I respectfully disagree.
1. I think people get the government they deserve. I don't see adding more government and infrastructure as ever a solution to economic or social problems.
2. I'm sure people there are payed what they are worth - as are people here. I don't believe just "paying people more" solves anything.
3. I don't get the hate for diplomas and student loans. If someone wants an education - someone else should pay for it???
My student loans were like $80k when I graduated. Quite frankly, I choose an career and professional program where I would have no problem paying them back. If you choose to go to college for a non marketable skill - who's fault is that?
I gladly write that check each month. Without college, I'd still be making $36k a year.
I don't think a study of history will support the second sentence of your first argument. If you look at the quality of day-to-day life for most Americans from Reconstruction through the early 1930s, a period when America was already well on the road to becoming a industrial society but almost entirely unregulated and the Federal Government was quite small relative to the current size, not many people would willingly trade places from the modern era. It was a period of financial instability/uncertainty, short life spans, disease and injury. Even if you factor out advances in technology like electricity and better medical care there is compelling evidence that government in the form of water and sewer infrastructure, controls on pollution, worker safety standards, etc. has dramatically improved most peoples lives. Additionally, post-WWII many of the technological advances were partially or entirely the product of government research or research grants. Similarly you can look at tightly governed modern societies (Germany, the Scandinavian countries, Finland, Singapore, etc.) and contrast the quality of life in those countries with minimally governed countries and I don't think the quality of life for most people favors small government.
Certainly there is an
immense amount of waste and bloat in our federal government, just look at the F-35, but do I believe that the FDA, EPA, OSHA, SSA, etc., are conceptually and inherently bad? The answer to that has to be a ringing "NO!" for me. For most Americans the quality of daily saw relatively steady and significant improvement from the late 1930s into the 1970s.
I do, however, think that quality of elected government has gotten markedly worse in the USA over the last twenty plus years relative to the 1950s through 1970s even in light of the not insignificant problems of those years. Personally, I don't think electing Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush or Scott Walker or... is likely to improve things.
