Random thoughts on history, and the virus

Philosopher George Santayana wrote "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

That saying later morphed into "Those who refuse to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it," which seems a bit more pointed.  Recognizable either way, and seems to have the ring of truth.

Seems to me that one of the iron-clad lessons of history is that people like free stuff--and thus will vote for politicians who promise them the most free stuff.  And since the most important goal for 99% of pols is to get elected and then stay elected, offering voters free stuff is quite popular.

The problem is--as another grim lesson of history teaches--is that when it comes to goods and services, or things supplied by governments, there's no such thing as "free."  Someone always has to pay.  Of course this doesn't foreclose individual charity:  if Bill Gates or Elon Musk or a high-paid PhD want to give charity from their own fortunes, good on 'em.  But that's entirely different from a government taxing workers to give cash to people who won't work.

Maybe I've been mis-informed but it seems to me that America was founded on the ideas of hard work, innovation and "rugged individualism."  But gradually those sound principles seem to have been replaced by the notion that the highest purpose of government is to take care of citizens.  That sounds reasonable, seductive.  Problem is, what happens when a huge chunk of the population decides they'd rather collect welfare--and thus get all their time to spend as they like--rather than working?

Or to take on the top end:  Charismatic corporate CEO's often dominate their board of directors, and can get the board to approve an outrageous salary.  If a company thinks it's found a CEO that it believes is worth, say, $20 million per year, fine--but why should the tax code allow that company to deduct more than, say, a million of that as a business expense?

The same should apply to the media's talking heads, too:  There's not a nickel's worth of difference between one newsreader and another, but if NBC is dumb enough to think one talking head is worth $30 million a year, fine.  But the IRS code shouldn't let NBC deduct more than a million of that.

Of course no member of congress [spit!] would ever vote for such a law--because the media would bribe them to vote against.  Frankly, I think that's been going on for decades, and I don't see any inclination by voters to vote the corrupt bastards out.

On the bright side, of a completely different topic, I see an Israeli company has supposedly announced it'll donate six million tabs of hydroxychloroquine to the U.S.   Democrats--including my favorite moron Rachel Madcow--have absolutely BLASTED Trump for mentioning that this drug holds promise against the virus, but from reading the paper on the test it looks as though it will indeed be effective.

Now the question is, how long after the pandemic is resolved will Dem governors keep enforcing their demand that their residents stay home, since they know every day at home hurts the economy and keeps people angry (thus looking to vote against Trump)?