Well, if you cut through the forty-inch layer of sarcasm, and industry-bashing, you are actually close to the right track

Even though sometimes it seems private enterprise screams we can't afford anything except to manufacture, that everything from Workers Compensation to Social Security to low levels of pollutants are going to be financially disastrous. Every time. Always. It seems to me they say that if industry can't pollute it cannot profit, enough. So, they NEED to use the entire environment which belongs to everyone for their own selfish purposes. Proper-think, though clearly shows those purposes aren't selfish, though, because if industry profits are very high, it's good for everyone - from CEOs and CFOs to gardeners, maids, housekeepers, car wash attendants, and so on. And since a person can't make it on Social Security, a bit more lead in the body is a favor to them. Makes sense.

No one, certainly not me, is saying that industries should have carte blanche to dump as much crap into the environment as they like. Objective laws against this are no more unreasonable than laws preventing me from dumping car parts onto my neighbor's lawn. My concern with this new technology is that it will be used to stretch the concept of dangerous pollution far beyond anything scientifically reasonable. Radical environmentalists partnered with attorneys have a long record of hammering very fuzzy science into a weapon against corporations and capitalism. My dad, before he retired, was the pollution control guy for Pillsbury, and he's forgotten more about the subject than anyone on this board knows. I have heard many stories about crazy and unreasonable demands from state and civilian environmental interests with little or no basis in reality. There was one case where a factory got in trouble by discharging water that was too clean into a river.

A few years back, the government environmentalists got a bee in their bonnet about gasoline leaking from underground tanks, and commanded all service stations to replace them at ruinous cost, leaks or no leaks. After a couple of years, Shell, Chevron, and the rest of the giant corporations with deep pockets and battalions of lawyers had shiny new high-tech tanks and stations on every corner. The mom-and-pop outfits had sold out to them, ruined by the costs, and joined the other small businessmen that had been wrecked by government fiats, including the demands of the Americans with Disabilities Act to rebuild their small stores and restaurants. It's not the Big Corporations that eat it when the government attacks, it's the little guys that Democrats are supposed to be the "Party Of."

And for the record, far more people die from the effects of poverty and a ravaged economy than from pollution. In point of fact, if you took a poverty stricken country and plopped a dozen of the biggest, stinkiest factories you could find into it, the net result would probably be an increase in the average life span. The industrial revolution, which was not exactly a poster boy for pollution control in its early stages, actually increased life spans this way. I have seen graphs showing the human risk factors for various things in the industrial environment, ranging from pollution to plane crashes. At the bottom of the graph was a line labeled "living below the poverty line." This line stretched far beyond all the others, and required a break in the line to make it fit the graph at this scale.

The next initially puzzling paradigm is that we've never had a stronger economy than that which was generated during the Clinton administration and inherited by Bush AND we've never had a more people-friendly economy in terms of things like Social Security, Medicaid, Workers Compensation and so on. Now, virtually every one of those was fought against tooth and nail by Republicans. More people friendly - strong economy. Huh. And thank God under proper-think there is an answer.



It must be that we would have had a much, much better way of life if none of those things happened. That's gotta be it. That it's good, except for those unfortunate enough to pay taxes, those poor but not hungry, put-upon people paying for deadbeats, corporate and individual. That it's paying for a marginal existence for individuals and a lavish one for corporations is irrelevant - welfare is welfare. Well, maybe not, because if corporations do well, even on welfare, we all do well. But it could have been much better.



Again, cutting through the snottiness, you are basically right. Things would be much better if a third of our GDP wasn't filtered through the government into areas that the free market finds less than attractive. We are successful in spite of the massive redistribution of wealth by our government, not because of it. And your statement: "More people friendly - stronger economy" makes the assumption that somehow "Social Security, Medicaid, Workers Compensation and so on" are responsible for economic growth. I don't think so.

And, as anyone who has read my stuff knows, I am no fan of corporate welfare either. I do find it irritating when liberals try to put tax cuts into this category, though. They should save it for the mollusc-minds in the media.

Hope some of this really makes sense to you someday.