Monday evening drops

- With harebrained social experiments like this going on - and no one willing to speak out against them for fear of looking old fashioned, intolerant, judgmental or politically incorrect - is it any wonder that some kids are being raised to think that this kind of belief system one is a good one?

- Sociologist Charles Murray, author of probably the best single study of the corrosive effects of overly generous on welfare on society (1984's "Losing Ground"), has been pushing a version of the guaranteed annual income as an antidote to an ineffective welfare state. In yesterday's Wall St. Journal, he argues for a 10K payment to every American every year. He writes:

Instead of sending taxes to Washington, straining them through bureaucracies and converting what remains into a muddle of services, subsidies, in-kind support and cash hedged with restrictions and exceptions, just collect the taxes, divide them up, and send the money back in cash grants to all American adults. Make the grant large enough so that the poor won't be poor, everyone will have enough for a comfortable retirement, and everyone will be able to afford health care. We're rich enough to do it.

I applaud Murray for looking at new ways to help the poor, but his statement that everyone will have enough for a comfortable retirement AND health care under his plan is complete BS. I would also say that he probably knows it. Why? First, without price controls on health care, no 10G payment is going to help anyone in the long run. Surely, he wouldn't want that, because it would provide a disincentive for health entrepreneurs to expand and improve service if they can't make a dollar somewhere. That illustrates how profits are good. Second, and more importantly, some people will fritter their 10K away. That's just how it is. The sooner society accepts that most of the time, people struggle largely because of their own poor choices in life, the better off everyone will be instead of pretending that it's not their own fault. I don't think that means we should punish people, but tough love is the right way to go. For Murray to advocate his plan without recognizing these two fundamental truths is intellectually dishonest. We should expect more from him.

- Even if you believe that human economic activity is the main cause of global warming and needs to be curtailed, as our so-called conservative government does, you have to ask why the flawed Kyoto treaty should apply to countries like Canada when others like China and India are exempt. At a time when we are competing with these countries (although I think they're much less of a threat than most), it's suicide to not insist that they be subject to at least some kind of limitation (although our manufacturing sector seems to be doing quite a fine job of imploding on its own, thank you very much).