"I hate the Eagles man." -- The Dude
On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 10:43 AM, Gail Brock <gbrock_dca at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The conservatives effectively began ranting about government bureaucracies
> as
> LBJ's Great Society programs really kicked in. You couldn't enter into
> "voluntary" real estate covenants that excluded minorities any more, and in
> a
> lot of jurisdictions you couldn't open burn leaves anymore. They were
> trying to
> make you less free in your own car with haranguing about gas mileage and
> seat
> belts. The extension of Social Security to domestic and farm labor made
> upper
> middle-class whites have to start paying and collecting FICA taxes on their
> help, which contributed to their feeling that government had started just
> working for minorities. If you dug a well, you had to have the water
> tested;
> most of the time the water was fine, which just proved that government
> threw up
> a lot of silly, expensive regulations. Meanwhile, inflation kicked up, and
> businesses energetically blames price increases on government regulation
> and
> bureaucracy.
>
> It was in fact true that people had more interaction with government in the
> normal run of things. The slowly improving cleanness of air and water
> isn't as
> memorable as the sudden banning of leaf burning when you personally have to
> change your habits. Social justice is a pain in the neck when it costs you
> time
> and money. In other words, the Great Society programs attacked
> externalities,
> but people experienced the bureaucracy directly.
>
>
>
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