The Democrat Contradiction

I need to start off with an admission. In this essay I make some sweeping generalizations. I justify them based upon my experience talking to self proclaimed Democrats. There are two of them:

1) Generally, Democrats "believe in" (their term -- not mine) evolution.

2) Generally, Democrats prefer the federal government to do a particular service rather than the states or local government, or allowing businesses, or allowing individuals themselves to do it. The example I'll use is health care.

Here is the contradiction.

What are the fundamental principles of evolution? Most will be quick to say "that the fittest survive". But that isn't really deep enough. Closer to the truth is that evolution is based upon two mechanisms.

First, nature provides a near infinite number of experiments -- tests. Each test is the particular gene makeup of an individual organism. It is interesting that often an individual's genes are referred to as its "instructions" or "rules" by which it acts, behaves, grows, etc.

Second, these tests have a success or failure. The individual survives and reproduces or it doesn't.

The individuals have groupings like genius, species, class, variety. The tests are most often looked at using statistics: e.g. more of variety A reproduced than variety B. And usually there are mundane numbers spewed around like 28.5%. I mention these aspects just to complete the picture.

There is a peculiar observation of evolution which is that the exact same experiment might work in one situation but fails in another situation. A tropical lily thrives in the tropics but dies in the north. A conifer loves the cold north but is choked out by other trees in more moderate climates. As a result of evolution, there is a wide variety of organisms each specialized for the environment they are in.

A federal plan is a single, unified, plan or system. There is one federal Health Care system. There is one set of rules to govern all the health care entities and how they apply to all the people in all of the country. The key here is "one" -- one set of rules or genes.

Do you see the contradiction yet? Perhaps not.

The contradiction is if Democrats actually "believed in" evolution they would hold dear the principles behind it. In particular, millions of tests and not just one test.

To be consistent, instead of arguing for a unified "one" plan, they should argue for many plans. Perhaps one for each state, or preferably one for each county if they want some form of government to take on this job. We won't broach the possibility of allowing each company or even each person do it since that begins to mix apples and oranges (mixing government based verses non-government based experiments).

Lets take for example, the possibility that each state implement their health care plan the way they see fit. In that situation, we would have 50 different plans running concurrently. In five years or ten years, most would die in which case, the state would pick another system. But some would survive. We would see populations moving between states to get access to the better health care system just as we see companies fleeing California today to get away from their tax system. We would definitely gain much more data on what works and what doesn't work using fifty concurrent experiments than with just one. The individual voters of state A could see what state B was doing and, if it made sense to them, vote to enact similar plans.

Imagine still the possibility of each county implementing their health care. In that situation, they could specialize even more for the exact environment that they are in.

Having dozens or thousands of concurrent health care experiments would allow for, and put faith in, the principles of evolution when applied to health care systems.

Instead, the Democrats are actually arguing the Creationist's viewpoint for health care. That one, omnipotent, greater power will create the perfect plan.

Am I rich?

I'm doing my taxes today for 2010. There are all sorts of deductions. Well, except not for me.

Medical deductions? Nope. Not for me. I have to have $8000 or more of medical expenses before I can take the first penny.

Tuition deductions? Nope, they faded away even if I made only one third of my income. I paid $14,000 for tuition but none is deductible.

Casualty or Theft? Nope. Has to be more than 10% of "adjusted gross income". So, I had $6000 of loss last year but no deduction.

The list continues but you probably get the idea.

What bothers me isn't that I'm not getting any credit for these deductions. What bothers me is the general sense in this country that the tax system is for the rich. But reviewing the twenty five plus categories of possible deductions, all of them fade away before you get anywhere near the income needed to be considered rich.