More talking points that have no basis in fact.
It’s a sad day when people have to deride the government providing services like libraries, parks, schools, police, highways, labor law enforcement, etc. as the redistribution of wealth.
I’ve long believed that the best anti-poverty program is a good, secure union job with benefits and a pension.
I too think it is unnecessary to deride the opinions of others as “talking points”. There are plenty of statements made by the left that could also be so described. But it just gets in the way.
I doubt GoofyJim or anyone else was trying to say the government should not provide parks, libraries, police, highways, law enforcement, etc. I think transfer payments is what they have in mind.
Now, I’m going to say that the Popes who wrote the social encyclicals would agree with your last point, though they would also agree with some of GoofyJim’s. They are very clear in espousing the widest possible ownership of productive assets. They are also clear in condemning dependence on government or big capital for all but the most needy who cannot help themselves. (which is why they espouse the widest ownership of productive assets). They also support decent wages and the right of labor to organize.
When you talk about “a pension”, there could be a split here. If you’re talking about “defined benefit”, that’s more in the nature of a dependency on capital. If the company goes under, so does your pension. If you’re talking about “defined contribution”, that’s more in the nature of self-dependence because the worker owns the asset. I think the social encyclicals give greater support to “defined contribution” than to “defined benefit”, assuming, of course, that both are reasonably designed to provide a decent living when a person can no longer work.
When we look at SS retirement (SSD and SSI are different, essentially being intended as welfare-type support of the disabled.) one could make a good argument for the proposition that it ought to have been more in the nature of “defined contribution” a long time ago, with a “safety net” underneath, which, indeed, SSI is, if one’s SS retirement is inadequate.
I would argue that the SSI “safety net” should be better than it is. SSI is terribly low, and I don’t see how anyone lives on it.
But none of this really has anything to do with the topic, quite. It is my position (having seen several) that there really is a business cycle that more or less raises all boats and lowers all boats. The down part can be made worse by governmental actions, and I think that has happened this time, primarily because of Greenspan’s inflation of the money supply, which caused the real estate and real estate derivative “bubble”, as well as a stock market “bubble” based on both. I do not think temporary fixes do anything but fool people about what’s going on, and increasing middle class consumer spending by inches does little but keep up the pretense and prolong the agony.
Look at the DOW today. I am no Wall Street worshipper, but Wall Street can read the handwriting on the wall when it’s written big enough, and it doesn’t buy the efficacy of Bush’s proposal, and it’s unlikely to buy anyone else’s. It knows asset destruction when it sees it. Neither the Dems nor the Repubs have any magic trick that will keep this economy from bottoming out, nor should anyone believe the propaganda “cures” of either, this time around.
