By now most of us have seen the posters in college towns and trendy neighborhoods reading, "Health care is a right, not a business." As the reasoning goes, because health care is necessary for survival, everyone must have access to it, preferably courtesy of a vast bureaucracy that limits everyone's options in the name of egalitarian ism. For this enlightened reason, Clinton proposes that the govern ment seize control over one-seventh of the national economy.
But why stop with health care? Surely the principles that inform Clintoncare have relevance to other human needs at least as compelling as health care, including such usual suspects as food, clothing, and shelter, as well as to such newly discovered basic necessities as Internet access. To this end, I propose an exciting new government program to supply such needs in a manner keeping with progressive notions of fairness--National Everything Care.
For example, any unfortunates in our society have a hard time paying for food. Yet we cannot simply give these unfortunates food stamps (or, heaven forbid, private charity) for the same obvious reason for which we cannot simply help poor people pay for health care. Nor can we do away with the federal and state laws and regulations, many dating from the Depression, that drive up food costs.
Instead, we must take control of the production, distribution, and preparation of food in America to give everyone a right to food that cannot be taken away. Regional food alliances should solicit bids from the companies that now provide food services to schools and airlines to run public-sponsored cafeterias where everyone, upon submission of a food security card, can receive the food that a government nutrition board deems appropriate.
The same goes for clothing. Catholic schools have the right idea in making everyone wear uniforms; this wonderful concept of enforced uniformity--oops, I mean egalitarian empowerment--should also serve adults.
Moreover, we have a crisis of affordable housing not because of strict property-use laws that take choice in the housing market from potential renters and confer it on zoning boards, but because of unmanaged competition, which, as we all know, drives up prices. Therefore, public housing authorities, which have done such an admirable job of providing the poor with safe, pleasant, and well maintained places to live, should become the sole providers of housing to all Americans.
Finally, government should guarantee access to information. Many persons in both government and the media have called for federal guarantees of access to the Internet. These persons correctly perceive that Americans who neither know nor care how to set the clock on the VCR desperately need anonymous ftp, telnet, and the like.
And now that I've mentioned VCR's, what shall we do with those [insert automotive cliche here] on the information highway? We must nationalize them, along with video stores and TV sets, to avoid dividing society into video haves and have-nots. Never mind that people who want these things manage to find ways to pay for them.
When government assumes control over the flow of information, it will be in an ideal position to regulate the content of that informa tion in the public interest. After all, unnecessary information will drive up the costs for everybody and thus defeat the purpose of our noble venture. Therefore, local authorities such as the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors must regulate the distribution of information not only in public libraries, but also in every other forum.