Thomas Sowell explains why too much compassion is a bad thing

Here is something you can forward to all of your progressive friends! It clearly explains what’s wrong with too much moral permissiveness and compassion. When you subsidize certain decisions, you get more of those decisions, when you tax certain decisions, you get less of them.

Excerpt:

Since the average American never took out a mortgage loan as big as seven hundred grand– for the very good reason that he could not afford it– why should he be forced as a taxpayer to subsidize someone else who apparently couldn’t afford it either, but who got in over his head anyway?

Why should taxpayers who live in apartments, perhaps because they did not feel that they could afford to buy a house, be forced to subsidize other people who could not afford to buy a house, but who went ahead and bought one anyway?

And what about saving for a rainy day?

Who hasn’t been out of work at some time or other, or had an illness or accident that created unexpected expenses? The old and trite notion of “saving for a rainy day” is old and trite precisely because this has been a common experience for a very long time.

What is new is the current notion of indulging people who refused to save for a rainy day or to live within their means. In politics, it is called “compassion”– which comes in both the standard liberal version and “compassionate conservatism.”

The article concludes with this:

Even in an era of much-ballyhooed “change,” the government cannot eliminate sadness. What it can do is transfer that sadness from those who made risky and unwise decisions to the taxpayers who had nothing to do with their decisions.

Worse, the subsidizing of bad decisions destroys one of the most effective sources of better decisions– namely, paying the consequences of bad decisions.

I would just encourage you to try to communicate with your neighbors who may not have thought clearly about “the forgotten man”, the taxpayer who works hard, plays by the rules and then is stuck with the bill for the compassion of well-meaning socialists.

In one of my more popular posts, I explained how the compassion of socialist democrats got us into this financial crisis by forcing banks to make loans to people who couldn’t afford them.

Global warming is a made-up crisis to justify socialism

I just want to get this out there so that we can be clear. There is no climate crisis. The whole thing was invented, just like “nuclear winter”, in order to justify government taking control of the economy so they can equalize economic inequalities.

Fox News reports that the United Nations is proposing global redistribution of wealth from productive, free nations to unproductive, repressive ones. The rationalization for this redistribution of wealth is going to be global warming alarmism.

Excerpt: (H/T John Lott)

A United Nations document on “climate change” that will be distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes — all under the supervision of the world body.

And Wesley J. Smith sheds more light on the topic here, where he analyzes a column by a radical environmentalist who argues that we need to prevent economic growth, on the grounds that it is harming the planet.

Excerpt:

This willingness to sacrifice human welfare is reaching a fever pitch among those who believe that global warming is a crisis of unimagined proportions–a belief that can border on quasi-religion or pure ideology. An article by David Owen–pushing the importance of economic decline to saving the planet–in the New Yorker illustrates the point.

Here’s one of the quotes from David Owen:

The environmental benefits of economic decline, though real, are fragile, because they are vulnerable to intervention by governments, which, understandably, want to put people back to work and get them buying non-necessities again–through programs intended to revive ordinary consumer spending (which has a big carbon footprint), and through public-investment projects to build new roads and airports (ditto).

I would recommend checking out the post to read what environmentalists really think about human welfare when compared to the myth of global warming. It’s important to understand what people on the left, who are advising Obama, are planning to do.

To get the real costs of what it would take to “fix” global warming, check out this post at the Heritage Foundation’s blog “The Foundry”. In this post, they explain the science, what global warming alarmists are trying to do, and how much it will cost to do it – and they done the research to prove it.

Excerpt:

Perhaps the most alarming part is the price tag associated with attempting to reduce such a small part of the atmosphere and something we really cannot control. Our analysis shows the cumulative GDP losses for 2010 to 2029 approach $7 trillion. Single-year losses exceed $600 billion in 2029, more than $5,000 per house¬hold. Job losses are expected to exceed 800,000 in some years, and exceed at least 500,000 from 2015 through 2026. It is important to note that these are net job losses, after any jobs created by compliance with the regulations–so-called green jobs–are taken into account. In total, the “climate revenue” (read: energy tax) could approach two trillion over eight years. Keep in mind, this is all for negligible environmental benefits.

UPDATE: Heritage Foundation weighs in with more on the UN’s plan for global wealth redistribution.

The U.N. conference in Bonn, Germany commenced yesterday to hash out details for an international approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The goal is to have a plan ready for the global warming summit in Copenhagen at the end of the year that would supplant the failed Kyoto Protocol.

And the Competitive Enterprise Institute has a link to a piece in the WSJ about the impact to the manufacturing sector and to US trading partners.

Health care policies in the UK and in Ireland

Over on Health Care BS, they reported the results of an Healthcare Commission investigation of Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust in the UK. This foundation runs the which runs Stafford and Cannock Chase hospitals.

Excerpt:

If you have a friend or loved one in an NHS hospital, make sure to send them flowers. They may have to drink the water out of the vase to avoid dying of thirst.

…The Prime Minister apologized and claimed that this was an isolated situation. Oh, really? Tell that to the NHS patients who starve to death in your hospitals. Tell that to the patients who die of cancer because the NHS won’t pay for their treatment.

Tell that BS to the patient on whom NHS surgeons insisted on operating despite the dead rat in the OR.  Tell that to the emergency patients stacked in ambulances in the ER parking lot. If they could hear, you could tell that the patients waiting for hearing aids.

Scary stuff! And this is what Obama wants for us, because then everyone will be equal, regardless of their ability to pay. Should individuals be left free to choose how much health care they need based on their own lifestyle choices? Obama says no.

On the other hand, the Stockholm Network reports that Ireland raised their co-payments for ER treatment, in order to encourage people to use managed care instead. (H/T State Policy Blog). They reduced their ER demand by 5%.

The 2009 Irish budget, presented by finance minister Brian Lenihan, revealed that charges for A&E services would rise from €66 to €100, if the patient has not been referred by their GP, or if they do not hold a medical card.

The revised tariff came into force on 1st January and …saw 4.5% less people attend A&E in January 2009 than in January 2008…

There is a myth on the ignorant left (and in Canada) that Americans are dying in the streets because of private medical care, that emphasizes personal responsibility. Actually, ER medical care is free in the USA, and maybe we should start charging something for it like Ireland is doing.

I posted before on the nationalized health care, the exploding health care costs in Massachusetts, and on health care problems in Sweden. Also, here is a funny video from a Canadian-raised comedian on single-payer health care.

UPDATE: John Lott has a post on how 9 people accounted for 2,678 ER visits over 6 years in Texas, costing taxpayers 3 million dollars.