Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Andrew Cohen Proposes Licensing Parents

I am against licensing parents but the his post is interesting because it makes it clear that there is a stronger argument for licensing parting which we do not license than professions that we do license.   



I it is better to give everyone a license to be a  parenting  and then have rules that if broken result in loss of license.  That is everyone has a right to be a parent but that right can taken away in a case of abuse which is the system that we have.   I think the same for professional licensing but in professional licensing their might a case for a very easy test 
(that any college grad could pass with a few weeks of study) up front.   


BTW related I think that anyone should be allowed to buy most medicines without a prescription but that one should have to pass a simple test and commit to taking the full regime to get an antibiotic. 

Tyler Cowen on Better Verses smaller Government

He writes:
The world is changing more rapidly, so automatic pilot isn’t good enough any more.  “Good governance” and most of all adaptability have become more important.  This will benefit the Nordic countries, the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, and Singapore.  It is mostly bad for India, Russia, and the Mediterranean countries, plus other countries with lots of corruption.  It remains to be seen which category the United States and China will fall into
It seems to me that our Government is even more wrong than it is big and that it could deliver more and yet be much smaller if it were not so wrong. For example SS exists to prevent low life time earners from running out of money in their old age, but SS pays out more to high earners than to low earners. Other examples: the lack of sensible spending controls on medicare, the bloated military budgets and how about the war on drugs. I do not see how anyone can propose giving more money to the Government until they end the war on drugs and address the other problems that I listed.