>>>- double the strength of levees in N.O.
>>>- get college tuitions back to 1999 levels
>>
>>While I agree that all the things you suggest would be a better application of the money than where it actually went, I find it very interesting that one of the choices was never "Return it to the people you taxed it from to begin with and let them decide how they want to spend their own money" <bg>
>
>And when was the last time this actually happened? :)
>
>Besides, they'd squander it right away.
Well, besides tax cuts, it doesn't happen often. But the way the proposition was structured it presupposed all money belongs to the state and the individual only has what the state lets him have. That is the assumption I question. ( oddly reminiscent of an older idea that all power rests with the king and the people only have such rights as he deigns to give them.)
And "squandering" it would mean spending it on goods and services they personally give value to and enriching those who provide those goods and services so they can hire more workers, produce more product and invest more capital.
It actually works rather well <s>
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
