Thomas Sowell: Free Market Flip Flopper
"During the first 30 years of my life, I had no health insurance. Neither did a lot of other people, back in those days. During those 30 years, I had a broken arm, a broken jaw, a badly injured shoulder, and miscellaneous other medical problems. To say that my income was below average during those years would be a euphemism.
How did I manage? The same way everybody else managed: I went to doctors and I paid them directly, instead of paying indirectly through taxes. This was all before politicians gave us the idea that the things we could not afford individually we could somehow afford collectively through the magic of government."
Thomas Sowell
Capitalism Magazine
"Most important of all, he took me one day to a kind of place where I had never been before and knew nothing about -- a public library. Impressed but puzzled as to why we were in a building with so many books, when I had no money to buy books, I found it all difficult to understand at first, as Eddie patiently explained to me how a public library worked. Unknown to me at the time, it was a turning point in my life, for I then developed the habit of reading books."
Thomas Sowell
A Personal Odyssey (p. 16)
(Evidently Sowell for got about the importance of public funded libraries when he wrote the piece for Capitalism Magazine.)
6 comments:
Here's the irony. If you have no insurance you pay more than people with insurance because you're not part of a group that has negotiated a lower price with physicians groups.
I'd like to this guy get away with no health insurance today. He better not have kids. I'll bet just popping them out costs $15 Grand. a pop.
If you know it costs $15 grand to have a child, Mr. Sowell would assume that you understand the cost of bearing a child and are financially prepared to meet the personal and financial responsibilities of having said child.
It's what is call "personal responsibility." Sowell was born in 1930 and few people had health insurance and employer-paid health insurance certainly was a very rare employee benefit.
Certainly, you'd agree that whether or not you have health insurance, you should be responsible for the care, feeding and hospital expenses of having a child? You certainly don't think it is up to the government to pay the hospital expenses of having a child?
Don't twist the argument Anon.
I think it IS up to the government to have policies that promote the availability of AFFORDABLE health insurance. The nitwit crowd in control at present have no intentions of promoting those kind of policies.
It's interesting to read your response. You "think it IS up to the government to have policies that promote the availability of AFFORDABLE health insurance."
I think it is not up to the government. I think it is up to the individual to take care of him or herself.
Notice that we "think" differently on the issue. I suppose you think you are right and I am wrong.
Where is it written that providing these policies are the business of the government?
Anon:
"Notice that we "think" differently on the issue. I suppose you think you are right and I am wrong."
YES!!!
"Where is it written that providing these policies are the business of the government?"
PLEASE, don't bait me for some asinine Constitutional debate!
It is written therefore it's true. Ha!
I THINK the government should provide everybody with an umbrella to equally protect them from the rain. This would improve the health of the individual.
Does it therefore follow that the government should provide umbrellas because I think they should?
You're like a kid in Wal-Mart crying to get what you want. What would require the government to pay for people to have children? Isn't that what Hitler did in Nazi Germany? If I want a Corevette, I have to plan and save for it. If you want a bady, you should also plan and save for it.
Smells like personal responsibility to me.
Post a Comment