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ORIGINAL: Frumious
Interesting opinion piece from the conservative David Brooks, [link=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/opinion/12brooks.html]http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/opinion/12brooks.html[/link]
the Republican Partys knee-jerk response to many problems is: Throw a voucher at it. Schools are bad. Throw a voucher. Health care systems a mess. Replace it with federally funded individual choice. Economic anxiety? Lower some tax rate.
The latest example of the mismatch between ideology and reality is the housing crisis. The partys individualist model cannot explain the social contagion that caused hundreds of thousands of individuals to make bad decisions in the same direction at the same time. A Republican administration intervened gigantically in the market to handle the Bear Stearns, Freddie and Fannie debacles. But it has no conservative rationale to explain its action, no language about the importance of social equilibrium it might use to justify itself.
I agree totally. The Republican party was the party of ideas in the nineties; regardless of what you want to say, it was the Republicans that pushed for a balanced budget, welfare reform, decreased capital gains and estate taxes. But the Republicans have become lazy.
The Democrats have the reverse problem. There answer to everything is create a gov’t program and fund it with more tax dollars.
There has to be a middle ground. Brooks brought up education. Well, I don’t think vouchers are the total solution; but they are part of the solution. Every place that vouchers are tried, they signficantly increase test scores and high school completion rates. Now, this is only going to solve the problem for a minority of students; but it can be part of the solution, including increased funding, better pay for teachers, education reform, etc.
We need to confront these big problems the same way we are starting to discuss energy reform; a kitchen sink approach. A lot of things will work, some won’t. But restricting these programs because either lobbyists or unions don’t want it is unacceptable.
