rf@wu1.UUCP (02/27/84)
Recently, I spent an hour studying the *1982 Statistical
Abstract of the United States*. I was reading the sections on
the federal budget hoping to find facts to buttress an argument.
As a result of this research I concluded that:
The federal government of the United States of America is the
world's largest insurance company, offering mainly three kinds
of insurance: income insurance for the elderly ("social
security"), war insurance (the military budget), and medical
insurance for the elderly ("Medicare"). By war insurance, I
refer to the national policy of investing in armies. These
three items comprise roughly two thirds of the federal budget.
Do we really want to be governed by an insurance company?
Incidentally, Nasa and the various federal welfare programs are
under 5% of the budget; possibly less (I didn't compute the
exact figure).
Randolph Fritztac@teldata.UUCP (Tom Condon) (03/14/84)
I was not reading the news, and so missed the survey some months back. I do have a definition of government which may be of interest. A government is an organization invested by private individuals with such rights as they possess and are willing to delegate for their mutual protection and benefit. Notice that the people who create the government cannot give to it any authority or powers which they do not have! This is a basic tenet of pure democracy--that people can not give away what is not theirs. Therefor they cannot give to any government that they create any powers which are not their's. The purpose of a government is to do those things which it was created and empowered to do. I believe that it was Thomas Jefferson who said, "They govern best who govern least!" One of our early presidents (I think it was Washington but I am not sure) vetoed EVERY law which congress passed. When asked why he told the legislators that they had not been empowered to perform the tasks that they were taking onto themselves by writing that law. One of the legislators then stood up and said,"Mr. President, do you mean to tell me that the constitution anticipated everything which needs to be done?" The president in question responded in the affirmative and continued with, "...and all of the things you would like to do too." It seems that the major problems which were facing the people at the time were unemployment, spiraling inflation, possible war with an aggressive foreign power (England) and a liberal distrust of governments. The United States Constitution was written to solve these problems. It did a very good job of it too. It is a shame that we are not willing to put our faith in such a tried and true document again.