American Republic Online

Wall Street trader Michael Lewis shares some lessons regarding the subprime blow up:

So right after the Bear Stearns funds blew up, I had a thought: This is what happens when you lend money to poor people.

Don’t get me wrong: I have nothing personally against the poor. To my knowledge, I have nothing personally to do with the poor at all. It’s not personal when a guy cuts your grass: that’s business. He does what you say, you pay him. But you don’t pay him in advance: That would be finance. And finance is one thing you should never engage in with the poor. (By poor, I mean anyone who the SEC wouldn’t allow to invest in my hedge fund.) [net worth <$1 million.]

He leaves us with five lessons regarding “poor people:”

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Presidential candidate John Edwards has a plan to “help” people get preventative care: force them to go to the doctor.

“If you are going to be in the system, you can’t choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK.”

It would seem that Edwards knows best when it comes to your health. You would get no say in the matter. This is worse than Frist’s long distance diagnosis of Schiavo.

The key phrase in Edwards’ comment is “you can’t choose,” and it is quite revealing. Under Edwards’ plan, you would have no choice, and would be at the mercy of the federal government. If I wanted to smoke and drink myself into oblivion, the government would ride to my rescue and take me to the doctor, spending gobs of money on something I never asked for in the first place. And that’s not even the scariest part. You see, I have almost no doubt that those who speak of universal health care (like Edwards) are sincere in their quest to help people. That is, they think that knocking on someone’s door and telling them they need to go to the doctor is “in their best interest.” C.S. Lewis shows us the danger in this:

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A look at the cost of immigration in New Jersey:

Two studies in New Jersey and California in the 90s found

…immigrants used government services at a greater rate than native-born residents did… the typical immigrant family received about $4,044 annually in government services, about 11 percent higher than the average native-born family…

 The net result was that “the average native household generated an annual fiscal surplus of $232” to government, while “the typical foreign household was a net burden of $1,484.”  The gap was even wider in California, where immigrant households produced a net deficit of $3,463 each…

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