Article 1, Section 8 - Question for Conservatives

Can you show any obvious failure? It is suppressed by government and when it is the least under the leash is when it works the best for everyone. The example of that is the great expansion of this country due to it, unless you think your flush toilets, vehicles, roads, and housing are an obvious failure.

 

Numerous investigations explored the causes of the explosion and record-setting spill. Notably, the U.S. government's September 2011 report pointed to defective cement on the well, faulting mostly BP, but also rig operator Transocean and contractor Halliburton. Earlier in 2011, a White House commission likewise blamed BP and its partners for a series of cost-cutting decisions and an insufficient safety system, but also concluded that the spill resulted from "systemic" root causes and "absent significant reform in both industry practices and government policies, might well recur".

The lack of regulation which is free market thinking let this billion dollar corporation cut costs on materials and not install an emergency valve that would have shut the flow ~ like so many other gulf oil company's do on their own. Left unchecked, corporations cannot be trusted to regulate themselves. This resulted in lost lives and billions of lost dollars in the food and other markets. along with those that had depended on that gulf for work and a living and a place to live. You ask for one ~ I give you one. BP will never be able to pay for the damaged Gulf, just like Exxon Valdez ruined the Western coast line that will be ruined for hundred's of years.

It doesn't matter if BP paid for negligence, the point is, left to their own free market practices they will harm others.

 

Welfare, the trillions spent, and not work is an obvious failure. Hiring people to work is not suppressed, wages and benefits are suppressed, even on the leash. You seem to forget, corporations control congress. You don't see the unemployed & poverty stricken masses with a fist full of money and a herd of lobbyists running around DC. THINK about it.

You are getting in late on the subject of trillion dollar welfare, or you saying your great expansion caused welfare. Welfare, poverty, low/no wages, unemployment, no benefits,.... is a capitalist failure.

 

Welfare was the progressive banner that Woodrow Wilson pushed over 100 years ago. Now that government is stealing the people blind it is only natural that anyone that has a need or want will try and secure a piece of that pie. Capitalism is not the problem.

 

Dunno how this discussion went from price fixing or anti "price gouging" regulation to stating that the free market somehow exempts corporations from taking responsibility for their actions. I never said corporations should not pay when they are at fault, or create a "Golf Oil Spill Disaster." I guess you know you lost the "price gouging" argument so you offered another argument in its place. Certainly government "product design" regulation is not always right, and is often wrong. Take what is occurring at Toyota for example.

Toyota Motor has alerted United States safety officials that seat material in several vehicles, including its top-selling Camry sedan, fails to meet fire retardation standards and could result in a recall.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101380267​

The seats meet Toyota standards and most probably Japan fire standards, but I guess not US Federal standards. Oddly enough with over 110,000 so equipped cars there has never been a related fire; not in the US, Japan, or any other place in the world. Don’t things burn exactly the same in Japan as they do in Washington DC?

Get real. Most of those regulations you so cherish are the result of highly paid lobbyists “selling” shoes regulations to law makers so their employers, BIG BUSINESS profit.

 

Again you can't cite a true failure of either capitalism or the free market. You cite "low wages" and "no benefits" as examples. Look at Wal-Mart. They pay as low as they can (paying the legally prescribed minimum wage) and then educate their employees on how to apply and receive welfare benefits. Without such assistance Wal-Mart would have to pay higher wages. No one would take a job that did not pay them enough to live. Again Democrats destroyed the Free Market, and then point to failures of their controlled market as failures of Capitalism!

 

I know very few that want to cut out welfare. The problem is how much do we spend? Trouble with Liberals, there isn't a social program they don't want to fund and it makes no difference if we have the money to fund them all. They want them. There has to be limits.

 

"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his father has acquired too much, in order to spare to others who (or whose fathers) have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, "to guarantee to everyone a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."

Thomas Jefferson

 

You just admitted welfare is over a 100 years of capitalist failure old, so it has nothing to do with gov. stealing people blind today.

Capitalism is still the problem.

Welfare predates Wilson, so capitalism has been a failure for years before that. For instance, in 1824 The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) was established. It was the first federal organization to attempt to provide direct assistance in the welfare of some of our Americans. Capitalism was a problem back then. Then 1835 there was the Boston Society for the Prevention of Pauperism, and by 1843 these welfare was spread out across America to other cities. By 1863 we have states building almshouses for the poor. In1865 At the end of the Civil War, the United States established its first federal welfare agency, the Freedmen’s Bureau, to provide temporary relief, education, employment, and health care for the newly released slaves.

It might help to educate yourself on the ways America has taken care of its people for 200 years with failed Capitalism.
http://www.socialworkers.org/profession/centennial/milestones_2.htm

 

Welfare is not any part of capitalism. You actually think that government control of Indians was capitalism? Again, government is usually the problem, not capitalism.

 

I never said I like regulations, quite the opposite. I said remove all regulations, let consumer beware and sue to own corporations that harm them, and I said that is free market. And I said that on this thread, so you are not keeping up, and you keep getting distracted from what I am talking about: Capitalism is failure and that is why we have welfare. If you want to end welfare change the economic system so it doesn't have to exist.

deregulate:#396

 

Welfare is the result of capitalism, like profit is the result of capitalism, like employment is the result of capitalism. You really need to get a grip. Your little lesson in American welfare is YOUR OWN DENIAL that it somehow began with Wilson, which is a lie. OK? And you had these problems since you have had capitalism, long before regulation. OK

So just accept that capitalism is a failure and it creates the need for welfare. Case closed.

 

Welfare is the result of utopians, not capitalism. Wilson introduced the Federal system progressive ideology and championed taking money from the people to pay for it. What came before it did not rely on stealing from the people directly for funding.

What government is supposed to do is to protect us from some basic bad behavior that is not essential for capitalism and that is monopoly, fraud, and illegal force, where you are forced to purchase something you do not want. Unfortunately government is now doing just that.

Capitalism is a social system based on the principle of individual rights. Politically, it is the system of laissez-faire (freedom). Legally it is a system of objective laws (rule of law as opposed to rule of man). Economically, when such freedom is applied to the sphere of production its result is the free-market.

Government bastardizes that with crony capitalism and picks winners and loser, oppressing true capitalism, or in the case of health care, is over 50% of health care spending, which again changes the outcome for the worse.

 

Some people claim that the general welfare means that the government is permitted to make whatever laws they want as long as it is for the general welfare. They further define “the general welfare” to either mean just general prosperity or others will even go as far to say that it means it permits government aid to the homeless, etc.

First of all, “welfare” did not mean government aid in 1787. Welfare simply meant prosperity, happiness, etc.

http://www.usconstitution.net/glossary.html#WELFARE

Thus, saying that the general welfare permits government aid to the poor is simply wrong.

Second, the “general” welfare and just plain “welfare” are not the same thing. The “general” welfare is meant to mean the entire public. It benefits everyone. The federal government taking money from person A to give to person B is unconstitutional. Taking money from person A to provide a service that benefits both person A and B is constitutional (depending on what the service is). Again, this is by simple definition.

So, we know that Congress can do whatever they want if it’s for the the happiness of the public, right? Well, the general welfare is cited in two parts of the Constitution — the preamble and article 1, section 8. Since the preamble is not technically law, let’s cite the official clause in article 1, section 8:

Let’s see if we can understand this fully by simple grammatical definition. Congress has power to lay and collect taxes — duties, imposts and excises — to provide for the general welfare. I think we can all agree on that? I used dashes — the Constitution uses comas. You could use parentheses if you wanted. It’s a matter of style, but they all mean the same thing. Duties, imposts, and excises are different types of taxes. So, to shorten the clause to put it in more simplistic terms and get to the main point (and since we’re only talking about the general welfare part), I could say

Interchangeably, I could say

Of course, this is not the only part in article 1, section 8.

“But” all of these taxes must be granted from the specific enumerated powers. The general welfare is a restriction on government — the government may only use the specific enumerated powers if it for the general welfare or the common defense, thus prohibiting social welfare programs as we know them today. The general welfare clause does not grant Congress the power to do whatever they want as long as it is for the general welfare. Why would our founders specifically list all those enumerated powers if the general welfare could mean anything, anyway? This is all by simple dictionary and grammatical definitions.

On a side note:
I often see conservatives use the argument that the Constitution actually says “promote” the general welfare, so the government can only encourage the activity. This argument is a fallacy. Although it does say “promote” in the preamble, it says “provide” in article 1, section 8, which is the part that is law.

 

And has been doing it for 200+ years, and you will never see true pure capitalism, which would still be a failure.

 

I just need to stop you at the beginning of your argument, for how could you possibly build an argument on a false pretense. It is like lying, one lie leads to the next, and a next in ridiculous BS. So take a deep breath! While there was a rush for the document, that doesn't mean everybody viewed that document in the same way from the very beginning. GW even today has different meanings to you than me.

Alexander Hamilton, argued for a broad interpretation of GW which viewed spending as an enumerated power Congress could exercise independently to benefit the general welfare, such as to assist national needs in agriculture (AFDC) or education (Public Schooling), provided that the spending is general in nature and does not favor any specific section of the country over any other. So you see your first mistake is thinking that GW was limited in some way., not that it matters, because it was further expanded in what we call legal precedence and through courts and laws grew from there to what it is today. Hamilton's view prevailed during the administrations of Presidents Washington and Adams.

So you really have to back track a bit to get any kind of story straightened out.

 

Let me stop you right there

Alexander Hamilton was an idiot.

 

You seem to be missing the point about potable and waste water management systems. In any case, why do you believe we would be worse off with the public sector being responsible for the physical layer of infrastructure? In my opinion, 24/7 should be expected in modern times simply to help provide infrastructure support to our republican form of Government; which is a requirement under our form of federal government.

 

I believe that is a simple leadership failure on the part of State governors who are commanders in chief of their State militias who should be able to build better aqueducts and roads in their spare time.

 

It doesn't help to sacrifice the end of our War on Poverty to the means of our War on Drugs, contrary to the dictates of "plain reason and legal axioms."