I get tired of the old 19th century views so common in Washington today. It is time for a 21st century approach to government and the economy. Several important principles will guide my comments:
- Government is “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Thus government is merely what the people have decided is important and necessary. In a libertarian sense, government is the definition of what you can do without harming others (not always the same as what others can do without harming you).
- Paul Krugman (of Princeton and the New York Times) is the most informative economist today. He’s not always right, but he makes fewer errors than anyone else.
- Global warming is real. Local and Global climate has been changed by people. Weather has cycles (annual, multi-year, etc.). The weather cycle only supporters have to explain what went wrong with the cycles that indicated a substantial cooling trend in the 1980s.
- Taxes are evil. Poverty is evil. Crime is evil. Repression is evil. Ignoring poverty, sickness, ignorance and exploitation is evil. Government is about reducing evils. Politics is partly the process of deciding which evil is worse, e.g. Taxes or Ignorance (as in, “Do we fund schools?”).
- If you are not willing to pay for something (i.e. through taxes) you are not really for it. For example, if you are unwilling to raise taxes to support the war in Iraq, you really do not support the war.