From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Tue Sep 24 2002 - 03:18:37 MDT
A MODEST PROPOSAL FOR MAKING EVERYONE BETTER-OFF
THE LIGHTHOUSE
"Enlightening Ideas for Public Policy..."
Vol. 4, Issue 38
September 23, 2002
Throughout its short, illustrious history, THE LIGHTHOUSE has taken
special delight in sharing simple yet highly promising ideas for
improving public policy -- from the well known (e.g., privatizing public
schooling and social security) to lesser known (e.g., "no-give, no-take"
organ donations pledges and filling public offices via drawing lots).
But if Frederick Turner is correct, perhaps we are better off promoting
the one policy proposal that, if enacted, would profoundly improve
nearly every aspect of our lives. What policy holds such enormous
potential?
Make everybody rich.
This idea is hardly far-fetched, as it might at first sound to many.
Universal prosperity would not make everyone happier, but it would
greatly advance the causes of world peace, environmental protection,
education, health care, women's rights, employment, sustainable growth,
racial harmony, political liberty, scientific discovery, spiritual
renewal and the arts. That's because, as Turner explains in the Summer
2002 issue of THE INDEPENDENT REVIEW, poverty "is not just one more head
on the hydra, but the hydra itself that grows all the heads. Put a stake
in the hydra, and the heads disappear."
How might public policy be changed if we make universal prosperity our
top priority?
"If we look at our laws from this perspective, it is remarkable how many
of them seem designed to prevent people from getting rich.... The first
thing to do, obviously, will be to repeal many of those laws....
"Consider a thought experiment," Turner continues. "If we take all the
money in the national budget except what is necessary to maintain a
justice system, government administration, and a national defense, and
instead invest it in sound growth funds for every child in the United
States, we will be able to make everybody in the country independently
wealthy in one generation. Or suppose Franklin D. Roosevelt had
instituted a private rather than a public social security system. The
money flowing into that system would have lowered interest rates and
restored the capitalization of the corporations damaged by the 1929
crash.... Meanwhile, all those born of American parents would have
inherited the remains of their parents pensions -- which, if invested
today, would have made them millionaires."
See "Make Everybody Rich," by Fredrick Turner (THE INDEPENDENT
REVIEW, Summer 2002)
http://www.independent.org/tii/content/pubs/review/tir71_turner.html
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