Life on the margins

By: John Hayward | August 21st, 2013

Early in his 2012 run for the presidency, Newt Gingrich remarked, “I don’t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering. I don’t think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate.” He was referring specifically to Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform proposals, which led to a bit of tension between Gingrich and Rep. Ryan. But taken as a general observation, Gingrich’s comment was intriguing… noble in principle, but utterly wrong-headed, at least in the early Twenty-First Century. He would have been on firmer ground if he had been speaking a hundred years earlier.

The government has grown so huge over the past century that virtually any change in policy could fairly be described as “social engineering.” Almost every level of American society has been engineered. The effects are most profound at lower income levels, where people are more obviously and directly dependent on government. But the vaunted “middle class” has been reprogrammed through government policies as well, and the process is accelerating. Just wait until families with $50,000 incomes are made dependent upon ObamaCare subsidies…..ToRead More….

My Take - Hayward is one of my favorite writers, but even he is missing the point. Life on the margins to the degree we are seeing is a direct result of the enlargement of government. The poor have been with mankind forever, and will always be with mankind. The only system that allowed so many of us to live so well was capitalism. The brand of capitalism practiced here in the U.S., even with the socialist overtones. The only way to fix the margins is to eliminate most of the federal government, along with the taxes they confiscate and the regulations that stifle any solid recovery.  Initially there will be some pain, but that will be short lived as it will release that force of nature called American capitalism. Otherwise the 'margin' people will be everywhere when the federal government goes bankrupt and makes what's going on in Detroit seem like child's play.