As this presidential election year rolls along, we’re sure to hear lots of talk about the proper role of the federal government in health care. Liberals like President Obama, in arguing for a government take-over of the industry, make a claim that sounds logical as long as you don’t think too hard about it; that good health care is a “fundamental human right.”
As compelling as that idea sounds at first blush, it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
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“We even owned a nightclub in Mexico City. It was probably the only nightclub in the world losing money.” Jesus Silva Herzog, on all the money-losing state-owned companies he had to privatize as Mexico’s finance minister in the 1980’s.
I’ve just been reading an excellent 1998 book about the results of government meddling in the economies of various nations. In The Commanding Heights, authors Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw profile the results of government economic policies in over a dozen different countries, and what they found casts a very negative pall on President Obama’s stated intention to sit in the nation’s capital and draw up a “blueprint for the economy.”
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The months leading up to a presidential primary, presidential candidates always spend about half their time crisscrossing Iowa to promise every Iowan in every meeting hall that they will continue to support the federal government mandate that forces oil companies to buy billions of dollars worth of corn-based ethanol. The ethanol mandate costs the taxpayers a bundle, hurts the environment, and raises food prices worldwide, as various studies have shown. So why do we still have it?
The ethanol mandate is a good example of Fuller’s Law: When government controls something, the decisions are made politically.
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Ronald Reagan once said “The most terrifying words in the English language are ‘We’re from the government and we’re here to help’.” The economic hardships America has been suffering for the last four or five years are a good example of what the Gipper was talking about.
President Obama will give his State of the Union Speech tomorrow night. If it’s anything like his recent speeches at George Washington University and in Osawatomie, Kansas, he’ll make grossly inaccurate statements about American history in order to build support for his vision of a government-centered nation.
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