The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) is proud to partner with Young America’s Foundation (YAF) to produce “Clichés of Progressivism,” a series of insightful commentaries covering topics of free enterprise, income inequality, and limited government.
Our society is inundated with half-truths and misconceptions about the economy in general and free enterprise in particular. The “Clichés of Progressivism” series is meant to equip students with the arguments necessary to inform debate and correct the record where bias and errors abound.
The antecedents to this collection are two classic FEE publications that YAF helped distribute in the past: Clichés of Politics, published in 1994, and the more influential Clichés of Socialism, which made its first appearance in 1962. Indeed, this new collection will contain a number of essays from those two earlier works, updated for the present day where necessary. Other entries first appeared in some version in FEE’s journal, The Freeman. Still others are brand new, never having appeared in print anywhere. They will be published weekly on the websites of both YAF and FEE: www.yaf.org and www.FEE.org until the series runs its course. A book will then be released in 2015 featuring the best of the essays, and will be widely distributed in schools and on college campuses.
See the index of the published chapters here.
#52-Progressives Have Good Intentions, So What Else is Required?By Lawrence W. Reed
Is it too much to ask of government that it do a small job right before it takes on a much bigger one?
If you’re wearing the sight-proof blindfolds that most progressives wear, the answer is probably “YES.”
Progressives advocate for a welfare state and sell it not so much on its track record (that would be embarrassing) but more for its good intentions. “We want to help people!” they exclaim. Definitions of the welfare state abound, and often depend on one’s perspective. Here’s my own brutally candid assessment:
Since people are not decent and compassionate enough to assist their deserving fellows in distress, we must expect them to somehow elect politicians who are more decent and compassionate than they are. Those politicians will then take money from them under threat of imprisonment, launder it through an expensive bureaucracy, and spend what’s left not to actually solve the problem but to manage it into perpetuity for endless dependency, demagoguery and political gain. And then the advocates of the welfare state will pat themselves on the back and salve their guilty consciences. They will compliment themselves for possessing a monopoly on compassion and ignore the destructive results of their handiwork, except to condemn as “heartless” those with the audacity to point them out.
Take the federal Department of Veterans Affairs (please!). Its website says its primary job is to provide “patient care and federal benefits to veterans and their dependents.” It manages more than a thousand hospitals, nursing facilities and health clinics. Horror stories emanating from this socialized medicine sampler are numerous and legendary. They include long waiting lists, staff shortages, death rates that would be unacceptable anywhere else in the country and care so shoddy that many veterans prefer to pay for private alternatives. But that doesn’t stop progressives from plowing full steam ahead for even more government in health care.
Writing in the February 25, 2014 Washington Examiner, Mark Flatten provided the latest shocking revelation: To cover up its massive backlog of orders for medical services, the VA simply cancelled tens of thousands of scheduled exams and appointments. Voila! Get rid of the patients and you get rid of the embarrassing backlogs. Imagine the huge outcry if a private provider behaved this way. Would anyone in his right mind say, “Give that outfit some more patients and money!”?
https://fee.org/articles/52-progressives-have-good-intentions-so-what-else-is-required/