Really?! Did You Hear What You Just Said?

To protect the innocent, I'll leave this young man's name anonymous. If he somehow ever finds his way to this blog, I'm sure he'll recognize himself, and I hope it is with embarrassment that he ever said these things.

Anon: "I'm probably in the minority, but I think taxes should be raised everywhere."

Me: "Anon, since you say you think taxes should be raised everywhere, I take it that you have an extreme faith in the government to use money wisely. As such, I expect to hear that you send an extra hefty check to the IRS every year as a donation to help the government out and reduce the burden on the rest of us... right?"

Anon: "I do have a little faith, but then again, my views might change when I get a real job. I am still in school, so I have not been faced with taxes like the rest of you."

Ah, yes. Please dispense more advice that you are not following yourself, at least not yet. Yes, Anon, your views might just change when YOU are the one sending Uncle Sam checks totaling thousands of dollars per year. Later, we get this:

Anon: "Unrestrained free market is not the answer. Neither is strict government control. Everyone focuses on the negative things the government does. We take for granted what it has done right and forget about it. I am not saying I fully support government. They have made many mistakes, but many of the advancements in technology, health and medicine, education, energy, etc. have been heavily supported by the government."

Me: "'Everyone focuses on the negative things the government does.'... that's because they do extremely little positive. Advancements in technology, medicine, education, and energy have all come about as a result of the free market. Take away government, and many of those fields would advance faster than they do. Take away free market, and we'd still be living in the middle ages. Just because the government gets involved at some point with regulations, subsides, or tax incentives does not mean they were responsible for the developments.

Me: "Actually, wait, I take back the one about education. Nearly everyone agrees that the state of education in this country has deteriorated badly over the past century, and we lag behind many other countries in educational standards and test scores. That one, yes, the government was responsible for that 'advancement.'"

Anon: "I don't have any facts to back up what I have said. I am sure I can find many if I do some research, but I am not interested at this moment in looking. It is idealistic to believe the free market created all these benefits. I said the government supported these advancements, usually through funding, not that they were responsible. Free market is an extreme. Extremes don't work. They never have. At least in the long run."

Oh yes, some more sage advice from the expounder who can't even bother to do the research necessary to back up his own position! I replied with:

Me: "Anon, you are entitled to your opinion. However, I think it's quite interesting that you dismiss my argument at face value without bothering to do any research to either 1) discover for yourself where the truth might lie, or 2) at the VERY least find a few facts to back up your own argument. The United States has enjoyed over 2 centuries of economic prosperity precisely because it has historically placed fewer restrictions on the free market than any other nation. We are poised to lose our status as the world's largest economy and are mired in an economic quagmire at just about the point in history when our government's size, and the number of regulations it imposes, has caught and surpassed most of the Western World. Meanwhile, China's star has been rising fast since the mid 1970's, which is precisely when it began loosening economic regulations. The free market is an extreme that doesn't work? Right."

I hope he sees the light.