Top marginal income tax rate should be fifty percent

[LeftishBrit]

88. Big Government Totalitarianism?? In America?

When has the government in America EVER been totalitarian? Or anything like it?

The nearest thing to political totalitarianism in the USA in recent history was probably McCarthyism; and McCarthy was a Republican Senator without much interest in funding public services.


The research on the polio vaccine was predominantly charitably funded; i.e. neither the federal government *nor* profit-making entrepreneurs. The *administration* of this and other vaccines to all who need it *has* been largely funded and regulated by government.

As regards your other examples: most of them seem to represent some confusion between *invention* of a commodity, and enabling its use by the public as a whole. No one has said that running water, electricity or the telephone were 'invented' by the government (indeed electricity was not invented at all; it was *discovered* and harnessed). But government has been strongly involved in enabling and regulating the use of these resources. The same goes for civil aviation - and there has also been a lot of government-funded research into aviation, though probably more because of its military than civil use.

'The evidence is irrefutable--the US model (of radio and TV provision) is far superior with respect to quality and variety of content.'

No, it isn't. The BBC is a lot better than such media as Fox News. And, in case I sound like a British chauvinist, I hasten to add that British newspapers are much worse on the whole than American ones. One of the big problems in our countries and many others, is that media moguls have disproportionate power over manipulating public opinion - sometimes without even living in the countries in question. It is bad for government to control media, but it is also bad for privately-owned and often monopolistic media to essentially control government, as too often happens.