that look third-world. However, those in poverty only represent a very small percentage, and such stated numbers don't include families that receive transfer payments from the government. Somehow, we still think that we should solve problems in other parts of the world. Americans join all sorts of initiatives like the Peace Corps and Amnesty International.
3. Americans are starting to believe in nonsense like education and healthcare are human rights: It used to be thought that food, shelter, clothing, clean water, and air (all necessities for survival) were human rights but our definition now entails gratuitous services as well. Americans make a lot of money these days so they believe in institutions that will tax them and transfer those revenues to programs that provide a chance for the American Dream. Sorry but pure markets, according to advocates of big government, can't help with this cause!
4. My mother complained about being very poor because she couldn't afford to get her hair professionally done: No need to comment on this absurdity.
5. The "poor" in the United States are lazy because they receive transfer payments: So much for a right to education when these people are lazy anyways.
6. My best friend, whose mother is a drug-addict/prostitute/ill-skilled woman, can barely afford a meal of food yet he has all of the newest video game systems and a 32 inch television set with a surround sound system.
7. On New Years, at 12 o'clock, a crack head woman screamed at the top of her lungs, "Viva los cupones" in English meaning, "Long-live welfare."
8. The United States spends so much money on education yet we have probably the worst education system amongst all of the biggest spending nations.
9. The poor work shorter hours than the rich.
10. Michael Moore complains about 47 million Americans not having access to health insurance, yet most of them could afford it.
11. As Walter Williams pointed out in this column, 97 percent of the poor owned at least one television and 76 percent of poor have air conditioning: The fact that our poor can afford to substitute their income with a television or air conditioning rather than the basic necessities for survival signals to me that we aren't doing as bad as impetuous political activists rant about all the time.
John Stossel complained that people don't respect free markets. Why? Because we are so rich that we don't necessarily need higher standards of living. We can substitute our time and money for basically worthless institutions that free markets don't guarantee. Every rich nation has aimed its government institutions to make the fat cats fatter.
So what are you going to do? Argue that this is the wrong direction to go for our country? Remember: it's just a tradeoff that most people and half-knowledged politicians agree with!
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2008 Christopher Espinal, all rights reserved.
Published: Sunday, January 20, 2008
Last modified: Thursday, March 27, 2008
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Agreed. I showed my Pakistani Muslim coworkers Morgan Spurlock's 30 days one episode was about Mulims in America, they had no idea that there were several peace loveing muslims living in the United States and that they could too. The second episode was about poverty in America. I had to constantly remind them that Morgan Spurlock was living the poorest that he could live in the United States (minimum wage X 2). They said that he was not poor and that if that was poor, then they wanted to live in the United States. I told them that it wasn't that hard, that I wanted to see Morgan do this in another country.
Posted By: Christopher Espinal
Date: 2008-01-21 01:16:43
AceNZ.....actually most countries that have higher standards of living spend a lot of money on these sorts of institutions but maintain their market systems. This is a general trend of society and history!
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2008 Christopher Espinal, all rights reserved.