Blog

The “benefit principle” and its problems. According to Wikipedia, the benefit principle is “a concept in the theory of taxation from public finance. It bases taxes to pay for public-goods expenditures on a politically-revealed willingness to pay for benefits received. The principle is sometimes likened to the function of prices in allocating private goods.” What are its problems though? According to Hello Vaia, “Two main drawbacks of the benefit principle of taxation are: it’s often difficult to accurately determine the level of benefits each individual receives from public services, and it may exacerbate wealth inequality as lower income earners may pay a disproportionately higher amount for services compared to higher income earners.”

The Washington Monument Syndrome. According to Wikipedia, “The Washington Monument syndrome, also known as the Mount Rushmore syndrome or the firemen first principle, is a term used to describe the phenomenon of government agencies in the United States cutting the most visible or appreciated service provided by the government when faced with budget cuts.” The Department of Interior needed to make budget cuts, so they shut down the Washington Monument knowing that the public would demand them to reopen it. 

Outcomes of anti-poverty programs. Anti-poverty programs were supposed to keep people out of poverty by giving them things. The outcome was that more people wanted to be in poverty to get free things. 

The primary problem facing a policymaker trying to design a program to benefit people in unfortunate circumstances. According to standardfusion.com, some problems facing policymakers are, “Inconsistent Document Creation and Editing, Poor Policy Maintenance, Lack of Accountability, Outdated Documents, Improper Policy Mapping.”

How can private-property rights help solve environmental problems? The environmental problem that I will talk about is pollution. Now there are many types of pollution. There’s just throwing trash on the ground (which is what most people think about when they hear the word pollution), there’s air pollution, noise pollution, hunting pollution, and many more. How can private-property rights help with pollution though? I’ll explain hunting pollution, because it’s the most understandable.  Imagine that there’s a forest that nobody owns with lots of animals. A lot of people are going to take their guns and go shoot all those animals, because nobody owns the property so no one owns the animals. But there’s this one person that thinks “If I only shoot a little bit of animals this year and leave enough animals to reproduce, then there will be enough animals for hunting next year.” That guys an idiot. Any animals that he doesn’t shoot, someone else will. But what if that guy owns the forest. He can make a number of animals that everyone can shoot, then there will be enough for next year. 

What have been some of the problems with the federal prohibition on certain drugs? Prohibition is a law that makes it illegal to sell certain drugs. What’s the problem? According to DocsTeach, “Prohibition was enacted to protect individuals and families from the “scourge of drunkenness.” However, it had unintended consequences including: a rise in organized crime associated with the illegal production and sale of alcohol, an increase in smuggling, and a decline in tax revenue.” So it was a complete failure. 

Some of the factors that have contributed to rising health-care costs in the United States. According to People Keep there are nine reasons. “1. Medical providers are paid for quantity, not quality, 2. The U.S. population is becoming more unhealthy, 3. Newer healthcare technology is more expensive, 4. Many Americans don’t choose their own healthcare plan, 5. There’s a lack of information about medical care and its costs, 6. Hospitals and providers are well-positioned to demand higher prices, 7. Fear of malpractice lawsuits, 8. Inflation’s impact on the economy, 9. The U.S. population is growing older.”

“World War II was a time of great prosperity in the United States.” This statement is a lie. Just because we won, doesn’t mean that we had great prosperity. The biggest reason I say this is because the government was too busy with the war to focus on America. They sent all our young, strong, and hard workers to fight in the war. Because they were gone, they had to be replaced by teenagers, older men, and women. Because of this, we couldn’t prosper anywhere near the rate we did before the war. 

What is the problem that Ludwig von Mises identified that a socialist economic planning board faces? According to Wikipedia, “Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises was an Austrian–American Austrian School economist, historian, logician, and sociologist. Mises wrote and lectured extensively on the societal contributions of classical liberalism and the power of consumers.” Mises believed that rational economic calculation wasn’t able to occur in a socialist economy. He thought that this could only lead to chaos and disaster. 
What has been the most significant contributing factor to the abolition of child labor? According to History Channel, “Through the first half of the 1800s, child labor was an essential part of the agricultural and handicraft economy of the United States. Children worked on family farms and as indentured servants for others. To learn a trade, boys often began their apprenticeships between the ages of ten and fourteen.” This child labor wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. A lot of families couldn’t make enough money so their children got jobs to help their parents. So what led to it getting abolished? According to History Channel, “Nineteenth century reformers and labor organizers sought to restrict child labor and improve working conditions to uplift the masses, but it took the Great Depression—a time when Americans were desperate for employment—to shake long-held practices of child labor in the United States.“

Is Kant’s nature/freedom dualism clearer in ‘Farewell to the Master’ or ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’? What was Kant’s nature/freedom dualism? Kant believed that  human thought are inexorably riven by fundamental dualities. There are many of these fundamental dualities that he talks about, but the one he talks most about is the distinction between practical and theoretical reason. According to Great Thinkers, “It can often look as if Kant thinks that rhetorical reasoning and practical reason constitute 2 separate domains of human thought that cannot possibly be joined in a single system: in theoretical reasoning we use the pure forms of sensibility and understanding, that is our pure intuitions of the structure of space and time on the one hand and the fundamental logical structures of the discursive thoughts on the other, to define the basic laws of a realm that cannot be influenced by our moral conceptions of how things ought to be, while we appeal to pure practical reason to determine how truly free beings ought to relate to themselves and one another regardless of what they actually do. Thus it can seem as if in Kant’s view the realms of nature and freedom, while each possesses its own kind of systematic laws and organization, cannot be joined in a single system.”

What is Farwell to the Master? ccording to Wikipedia, “‘Farewell to the Master’ is a science fiction short story by American writer Harry Bates. It was first published in the October 1940 issue of Astounding Science Fiction on page 58. It provided the basis of the 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still and its 2008 remake.” 

What is The Day the Earth Stood Still? Thus is just a remake of Farwell to the Master. 

Is Kant’s nature/freedom dualism clearer in ‘Farewell to the Master’ or ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’? I think it is Farwell to the Master. This is becausee robot thinks he is sovereign instead of the police bot that he was supposed to be. 

What is one issue that reflects the individualist versus collectivist outlook in your own times? According to the dictionary an individualist is “an advocate of a social theory favoring freedom of action for individuals over collective or state control” A collectivist is “an adherent of the practice or principle of giving a group priority over each individual in it” So we see that each group has a different idea, but how have they acted toward each over the years? The biggest issue in todays time is politics. But how does it do this The answer to this is more simple than most people think. Today the individualists want to be free. America used to be free and now we are being controlled by the government. The collectivists are blind to the world around them and think more government is better. Most politicians are collectivists. They want to be in control so they tax us, teach us lies, make the government bigger, threaten us, make stupid laws, and spy on us through our devices! Collectivist think this is good! Now people argue over government and this has caused more problems. Our world is falling apart because of what the government has done to it. 

Why was the world a dangerous place in the 1960s and 1970s? A big reason was the Cold War. This war lasted from 1947 to 1991. This war was influenced by World War II. It was the US and their allies against the Soviet Union and their allies. One more thing was the assassination of  J. F. Kennedy. This caused a great uproar in the people. The vice president took over and started the Welfare State. This was very stressful, but not really dangerous. 

What have been the effects of foreign aid programs, such that virtually everyone was describing them as failures by the 1990’s? A negative effect according to edubirdie.com is Increase dependency-less economically developed countries (LEDCs) become more dependent on donor countries and become heavily dependent, which causes the economy the stay at equilibrium.” According to javatpoint.com, some other ones are “Exhaustion of Vital Resources. Has an impact on the domestic industry. Lopsided economic growth. The Dangers of Dumping. Reliance on foreign countries. Opposition to national defense. Economic planning and unpredictability. Legal inconsistency.”

Is “income inequality” a problem? According to Britannica, “income inequality, in economics, significant disparity in the distribution of income between individuals, groups, populations, social classes, or countries. Income inequality is a major dimension of social stratification and social class.” This can lead to things like political polarization and lower economic growth. Income inequality is a problem if it is used regularly. 

What were the important components of Germany’s Economic Miracle? According to Wikipedia, “The Wirtschaftswunder (“economic miracle“), also known as the Miracle on the Rhine, was the rapid reconstruction and development of the economies of West Germany and Austria after World War II.” There were tw0 important components, currency reform and the elimination of price controls. According to Springer, “A currency reform is a prearranged redenomination or alteration of the currency, sometimes with confiscatory elements.” According to the Dictionary, “a government regulation establishing a maximum price to be charged for specified goods and services, especially during periods of war or inflation.”

What are some of the problems with the concept of public goods? Public goods are a service or commodity that are provided to the public by economics. These public goods are most likely bought by taxes, Some of these public goods are national defense, fresh water, and law enforcement. A problem that relates to public goods is the free rider problem. According to Study.com, “The free-rider problem arises when individuals who benefit from a public good avoid paying for it. Because consumers have the inducement to be free riders rather than purchasers, the market will not generate an efficient outcome and hence market failure.”

The process by which the market economy tends toward an improvement in the standard of living. Economic growth. According to CK-12, “Growth in an economy is measured by a continual increase in the production of goods and services. As a result of economic growth, the standard of living improves, meaning people are making more money, the population is able to grow, and education levels rise.“