Re: To Subsidize Or Not To Subsidize-Cost Benefit????
Author: OldPoleBurner
Date: 09-13-2012 - 17:47
> Isn't it amazing that people don't realize that we are a republic and that means we follow
> rules of law and not what some wanna-be thinks is best.America is a republic and the sooner
> people embrace this fact and demand that our government do it's job... protecting our nation
> from it's enemies. This protection does not include free cell phones,free food,free rent or
> subsidized transportation.
Well stated - America under the Constitution is a Republic, not a pure democracy. And there is a huge difference; the biggest one being that except for very small local governments (a few hundred people), pure democracy just will not work. And yes, rule of law is supposed to be supreme. Too bad our current power mongering politicians at the highest levels, have thrown that "rule of law" under the bus, along with all their common sense! Assuming they ever had any!
And true enough - the just powers of government "do not include the giving away of free cell phones, free food, free rent" or free anything; or anything else that was not EARNED. But let us not take it to extremes". Under that same Constitution, the federal government is charged with "providing for post roads" and such; and most importantly, regulation of "commerce among the states", and by obvious implication - the facilitation of that commerce.
Note that the word "interstate" is not to be found anywhere in the constitution; for dang good reason. The whole point of the Federalism in the first place, was to fix the utter failure of the economy under individual state regulation, as permitted by the previous "Articles of Confederation".
Those publicly owned post roads became the federal highways and later the interstates we know today. Various governments, most notably, the FED, subsidized the construction and operation of railroads from the very beginning, just as they later did the airlines and the trucking industries. Unfortunately, not always evenly. But in any event, it is doing its duty by such facilitation of commerce among the states.
Certainly, both parties are about as myopic as they could get when it comes to the proper use of subsidy. But specific to the republican brand of myopia is a forgetting of their own roots - that of Abe Lincoln providing the biggest railroad subsidies of all, up to his day. Have they forgotten? As to other brands of political myopia? Truly breathtaking indeed - leaving me speechless!
But in any event, public infrastructure of any sort, by its very nature, inevitably provides subsidization, even while it facilitates commerce. There is no escaping that. thus subsidized transportation has been with us since the very beginning. And while it is here to stay, I grant that it should be done in a much more even handed manner. It might then be found more acceptable in some quarters.
OPB