The Political
Scene
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Thoughts
As a boy I was not very interested in politics but now I have lived under several different political systems, some for a very short time, but long enough to experience the way that they affect their citizens. During my RAF days most of us in the service initially tended to look to the socialist ideals. After all we were at that time living under a very tightly controlled military system, with everything provided and little if any freedom except to do what we were told. Even the communist system at that time appeared to be comparatively free compared to our military service. Nothing really mattered much except to win the war and we all looked forward to our return to civilian life. However as the threat to our country slowly disappeared, our thoughts turned more and more to the kind of life we wanted as civilians, and we began to look towards the less controlled approach. However the majority of the people still looked towards the left and we soon had a government in the UK that in general took a socialist approach to the many problems left over from the war years. Many service industries such as power, gas and so on, were taken over by the government and the unions ruled in many others. We saw businesses and prosperity slow down, and taxes rose to impossible levels. However a few very good things came into being at this time, not the least being the National Health Service and a strong movement away from the power of position and money.
Our move to the USA was triggered by the business conditions in the UK and we were very happy with the changes that we found in our new country. Then for a few years we lived in Canada and experienced a "middle of the road" system that fell somewhere between what we had experienced in the UK and what we had lived with in the USA. By and large we were happy to return to the freedom of America, in spite of the wider spread of the "safety net" in Canada to rescue its citizens from unexpected misfortune.
At this time I also worked for a short time in the communist Soviet Union at that time under the rule of Brezhnev. Conditions there for all but the elite were absolutely awful yet even there some people I talked with preferred the safety of government control rather then the freedom of the capitalistic society. I saw very clearly just how the lack of personal freedom and the ability to determine one's personal life pulled down dramatically the entire social system. My wife and I also worked for some time in India and Singapore. India was changing over from a socialist state into a much freer democracy, and as a consequence was improving business and the lives of their people. Singapore was very definitely a dictatorship, but a kindly dictatorship that had managed to bring together the many races into a coherent whole, and developed a high standard of living for all their people. Certainly some of the laws seemed to be excessively rigid, but with millions of people living on a very small island with no natural resources it was amazing that they had reached such a high standing in the world and I heard no complaints from any of their people. In China I found much freer conditions than in the Soviet Union. They were certainly far from our idea of freedom, but in some respects I felt this was necessary to assure that chaos did not develop as the level of education was improved and business flourished. They certainly avoided the total collapse of government as we saw in the Soviet Union.
Based on all these experiences my personal ideals for government fall somewhere between the extremes. I want to be free to do what I want, when I want, and I am prepared to accept the consequences. I do not want anyone to tell me how to live my life, I want to say what I want without fear. In other words my ideal political system would apparently be far to the right with the emphasis on personal responsibility.
However then I see people who very definitely need help in many areas.
The sick who cannot afford the high cost of medical treatment, the unemployed
who find it impossible to get a job, the single parent with children from a
failed marriage and so on. My conscience tells me that as a society we should provide them
with assistance. We presently try to do this through a myriad of private and
government operated systems that are generally quite inefficient. For this reason I
support the idea of a National Medical System with free service to all people
directly paid out of taxes. Medical services should be provided according to need,
NOT according to earnings. It is fascinating that the UK National Health Service
is one of the most efficient health organizations in the world, simply because it is
operated as a
total service and avoids
much of the paper work and form filling that we have here in the U.S.A.. It also eliminates the interference
and cost of
the insurance business into the medical profession. Certainly there are
problems, but these are apparent with all of the various systems. Similarly I believe we should provide a
"minimum income" to all whose wages fall below a certain level with
some precautions such as the need to actively seek work. I believe that
scrapping the many public and private agencies that presently provide these
services would dramatically reduce the
government infrastructure and I desperately want to see less government
intervention in our personal lives.
I also believe that all government
services should be paid for through income tax. Taxes should be graded from 0% for the lowest paid individuals to 50% or more
for the highly paid. It is obscene to hear of individuals being paid tens of millions of
dollars a year, especially when their salaries are derived from the efforts of the
many individual and less highly paid workers, who are an essential part of any
organization. In addition I do not believe that taxes should be used to attempt
to change the way that we live. For example taxing tobacco products in an
attempt to reduce smoking. Taxes should be levied solely to pay for those items
and services that our citizens through their representatives have decided are necessary. In addition
this would clearly demonstrate exactly how much we each pay in taxation instead
of hiding so much in other indirect sources of financing. Taxes on purchases, on
property, and so on, merely hide from the citizen the true mount of taxes paid
and are often totally unfair. A tax on income with no exceptions and exemptions
is the only fair system.
This is especially needed in the
majority of states where the cost of education is largely financed through
property taxes. Here all too often we see cases where a family purchased a
property to be their family home, that they feel is affordable, but then with
the steady growth of their property tax they eventually find they can no
longer afford to live in that neighborhood. This is usually due to the expansion
of the school system from new development, often from much wealthier people
moving in from neighboring cities pushing up the value of their property. Also
many of today's schools are now defined by the many rules and regulations from
both state and federal sources that however do not provide the accompanying
funds to implement them. This is a distant cry from the the days of the local
school house when residents controlled almost every facet of their schools
and decided what they should pay for the school they wanted. Several
states have already changed this method of funding education and many more are
considering this, faced with the obvious unfairness of the property tax
system.
I accept the need for competition and freedom in business, indeed
one of the most frequently heard complaints in the old Soviet Union was the lack
of competition that made their society so terribly inefficient. However we must
control the system in order to maintain fairness and honesty throughout our
financial system. We should also attempt to develop a salary system that is based on the value to society of the
work done, not on the amount of money it generates. With
the growing population of the world and the limited world resources it appears
inevitable that in the comparatively near future there will be shortages of essential
goods and it is difficult to see how a competitive system will then be
acceptable. It seems that we will have to totally reconsider the ways that we
manage the production and distribution of scarce materials especially food and
oil products.