The US was founded on the idea that government should treat every person equally by protecting his fundamental rights to life, liberty, and property.
We have strayed so far from that path at this point that we can barely recall ever having followed it. Rather than treating people with the blind eyes of justice, we treat them according to arbitrary principles of fairness and leveraged inequality.
There are plenty of ways in which taxation can be made to fulfill the fundamental principles of justice and equality under the law, so I'll leave that for another thread.
This thread is about addressing the method by which the US has enacted its social programs. For these programs to treat all citizens equally under the law, they must be available to everyone without regard for race, color, creed, wealth, income, marital status, or anything else. It is contrary to justice to charge someone for a service that they cannot access because of their income level, rendering the program nothing more than wealth redistribution.
For example, I paid taxes for Medicaid while I was a grad student living below the poverty line, but I did not have access to Medicaid because of my status as a student. I was paying for a service for someone else, period. The little money I had was taken from me and used to pay for someone else to receive a service. That is nothing more than wealth redistribution. The same argument holds for wealthy individuals paying for Medicaid or any other social program.
There are two just solutions to this problem. One is to scrap all of the social programs outright. The other is to offer the programs to everyone equally. Which solution is correct depends on whether the fundamental "right" the program supposedly protects is deemed a protected right by society. Is healthcare a right? If so, government is obliged to cover it for all its citizens to an equal degree, whatever that degree might be. Is "peace of mind" a right? If so, government can only treat its citizens equally by offering all citizens the same degree of protection of that right. Individuals would still be free to go over and above the level of protection government provides.
Perhaps by framing elections in terms of rights rather than positions is a better way to approach the whole idea of political compromise. It is well known that position-based negotiation leads to the type of shenanigans we just witnessed regarding the debt ceiling bill. However, if negotiations instead focus on the underlying issues of each party, real compromise can be achieved without either party losing face. For example, if one party can cede that "peace of mind" is not really a right, then the other might be willing to cede that healthcare is, even if only to an extent.
In any case, it should be clear to everyone that we cannot absolutely protect every right that people think they ought to have simply due to financial constraints. As the financial constraint is lessened due to continuing economic growth, the list of rights society chooses to protect, as well as the degree of that protection, may grow accordingly. A corollary of this approach is that, when the economic constraint contracts for whatever reason, the protections must similarly contract unless the protections are not currently financially constrained (when has this happened?).
Anyway, just some thoughts I had that might frame a path for debate with common ground between libertarians and progressives.
We have strayed so far from that path at this point that we can barely recall ever having followed it. Rather than treating people with the blind eyes of justice, we treat them according to arbitrary principles of fairness and leveraged inequality.
There are plenty of ways in which taxation can be made to fulfill the fundamental principles of justice and equality under the law, so I'll leave that for another thread.
This thread is about addressing the method by which the US has enacted its social programs. For these programs to treat all citizens equally under the law, they must be available to everyone without regard for race, color, creed, wealth, income, marital status, or anything else. It is contrary to justice to charge someone for a service that they cannot access because of their income level, rendering the program nothing more than wealth redistribution.
For example, I paid taxes for Medicaid while I was a grad student living below the poverty line, but I did not have access to Medicaid because of my status as a student. I was paying for a service for someone else, period. The little money I had was taken from me and used to pay for someone else to receive a service. That is nothing more than wealth redistribution. The same argument holds for wealthy individuals paying for Medicaid or any other social program.
There are two just solutions to this problem. One is to scrap all of the social programs outright. The other is to offer the programs to everyone equally. Which solution is correct depends on whether the fundamental "right" the program supposedly protects is deemed a protected right by society. Is healthcare a right? If so, government is obliged to cover it for all its citizens to an equal degree, whatever that degree might be. Is "peace of mind" a right? If so, government can only treat its citizens equally by offering all citizens the same degree of protection of that right. Individuals would still be free to go over and above the level of protection government provides.
Perhaps by framing elections in terms of rights rather than positions is a better way to approach the whole idea of political compromise. It is well known that position-based negotiation leads to the type of shenanigans we just witnessed regarding the debt ceiling bill. However, if negotiations instead focus on the underlying issues of each party, real compromise can be achieved without either party losing face. For example, if one party can cede that "peace of mind" is not really a right, then the other might be willing to cede that healthcare is, even if only to an extent.
In any case, it should be clear to everyone that we cannot absolutely protect every right that people think they ought to have simply due to financial constraints. As the financial constraint is lessened due to continuing economic growth, the list of rights society chooses to protect, as well as the degree of that protection, may grow accordingly. A corollary of this approach is that, when the economic constraint contracts for whatever reason, the protections must similarly contract unless the protections are not currently financially constrained (when has this happened?).
Anyway, just some thoughts I had that might frame a path for debate with common ground between libertarians and progressives.
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