Rare News Desk
Just as Obamacare is going down for the count, here are some big ideas from lefty Lane Kenworthy in his book “Social Democratic America”. It’s reported by AEI’s James Pethokoukis.
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1. Universal health insurance
2. One-year paid parental leave
3. Universal early education
4. Increase in the Child Tax Credit
5. Sickness insurance
6. Eased eligibility criteria for unemployment insurance
7. Wage insurance
8. Supplemental defined -contribution pension plans with automatic enrollment
9. Extensive, personalized job-search and (re)training support
10. Government as employer of last resort
11. Minimum wage increased modestly and indexed to prices
12. EITC extended farther up the income ladder and indexed to average compensation or GDP per capita
13. Social assistance with a higher benefit level and more support for employment
14. Reduced incarceration of low-level drug offenders
Now what would you think is the common denominator in all these ideas? Force.
That’s right, those Social Democrats want to force you, or your employer, or the rich to support some social democratic plan or program. Just like the coercive disaster known as Obamacare.
Collectivism always means force — always. Think about the pilgrims at Plymouth Plantation in 1621 practicing pre-Marxist “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” collectivism. Suppose Joe Pilgrim doesn’t want to use his ability? Then the community has a vote at its evening meeting and the majority decides “he who does not work, neither shall he eat.” Both St. Paul and St. Lenin agree on this.
But there is another way. It is called individualism. The idea is that each one of us is individually responsible for figuring out how we can apply our abilities to meet the needs of other people. And then each of us is individually responsible for doing something about it.
Only after all this figuring and doing something about other peoples’ needs does the next thing become significant. What is it worth to the other person for us to figure out and meet their need with our ownmost ability? Hopefully it’s enough to start providing for our needs; otherwise it’s back to the drawing board to figure out another way of meeting other peoples’ needs.
What an amazing idea! Who would have thought it? If people are working away figuring out what other people need and then meeting their needs, then you don’t need to force them, at a duly constituted meeting of the collective, to use their abilities for the needs of others as required by the majority of the community’s representatives. That’s because they have already gone out and done it!
This is what I call the Paradox of Individualism. In a collective, where people are all hope-and-changey, you have to force them to cooperate, just like the social democratic 14 point plan above. But under individualism, where you might fear that selfishness would reign, each person has the “freedom” to contribute in any way he or she wants. So long as the contribution is useful enough that people are willing to pay for it.
What a concept. Someone should apply it to Obamacare, Obama’s program of collective coercion on steroids.
