Layton does want to legalize drugs. The problem is the Conservatives are determining the spin by promoting Layton's view. The NDP should talk about Prohibition and its many poisonous aspects that are prevalent in Canada today. Instead, they let the Tories bash that legitimate position. Layton should fire back that responsible rules and regulations over distribution of marijuana would solve so many social problems that will only be made worse by Conservative mean spirited prohibition policies.

"I come from the right wing of the political spectrum and I think Conservative policies help the poor even more than they help the rich."



The same people who are telling you and drilling into your head that the federal government is your enemy are also saying we have to strengthen it, but we have to strengthen that part of it that pours money into the pockets of Newt Gingrich's rich constituents. So the Heritage Foundation, the right wing foundation that, more or less, sets the kind of budget and that sort of thing for the right wing, they, and Newt Gingrich, and the rest, also want to increase the Pentagon budget against the will of the population. The population is opposed to that by about six to one, but they want it because they know a little secret that you're not supposed to know, but that the business world knows very well. And that that system is primarily functioning, and has been for 50 years, to transfer funds from the general public to advance sectors in industry, high-tech industry. That's how Newt Gingrich ends up getting more federal subsidies for his rich constituents than any suburban county in the country outside the federal government itself.

JB: Probably a lot more from any inner-city poverty district, as well.

NC: Yea, I mean this is ... People talk about corporate welfare, which is a serious thing, but the whole Pentagon system, which is a much broader system than the Pentagon itself, that's a huge welfare system, which keeps the wealthy wealthy.

http://www.wtp.org/archive/transcripts/chomsky_two.html


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_welfare




Military spending

Britain is a long way behind America in military spending, but still one of the five biggest military spenders:

Annual military budget (US$ billions)
• USA: 399
• Russia: 65
• China: 47
• Japan: 42
• UK: 38
• France: 29

The development cost for just one fighter jet (the US F-22) was $63 billion, more than enough to eliminate global starvation, according to WGI figures quoted by Unesco.
(Source: Center for Defense Information, 2003).

Welfare

The annual cost of welfare in Britain is about £100 billion. The tabloid media blame this high cost on the "workshy", but most of it goes on pensions:

Annual cost (£ billions)
• Job Seekers Allowance: 2.3
• Housing benefit: 4.1
• Income Support: 6.5
• Child benefit: 8.8
• Benefits for disabled: 10.8
• Contribution-based pensions: 42.1

(Smaller costs include winter fuel payments for the elderly, at £1.7bn, etc. Source: Department for Work and Pensions, 2003)

Corporate welfare

America spends $175 billion per year on corporate welfare. Much of it takes the form of tax breaks:

Corporate tax welfare 1996-2000
(US$ billions)
• Microsoft: 12
• General Electric: 12
• Ford: 9.1
• Worldcom: 5.3
• IBM: 4.7
• General Motors: 3.6
• Enron: 1
(British businesses also receive billions in welfare handouts – from the Department for Trade and Industry. The DTI is basically a corporate dole office. Source for tax welfare figures: Citizens for Tax Justice)

Tax avoidance & fraud

When it comes to swindling, "dole cheats" aren't the biggest drain on the UK economy:

Estimated annual cost (£ billions):
• Corporate tax avoidance: 85
• Business fraud: 14
• Government fraud in Whitehall: 5
• Tobacco smuggling: 3.5
• VAT fraud on mobile phones: 2.5
• Total welfare fraud: 2
• Jobseekers Allowance fraud: 0.19
• Bulldozer smuggling: 0.15
(Sources, respectively: Guardian, 12/4/02; BBC Radio 4, 'Today', 23/8/01; BBC Radio 4 News, 1996; Guardian 17/12/99; BBC Radio 4, 'Today', 3/7/03; DWP, 2003; The Informal Economy, by Lord Grabiner, March 2000; Guardian, 25/8/01)

Long Working hours

• Working hours have risen in the last 20 years, on average, for UK full-time workers. This reverses a 150-year trend of declining working hours.

• UK government research shows 1 in 6 people working more than 60 hours per week.

• Each year workers are giving £23 billion in free labour to their bosses, due to unpaid overtime.
(Sources: UK Labour Force Survey, 1999; Guardian, 30 Aug 2002; Press Association, Feb 26 2004)

Death by Work

• People with stressful jobs are twice as likely to die from heart disease, according to a 2002 study in the British Medical Journal.

• Long-term job strain is worse for your heart than gaining 40lbs in weight or ageing 30 years, according to a 2003 US study.

• Going into work when you feel ill (taking no sick leave) doubles the risk of heart disease for 35%-40% of the population.

• Work kills more than war. Approximately two million workers die annually due to occupational injuries and illnesses, according to a United Nations report. This is more than double the figure for deaths from warfare (650,000 deaths per year). Work kills more people than alcohol and drugs together.
(Sources: British Medical Journal, 19 Oct 2002; American Journal of Epidemiology, 2003; BBC2, The Money Programme, 1 Dec 2004; UN ILO SafeWork programme, April 2002)

Work is no cure for poverty

• The number of people in work is at "record levels" according to the UK government. Meanwhile, official UK figures show 22% of people living in poverty, compared to 13% in 1979.

• 47% of employees have wages that, on their own, are insufficient to avoid poverty. 42% of employees rely on means other than their own wages to avoid poverty.

• In the 1970s and 1980s, around 4% of low-paid employees lived in poverty. Currently, 14% of low-paid employees live in poverty. (5% of all employees now live in poverty).

• Since the early 1970s GDP (national income) has doubled, but in real terms (ie allowing for inflation) the bottom 10% of jobs pay less now than in 1970. The minimum wage would have to be around £6.50 per hour to bring low-pay up to the 1970 level.
(Sources: Government DWP press release, Nov 2004; poverty.org.uk;



Corporate welfare is often used to bail out business failures. Examples include: (in Britain) the £46 billion of public money required to clean up the nuclear industry;
(in America) the $15 billion bailout of airlines and the Savings and Loan scandal which is likely to cost US taxpayers over $1 trillion.

• • •

According to Gore Vidal, the ongoing US Savings and Loan bailout will cost more than the whole of US spending on social welfare from 1789 to the present. (Source: Vidal, On the State of the Union, 1994.)

http://www.anxietyculture.com/stats.htm

The analogy holds.


Don't feed the bears is a lot like don't feed the bums.

The malefactor always hates his benefactor anyway.

That's a Szaszian insight and it true.

Redistribution of wealth goes on at the point of a gun.

You understand that it is wrong for the state to point a gun at me and tell me I can not consume cannabis.

It is also wrong for the state to point a gun at me and take my created wealth no matter what justification.

Stealing is wrong whether you do it your self or confer the power to another.

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I struggle to understand how providing basic sustinence to people is harmful,

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I struggle to see how you can justify state plunder.

And if you read what I said, I said charity is an institution of the church, not the state.

So far as I know, people give their money to the church and there is no theft involved.

So, let me help you in your struggle. The harm all comes when the money given to welfare recipients is taken from the people who actually earned the money.

Do you not see the harm in plunder, legal or not?

David, either take the cotton batton out of your ears or take off the rose colored glassses.

Your whole speil is for the supporters of Keynesian economics.

I am a Misesian, a classic liberal, a libertarian.

I have already posted the Rothbardian quote twice for you where Rothbard states no incorporation from the state.

So why post all this garbage?

I'm just as much against welfare of any kind as you are.

I do not support special privilidges for anybody.

I keep telling you you have to get in better touch with the libertarian side of your libertarian socialist ideology.

To help you out here is a lttle piece from 1848 written by Frederic Bastiat. It is a mere pamplete and won't take you long to read. Our ancestors were intimate with the tenet of Bastiat's economics. Bastiat is why there was no income tax. People knew better because Bastiat ensured no silver tongue devils would pull the economic wool over your eyes.

If you want to quote and criticise anything quote and criticise the two passages below. I'd like to see these 150 year old arguments trumped. No one has done it yet!

The Law

http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html

7 A Fatal Tendency of Mankind

Self-preservation and self-development are common aspirations among all people. And if everyone enjoyed the unrestricted use of his faculties and the free disposition of the fruits of his labor, social progress would be ceaseless, uninterrupted, and unfailing.

But there is also another tendency that is common among people. When they can, they wish to live and prosper at the expense of others. This is no rash accusation. Nor does it come from a gloomy and uncharitable spirit. The annals of history bear witness to the truth of it: the incessant wars, mass migrations, religious persecutions, universal slavery, dishonesty in commerce, and monopolies. This fatal desire has its origin in the very nature of man — in that primitive, universal, and insuppressible instinct that impels him to satisfy his desires with the least possible pain.
8 Property and Plunder

Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor; by the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources. This process is the origin of property.

But it is also true that a man may live and satisfy his wants by seizing and consuming the products of the labor of others. This process is the origin of plunder.

Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain — and since labor is pain in itself — it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. History shows this quite clearly. And under these conditions, neither religion nor morality can stop it.

When, then, does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor.

It is evident, then, that the proper purpose of law is to use the power of its collective force to stop this fatal tendency to plunder instead of to work. All the measures of the law should protect property and punish plunder.

But, generally, the law is made by one man or one class of men. And since law cannot operate without the sanction and support of a dominating force, this force must be entrusted to those who make the laws.

This fact, combined with the fatal tendency that exists in the heart of man to satisfy his wants with the least possible effort, explains the almost universal perversion of the law. Thus it is easy to understand how law, instead of checking injustice, becomes the invincible weapon of injustice. It is easy to understand why the law is used by the legislator to destroy in varying degrees among the rest of the people, their personal independence by slavery, their liberty by oppression, and their property by plunder. This is done for the benefit of the person who makes the law, and in proportion to the power that he holds

And for Kirk, who could not see the harm in welfare, Bastiat continues....

9 Victims of Lawful Plunder

Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter — by peaceful or revolutionary means — into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it.

Woe to the nation when this latter purpose prevails among the mass victims of lawful plunder when they, in turn, seize the power to make laws! Until that happens, the few practice lawful plunder upon the many, a common practice where the right to participate in the making of law is limited to a few persons. But then, participation in the making of law becomes universal. And then, men seek to balance their conflicting interests by universal plunder. Instead of rooting out the injustices found in society, they make these injustices general. As soon as the plundered classes gain political power, they establish a system of reprisals against other classes. They do not abolish legal plunder. (This objective would demand more enlightenment than they possess.) Instead, they emulate their evil predecessors by participating in this legal plunder, even though it is against their own interests.

It is as if it were necessary, before a reign of justice appears, for everyone to suffer a cruel retribution — some for their evilness, and some for their lack of understanding.
10 The Results of Legal Plunder

It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.

What are the consequences of such a perversion? It would require volumes to describe them all. Thus we must content ourselves with pointing out the most striking.

In the first place, it erases from everyone's conscience the distinction between justice and injustice.

No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree. The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law. These two evils are of equal consequence, and it would be difficult for a person to choose between them.

The nature of law is to maintain justice. This is so much the case that, in the minds of the people, law and justice are one and the same thing. There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are "just" because law makes them so. Thus, in order to make plunder appear just and sacred to many consciences, it is only necessary for the law to decree and sanction it. Slavery, restrictions, and monopoly find defenders not only among those who profit from them but also among those who suffer from them.

And lastly David, unlike Chomsky who is a great critic of everything, but offers nothing to replace what he is critical of, Bastiat offers a solution to the universal problems he critiqued.

75 The Desire to Rule Over Others

This must be said: There are too many "great" men in the world — legislators, organizers, do-gooders, leaders of the people, fathers of nations, and so on, and so on. Too many persons place themselves above mankind; they make a career of organizing it, patronizing it, and ruling it.

Now someone will say: "You yourself are doing this very thing." True. But it must be admitted that I act in an entirely different sense; if I have joined the ranks of the reformers, it is solely for the purpose of persuading them to leave people alone. I do not look upon people as Vancauson looked upon his automaton. Rather, just as the physiologist accepts the human body as it is, so do I accept people as they are. I desire only to study and admire.

My attitude toward all other persons is well illustrated by this story from a celebrated traveler: He arrived one day in the midst of a tribe of savages, where a child had just been born. A crowd of soothsayers, magicians, and quacks — armed with rings, hooks, and cords — surrounded it. One said: "This child will never smell the perfume of a peace-pipe unless I stretch his nostrils." Another said: "He will never be able to hear unless I draw his ear-lobes down to his shoulders." A third said: "He will never see the sunshine unless I slant his eyes." Another said: "He will never stand upright unless I bend his legs." A fifth said: "He will never learn to think unless I flatten his skull."

"Stop," cried the traveler. "What God does is well done. Do not claim to know more than He. God has given organs to this frail creature; let them develop and grow strong by exercise, use, experience, and liberty."
76 Let Us Now Try Liberty

God has given to men all that is necessary for them to accomplish their destinies. He has provided a social form as well as a human form. And these social organs of persons are so constituted that they will develop themselves harmoniously in the clean air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and organizers! A way with their rings, chains, hooks, and pincers! Away with their artificial systems! Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations!

And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.

Kirk,

I hope you have read the Bastiat stuff because I want you to understand that my "straw men" arguements that you keep asserting are indeed based in rock solid logic.


The crux of Bastiat's arguement is that when the law is turned into an instrument of plunder how can the the law be at once just?

In short, how can you have plunder and justice eminating from the same institution at the same time?

People don't just hand their money over to the government. the government takes it by force from dissenters.

The majority have no right to vote away the rights of the minority.

With the consent of the people, in Cato's Letters that meant 100% of the people.

So I have yet to hear the straw man of plunder and justice from the same institution at the same time resolved.

Can there be justice and plunder from the same instition at the same time?

The bane of humanity is the trying part!

Liberty forever!

The power of the eyebrow always trumps brute force.


The Intervenionist state which gives us the hampered economy really hurts the poor the most. The poor are stifled when licensesure and other state obsticles hamper their progress from wage earned to entrepeneur.

The ability to save is much under rated because of such poor underlying understanding of the work of Ludwig von Mises.

Mises has many admirers. There is a reason for that.

Mises cared and wrote about man as an economiser. Praxeology is the word he invented for what he did. He studied human action.

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Human action is purposeful behavior.

Human life is an unceasing sequence of single actions.

Action is purposive conduct. It is not simply behavior, but behavior begot by judgments of value, aiming at a definite end and guided by ideas concerning the suitability or unsuitability of definite means. . . . It is conscious behavior. It is choosing. It is volition; it is a display of the will. --Ludwig von Mises

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Mises was much more than an economist. He is one of those rare individuals who is capeable of origininal thought. Mises is a history proffessor, a political philosopher and an economist too.

Misesian economic arguments have never been refuted.