E-Newsletter No. 43 ______ July 2017
In our newsletters the past few months, we have tried to promote the concept that education and healthcare are personal responsibilities. However, the Socialists of the Left want to change our citizens’ mindset by re-labeling these aspects of daily life as being new “rights” that give rise to new “entitlements”. This is simply part of the Left’s “progressive” agenda to increase the size and scope of the federal government. Unfortunately, if the Socialists are successful in regards to education and healthcare, the same thinking can then be applied to the concept of an “entitlement” to food and housing. And after that…. Who knows?
Compassionate conservatives recognize the fact that food and housing are “needs”. Conservatives agree that there is no reason why a citizen in our country of plenty should go hungry or homeless, and also acknowledge that some of our country’s citizens require assistance to have their needs met. Where Conservatives and Socialists disagree is in regards to the methods to make this happen. The Socialists believe in the coercive powers of the federal government, which they try to sell to the public as being “federal government benevolence”. The federal government was not set up to be benevolent. (See Thomas Paine’s Common Sense comments about government). Conservatives believe in personal responsibility and families and Not For Profit charities – this is a far better method of taking care of our citizens’ needs, rather than relying on yet another inefficient, counter-productive government program.
Our Editorial Board believes that the waste, inefficiency, and corruption of the federal government prevents it from effectively accomplishing any of its stated welfare goals. In The 2020 Initiative, our Editorial Board proposes a fundamental change to the US tax code for personal income taxes, whereby a charitable contribution to a Not For Profit charity will result in a tax credit against an individual’s / family’s federal income tax obligation that would otherwise be paid into the swamp. The federal government needs to be starved of these funds, so that it no longer intrudes into the marketplace for education, healthcare, food, housing, or any other aspect of daily life. Its focus should be on the federal government’s responsibilities that are specifically listed in the US Constitution.
In The 2020 Initiative, we recommend that four independent national Not For Profit “clearing-house” charities be established for food, housing, healthcare and education. The sole purpose of these national charities would be to collect funds from citizens, and then (based on stringent, objective criteria that quantifies each state’s needs) disburse that charity’s funds to the applicable state-level charitable organization in each state.
As we will discuss in our upcoming Conversation Piece on Welfare Reform Re-Visited, the real solution to the issue of poverty is to help those less fortunate become “unpoor”. The Socialists’ “default solution” to any issue is to have the federal government simply provide cash to people who need assistance. But this approach only serves to increase the sense of entitlement among our country’s citizens, and increases the recipient’s dependency on the federal government, while only marginally and temporarily helping the recipient become “somewhat less poor”. The better solution is to provide financial support to local community-based social services agencies (local job training programs, food banks, habitat for humanity groups, public health clinics, etc.) so that civil society can help citizens assume personal responsibility for their own lives, lift themselves out of poverty, and become unpoor.
US Debt Clock – – June 1st – $61,297 per citizen / July 1st – $61,368