An Excellent Analysis of Why Open Borders Work

The Future of Freedom Foundation has done an incredible job explaining to us why open borders work and how closed borders are harming our country and harms any country trying to force people out. Another way of putting this is that America does not belong to anyone in particular - but it does belong to anyone who wants to work and live in freedom. There are two parts to this article and you can find it at THE FUTURE OF FREEDOM FOUNDATION.

Imagine you were born in a part of the country where farming was no longer productive, or in a rust-belt town where the local factories had closed. You hear of good jobs in California and Colorado, so you decide to move. How would you feel if, when you arrived at the state line, you were denied the opportunity of a better life because you happened to have been born in a different state? Welcome to what it is like to be Mexican.

Freedom of movement is one of the most basic human rights, as anyone denied it can confirm. Yet governments obstruct people’s movement across borders in all manner of arbitrary and iniquitous ways. They require that people prove — how? — that their lives are in danger before admitting them. They determine which family members are permitted to join their relatives and which are not; Danes’ non-European spouses cannot come to live with them in Denmark unless both are age 24 or more. Americans’ foreign girlfriends and boyfriends also struggle to gain admission; the rules for foreign pets are laxer. Those seeking to come to work are vetted through a byzantine set of rules and quotas that delight bureaucrats, lawyers, and lobbyists, but deny most people the opportunity to better themselves and do untold damage to the U.S. and global economy.

Immigration controls are generally seen as normal, reasonable, and necessary, but in fact they are economically stupid, politically unsustainable, and morally wrong. For a start, the freedom to leave a country and enter another is the ultimate safeguard against tyranny. Throughout history, emigrating has often meant the difference between life and death: remember the Pilgrims who set sail on the Mayflower, the Huguenots who fled France to take refuge in England, and the Jews who escaped Nazi Germany. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the shameful recognition that governments had conspired to send countless Jews to their deaths by denying them refuge led to their signing on to Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states, “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” In practice, though, this right is often honored in the breach.

While it is vitally important that asylum-seekers are able to seek refuge abroad, fear of persecution is not the only legitimate reason that people might want to cross national borders. They might be seeking a better job. They might want to be with the ones they love. They might simply want to experience something different. And why shouldn’t they be able to?

Those fortunate enough to be rich and highly educated take it for granted that they can move around the world more or less as they please. They vacation in Mexico, safari in Africa, even go on trips around the world; they increasingly work abroad for periods of time; and some end up settling elsewhere — like the many Americans who now live in London, and the many Londoners who now live in the United States. Why, then, do we seek to deny this right to others?

Opponents of open borders often respond that Americans aren’t actually free to go where they choose. They point out, correctly, that one needs a visa to go to many countries and that the Chinese government, for instance, may very well deny you one. But why should America be basing its policies on what the Chinese government does? Should the United States deny people freedom of speech because the Chinese government does so? The point about universal human rights is not that they are necessarily universally applied, but that they ought to be. That others fail to apply them is not a reason for the United States to fail to do so too.

Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own.” But what is the right to leave a country if one cannot enter another? Since even international human-rights law does not give people the right to cross borders freely, the United States should lead by example, by passing a constitutional amendment guaranteeing open borders. READ THE REST - Open Borders Work- part 1
Then read Open Borders Work - Part 2.

Europe, IMF and the European Central bank Admit Quietly that Government Healthcare is Unsustainable. Surprise!!!!

So the cat is out of the bag. Europe admits that government run healthcare is UNSUSTAINABLE. Are you surprised? Of course not. Most Americans know that government run anything leads to bankruptcy, failure and mediocrity. Let's take back America for Americans before it's too late for us. Let's learn the lesson of Greece and go back to Capitalism, the system which is "based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned." ("What Is Capitalism?" in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal by Ayn Rand). Read "Guess What Greece Has to Jettison" by

Policy Failure: Greece was told that if it wanted a bailout, it needed to consider privatizing its government health care system. So tell us again why the U.S. is following Europe's welfare state model.

The requirement, part of a deal arranged by the IMF, the European Union and the European Central bank, is a tacit admission that national health care programs are unsustainable. Along with transportation and energy, the bailout group, according to the New York Times, wants the Greek government to remove "the state from the marketplace in crucial sectors."

This is not some cranky or politically motivated demand. It is a condition based on the ugly reality of government medicine. The Times reports that economists — not right-wingers opposed to health care who want to blow up Times Square — say liberalizing "the health care industry would help bring down prices in these areas, which are among the highest in Europe."

Of course most of the media have been largely silent about the health care privatization measure for Greece, as it conflicts with their universal, single-payer health care narrative.

The public health system in the Hellenic Republic is operated by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, where centralized decisions and rules are made.
It provides free or low-cost treatment through what is essentially a single-payer system established in 1983 when the Socialist Party was in power. Family members and retirees are also covered. Like the systems in Britain and Canada, it has agonizingly long waiting lists...READ the rest here at IBD.

Doctors Should Go On Strike!

What would happen if Economic freedom was lost? In her novel, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand showed what happens to a society that allows its government to go down the road of National Socialism: over taxation of the successful to support the poor and taxation of all people to support an assortment of government bureaucratic programs none of which are allowed under the United States Constitution, and the support of inefficient businesses in the name of saving jobs and the overburdening of the more efficient with rules and regulations.

Rand demonstrates that in this kind of atmosphere the only way to “flourish” is by businessmen becoming corrupt in order to seek profits. To do this, of course, they must manipulate crooked politicians on the take. Sound familiar to anything happening today?

The Health Care bill which seems likely to pass after reconciliation between the Senate and House versions will almost certainly take us, by a giant leap, to socialism by turning our doctors into slaves of the state. Think what this will do to the quality of young men and women who decide to become doctors. Who do you think will sign up to train for 10-15 years of grueling study and hardship in order to practice a profession where the majority under the best of circumstances makes an OK living? For the most part it will not be the best and the brightest but the ones who can “work the system” as Rand showed in her novel. In a sense there will be a strike by the doctors - the best, brightest and honest ones will NOT become doctors.

Rand’s novel depicts a scenario where the men of the mind go on strike. Brilliant bankers, engineers, financiers, doctors and nurses, all decide to withdraw their minds from the market place. Hundreds go to a secret town in the mountains to start a new society based on individual rights and economic freedom. They do this as a declaration of their right to think, live and exercise their profession as they see fit.

Maybe the beginning of the 2nd decade of the 2nd millennium is the time for a showdown between statism and freedom, Socialism and Capitalism, and between the chained mind and the free mind. It’s time for Americans to learn what Capitalism is and what huge benefits and riches it has provided those few nations that follow even partially its principles, and we must learn that governments exist to PROTECT rights….not to violate them as ours has for the past century in ever increasing amounts.

“Capitalism, the system of individual rights, has brought increased freedom to men all over the world. In Europe, capitalism ended feudalism…In America... the principle of individual rights impelled the British colonists to throw off the rule of the monarchy and establish history’s freest nation – and the logic of the country’s founding principles led, in less than a century, to the abolition of slavery…”

“Capitalism is the system of freedom…”
“Capitalism is the system of wealth…” (The Capitalist Manifest by Andrew Bernstein; University Press of America)

The Looting of Taxpayers by Big Pharma and Big Government

An excellent review of how the Pharmaceutical industry is committing suicide by giving up its principles for illusory gains by collaborating with the government to extort money from the taxpayers and how it inevitably will lead to the death of this industry and jobs.

Pharmaceutical industry executives are frequently accused of greedily putting “profits before patients” (as if drug companies could profit by means other than serving patients). This accusation would be unjust if these executives were after profits. Unfortunately, however, today’s pharmaceutical executives are not after profits. They are after loot. They seek to gain, through legislation, money coercively taken by the government from American citizens. But, unbeknownst to these executives, their looting is self-destructive. In fact, by aiding and abetting the government in its violation of individual rights, the pharmaceutical industry is committing suicide. To see why, let us begin by examining some of the ways in which the industry calls for the violation of rights and receives loot as a result. Then we will turn to the reasons why this practice is killing the pharmaceutical industry.

Consider the industry’s support for the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA).
The MMA expanded Medicare to include coverage of prescription drugs for Americans over the age of 65 and was the largest expansion of welfare in America since the creation of Medicare itself.1 When the Act took effect in 2006, it made the U.S. federal government the single largest purchaser of prescription drugs in America.2

In 1999, years before this bill had been conceived, Alan Holmer, then president of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the industry’s lobby group, made clear in a trade journal the industry’s view that “the question is not whether, but how, to expand Medicare coverage of prescription drugs.”3 In 2000, Holmer testified before the Senate Finance Committee that at “some point in the not-too-distant future, a Congress will pass, and a President will sign, legislation to expand drug coverage for Medicare beneficiaries. . . . Expanded drug coverage for seniors will be a positive development.” Holmer emphasized:

The pharmaceutical industry strongly supports . . . expanding Medicare coverage of prescription medicines. . . . Medicare beneficiaries need high-quality health care, and prescription medicines often offer the most effective therapy for them. We believe that the best way to expand prescription drug coverage for Medicare beneficiaries is through comprehensive Medicare reform.4

The pharmaceutical industry got its desired “reform,” and when the MMA became law, the government not only began dictating the terms by which private insurers would provide prescription drug coverage to Medicare beneficiaries, it also began spending tens of billions of dollars annually to subsidize that coverage.

From where does the U.S. government get this money? The government does not create wealth; it does not produce anything. Every penny the government spends on drugs (or anything else) comes from taxpayers. The government gets this money by taking it under threat of force from hard-working Americans (or by printing or borrowing it, which is deferred taxation). This is legalized theft; the money taken by force is loot. And when the government spends this loot on prescription drugs for the elderly, the loot is passed on to the pharmaceutical industry.

Now, merely receiving loot from the government does not in and of itself constitute the moral crime of complicity in the government’s coercion. But the pharmaceutical industry is not merely receiving money from the government as a result of the MMA. The industry advocated this socialist scheme of forced wealth redistribution from the start, supported it at every stage of development, and is now receiving the loot as planned. Although the industry exchanges drugs for the loot, the entire arrangement on the part of taxpayers whose money is taken by force to buy the drugs is involuntary. Taxpayers do not choose to fund the industry in this way; they are forced to do so—by a law that the pharmaceutical industry enthusiastically helped to create.

When Congress and President George W. Bush—with the eager support of the pharmaceutical industry—expanded Medicare to include prescription drugs, the pharmaceutical industry gained millions of new customers, customers whose payments are made with loot. And we are talking about a lot of loot:... In 1999—before the MMA was made law—this age group composed 13 percent of the population but consumed 30 percent of all prescription drugs sold in the country.5 Thus, the pharmaceutical industry stood to increase its revenues immensely when taxpayers were forced to fund expanded drug coverage for seniors. By 2008, the federal government was spending $44 billion annually on Medicare prescription drug coverage.6

In supporting the MMA, the pharmaceutical industry supported a massive violation of individual rights. It aided and abetted the U.S. government in a scheme that forcibly and continually transfers wealth from American taxpayers to pharmaceutical companies.

Not content with the billions in annual loot that it gains through the MMA, the pharmaceutical industry is now after more... READ at The Objectivist Standard: "Pharmacide: The Pharmaceutical Industry's Self-Destructive Effort to Loot America" by Cassandra Clark.