From: "The Free Marketeer" Date: Sat, 29 Mar 1997 23:22:06 -0800 Subject: Nine Major Myths That People "Know for a Fact" 1. We'd have a balanced budget if the rich would just pay their fair share. FACT: Recent figures showed 63,642 Americans made over $1 million for the year. Even *doubling* their tax rate (to a highly unfair 79%) would add only enough money to feed the government monster about ten days! 2. Global warming is destroying the planet. FACT: Global warming doesn't exist. Satellite data now shows worldwide temperatures *down* .23 degrees F. over the last 15 years! Previous high readings caused alarm, but proved to be caused by such basic blunders as placing thermometers next to airport runways and in other hot areas. But don't hold your breath waiting for this to hit the evening news. 3. Republicans are reckless and mean-spirited. They simply *can't* cut Government spending any further without slashing vital services. FACT: Government spends more than $23,000 a year for every family in the U.S.. Even corrected for inflation, that's *twice* the spending level of 1960. Obviously, someone is trying to expand the meaning of "vital". 4. The government should reign in greedy corporations and stop them from gouging the American consumer. FACT: Competition eliminates 95% of the potential gouging in this country. Price jumps are largely caused by: * the government, as manufacturers pass along the increased cost of taxes (now a very high percentage of the cost of the average item); * government-caused inflation (which is actually over 7%, not the official 3.3% you hear); * and regulatory compliance and red tape (which in 1992 cost the average family $8,300 to $17,100 a year). EXTREME EXAMPLE: A child's $10 vaccination could profitably be given for 50 cents. The other $9.50 is the pass-along cost of government compliance! 5. A 1993 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that guns are dangerous for their owners and give "no protective benefit" anyway. FACT: It turns out that the study was not based on national statistics at all, but sprang from a warped study of 388 households where: a. One-fourth had drug or alcohol problems. b. Over half had a member with a rap sheet. c. One-third had a previous record of domestic violence. d. In all of them, homicides had taken place! These 388 families are not exactly in the middle of America's bell curve. The Journal disgraced itself, but the myth lives on. 6. The #1 villain of the century is Adolf Hitler. FACT: Soviet and Chinese communists *both* killed over three times as many victims as Hitler's 20,946,000 dead. But Hitler is always singled out for villification by the left because the Nazis were supposedly far right. To set the record straight, Hitler believed in a centralized, powerful government, as do the Socialists. Conservatives always believe in small, decentralized, restricted governments. 7. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. FACT: This tired mantra is revived from time to time to complain about economic conditions. Most recently, it was heard a lot in the Reagan years. But according to the Fed, from 1983 to 1989, the net wealth of American families grew like this: Income Growth of Wealth ------ ---------------- $10,000-20,000 19.1% $20,000-30,000 28.9% $30,000-50,000 27.2% $50,000+ 6.6% Even the liberal Urban Institute has admitted that in the '80s, "...on average, the rich get a little richer and the poor got much richer". 8. Civilization is destroying the ozone shield. FACT: Greenies keep warning us about a coming epidemic of skin cancer caused by ozone depletion. But the "ozone hole" has been wildly flunctuating up and down in size ever since it was discovered in the '50s, and since 1974 the U.S. National Cancer Institute has been racking the ultraviolent radiation on earth. They report it's falling. 9. How come we can send a man to the moon, but we can't help the three million homeless on our streets? FACT: There are no 3,000,000 homeless. Back in 1980, a homeless advocate named Mitch Snyder polled 100 agencies to get their estimate of homeless people. The answers ranged from a high of 1% in desperate areas down to a few hundredths of 1%. The higher number suited his purposes, so in 1982 he started claiming that 1% of us (2.2 million) lacked shelter, and that the number "could" reach 3 million by 1983. The 3 million number was pounced upon and quoted endlessly by advocacy groups until it attained the burnished luster of gospel truth. But as Snyder himself later explained to a Congressional committee, "These numbers are meaningless. We have tried to satisfy your gnawing curiosity for a number because Americans have to quantify everything in sight." An identical process was followed by John Walsh after his son vanished. His polls of missing-child groups yielded a total of 50,000 abducted kids per year -- and if you've ever seen a carton of milk with a child's picture on it, you know the rest of the story. Unfortunately for the alarmists' case, through, the federal National Center for Missing and Exploited Children could only cite 471 definite kidnappings over a four-year span. -- "'Free and unequal' is an oft-heard expression, suggesting that freedom and equality are as inseparable as Siamese twins. Actually, they are mutually antagonistic. The equality idea -- equal pay and so on -- rests on the antithesis of freedom: raw coercion. It is just as impossible to be free when equality is politically manipulated as it is impossible to be equal. Free and unequal -- freedom and inequality -- are what go hand in hand. The essence of individuality is uniqueness: inequality in skills, talents, knowledge, aspirations. This is merely an acknowledgement of a Universal Law." -- Leonard E. Read