A Quote by Ben Fountain
The Gilded Age robber barons - the Goulds, the Vanderbilts, the Morgans and Rockefellers - did quite well under laissez-faire. Most of the rest of Americans were still stuck in the ditch, with little to no economic security, life expectancy of roughly 45 years, and horrific infant mortality rates that claimed 300 babies per 1,000 in the cities.
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Rightfully given near-deity status in the early days of industrial America, the J.P. Morgans, Rockefellers, Carnegies, and Vanderbilts of the world not only ran our country, they were also revered - and often despised - as larger-than-life personalities who could perform feats mere mortals could only dream of.
Infant mortality and life expectancy are reasonable indicators of general well-being in a society.
Ultimately, I would like to say yes, conditions have improved, but there is still vast room for more improvement; we are still the poorest of the poor. And we are still statistically considered to be extremely disrupted culturally, and have extreme health needs in many areas, as well as high suicide rates and infant mortality rates.
In the 10 cities with the nation's highest obesity rates, the direct costs connected with obesity and obesity-related diseases are roughly $50 million per 100,000 residents. And if these 10 cities just cut their obesity rates down to the national average, all added up they combine to save nearly $500 million in healthcare costs each year.
All that I can say is that we are spending far more per capita than people in any other country, and our health care outcomes are in many cases worse in terms of life expectancy, infant mortality and so forth.
The income tax only taxed the Rockefellers, the Morgans and the Vanderbilts. It was aimed at the top 4 percent, and the top rate then in 1913, was 7 percent. Woodrow Wilson had a big ceremony and said, "I'm delighted to be president at the creation of this popular new tax."
There was nothing natural about laissez-faire; free markets could never have come into being merely by allowing things to take their course. Just as cotton manufactures were created by the help of protective tariffs, export bounties, and indirect wage subsidies, laissez-faire was enforced by the state.
Reagan's story of freedom superficially alludes to the Founding Fathers, but its substance comes from the Gilded Age, devised by apologists for the robber barons. It is posed abstractly as the freedom of the individual from government control a Jeffersonian ideal at the roots of our Bill of Rights, to be sure. But what it meant in politics a century later, and still means today, is the freedom to accumulate wealth without social or democratic responsibilities and license to buy the political system right out from everyone else.
In all, 86 per cent of the increased life expectancy was due to decreases in infectious diseases. And the bulk of the decline in infectious disease deaths occurred prior to the age of antibiotics. Less than 4 per cent of the total improvement in life expectancy since 1700s can be credited to twentieth-century advances in medical care.
Social mobility decreased under Labour and under the current government it is reversing. The differences between the poorest and richest are returning to Victorian levels. We don't have open sewers and infant mortality rates at fifty percent but in economic terms we're getting to a level of disparity we haven't seen for a couple of hundred years. And we're getting there very quickly.
It's really quite a situation. It's ridiculous. I make $200,000, $300,000 a night. For years I was working little dives, and if I got $700 a week, I'd say, "Wow, I'm really cooking.
The average Mexican lives longer now than the average Briton did in 1955. Infant mortality is lower today in Nepal than it was in Italy in 1951. The proportion of Vietnamese living on less than $2 a day has dropped from 90 per cent to 30 per cent in twenty years. The rich have got richer, but the poor have done even better.
Only 1 percent of the homosexual population in America will die of old age. The average life expectancy for a homosexual in the United States of America is 43 years of age. A lesbian can only expect to live to be 45 years of age. Homosexuals represent 2 percent of the population, yet today they're carrying 60 percent of the known cases of syphilis.
To check centralization and usurping of power ... we require a new laissez-faire. The old laissez-faire was founded upon a misapprehension of human nature, an exultation of individuality (in private character often a virtue) to the condition of a political dogma, which destroyed the spirit of community and reduced men to so many equipollent atoms of humanity, without sense of brotherhood or purpose.
I remember the first show I had there were about 3 people, at least there was somebody. The next one was about 30. Then a couple years later there were 300 people and before I knew it there were 3,000... Then one day, I opened my eyes and there were 300,000 singing all my lyrics.
Laissez-faire capitalism, or anarchocapitalism, is simply the economic form of the libertarian ethic. Laissez-faire capitalism encompasses the notion that men should exchange goods and services, without regulation, solely on the basis of value for value. It recognizes charity and communal enterprises as voluntary versions of this same ethic. Such a system would be straight barter, except for the widely felt need for a division of labor in which men, voluntarily, accept value tokens such as cash and credit. Economically, this system is anarchy, and proudly so.
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