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LAISSEZ FAIRE LINKS
- Is there a social obligation for me to provide my neighbors’ opportunity to receive healthcare? What about if his provision negates mine? Rituparna Basu at the Ayn Rand Institute throws down the argument from social obligation used by proponents of Obamacare. One’s only “right” to healthcare rests on one’s moral requirement to earn the best healthcare he or she can, not one’s right to receive it at the expense of someone else. She also gives a comprehensive overview of how Obamacare will greatly limit younger Americans and what we can do to move forward.
- Ari Armstrong at The Objectivist Standard Blog asks “Is ObamaRetire Next?” Now that Progressives have our healthcare, they want our retirement accounts as well.
- Judge Napolitano writes an informative piece contrasting the progressive status quo with the more liberty-loving Madisonians. The latter founded America on the principle of individual liberty and limited government. The Progressives, a title encompassing most of Washington, seeks to turn this idea on its head, placing the State as the first and final arbiter of personal liberty.
- Yaron Brook, Director of the Ayn Rand Institute, on the reality of the minimum wage debate…an impassioned piece of writing.
“Note that Obama doesn’t say that “America deserves a raise” because low-wage workers have suddenly become more productive and, therefore, more valuable to their employers. No, he says that they deserve it because “nobody who works full time should have to live in poverty.” What about the consequences of the minimum wage? Consequences be damned! What about the businessman who must make ends meet and can only pay a wage for unskilled labor that is lower than the minimum wage? Businessmen be damned! What about the workers who are willing to work for lower than minimum wage, but will be laid off or replaced by automated teller machines and other automatic processes? Workers be damned! The minimum wage is right! It makes us feel moral! Reality be damned!”
- Don Watkins, Fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, examines our nation’s dependence on government welfare programs and the unsustainable debt ($200 trillion) it imposes on future generations. His new book Rooseveltcare: How Social Security is Sabotaging The Land of Self-Reliance is a unique intergenerational look at the entitlement state and our moral obligation to challenge it. He also offers it as a free PDF download.