Congress proved it: not even childbirth is off limits to federal mandates. Forty-eight hours will heretofore be the minimum hospital stay for new mothers, Congress said, double the time insurance companies used to cover. Who could disagree with such tender loving care, courtesy of D.C.?
Among the many excuses for government planning is that it makes life safer for one and all. The automobile bears the brunt of this central planning. Like most all interventions in the free market, the effect of mandates to make the car safer is nearly the opposite. Witness the recent air bag fiasco.
In October, former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros spent $716 million to demolish decrepit housing projects. Before you cheer, consider this. The units won't be replaced with a market system. More money will be spent on yet another socialistic program, this time to pay welfare recipients to move into private housing in suburbia and elsewhere.
People who advocate tax-funded school vouchers for private schools frequently hail the G.I. Bill of Rights education vouchers for World War II veterans as a model. In truth, the G.I. Bill was a budget-busting middle-class entitlement scheme that had destructive effects on higher education, and set the stage for virtually all our current educational problems.
At times in this strange book, Mr. Pinkerton sounds like an advocate of the free market; fortunately, he really is not. "Fortunately," because our author has an anti-Midas Touch.
The excuses given for big government take many forms. But NASA has surely come up with something unique in world history. They are trying to convince us that there is life on Mars, that we'd better speed our way there to find out more, and that's why they need more of your money.
As the Cold War wound down, opinion elites discovered a new menace: "unfair trade practices." These are the subsidies, protectionist tariffs, and various regulations and business practices other countries use, which hamper the export of American goods.
It's no shock that the Senate has taken another step towards socializing the medical sector. That's been the pattern for nearly a century. What's appalling is that this socialization is confused with authentic insurance, a viable market institution.
Republicans seemed sincere when they argued against a minimum-wage increase. In their rhetoric they were right: it increases unemployment, especially among the poor, by making work illegal. Even the head of Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers denounced the minimum wage—when he was a private economist.
Media personality Kathie Lee Gifford took quite a pounding when the National Labor Committee, a labor union organization, found that some of the clothes sold under her label in the U.S. were made by children in a Honduran "sweat shop."
