Why the libertarian party is so small

Last night I read Hayek's essay, _"Free" Enterprise and Competitive Order_. Hayek states in the beginning of his essay that people today aren't generally backing free-market supporting economic political practices and the purpose of the essay is to give free-market oriented people a strategy to increase support.

Certain institutions must be in place for free market economics to 'work.' Ya know, the normal stuff... property rights, 'rules of the game' as Heyne puts it in _The Economic Way of Thinking_, contract enforcement, and so on. Hayek writes that we must find a system that will not just reduce the size of the state, but we must form one that will protect market institutions. The idea behind the essay was that a more positive stance from the market-advocates would win the favor of the masses.

Hayek then argues that most libertarians support a policy of what I'll call "slash and burn" politics. This stance could make libertarian ideology less appealing to a larger number of people. According to Hayek, people think the government should fill certain roles like taking care of the poor and achieving full employment. He goes on to say that the libertarians should come up with a policy that doesn't argue against 'taking care of the poor' or 'full employment', but devise a system that will allow the government to perform normally expected government actions without interfering with market processes as much as possible. Obviously a key part of the future discussion would be finding a system that interferes least with the market. Of course, there can be no political system that does not interfere with the market at all.

Hayek does make some interesting points though. He argues against patents and against progressive income tax when backed by ideas based in egalitarianism.

I think that Hayek is wrong about free-market oriented people having to give in to certain positions like 'full employment' and 'welfare' in order to gain public support, but it may not be a bad idea to ‘soften’ many of our arguments. At least when I'm in discussions with people, I almost always end up saying something that sounds totally ridiculous to them like "who cares about the poor" or "of course, the private road owner could charge the person trying to get to the hospital a million dollars" so maybe Hayek has a point there. People supporting free markets, including myself, should probably make bigger efforts to explain the "softer side" on things like how a free market would lower unemployment or how it would make the 'poor' better off. I’m not convinced that this is the reason why there are so few libertarians, but it could be a start. I know not everyone argues the same way I do, but I’ve heard quite a few libertarians taking the same route as me.

Who holds the right?

Does the man who owns a million dollars have less right to it than the man who owns but a single dollar? When a product is made, should the inventor bear no ownership for it? Say a new toaster is made. It's a marvelous tool; bread is toasted in only three seconds. I want one. You want one. The man across the street wants one. We all have one now. The inventor is now a very wealthy man. Has he not earned his wealth fairly? Who has been hurt by his wealth? He offered a product that was desired. It was bought and sold voluntarily. From whom did he steal in his quest for profit? If his money was earned through the fair act of trade, then by what right does another man take it? Let us make no mistake: the taking of money unearned is theft.

The argument made is that "government" has the right. Yet "government" is a fictional social construct. It is in actuality a collection of individuals working towards their own individual goals. When broken down simply, who is it that has taken from us? It is but another man and possibly his associates, all men. The question then becomes: by what right does one man steal from another?

We must, as always, start with a definition, as words are the only true way to comunicate. A job is work done in return for payment, monetary or otherwise. A thief is one who takes something not of his possession, something unearned. Pay close attention to the words, particularly "unearned" and "payment".

For one who holds a job, he is working for a desired goal. At the moment, this goal remains unnamed as it may vary from person to person. The constant for all persons is that the man who works does so for something. The act of working is never purposeless. There are many forms of "something," be it monetary or even the sheer joy of the work, but there is always a product of one's labor. If I am a painter, I will have a masterpiece; if I make toasters I will have a toaster for my product. One works; something is produced. Now for most people, this idea seems very simple. So if the idea of production is simple, it must be the next phase that is complex. Once my masterpiece is complete, once my toaster is perfected, to whom does it belong?

"What a simple question!" one might say, but apparently it is far from simple. One might argue that he who paints owns the painting. It is his to do with as he will! The irony is that once the art is sold, the same arguer will cry foul. "He has sold the masterpiece! Why should he not share his good fortune?" It is agreed that the final product belongs to the artist, yet he is not allowed to do with it as he will. His long hours of work have gone into the making of this masterpiece, yet he should not be given his due payment. It should be shared. I, who had nothing to do with its production, should be entitled to payment unearned. What was the definition of a "thief" once again?

the battle for truth

Today I heard Thomas DiLorenzo speak at Hampden-Sydney. He talked about his book, How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold history of Our Country, from the Pilgrims to the Present. I brought my mother in hopes of her biting onto some part of the libertarian ideology. Dr. DiLorenzo was an interesting speaker and I enjoyed the talk.

I’ve been thinking recently about what I’d be interested in writing in the future, that is, what I’d like to attempt to publish in the long run. Recently, I had decided that I wanted to try to publish something that I considered ‘worth while’ – something that would be ground breaking in economics or philosophy or political science. I think that it is highly unlikely that I will think of or publish something of this nature, but it’s a noble goal. I’m under the impression that some economists and political theorists of libertarian leanings believe that the theory-side is ‘done’ and all that is left for us to do now is relate again and again to the masses what Mises or Rothbard have already written for us. This may be true, but if it is, it’s a depressing truth for me. I would love to add some real value to the science of economics instead of simply pointing out what others have already discovered. Other up and coming economists think that they can have satisfying and profitable careers in academia simply by applying old economic theories to different sectors of the economy. I sincerely hope that I am not stuck doing this in a few years.

So… a few things changed my opinion today… First, DiLorenzo’s book… It was written for non-economics studying people. It has sections in it explaining that robber-barons are myths, that capitalism made workers in the industrial revolution rich, that capitalism did not cause the Great Depression, and that anti-trust laws do not work. I have to preface talking about the book by reminding myself that it was intended for common people – not students of economics. Each section that he mentioned in the talk about his book repeated economic theories that virtually any student would be familiar with. Until tonight, I would have thought that this was mostly a waste. He said that he wrote the book in response to the Enron and Worldcom crises. He thought that many academics would write silly things arguing that these crises were direct results of liaise-faire capitalism. Of course, he was right. Many books of this sort followed from the Enron and Worldcom scandals. His book is a direct counter to these. It is a defense of capitalism using theory backed by statistics. I thought Human Action had it pretty well covered, but this book is much more accessible.

I think it was naive of me to think that people would seek out truth in a library or a class room when the vast majority of literature and education went in the face of it. Someone told me recently that I should publish as many books or articles as I possibly could because there were so many more socialists publishing that the libertarians had to respond with similar output to compete. This is beginning to make sense to me. Tonight, I discovered the blog, http://www.bkmarcus.com/blog/ and I read this entry - http://www.bkmarcus.com/blog/2006/09/fighting-for-truth.html

He quotes Rothbard near the end of the entry:

Menger and Bohm apparently insisted on the naive view that truth will always win out, unaided, not realizing that this is hardly the way truth ever wins out in the academic or any other arena. Truth must be promoted, organized, and fought for as against error. Even if we can hold the faith that truth, unaided by strategy or tactics, will win out in the long run, it is unfortunately an excruciatingly long run in which all too many of us -- certainly including Mises -- will be dead.

I was impressed by this quote, as I am by many of Rothbard’s quotes. I think Rothbard is right, again. DiLorenzo’s book held more value for me after reading that blog entry. Thank you, lowercase liberty. I’m beginning to change my perspective on what I’d think of as an acceptable topic to attempt publishing. Since truth-seeking doesn’t seem to be a high priority for many people… and since many people will be required to seriously shift our society away from socialism, it must be our goal to share our ideas with others and not just wait around until they discover them on their own.

Speaking of Muses...

So, a friend of mine recently started reading Wordsworthian poetry. I am quite a fan of Wordsworth. We got into a discussion about the political orientation of poets and he asked me why there were no famous libertarian poets. Are there any? I certainly don't know of them. They all seem to be socialists or unrelated to politics - at least all of the famous ones. Why wasn't there a seriously liberal thinking poet in the eighteenth or nineteenth century that made it big when all of the new liberal ideas were still new? Why hasn't there been one since? Why has their not been a highly skilled or at least recognized poet, with the explosion and resurrection of nineteenth century liberalism centered around Rothbard and Rand?

I'm curious to find the answer to this question. A few of my friends and I came up with a few theories... Maybe it is that freedom-oriented people use reason before emotion to solve problems or to think about certain situations. Certainly, poetry is inspired by emotion... Could this be the cause of the non-existence of this poet or group of poets? Another answer might be that there was a great poet, but none of us know about him because he had no readership because of the limited size of the movement in existence at the time when he was writing.

I certainly don't think the problem is lack of inspiration and I'm not convinced that the problem is that we use reason before emotion. I could see Rothbard being angry enough to defeat his enemies in verse. It might add something to winning an argument. Not only is the opponent defeated by reason, but I rhymed while doing it.

Anyway, if you have any ideas on why there is no great libertarian poet, by all means, post it. If you know of one that I may have overlooked, post that too. If you have any libertarian poetry - post it!

Free State Project

Everyone may already be aware of this but -

Some freedom-minded people have started a program called the "Free State Project - Liberty in our lifetime". The plan centered around this program is to have 20,000 people move from wherever they are in the US to New Hampshire where they will become a politically active group that will fight to reject federal aid and massively cut the size of state and local governments there. They picked New Hampshire because it has one of the lowest tax rates in the country and probably because it has a fairly low population, so 20,000 people might actually make a difference.

After the plan works, other states should follow suit in the cutting the size of government through the enormous economic growth that should take place in New Hampshire. I'd also expect a large increase in wages and a large number of people moving to New Hampshire looking for work...

The project already has over 6,000 signatures, pledging to either move to New Hampshire now or move there when the number reaches 20,000.

"Galt's Gulch" might be in New England in a few years...

Destruction of the Future

“Every time we produce a Cadillac, we irrevocably destroy an amount of low entropy that could otherwise be used for producing a plow or a spade. In other words, every time we produce a Cadillac, we do it at the cost of decreasing the number of human lives in the future (Georgescu-Roegen, 85).” Every “unnecessary” good that is created and distributed throughout the population acts as a drain upon the world’s shared resources. With each good that raises humanity above the level of subsistence, some future generation will lack the resources needed to exist. Yet if this argument holds true, then, in reality, every action committed by a human being in the present harms a future generation.

The argument is based on the laws of thermodynamics, most notably the law of entropy. “All physical processes, natural and technological, proceed in such a way that the availability of the energy involved decreases (Ehrlich, Ehrlich, and Holdren).” With each use of the worldly energy, some portion of that energy, while it is unable to be destroyed, becomes unusable. Thus a portion is lost and a new supply of energy must be tapped in order to produce more “things”. Every time something is created for use now, something in the future will not be able to be created. As Georgescu-Roegen states, “When a piece of coal is burned, its chemical energy is neither dissipated nor increased. But the initial free energy has become so dissipated in the form of heat, smoke, and ashes that man can no longer use. It has been degraded into bound energy (Georgescu-Roegen, 77).” Once a resource is used, there is less, if anything, of it to use again.

One of the Georgescu-Roegen’s most important points, then is that
[e]conomic development through industrial abundance may be a blessing for us now and for those who will be able to enjoy it in the near future, but it is definitely against the interest of the human species as a whole, if its interest is to have a lifespan as long as is compatible with its dowry of low entropy (Georgescu-Roegen, 85).

This argument leads into a question of what is considered abundance. If the human species must live at subsistence level in order to prolong the number of future generations, then the natural question must be: What is subsistence level? What are the limits of production that will supply humanity with food, shelter and the other “necessities” of life? There is no chart that provides a list of the items and the number of those items that are necessary for the continued human existence. One of the major flaws of this economic theory is the lack of information. It is not possible to choose a level of production for the entire population of the planet. Even in scaling back from the overproduction of goods that are termed “unnecessary” there is no measure of what is absolutely necessary for life to exist.

This lack of information means that not only is it improbable to reform the entire world to a level of subsistence, it is impossible. If humanity were to make the attempt, there would have to be a central leader who directs the allocation and distribution of goods to be certain that no one cheated and gained more than his or her fair share of goods. While history has show that this experiment has been attempted in certain countries, like the Soviet Union, the attempts have so far been unsuccessful. The impracticality of a world scale back in production is one argument against Georgescu-Roegen’s solution.

Another argument, also dealing with the impracticality of the solution, is that humanity enjoys its “unnecessary” goods. It is the nature of the human being to “want”. The U.S. government, and many others, has laws in place to protect private property. Americans enjoy buying the latest toys to satisfy their curiosity. The argument that people should give up their property, their toys, holds little weight when the only reason given is that in some distant future, humanity will cease to exist. Either no one believes such a claim, or no one cares to consider that distant, uncertain future. A basic rule of economics is an individual’s positive rate of time preference. Humanity wants “things” at the exact moment that the idea takes hold. It is extremely unlikely that people will allow someone to reorder production to the subsistence level until the last moment when mankind’s eminent destruction is on hand.

Yet another argument against Georgescu-Roegen’s solution to the entropy problem is that his argument can be taken to absurd levels. Since every action by its very nature must use energy, and each use of energy causes a loss of usable energy in the future, then every action taken by an individual causes a loss to some undetermined future generation. For each breath an individual takes in the present, there is less air available for the future. Thus for each person who continues living in the present, there is at least one less person that will be allowed to live in the future. The only option to ensure that an individual is not usurping the space of a future member of humanity is for that individual to die as soon as possible to avoid using energy.

(Georgescu-Roegen's "The Entropy Law and the Economic Problem," Ch. 3 is found in Valuing the Earth: Economics, Ecology, Ethics. Edited by Herman E. Daly and Kenneth N. Townsend. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1993.)

Spooner's Constitution of no authority

So I just read Lysander Spooner's essay/article, No Treason. No. VI, the Constitution of No Authority. It can be found online here... http://www.lysanderspooner.org/bib_new.htm Scroll down to where it says No Treason and click The Constitution of No Authority. This man's life was very interesting to me. Information on it can be found on the website.

The article argues very effectively that we are not bound by the American Constitution and people residing in the territorial area known as the United States never were bound by it, simply because they never truly consented to it in any form that would stand in a court. He has an especially entertaining paragraph or two comparing government to highwayman. I think Ayn Rand uses some his paragraph in Atlas Shrugged. He claims that the highwayman is more honorable and noble than the government because the highwayman leaves us alone after we are robbed.

There is also an interesting attack on the secret ballot. I am not sure if he actually argues for non-secret ballots or just uses the argument to attack the government. Either way, it's worth a read. Check it out if you haven’t read it already.

Economies in MMOs

Massively multiplayer online games have been quite popular in the past few years and some of them have interesting economic aspects to them. Titles under this genre include Ultima Online, Everquest, Asheron's Call, Star Wars: Galaxies, Dark Ages of Camelot, The Sims Online, Shadowbane, and World of Warcraft.

Virtually every character you run into in games of this nature are controlled by another player. Player interaction is usually encouraged to defeat hard monsters or puzzles and players can trade virtually every item in most of the games. This exchange creates some interesting possibilities and problems. Most games have a common currency, usually gold. One of the larger problems in these games is that the gold massively inflates over time. The gold enters the economy usually by players taking it off monsters they've killed or as rewards for quests or puzzles. Gold exits the economy by buying things from non-player-characters. Some games make players use the gold to pay to power-up, other games require certain amounts of gold to cast spells or travel to other locations. We can see how this is not all that similar to a real economic system.

This system is called a "faucet-drain economy." There have been a few essays written on it. Some of them may be published. For me, the interesting part is what happens in-between the faucet and the drain. Nike has used some smaller MMOs to model or forecast preferences for clothing and shoes. Other companies have done this too. Some of the games may have some real potential for economic analysis - at least to see some of less-noticeable theories in action.

I think it'd be interesting to see some company make a game that didn't start off with a default currency like "gold" that can be looted off monsters. It'd be interesting to watch at first as players try to find something that can be used effectively as a medium of exchange. DarkFall Online, several years ago, had some posts about this on their development board, but I'm not sure if that game is still being tested or not.

Very Basic Utilitarian Libertarianism

So this is mostly a continuation of the previous discussion on Natural Rights libertarianism... Many people have asked me (usually with some anger?) how a system could possibly work without taxes. The natural rights argument doesn't really address this question, but it shouldn't have to because the question isn't related to the argument at all.

In this post I will attempt to use utilitarianism to explain how a political system could work without taxes, aggressive war, or conscription.

The word utilitarianism is a structure of beliefs or ideas built around the idea of maximizing utility. Utility generally means happiness. Most economics teachers would agree to this definition. Maximizing utility could also mean something like... the maximum amount of uneasiness removed. The two meanings are similar, but happiness seems slightly less definitive to me.

A libertarian utilitarian generally believes that the maximization of utility for a society would be accomplished by the removal of government.

Basically, the argument is based on the success of the free market. If enough people want something or if a single person wants something badly enough, then they or he will get it through the market. If enough people want green shoes, then someone will start a shoe company to make green shoes or a currently existing shoe company will start to manufacture green shoes. The same goes for the various operations of government according to this line of argument.

If a large number of individuals demand something like security (a police force for example) on the market, then various methods of security will arise through various entrepreneurs attempting to profit from other peoples desires.

David Friedman and Murray Rothbard in their books, The Machinery of Freedom: A guide to radical capitalism and For a new liberty: the libertarian manifesto, respectively, lay out basically the same ideas for the road to utilitarian libertarianism or anarchy. I don't have The Machinery of Freedom available to me right now, but Friedman says there are things that we can do today and things that we can do in the future to take the state apart. It must be done in a certain order for the system to work most efficiently, he argues.

If I remember correctly, he first says that we should sell off the public roads and schools. I think I should pause here before proceeding with what order to do things or explaining exactly how the system would run to put up an argument for a private road and school system...

These two areas are some of the hardest to defend for a utilitarian libertarian. There was a highway built in LA a while ago, a private one that cut a more direct path for travelers to wherever it was going and saved them time (highway 73). I think when it came out the toll was like $8 per trip. The price is high, but the road boasted a toll system that you could drive through at 70 miles per hour without stopping. No other system like this exists in the country, to my knowledge anyway, and there are a lot of toll systems back east. The owners of the road set up cameras along the whole length of the road and if there was an accident or some kind of breakdown, they knew about it immediately and sent crews out to clean it up to keep traffic moving and the money coming in. No road system that I know of can respond this fast. They gave away a free gallon of gas to people that ran out because it was inefficient for them to leave the car on the side of the road with the possibility of impeding traffic. The enormous amount of traffic and the social costs associated with it would be minimized by having a private road system.

Concerning education: Most people, liberals anyway, seem to think that the public school system in America is in horrible condition. Would a private system of schools fix the problems or just leave some people uneducated and be generally worse for society? Imagine what would happen if there were no public school system. First, people wouldn't be forced to pay for public schooling through taxes. Various private schools would arise serving whatever desires that the market demanded. Some parents would demand high quality education and be more willing to pay for it for their children than they were previously. Some poorer families that couldn't afford to send their children to a very high quality expensive school would have the option available to them to send their child to some sort of shorter-term trade school if they wanted. Schools would compete with each other for students. In every case where free competition exists in a free market, prices drop. New methods of education would be attempted and new ideas would surface, allowing for more efficient education of everyone. Public schools have virtually no one to compete with and therefore have very little incentive to innovate. Basically, if schools were privatized, then a larger variety of education would come into existence and overall prices of education would fall because of competition.

Friedman and Rothbard both go on to explain how a market based police force, court system, and perhaps even military could not only exist but also be more efficient on the free market than the way it currently is. Where the argument is now though, without public education or public roads, is where many minimal-state libertarians draw the line. Most also believe that there should be a much smaller military as well...

I'll make another post on how a police force, court system, and maybe a military could be provided on the market.

This argument isn't as solid as the natural rights one, so feel free to nail me somewhere and I'll argue about it.

Natural rights libertarianism

Libertarianism is a relatively modern name for an older bunch of ideas manifesting themselves in the American Revolution, based, to at least some extent, on the ideas of John Locke, along with some other major thinkers of his time and before.

I will explain, at least in this post, natural rights libertarianism, which is based off of some of the ideas of John Locke and for the most part was realized in early eighteenth century America.

The basic assumption that I must begin this explanation with is:
Human being have the right to live.

Humans survive, not through instinctual behavior, but through the use of reason to gain food or shelter. Humans must use reason to survive. Because we have the right to live, as human beings, we therefore have the right to reason.

Because we have the right to live - that is, to produce things necessary for survival, the man that creates, makes, or thinks of something has the sole right to keep, use, destroy, or do whatever he wishes with that which he has produced with his own mind or body. The implications of this are interesting.

The goods that we come to 'own' through the use of our own reason, minds, and body, are ours to keep. Any attempt to take the property of another individual is a violation of the human right to live, since they exercised their ability to reason - man's sole means of survival - to gain possession of the property. Any individual with a property right over some good has the right to trade it or sell it, but not to violate the right of any other person's right to their own property. Keep in mind that exchange between two individuals is ALWAYS voluntary and therefore completely in accordance with man's right to live. Obviously, included in a man's property, is his own body, since it is his own body, guided by reason, which performs the actions that allow him to survive.

From this line of reasoning, we conclude that only voluntary exchanges between individuals do not violate the rights of human beings. If someone steals something from another person, it is theft. If someone forces another person to give up a piece of their property through force, then it is theft. Taxation then, is theft. The government, through the use of coercion, takes what you earned honestly through the use of your mind and your body. This is theft and a violation of the basic human right to live.

Since human beings have a right to their own bodies and to do what they wish with their own time, conscription is slavery and it violates the basic human right to life, to reason, and to property.

In accordance with humans right's to life, aggressive war is murder. Any death on any side of a conflict is the responsibility of the aggressor. If a country goes to war with another country for any reason except self defense, then the heads of state that started the aggressive war are murderers and should be held accountable for their actions just as any other criminal. If the war was put to a democratic vote and over half the people in a country voted to start an aggressive war with another nation, then anyone that perished in the conflict on either side is a victim of murder. Anyone that voted 'yes' for the war should be held accountable for the crime of murder.

Since we have the right to our own body and property, anyone aggressing upon our body or property has violated our right and self defense is completely justified.

Natural-rights libertarianism is the only truly just system in accordance with man's basic right to life.

Acknowledgements: Many of these ideas are based on Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, by Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged, by the same author. Murray Rothbard’s For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto outlines them in more detail. I was probably influenced by David Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom: A Guide to Radical Capitalism as well.

Cav Daily article about Social Security

Well, I wrote this back in March, but I want my blog to look full and active from the very beginning, so I'm going to post it. The first part is a newspaper article in the Cavalier Daily, the student newspaper at the University of Virginia. My response starts about half way down after the spot with his email.


Securing the dignity of the elderly

Zack Fields, Cavalier Daily Columnist

WHEN MY grandmother's great grandfather died, he was living on the poor farm in Lawrence County, Ala. Before there was Social Security, those old folks who didn't have any family or whose family couldn't afford to take care of them went to the poor farm or the poor house. In Lawrence County the seniors who could still get out of bed in the morning went on down to the fields and hoed cotton or squash, working until the day they died. Many old folks who didn't end up on the poor farm lived with their relatives. My grandmother told me that often a husband and a wife would be split up for their final years because one family could not afford to take care of both of them. Perhaps a son's family would take care of the mother and the daughter's family the father.

None of my relatives live on the poor farm today. No elderly person has to suffer the indignity of being separated from her or his spouse because of economic necessity because in 1938, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democratic Congress created Social Security, which Lyndon Johnson expanded to cover all seniors under the auspices of the Great Society. According to Associate History Prof. Grace Hale, these federal programs had virtually eliminated poverty among the elederly by the 1980s. While rising drug prices have compromised the living standards of seniors in the past decade, Social Security nevertheless ensures that my grandmother can retire in her home rather than till the soil on the poor farm.

Why, then, is President Bush attempting to dismantle Social Security? Why privatize, and thereby destroy, our country's most successful social program? Why would the Republican Party return us to an era when old age was characterized by poverty? It is not only callousness to the well-being of my grandmother and all working-class senior citizens. To be sure, Bush will sacrifice the interests of the seniors in order to enrich the stock brokers and mutual fund managers who, as Hale pointed out, are the only sure winners of Social Security privatization. Yet Bush is not attempting to destroy Social Security merely to transfer the retirement savings of all citizens to some stock brokers on Wall Street. Bush must destroy Social Security because its existence is a daily refutation of Republican ideology and "free" market rhetoric.

Social Security has vastly lower management overhead costs than privatized pension systems in oher countries (such as in Britain), according to Princeton economist Paul Krugman, and Social Security is so successful that we effectively eliminated poverty among seniors. The Social Security Administration estimates that "nearly half of all older Americans" would live below the poverty line without Social Security, based on data from 1999. Fifteen million seniors would live in poverty today without that guaranteed benefit. Over the last forty years, the time since Johnson expanded Social Security to include all seniors, the poverty rate for the elderly has fallen 72 percent, according to the SSA.

But because the Republican Party thrives on criticizing "big government," the existence of a big government program that eliminated poverty for old folks threatens their party's and their ideology's long term solvency in America. If we can eliminate poverty for seniors, there is no reason we cannot eliminate poverty among children, who currently suffer the highest rates of poverty. If we can eliminate poverty for seniors, perhaps we can provide employment for workers who have seen their jobs sent to Mexico and China by their former corporate employers. Social Security's unambiguous success is a stirring testament to the power of government to affect positive change in the average person's life.

My father and mother deserve to retire after a lifetime of labor. My cousins in northern Alabama should not have to work at Wal-Mart until the day they die. We have a moral responsibility to protect Social Security from Bush's assault, and expand the welfare state where otherwise possible, precisely because the wellbeing of my family, of most American families, depends upon it. We cannot return to an age when, as Prof. Hale said, Americans "worked until physically unable, then lived with family or in the country home, the poor house."We have an obligation to protect the "profoundly important" achievement of our grandparent's generation, lest we condemn our children's to the poor farm in their old age.

Zack Fields' column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at zfields@cavalierdaily.com.


Now my response...

Here's my response to the article... a letter to the newspaper. They didn't publish it.

This letter is in response to Zack Fields’ article concerning Social Security that appeared in the Cavalier Daily on Wednesday, March 2, which argued that Bush’s plan to ‘privatize’ Social Security would lead to the destitution of millions of American seniors’ ability to retire. Mr. Fields praises Social Security as an “unambiguous success” and a “testament to the power of government to affect positive change in the average person's life.” In addition to this, he also accuses President Bush of being a free-marketer which is simply not true. This letter is intended to amend some of the thoughts expressed in Mr. Fields’ article through a look at economic growth since 1930 and the Republican Party’s approach to ‘big government’ and free trade.

Mr. Fields misunderstands the underlying causes of the decline in poverty rates of senior citizens in the twentieth century. He writes that Social Security “eliminated poverty for old folks.” Yes, to an extent, Social Security may help seniors to retire – especially those that would not normally save the money in the absence of Social Security. What really though, has stopped poverty in the United States? Mr. Fields starts his article off talking about his grandmother’s great grandfather. If I am not mistaken, that is five generations. That could be between one hundred and maybe one hundred and fifty years ago. In 1850, the United States was only beginning to experience the effects of a world wide Industrial Revolution that would eventually lead to greater prosperity for virtually every nation and almost every individual in the United States. It was the enormous economic growth of the last one-hundred years that has ‘saved’ us from more poverty than we are currently experiencing, not government programs attempting to define what we can and cannot do with our own money. It does not logically follow then, that if Social Security were to be dismantled, we would return to a period of poor elderly members of society toiling their last years away on the poor farm.

Personal income in the United States since 1930 has risen drastically. It is this increase, this huge economic growth, which has saved fifteen million seniors, as Mr. Fields says, from poverty. From the article on Wednesday – “According to Associate History Prof. Grace Hale, these federal programs (Social Security and Johnson’s Great Society) had virtually eliminated poverty among the elderly by the 1980s.” Well, of course poverty had been “virtually eliminated” by 1980. Per capita income has increased between the years of 1929 to 1980 by fourteen times what it was according to Bureau of Economy Analysis. The massive economic growth of this century does much more to fight poverty than the government forcing people to save a small percentage of their income.

I may surprise some of you now. I am not a conservative. Mr. Fields’ article not only talked about how wonderful Social Security and the ‘Nanny-State’ are, but also implied that the Republican Party does not approve of ‘big government’ programs. He also wrote that President Bush is a free-marketer. In the last four years, the President and a majority Republican Congress have succeeded in spending trillions of dollars, pushing the National debt higher and higher. The war in Iraq and Bush’s social programs have cost the American tax payer much. Accusing the president of being hard on ‘big government,’ according to the evidence from his first term and his most recent State of the Union Address, is absurd. The President is expanding government spending and policy quite rapidly and doesn’t seem to think there is anything wrong with ‘big government.’

Mr. Bush also supported a tariff on steel in his first term that would prevent the free importation of that commodity into the United States. That is an attack on free trade. I tend to think that the President is more of a mercantilist or moderate socialist than a conservative. Mr. Fields writes too, about how the government could fight for American jobs to stay at home instead of being sent to China or Mexico. In the article, the blame falls on the corporations for sending the jobs away. The President, in his campaigning speeches anyway, promised to bring the jobs back home. Of course the blame would fall on the corporations though. The leaders of all business firms attempt to make a profit. If labor costs are very high in the US, then it’s cheaper to build factories in Mexico or even China. This is not unusual. Firms attempt to maximize profits. Why is it though, that wage rates are higher in the United States than in other countries? One quick answer is that it is the unions and their involvement with the government drives up labor prices and prevents the flexibility of wages. That is, wages can only rise in our current system. This encourages credit expansion by the Federal Reserve to help alleviate the problem of only upward moving wages through inflating the dollar.

If jobs leave the United States, the prices of all goods fall for all consumers in the US. If totally free trade is permitted by our government, then the prices of all goods in the US would fall at the expense of some American jobs. If wages were also allowed to fall, then the drop in prices would nearly equate to a drop in wages that would allow the employment of a large percentage of American workers, even ones that have lost their jobs to cheap foreign competition. If you have any trouble with this letter, please direct at least some of the questions to your economics professor.

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