[quote name='MSI Magus']You are talking out both sides of your mouth bob. Do you suddenly feel that we should have a government run healthcare system? Do you suddenly believe that we should invest far more in education? Do you suddenly believe we should take steps to end corporate welfare, charge them at a higher rate and invest that money in to programs to help the less fortunate? Do you suddenly think we should have stricter regulation on business and what they can do with the environment?[/QUOTE]
And yet, if you've spent any time reading my posts, instead of assuming you already know what's in them, you'd know the answers to most of these questions.
Government-ran health care? Sure. But not by our current government.
Invest more in education? No. Spending in education isn't the problem.
End corporate welfare? Yes. I've been saying this for as long as I've been on this board.
Charge them at a higher rate? ... depends what you mean. Higher than they're being charged now? Not really. Higher than other people are charged? To an extent. Personally, I'd rather see people taxed than corporations. It's much easier to tax a corporation, then let the corporation hide those taxes in the various aspects of their operation so that they're all hidden within the price of the end product and no one really knows how much they're paying in to the tax man.
Invest that money in to programs to help the less fortunate? ... to an extent. Wisely invest that money into these programs after our government has been reformed into a system that isn't abused by power-hungry politicians - okay.
Stricter regulation on business and what they can do with the environment? - Yes and no. I don't think the issue is necessarily the amount of regulation on private business, but the government/politicians' willingness to properly and accurately enforce that regulation. How many times have we had some kind of environmental issue and we hear "This regulation was in place, but it wasn't enforced/checked/followed up on because of this or that." I don't think adding a bunch more regulations, with our current set of politicians in play, is going to help anything.
I had a post on here about how Mattel imported a bunch of lead-coated toys from China and the US Government responded by putting all these new testing requirements by third parties in place, but then added an exemption to the bill that allowed Mattel do their own testing.
(
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32582238/ns/business-consumer_news/)
So, Mattel, the primary reason for this new regulation, gets a slap on the wrist and the other toy companies (most of them much, much smaller than Mattel) now get to pay all the costs for third parties to test their toys for lead, which was never a problem for them.
We don't necessarily need *more* regulation, we need smarter and more efficient regulation headed up by more common sense regulators.