Distributism and the welfare state

[Ridgerunner]

But when the colonies became the United States, the “Poor Laws” were not included in the Constitution. I wonder why?

Because the Common Law is not statutory, that’s why. The Constitution is a statute. For every page of every statute in this country, including the Constitution, there are many, many pages of Common Law decisions. The U.S. adopted the Common Law of England as it was at the founding, a body of law far, far larger than the Constitution.

Look up some really old case sometime and you’re more likely than not to run into citations of “Blackstone’s Commentaries” on the Common Law of England as the law. Abraham Lincoln studied them to become a lawyer.
authorama.com/life-of-abraham-lincoln-10.html

 

[SuperLuigi]

the state has an obligation to protect the weak (and strong alike)…its called the rule of law. It is far from tyranny. It is the purpose of the state.

So what?

Lots of institutions have purposes that go unfulfilled.

 

[epan]

But when the colonies became the United States, the “Poor Laws” were not included in the Constitution. I wonder why?

It was not until FDR that the purpose of government changed in a broad way to be concerned with the economic welfare of the average person. Every president and congress after Roosevelt continued along those lines, until President Reagan did his best to reverse the trend.

There has to be balance, which we are lacking in the US, at this time. For example, governments of Canada, the UK and Germany each spend approximately the same amount as government spending in the US on medical care. In other words, if we could put a system in place which is equal in efficiency to any of those three countries, then we could have universal health care for every citizen, without raising taxes at all. Those who wished better care could buy supplemental insurance in the private market. It’s really such an obviously sensible solution, but which is opposed by the insurance industry, since private spending in the US on medical care amounts to $3-4k per year per person annually (depending on which estimate you look at). Not only that, it is the law that individuals must purchase health insurance, one way or another. So, we actually have a law on the books, which is claimed to be for the public good, but in reality is merely a way to coerce people into giving a lot of money to insurers.

In this case, Mr. Reagan was wrong when he stated the government is the problem. It is private corporate interests, and their corrupting effect on the Congress and the President which is the problem. You would be hard pressed to find many physicians who advocate the current hybrid system in the US.

The reason I bring this up, is simply to point out that capitalism is sometimes extremely inefficient, unless you consider generating a profit to be efficiency. Sometimes, there are other goals, such as delivering quality medical care to everyone, which are more worthy objectives. In this case, we could achieve that goal, while cutting our costs by 30-50%, but at the expense of the profits of the insurance companies.

 

[Ridgerunner]

It was not until FDR that the purpose of government changed in a broad way to be concerned with the welfare of the average person. Every president and congress after Roosevelt continued along those lines, until President Reagan did his best to reverse the trend.

There has to be balance, which we are lacking in the US, at this time. For example, governments of Canada, the UK and Germany each spend approximately the same amount as the US government on medical care. In other words, if we could put a system in place which is equal in efficiency to any of those three countries, then we could have universal health care for every citizen, without raising taxes at all. Those who wished better care could buy supplemental insurance in the private market. It’s really such an obviously sensible solution, but which is opposed by the insurance industry, since private spending in the US on medical care amounts to $3-4k per year per person annually (depending on which estimate you look at). Not only that, it is the law that individuals must purchase health insurance, one way or another.

You would be hard pressed to find many physicians who advocate the current hybrid system in the US.

The reason I bring this up, is simply to point out that capitalism is sometimes extremely inefficient, unless you consider generating a profit to be efficiency. Sometimes, there are other goals, such as delivering quality medical care to everyone, which are more worthy objectives. In this case, we achieve that goal, while cutting our costs by 30-50%, but at the expense of the profits of the insurance companies.

I have been somewhat intrigued by the French system. 2/3 of it is public, paid by the government. Salaries, medical school and malpractice insurance are paid by the government for those doctors. Special courts try the malpractice cases.

1/3 is private. Some who use that system are privately insured, some are just wealthy enough to pay their own way. Unsurprisingly, it’s the better system.

In a way, Canada has that arrangement without admitting it. If you’re well insured or wealthy, you can go to the U.S. Otherwise, you’re stuck with the government system because Canada doesn’t allow a private system in Canada itself.

Ultimately, given the propensity of government to control healthcare, I suspect we’ll end up with something similar. But it won’t be “officially” so. It will just be so. Some physicians and clinics will decouple from government funding and depend on private pay. Some already have, it appears. Probably that will be progressively the case as governmental funding programs get less generous and more demanding. IPAB will tell doctors what they can and cannot do for patients. If you’re 80 and need a hip replacement, for example, you will want to be in the private sector where it will actually get done, and when needed.

 

[bibcat]

If we lived in the 19th century, the United States was primarily agricultural, and the Federal government held land suitable to agriculture it would be workable.

Unfortunately for your hypothesis, all of these conditions that existed at the time of the Homestead Act no longer exist.

In fact, yes, it would be completely unworkable.

The flat tax has had zero traction in American politics for decades. Capital gains are NOT the same as wages and profits, and therefore taxing them the same is both incoherent and unjust.

In fact, yes, it would be completely unworkable. Property taxes are levied at a very local level. That leaves no mechanism for aggregating property valuations across multiple jurisdictions to assess an individual or company’s total property valuation. It would effectively shift the tax burden to productive property, which would tend to decrease rather than increase economic activity.

The loaded phrases “trust games” and “ultra rich” are rather typical of the distributist propaganda that I’ve perused. At its core much of the distributist movement is simply another thinly disguised and poorly conceived “get the Man” populist movement with vague nostrums and nebulous slogans.

The Soviet Union tried it. We all know how that turned out.

I am singularly unimpressed with distributism.

.

The collapse of the Soviet Union had nothing to do with economics. The Soviet Union collapsed because it was anti-God from its very inception. When one of the first things a new regime does is slaughter and imprison millions of religious laity and tens of thousands of clergy, God is not likely to make things easy for that nation. Ever wonder why Tsarist Russia was a net exporter of foodstuffs, and yet the USSR, using the same or better farming methods suffered one bad harvest after another. How about the Soviet Union’s sky-high infant mortality rate, despite having free and widely available pre and post natal care? Obviously God stacked the USSR’s deck from the start, and when he tired of it, he just made it collapse.

 

[epan]

I have been somewhat intrigued by the French system. 2/3 of it is public, paid by the government. Salaries, medical school and malpractice insurance are paid by the government for those doctors. Special courts try the malpractice cases.

1/3 is private. Some who use that system are privately insured, some are just wealthy enough to pay their own way. Unsurprisingly, it’s the better system.

In a way, Canada has that arrangement without admitting it. If you’re well insured or wealthy, you can go to the U.S. Otherwise, you’re stuck with the government system because Canada doesn’t allow a private system in Canada itself.

Ultimately, given the propensity of government to control healthcare, I suspect we’ll end up with something similar. But it won’t be “officially” so. It will just be so. Some physicians and clinics will decouple from government funding and depend on private pay. Some already have, it appears. Probably that will be progressively the case as governmental funding programs get less generous and more demanding. IPAB will tell doctors what they can and cannot do for patients. If you’re 80 and need a hip replacement, for example, you will want to be in the private sector where it will actually get done, and when needed.

Yes, I agree with you for the most part. I think that we can do a much better job, and at lower cost, of providing basic medical care for everyone. Then, just as people buy supplemental insurance with Medicare, so could any person or employer buy supplemental coverage.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Yes, I agree with you for the most part. I think that we can do a much better job, and at lower cost, of providing basic medical care for everyone. Then, just as people buy supplemental insurance with Medicare, so could any person or employer buy supplemental coverage.

I can see downsides, though.

For a long time, the American healthcare system was willing to “do everything”. If, say, a treatment had only a 5% chance of cure, it would happen despite the lack of “objective” cost-effectiveness. Admittedly, that caused American healthcare to be more costly than in some places where they didn’t “do everything”.

The American system is transitioning to a perceived cost-effective system. That’s what “evidence-based medicine” is really all about. It is assumed, for example, that “preventive” care is effective in avoiding huge costs later, even though the studies show that it does not change outcomes. So, what it is turning into is a means of saving the system from having to pay for care in a lot of instances. Of course, it also has politically popular but cost-ineffective accretions like totally free birth control and abortifiacients that are inexpensive for people to pay for anyway.

Likely political accretions will continue, as will political deletions. Not too long ago, government programs increased reimbursement for “well care” while reducing them for “chronic care”. Again, the supposition (which seems to be false) is that preventive care will avoid later big costs.

More and more, medicine is turning into “computer medicine”. There is increasing institutional resistance to going outside the computerized “evidence based medicine” algorithims, because departures from them are questioned when it comes to reimbursement, or simply not reimbursed at all. Obviously, it wouldn’t take a lot of tinkering with the algorithms to avoid paying for treatments that might simply be undesirable politically to whoever is running the show. Already, the intrusive questions physicians, nurses and NPs are required to ask at least annually and document, along with the directives they must mechanically give, present the hazard of being declared “noncompliant” or “chronic”, in which event one is likely to be dropped by money-oriented providers. In the case of employment-based insurance, “noncompliance” already increases the amount the employee must contribute to his insurance plan. The computer says your BMI is too high, the NP tells you to lose 30 lb, you don’t, your premium goes up. Simple.

So, as perhaps an extreme example, “Suzie”, who has four children already, repeatedly hears suggestions from the nurse or the NP or the PA or the doctor that she might want to not have any more children, (which they do advise) and then has a fifth child even so, then how does “Suzie” get categorized? “Noncompliant” perhaps?

A totally private pay sector would avoid all of that because it could, and some percentage of the populace would have the kind of “do everything” medical care that nearly everyone once had. Where there’s a demand, a supply springs up.

 

[Zoltan_Cobalt]

Because the Common Law is not statutory, that’s why. The Constitution is a statute. For every page of every statute in this country, including the Constitution, there are many, many pages of Common Law decisions. The U.S. adopted the Common Law of England as it was at the founding, a body of law far, far larger than the Constitution.

Look up some really old case sometime and you’re more likely than not to run into citations of “Blackstone’s Commentaries” on the Common Law of England as the law. Abraham Lincoln studied them to become a lawyer.
authorama.com/life-of-abraham-lincoln-10.html

I’m sorry, Ridge, but I don’t think you have it quite right…

The Constitution is the basic law of the land. It sets up the law-making machinery e.g. the legislature and congress. It is not a statute.

The Constitution can only be amended by a special procedure. Usually a “Constitutional Convention” or an amendment proposed by Congress by a two-thirds vote in both houses, then ratified by three-fourths of the State legislatures.

A Statute is a law passed by an act of the legislature (Congress) Common law, or. judgments of courts, are not statutes.

A statute can be made, or changed, or repealed just by an ordinary act of congress without the need for any special procedure.

I am sure there are many of our laws that are based on old common laws…but they have to pass Constitutional muster before they can be applied.

 

[Zoltan_Cobalt]

It was not until FDR that the purpose of government changed in a broad way to be concerned with the economic welfare of the average person. Every president and congress after Roosevelt continued along those lines, until President Reagan did his best to reverse the trend.

FDR blatantly violated the Constitution. When the Supreme Court rejected most of his social programs he threatened to “Stack” the Court with his own supporters.

Presidents, including FDR and his successors were not interested in the economic welfare of the average person…they were only interested in expanding the power of the government.

There has to be balance, which we are lacking in the US, at this time. For example, governments of Canada, the UK and Germany each spend approximately the same amount as government spending in the US on medical care. In other words, if we could put a system in place which is equal in efficiency to any of those three countries, then we could have universal health care for every citizen, without raising taxes at all.

By “equal in efficiency” you mean quotas, long waiting times, and substandard treatments…then I would agree with you. As a dissatisfied patient of the VA system I would advise against ANY form of universal government provided health care.

Those who wished better care could buy supplemental insurance in the private market. It’s really such an obviously sensible solution, but which is opposed by the insurance industry, since private spending in the US on medical care amounts to $3-4k per year per person annually (depending on which estimate you look at). Not only that, it is the law that individuals must purchase health insurance, one way or another. So, we actually have a law on the books, which is claimed to be for the public good, but in reality is merely a way to coerce people into giving a lot of money to insurers.

In this case, Mr. Reagan was wrong when he stated the government is the problem. It is private corporate interests, and their corrupting effect on the Congress and the President which is the problem. You would be hard pressed to find many physicians who advocate the current hybrid system in the US.

That’s true. Most of my Physician friends are retiring early and cautioning young people about the dismal future a career in medicine will offer. All due to our “hybrid” system.

The reason I bring this up, is simply to point out that capitalism is sometimes extremely inefficient, unless you consider generating a profit to be efficiency. Sometimes, there are other goals, such as delivering quality medical care to everyone, which are more worthy objectives. In this case, we could achieve that goal, while cutting our costs by 30-50%, but at the expense of the profits of the insurance companies.

What you are pointing out is that a government regulated economy is extremely inefficient.
True, pure Capitalism in American ended with the first government regulation of business. (1900’s)

A law requiring citizens to buy insurance for the benefit of the insurance industry does not have a shred of Constitutional authority. This is a perfect example of what happens when a government oversteps it’s bounds and involves itself in regulating business.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I’m sorry, Ridge, but I don’t think you have it quite right…

The Constitution is the basic law of the land. It sets up the law-making machinery e.g. the legislature and congress. It is not a statute.

The Constitution can only be amended by a special procedure. Usually a “Constitutional Convention” or an amendment proposed by Congress by a two-thirds vote in both houses, then ratified by three-fourths of the State legislatures.

A Statute is a law passed by an act of the legislature (Congress) Common law, or. judgments of courts, are not statutes.

A statute can be made, or changed, or repealed just by an ordinary act of congress without the need for any special procedure.

I am sure there are many of our laws that are based on old common laws…but they have to pass Constitutional muster before they can be applied.

The Constitution is most definitely a statute. It’s a legislative fiat. It’s just a more difficult one to change than most.

The Common Law is decisional; as determined by courts. When William the Conquerer conquered England, he promised the Saxons that they would be governed “by the laws in place on the day when King Edward was both alive and dead.” In other words, by the traditional law of the Saxons. Because of that, courts in the Anglosphere (except Louisiana) have honored precedent and tried to keep consistent with it. In many ways, we’re still living under the law as it was on the day when King Edward was “both alive and dead”.

Elements of the common law that did not seem to pass constitutional muster were, and occasionally still are, challenged and abrogated. Nevertheless, most of our law is common law, (precedent established by court decisions) and by a long way.

Legislatures can change the common law, and sometimes do, or define aspects of it. But once a statute is passed, it again becomes the grist for the common law; refined, interpreted, sometimes changed.

The Constitution is not self-executing. It is as the Courts declare and interpret it to be, and once that happens (by and large) that interpretation becomes part of the common law (precedent) and it prevails no matter what you or I think the Constitution ought to mean.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I am sure there are many of our laws that are based on old common laws…but they have to pass Constitutional muster before they can be applied.

I just realized I didn’t make what I was saying very clear. The Common Law is not some ancient remnant of English law. It is the whole body of precedent that gets added to daily. It’s being built as we write here, and will continue to be built until the U.S. no longer exists at all.

 

[Zoltan_Cobalt]

The Constitution is most definitely a statute. It’s a legislative fiat. It’s just a more difficult one to change than most.

The Common Law is decisional; as determined by courts. When William the Conquerer conquered England, he promised the Saxons that they would be governed “by the laws in place on the day when King Edward was both alive and dead.” In other words, by the traditional law of the Saxons. Because of that, courts in the Anglosphere (except Louisiana) have honored precedent and tried to keep consistent with it. In many ways, we’re still living under the law as it was on the day when King Edward was “both alive and dead”.

Elements of the common law that did not seem to pass constitutional muster were, and occasionally still are, challenged and abrogated. Nevertheless, most of our law is common law, (precedent established by court decisions) and by a long way.

Legislatures can change the common law, and sometimes do, or define aspects of it. But once a statute is passed, it again becomes the grist for the common law; refined, interpreted, sometimes changed.

The Constitution is not self-executing. It is as the Courts declare and interpret it to be, and once that happens (by and large) that interpretation becomes part of the common law (precedent) and it prevails no matter what you or I think the Constitution ought to mean.

Justice Anthony Scalia wrote an essay titled: A Matter of Interpretation back in 1998. That really helped me understand common law and its relationship to the Constitution. I wish I could fine a link to it for you. If you can find it I know you will find it very interesting.

If I remember correctly…In a common law system, the judge’s task is to “discover” the law—meaning that he develops rules from certain principles and precedents, extrapolating the factual circumstances of a given case into broader notions of sound public policy (“the law”)

Our Constitution, however, does not task our judges with “discovering” the law or crafting the right result in accordance with “natural law or the law of reason.” Unlike the English common law system, the U.S. Constitution confines the power to make (or “discover,” if you will) law, and the power to interpret it to the legislative and judicial branches, respectively.

Our Constitution guarantees that judges are not also legislators as in common law.

 

[epan]

FDR blatantly violated the Constitution. When the Supreme Court rejected most of his social programs he threatened to “Stack” the Court with his own supporters.

Presidents, including FDR and his successors were not interested in the economic welfare of the average person…they were only interested in expanding the power of the government.

By “equal in efficiency” you mean quotas, long waiting times, and substandard treatments…then I would agree with you. As a dissatisfied patient of the VA system I would advise against ANY form of universal government provided health care.

That’s true. Most of my Physician friends are retiring early and cautioning young people about the dismal future a career in medicine will offer. All due to our “hybrid” system.

What you are pointing out is that a government regulated economy is extremely inefficient.
True, pure Capitalism in American ended with the first government regulation of business. (1900’s)

A law requiring citizens to buy insurance for the benefit of the insurance industry does not have a shred of Constitutional authority. This is a perfect example of what happens when a government oversteps it’s bounds and involves itself in regulating business.

Yes, the Supreme Court fiasco was the low point of FDR’s presidency. But, in fact, the Justices did start ruling in favor of the people, instead of in favor of big business, after the threat. But it would be inaccurate to characterize the FDR presidency with that one low point. He did, in fact, change the nature of the presidency of the role of the federal government for the average person. The aggregation of power to the executive started with Kennedy, not with FDR, and has continued with each successor.

 

[freeRadical]

I think that’s an excessive statement of it, and don’t think the Founders thought of it that way, since they countenanced the adoption of the Common Law of England as it was at the founding. There were a lot of “dos” and “donts” in it, among them being Sovereign Immunity, which fits into none of the categories you mentioned. There was a lot more regulation of property and contracts than simply to “protect” property and to protect contracts from breach or fraud.

But I realize your overstatement is not intended as a treatise on what the law did or doesn’t do. Rather, it’s your statement of opinion that it is not a proper function of government to provide for the poor. Such provisions are actually older than the country is, and nobody questioned their propriety particularly. Even (in England, of course) Ebenezer Scrooge didn’t entirely. Doubtedless he had counterparts here and there in this country from the beginning, but they’re not as well known. To find a real example of “no aid to the poor”, one would almost have to look at the Soviet Union before the NEP.

And you actually can’t dam rivers at will, and for the most part never could even before the EPA and the Corps of Engineers basically took control of every puddle and dry wash. Look up “Riparian Rights” and the doctrine of “Prior Appropriation” and you’ll see.

I hate to agree with him but he’s right. The only proper roles of government are:

To protect our life, liberty, and property from each other
To enforce contracts
To provide a neutral and unbiased system of courts to settle and arbitrate disputes

It is not the government’s job to:

Protect us from our own bad decisions, especially at the expense of others
To decide what is good for us and what is not
To decide how much risk we are allowed to take
To take property from one person and give it to another

If you want to read the philosophy that shaped the thoughts of our Founding Fathers then you should read up on Classical Liberalism. I personally recommend The Law by Bastiat.

 

[epan]

I hate to agree with him but he’s right. The only proper roles of government are:

To protect our life, liberty, and property from each other
To enforce contracts
To provide a neutral and unbiased system of courts to settle and arbitrate disputes

It is not the government’s job to:

Protect us from our own bad decisions, especially at the expense of others
To decide what is good for us and what is not
To decide how much risk we are allowed to take
To take property from one person and give it to another

If you want to read the philosophy that shaped the thoughts of our Founding Fathers then you should read up on Classical Liberalism. I personally recommend The Law by Bastiat.

So, you would not include defending our borders, or addressing our security concerns elsewhere in the world. To you a proper government only provides for police, but no military?

How in the world did you come to your conclusions regarding the “proper role” of government? In a democracy, the role of government can change simply by voting. By the way, you also fail to mention the role of representing the will of the people, and ensuring a fair electoral process. Or, is that also not a proper role?

 

[Ridgerunner]

It is not the government’s job to:

Protect us from our own bad decisions, especially at the expense of others
To decide what is good for us and what is not
To decide how much risk we are allowed to take
To take property from one person and give it to another

.

The law protects people from their own bad decisions in a thousand ways. One small example, it protects people from putting savings into ponzi schemes. Another: It (sometimes) prohibits or limits gambling, drugs, sales of liquor to minors, on and on. And it always has.

Same for deciding what is good for us and what is not. It decides that, for instance, heroin or candy laced with lead (both of which used to be commonly for sale) is not good for us, and therefore bans the sale, possession and manufacture of both.

Refer again to the first paragraph regarding risk. We’re allowed to risk, say, starting a restaurant, but we are not allowed to go over Niagra Falls in a barrel.

Taking from one to give to another is not done in most literal sense, but if the government so much as pays its police and soldiers, it’s “taking from one and giving to another”.

 

[epan]

The law protects people from their own bad decisions in a thousand ways. One small example, it protects people from putting savings into ponzi schemes. Another: It (sometimes) prohibits or limits gambling, drugs, sales of liquor to minors, on and on. And it always has.

Same for deciding what is good for us and what is not. It decides that, for instance, heroin or candy laced with lead (both of which used to be commonly for sale) is not good for us, and therefore bans the sale, possession and manufacture of both.

Refer again to the first paragraph regarding risk. We’re allowed to risk, say, starting a restaurant, but we are not allowed to go over Niagra Falls in a barrel.

Taking from one to give to another is not done in most literal sense, but if the government so much as pays its police and soldiers, it’s “taking from one and giving to another”.

All taxation is income (or asset) redistribution. The purely libertarian person would oppose it as slavery, or theft.

 

[Ridgerunner]

All taxation is income (or asset) redistribution. The purely libertarian person would oppose it as slavery, or theft.

I don’t doubt for a minute that many libertarians see it that way. It’s unrealistic, of course, but held by some nonetheless.

 

[freeRadical]

The law protects people from their own bad decisions in a thousand ways. One small example, it protects people from putting savings into ponzi schemes. Another: It (sometimes) prohibits or limits gambling, drugs, sales of liquor to minors, on and on. And it always has.

Same for deciding what is good for us and what is not. It decides that, for instance, heroin or candy laced with lead (both of which used to be commonly for sale) is not good for us, and therefore bans the sale, possession and manufacture of both.

Refer again to the first paragraph regarding risk. We’re allowed to risk, say, starting a restaurant, but we are not allowed to go over Niagra Falls in a barrel.

Taking from one to give to another is not done in most literal sense, but if the government so much as pays its police and soldiers, it’s “taking from one and giving to another”.

I never said that the government doesn’t currently do these things, I merely said that they are not the proper roles of government.

If I want to smoke crack, smack heroin, eat fast food, and then go over Niagra Falls in a barrel then that is my right. What justification is there for the government to stop me?

 

[Ridgerunner]

I never said that the government doesn’t currently do these things, I merely said that they are not the proper roles of government.

If I want to smoke crack, smack heroin, eat fast food, and then go over Niagra Falls in a barrel then that is my right. What justification is there for the government to stop me?

The good of others.

Many, if not most, would disagree with this, but it was long a part of western thought that the state has an interest in many things people now discount.

One, of course, was marriage and the rearing of children. It was thought that the sovereign or state had an interest in having a robust population of parent-raised children. The “overpopulation” and “gay rights” people totally discount that as any kind of societal good. Still, many would say that widespread harlotry and/or a collapsing population like that of Russia or Japan bodes ill for a society.

And things like smoking crack harm a society in more direct ways. People have to have money to buy it, and since its use can be disabling both physically and mentally, such people often become thieves or burden society in other ways. One wouldn’t have to talk to a prosecutor very long to be informed that most crime is drug related in some way. Any industry plant manager will tell you that a substantial number of injured workers fail the drug test. And if they weren’t impaired, would the costs of their care be imposed on society? No.

And, of course, besides the loss of citizenry potentially involved in shooting Niagara Falls, there is the possibility that society may end up giving lifetime care and support to a person for no reason other than that person’s foolishness and whimsy. And, too, should you be allowed to corrupt the minds of impressionable children who might, upon your example, decide to do the same thing or something similar?

I sometimes find it amusing that some claim the Church itself should not consider certain things “sinful” if they “don’t hurt anybody else”. Problem is (completely aside from biblical prohibitions of things) most everything sinful does have ripple effects that affect others. Difficult to think of many (perhaps any) that don’t.