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Originally Posted by PaulS
The lessoning of environmental regs. will hurt the poor more than the middle and upper class. Pres. Trump talked about "carnage" yet his policies will make things much worse for the people he appealed to.
It depends on what is meant by "helping" the poor. If by helping the poor is meant making it easier for them to remain poor, or to remain in place, it might be possible for government central planners to regulate society by totally controlling the market in order to make that happen. Remaining in a place which is defined by central planners is the model for communistic societies. Indeed, it is the aim of communistic societies to eliminate gradations of place--the elimination of class. Everyone (with the possible exception of the planners and regulators) will be levelled to a unitary, hopefully well taken care of, "class."
If what is meant by helping the poor is to create conditions which allow them to move out of that place, regulating society by over regulating its market would be the worst thing for a government to do. Only free market societies allow individuals to fluidly move in and out of their class structures. The freer the market, the more fluid will be the moving in and out of economic classes. In a sense, by eliminating the condition of permanent residence in a class, a free market essentially eliminates a defined class structure. In a free market there is an undefined spectrum between poverty and wealth available to all who have the ability and initiative to navigate through it.
Inherent differences in individual ability and initiative, as well as inherited advantages, will, of course, give an edge to some over others. However, eliminating intrinsic advantages would require the total, centrally planned, communistic society.
A so-called "mixed" economy supposedly allows for free market fluidity in concert with government aid to the bottom spectrum. Unfortunately, in a democracy wherein government tenure depends on periodic election to power, those who rule must constantly promise things in order to get elected. So there cannot be an unchanging, permanently defined "mix" of free market and government regulation. And the promises will have to be made not only to the poor, in order to get a majority (unless the poor are the majority which would speak badly of a society and its government), but promises would have to be made along the spectrum of wealth.
So regulations will have to be concocted which give advantages to some along the entire spectrum--from poor street to Wall Street. The tendency will therefor be the constant growth of regulation. This is especially true when there is no effective limitation on government growth and government power.
America has been experiencing a utopian attempt at mixing market with regulation. Unfortunately, it is also experiencing the expansion of central government power with all the ills which accompany that growth. The balancing act has gone out of kilter and the scales have tipped against freedom in favor of regulation. This is not sustainable in any way except continuing on to total regulation. Total government control which would include forgiveness of the national debt and a centrally planned economy.
And it is less than debatable whether that would be sustainable given history and human nature.
He is slashing projects to help low-income families pay for heating or move to better neighborhoods; cutting nutrition assistance for mothers and help for low-income students to enter college, food support (WIC) for the poor with children, etc. The mortality of the poor, whites w/no more than a college educ. has increased over the last 20 or so years.
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Federal help for low income families has drastically escalated since LBJ's Great Society projects. It has not reduced low income families. Rather it has created more of them. For income to actually grow, there must be a market which creates incomes and produces in ways that those incomes grow. When government projects (regulations) restrict market freedom, market response will be ever more centralized, bigger businesses. Ergo less income producing jobs. And so will require even more "projects" to help low or, more and more, no income families. When income is provided by government, it must be siphoned from the private sector, which shrinks private sector growth, requiring more centralized, merged, business models. And on, and on . . . fueling the Big Government/Big Business complex . . . which eventually must meld into one entity.
If the Federal government would just stick to the few and defined powers as outlined in the U.S. Constitution, the beast of centralized and unlimited government power would be slain. The states, really, are capable of creating regulatory models of their own and can more relevantly address problems that belong to government rather than to the market. Just doing that would solve most of our economic problems and many of the social ones.
The quality of education would improve and its costs would drop dramatically (Federal Government "investment" in education invariably raises its costs). And the teaching of economics, the power of self reliance, rather than some Progressive notion of social justice, as well as the virtue of federated republican (small "r") government over the authoritarian style of an all-powerful central government, would do wonders toward changing the American character from its now identity divided government dependency toward a more American "e pluribus Unum" individuality capable of solving its own problems.