This page was last updated on March 15, 2011.
Give drug tests to aid recipients; Greg Sherman; Beaver County Times; March 14, 2011.
Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.
“I would start by saying that we definitely need to revamp our state government spending, but why only attack the working class?
“I feel that we should look at other avenues of saving the government money. I would suggest that due to the fact that most of the working class needs to pass a urine analysis test to either obtain a job or retain a job that we should begin testing all of the people in our state who are collecting government aid.
“If you can’t pass the drug test, you do not get any money, food stamps or health care.
“I would think that a lot of money could be saved by instituting this policy, and maybe some of the burden could be removed from the working-class taxpayer.”
The purpose of this critique is to address the following comments made by local self-described Marxist Carl Davidson.
carldavidson posted at 7:17 am on Mon, Mar 14, 2011: “You need to learn to play chess instead of checkers, Greg. Suppose you purge substance abusers from any public aid, then what? Do you think they disappear? No, but your crime rate will go up, and it will cost $25K a year to incarcerate those you catch. Who pays for that? Drug abuse is best solved as a public health matter, and needs decriminalization to take the profit out of the trade, just as with alcohol and prohibition. What we really need is to pass Conyer’s HR 870 Full Employment bill to put everyone to work.”
[RWC] For a lefty to say something like “You need to learn to play chess instead of checkers” is generally a rookie mistake, but Mr. Davidson is anything but a rookie. It’s usually a rookie mistake because the implication is you need to look several moves beyond the first move and this rarely works out well for leftist policies. You’ll see what I mean as you read on, and you’ll note Mr. Davidson doesn’t “play chess” with H.R. 870.
On a side point, Mr. Davidson would usually assert to stand for “the working class,” but not this time. I suspect Mr. Davidson recognized his definition of “working class” probably differed from Mr. Sherman’s. If so, that could be because Mr. Davidson once described his definition of “working-class” thusly: “If someone else [signs your paycheck], you’re in the working class.” Most business owners - large or small - (who pay SS and Medicare taxes just as the rest of us) would be surprised to learn they aren’t “working class.”
carldavidson posted at 11:48 am on Mon, Mar 14, 2011: “How about building Raccoon Creek State Park? That was done by the WPA/CCC hiring the unemployed in the 1930s, including my grandfather. Do you think it’s added value to our local economy, not to mention quality of life?”
[RWC] Mr. Davidson doesn’t consider the possible alternative dispositions of the private-sector employee dollars used for the project. Considering alternative dispositions is economic analysis 101. While the government employed Mr. Davidson’s grandfather in a make-work job, my grandfather worked as an unskilled laborer at J&L – Aliquippa Works. Now, let’s “play chess” as Mr. Davidson wanted to do above. If my grandfather and his fellow private-sector employees weren’t forced to fund make-work jobs via their taxes, how many real private-sector jobs would they have generated because they would have had more money to spend? The question isn’t did the park “add value to our local economy, not to mention quality of life,” it’s “what could have been done had employees had to pay less in taxes and more to spend on goods and services?”
Let’s play more chess. If Progressive FDR hadn’t inflated (relatively speaking) wages via his minimum wage law, how many more persons would have had a job? Why were there so many unemployed in the first place? If you answered “the 1929 stock market crash,” you would be wrong. Though a nominal member of the Republican Party (He once belonged to the Progressive Party and almost ran for office as a Democrat.), President Herbert Hoover was a Progressive, like Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and FDR. Therefore, when faced with the 1929 stock market crash, Mr. Hoover reacted as a Progressive. The big difference between Messrs. Hoover and Roosevelt was FDR did a lot more of what Mr. Hoover started. Leftists would like us to believe the 1929 stock market crash caused the Great Depression. In truth, the “progressive” policies of the Hoover and FDR administrations took what should have been a short-term “normal” recession and turned it into a 10+-year Great Depression.
“How about the Broadhead [sic] Rd? A military-government project started by George Washington’s soldiers and other locals he hired that’s still paying off.”
[RWC] Mr. Davidson likes to talk about Brodhead Road. At least a few times previously Mr. Davidson asserted Brodhead Road was an example of where the market couldn’t/didn’t get the job done. Here’s what Mr. Davidson said in “Battleground Report: Politics at the Raccoon Township Fair.” “I finally stump him [a person visiting Mr. Davidson’s booth] on the Brodhead Road, the first vital overland route through our part of the county, and still very significant for the markets here, built by the troops of General Brodhead and General George Washington in the 1700s. I say: ‘How’s that for state intervention where the market can’t do the job; in fact, it creates the market? Why is using our taxes to prime the pump of getting these mills up and running with green jobs making wind turbines any different in principle?’ That one he had to ponder a bit.”
The implication of Mr. Davidson’s comment is Brodhead Road was built for the settlers. In fact, the military built Brodhead Road to supply Fort McIntosh from Fort Pitt. Built in 1778 at the mouth of the Beaver River, Fort McIntosh along with other new outposts was considered necessary to help defend the frontier from local Indians (British allies) and British outposts to the west.
In any case, Mr. Davidson’s intent was to discredit the belief in free markets by showing they aren’t appropriate in every situation. Who said they were? I don’t know why Mr. Davidson had to go back to 1778 for an example. We should also throw in water systems, sewer systems, natural gas infrastructure [not the gas], electricity infrastructure [not the electricity], and telephone (land line) infrastructure. Does Mr. Davidson really not see the difference between providing a road system and selling widgets, even “green” widgets? Of course he does.
“I won’t even go into the lock and dams on the rivers. In all these, government funded and created the jobs. My deck is full; but yours is light, and has some extra jokers.”
[RWC] “government funded and created the jobs?” At least 50% of funding comes from the Inland Waterways Trust Fund (about $100 million/year funded by a 20-cents-per-gallon tax on diesel fuel used by the barge industry, and ultimately by you and me via product prices) and the rest comes from you and me via taxes. Government doesn’t have any money it doesn’t confiscate from you and me. As for “creat[ing] the jobs,” commercial demand ultimately generated the jobs. Reduced commercial demand is why some lock-and-dam complexes face reduced hours or closure.
carldavidson posted at 7:58 am on Tue, Mar 15, 2011: “Plenty of people work now for less than a living wage. The refutation of your argument is the long lines of hundreds of applicants that line up when the word is out that some firm is hiring a dozen workers. But today, for every opening, there’s five people to fill it. That’s called ‘market failure’ and that’s why government does well to step in to pay people to create value for which there’s no current market, but will enhance markets and social value more widely over time. That’s why Raccoon Creek State Park is a good example, or the TVA and rural electrification of the New Deal. Best of all was the GI Bill, where the government paid underemployed vets to go to school. We’re still reaping the rewards of that wise measure. Don’t believe all that nonsense that government can’t create value. If we put wise people in power, who work for everyone, not just corporations, we can solves [sic] some problems.”
[RWC] I’ll let the words of Henry Morgenthau, FDR’s Treasury Secretary during the Great Depression, address this. Testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee in May 1939, Sec. Morgenthau said, “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong … somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started … And an enormous debt to boot.” Unemployment never got below 9.9% before the U.S. entered World War II.
As for Mr. Davidson’s GI Bill comment, I hope he doesn’t think this was a handout. Veteran benefits are not like food stamps, Medicaid, welfare, et cetera. Our veterans earn everything they get.
Finally, so how’s that “play[ing] chess” working out?
© 2004-2011 Robert W. Cox, all rights reserved.