Wednesday, March 4, 2009

We Know What’s Best For You
  Socialism piece by Thomas E. Brewton

Democrat-Socialists are prepared to force everyone to do what their academic planners think will be best for the new one-world government.

Two current examples of Democrat-Socialist dirigisme are “green” energy and nationalized healthcare.

During the presidential campaign primaries, Hillary Clinton proposed to institute a national health insurance plan that would compel every person to subscribe to it.  The same sort of program already exists in socialist Massachusetts (with catastrophically bad results, per the Kaiser and Harvard Medical School studies).  Many elements of those plans are incorporated into the President’s budget proposal.

That budget also gives one of its largest spending increases to promoting “green” automobiles and energy production.  A major obstacle is Americans’ aversion to small automobiles (see Do Americans Really Want Small Cars?).

Add to this the fact that GM and Chrysler, whom taxpayers now are supporting, can’t make small cars profitably unless they can be sold in much larger volumes than small cars historically have achieved in the United States.

Democrat-Socialists are keen on “green,“ because it comports with President Obama’s efforts to revive some version of the Kyoto Protocols.  Those protocols take us onto a path that will bring all nations under regulatory control of the Brussels socialist EU commissariat (see Senator Obama, Citizen of the World).

Which means that each of us ultimately will be told what we must buy and how much of it we will be allowed to have.

If the “green” car thrust is to succeed, Americans cannot be allowed to spend money on automobiles of their choice; that would keep sales of “green” autos unprofitably small.  The new Federal auto bailout commissariat will have to tell GM and Chrysler how many autos of each type they will be allowed to produce.  Buyers will not be permitted to keep old models of the large size they prefer; punitive taxes on such vehicles will drive them off the market and force consumers to buy the only autos available: less useful mini-vehicles that are more dangerous in auto crashes.

Similarly, the President’s budget and his cabinet ministers point in the direction of price controls for prescription drugs and medical care, along with an ever-growing web of regulations.  In effect, nationalization of the health care industry.  The end point will be the same as in the UK and Canada: rationing medical care, months of waiting for special care, and stagnation of new drug research.

Underlying all such realignments of free markets into regulated, centrally-planned economies, is socialist intellectuals’ conviction that they can plan economic activity more effectively than can the thousands of business managers and entrepreneurs directly on the firing line.

Free markets, socialist intellectuals tell us, waste resources that belong collectively to the government.  Too many different products are now made, encouraging a wide spectrum of consumer tastes.  When government regulates all production and distribution, the variety of products can be reduced, thereby saving government tax revenues.  Happily for socialist academics, buyers choices can be restricted to products that planners regard as healthy and eco-friendly.

Such has been the dream of “efficiency” held forth by socialists since the earliest days of their ideological religion.

Thomas E. Brewton

Posted by Thomas E. Brewton on 3/4/09

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