Access to Capital
Universal Access to Capital, Health Care, and Education
Capital: Capital is protein in the diet of freedom. Investment is necessary to produce sustainable growth and financial security. America’s great original promise was the right of individuals to own land. Land was the prized income-producing asset until the industrial revolution. It was productive capital. Today financial capital is necessary to become self-sufficient. As micro finance has proved in the emerging world, reasonable access to capital is the key to raising the prosperity of entire nations. We must insure that entrepreneurs of all size have access to capital at similar terms and conditions to insure the most efficient flow of capital. Capital means the most to people who have it the least. Health Care: We’ve reached a time when mothers should not have to put up posters and plastic buckets in supermarkets to collect money for their child’s cancer treatments. We have reached a time where as a nation we must be wiling to pay for catastrophic care costs for all our citizens. Citizens must also take responsibility to insure themselves for routine sickness and small accident costs (less than $50,000). American citizenship should make you part of a universal group that makes us all insurable. Insurance can be private but non- profit. Medical schools must train thousands more doctors. We should pay less for and buy fewer prescriptions. And above all we need to educate and give incentives to everyone to live healthy lifestyles.
Education: The greatest single factor in improving human well-being is education. Research reveals that the more education a person has the less likely they are to divorce, abuse family members, smoke, become overweight, suffer from addiction and depression, or be imprisoned. The better educated make the most money, report the greatest life satisfaction, volunteer and vote the most, and use the least public assistance. Education is the best investment a society can make. So how is American Education? We are not getting much for our money. We spend $500 billion a year K-12 and 20% of American youth do not even earn a high school diploma. Half of our kids who start college never finish. For those that do, college education has become a life long financial burden. Is this the best we can do? We must institute ways to raise and equalize the quality of our K-12 schools and lower the actual cost of college. The greatest investment in our future is the wise investment we make in universal effective education.
Discussion
5 comments for “Universal Access to Capital, Health Care, and Education”
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What you are promoting is socialism. Your use of Universal is really just another word for Socialism. Read Ayn Rand “For the New Intellecual”. What we need to do is to get rid of all the middle Men like insurance companies and anyone getting tax breaks for more children and religion; and start paying people what they are worth so that they can go to the doctor on their own dime. The more responsibility you take from individuals for their own survival the more dependants, and welfare you produce. This is not Rocket Science!
The reason children are not getting educations is because disipline and confront has been stripped from education and replaced with esoteric theories of learning that don’t produce anything but entitlement, self-esteem junkies! Schools need to bring back apprenticeships that demand the teachers to have actually succeeded at something before they get to teach. Apprenticeships should also be required all students before they graduate Public School! Then you would start producing a nation of students and teachers of substance rather than just quickly forgotten theory.
Inequality is like a festoring infection that eats deeply in to the core of our society. It breeds seperation, discontent, lack of productivity, and when stretched too far, violence. A communist would suggest that the only way to establish equality is through forced redistribution of all things in common regardless of the effort that one puts forth. A capitalist would suggest that true equality is a measure of a persons deeds and labor, and allow the distribution to occur through the natural actions of the free market. A system that that allows indolence to flourish is not equal, nor is a system that rewards men with untold wealth while allowing working men and women to live on the streets without access to the most basic of services.
What system then should we adopt? Socialism? I would suggest that there is a new and revolutionary approach who’s adoption would be a great step forward for all mankind.
What is this new and revolutionary approach?
Quite simply it is the adoption of capitalism and communism in tandem under the protective flag of true democracy. A dual system in which each acts to balance the other.
Many people cringe at the word communism because they associate it with tyranical despotism of the former Soviet Union, and China. I would propose that neither of those countries ever practiced such a thing, save in name only. They simply used the word as an excuse to divert wealth to a new group of eliteist tyrants. Instead look to the Amish, and the way a community comes together to build a home for one of their members in a weekend.
In this new system. A young man or woman goes in to government service (not necessarily the military) upon graduation from high school. While in there term of service they produce the basic needs of themselves, the elderly, the infirm, and those that can not realisticaly care for themselves. In such a plan Social Security is no longer needed. The term of service depends largely on the type of service they enter (Education, Health Care, Management, Engineering, Manual Labor, Military …etc). Upon completion of their service they would be granted citizenship, and it’s attendent rights (i.e the right to vote, and the right to benefit from the service of others should they find themselves legitimately unable to work (i.e from disease or age) in the future.
Upon completeing their service, individuals could then go in to the private sector. If at anytime however, the private sector was not able to provide an individual (who being fully willing to work) adaquate opportunity to meet their needs, they could return to the public system. In this way, the public sector would need to offer reasonable wages or risk loosing it’s work force to the other system.
In addition to the natural establishment of checks and balances, this system insures that every willing member of society has the opportunity to be productive, and offers a safety net that allows peoples minimum needs to be met. The gap between rich and poor would be narrowed through the use of a democraticaly controled escape valve. Productivity would soar, and our society would prosper as never before.
The worst crime you can commit against another person is to steal from them the knowledge that they are able to care for themselves. No system is perfect but socialism is certainly not the solution. There is, in my opinion, a clear line between charity and welfare. My definitions are charity is what we give and do for those who cannot do for themselves; Welfare is what we do for those who will not do for themselves. We have seen this truth in operation in the Katrina problems when people waited for others to take care of them and carried it to the point that they complained they were not receiving ENOUGH attention. They lived in the Superdome in self-created squalor waiting for others to clean up after them etc. etc.
How to have your comments make a difference.
Hopefully, there will be hundreds, thousands contributing to this site. But none of the comments will make any difference if every commentor leaves a comment of this format:
1. here’s what’s wrong
2. here’s the solution
3. here’s what SOMEONE ELSE needs to do about it
The essential weakness in this format is that it leaves off item 4. A statement: “here’s what I WILL DO about it in the next 10 days.”
My opinions and your opinions have no value. Notice that you cannot buy a cup of coffee with your opinion. But if I enter a comment and then state what ACTION I am personally taking, something infectious is possible.
Here’s an example. I see that people continue to buy cars that get poor gas mileage. There are several things I could do to influence better choices. For example, I could carry a sign in front of the Hummer dealership this weekend that says “Buy a Hummer today, Insure that your kids wont be able to breathe tomorrow.” Its possible that one person might see that and make a better decision about their car purchase. They might even tell someone else about the sign they saw. Here’s another idea, one that I WILL DO in the next 10 days. I will offer my 12 employees $3,000 toward the purchase of a Prius or Honda Hybrid. Now that’s the employment of capital to make a difference.
So I challenge all contributors to feel free to voice their opinion and then state the action they will take to make a difference. If we hold ourselves to this simple standard, this web site will account for more change than any website I know of.