Chang Se-moon
Professor of economics at the University of South Alabama
I admit that I went to see the movie called “2016: Obama’s America.” It is an anti-Obama documentary based on a book by Dinesh D’Souza and directed by Gerald Molen, who won an Academy Award for co-producing Schindler’s List. I was thinking that those, except me, who had seen the movie were Romney supporters, while Obama supporters would simply ignore the movie. Therein lies the problem of American politics.
Traditionally, I believe that 40 percent of American voters will always vote for the Democratic candidate, while the other 40 percent will always vote for the Republican.
When I say always, I really mean always, no matter what. In this year’s presidential election, the percentage appears to have increased to 45 percent each. Only about 10 percent of voters appear to be objective enough to evaluate the two candidates on their merits before they vote. Does it matter? Yes, it does.
Many years back, I was chatting with one of my graduate school friends about how to recruit faculty to our departments. This is what my friend told me.
Democracy is not necessarily a good system because if the majority of existing faculty members of a department were incompetent, they would recruit a faculty who will not make them look any worse.
No one knows exactly what percentage of the American public receive government assistance such as medicare, medicaid, social security, student loans, housing subsidy, unemployment insurance, loan guarantees, price subsidies, investment incentives, and more.
The percentage is likely to hover around 50 percent, if not more. Just like the incompetent faculty, there is a good possibility that about half of the American voters will vote for the presidential candidate who promises to secure, if not increase, government assistance that they receive, even if the government has to borrow every penny of it.
Many Americans, including voters and political leaders, act as if they have never heard Milton Friedman’s famous words: There is no such thing as free lunch. They never understand that somebody has to pay one way or another. Let me give you an example.
On February 16, this year, Sandra Kay Fluke, a Georgetown Law School graduate and women’s rights activist, testified at the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on the importance of requiring insurance plans to cover birth control pills, including those at Catholic churches and universities that are against birth control: “Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a
woman over $3,000 during law school. For a lot of students who, like me, are on public interest scholarships, that’s practically an entire summer’s salary. Forty percent of the female students at Georgetown Law reported to us that they struggle financially as a result of this policy.”
She did not mention who would pay for the pills, as if these pills would be made available free of costs to anyone including religious people who are opposed to the use of contraceptives as well as gays and lesbians who may not need the pills.
I do not necessarily agree with the underlying theme made in movie 2016, because both Obama and Romney will have to make adjustments once they are elected.
However, the global trend toward greater entitlement will eventually have to be paid for as it is now in Greece, Italy, Spain, and beyond. At least in the United States, the rich are just as guilty as the poor in expanding the entitlement mentality.
The poor like Sandra Flukes want more of something so long as it is paid for by everyone except themselves, while the rich like General Motors and Solyndra want a huge amount of something so long as it can be justified under the deceptive banners of saving jobs or developing a clean industry.