Oct. 26, 2010 Staff Report
John K. Wilson (R), who is running for NY State District 37 Assembly seat, wrote the following comment to readers, clarifying his position/beliefs. His response followed an earlier article that covered the United 40s political debate.
When I use words like “self-reliance, personal-responsibility, entrepreneurship,” and “liberty,” I don’t intend for them to be code-words to indicate that I would like to destroy necessary social services; they simply mean what they mean. I believe these are virtues to admire and aspire to.
I don’t advocate cruelty, and, in fact, because I believe in spending public funds wisely, I am very much in favor of investing public funds on children early–through Head Start-type programs–because it is so much less expensive than to build prisons, fund welfare, and over-burden the legal system later. Besides, it is just the right thing to do. We need to decide, as a society, just what it is that we value–and fund those things–because our government dollars are limited now, and will be dwindling soon. Personally, I value children, our elderly, and the truly needy more than the convenience of public sector unions.
Incidentally, sometimes “work-safety laws” are an impediment to liberty and entrepreneurship, as well as safety itself: at a very important downtown construction site, workers are required to wear safety googles at all times. Sounds prudent, doesn’t it? But, one of my future constituents, a worker there, told me that, when wearing those thing at ALL times, vision is impaired. He says the practice has caused several serious injuries; and, he believes it is a matter of time before someone loses their life. He says that no worker would ever not wear the googles when working in a situation that called for it; but, he wished common sense would prevail. He further explained that the insurance company has determined that eye injuries are the greatest single threat to their financial health; the other injuries caused by wearing the goggles at all times–and presumably any fatalities–are cheaper for them to pay-out on.
Sometimes, things that sound like a good idea are made to sound good in order to convince the public that an action that is good for a particular group’s bottom line is also in the public interest; in reality, it may not be.
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One Comment
Regulations like anything else can be good or bad. Unfortunately, we’ve become such a bureaucratic, nanny-state and litigious society a lot of regulations are just plain ridiculous, a drag on business and are just an excuse to make more work for lawyers and government employees.