It’s that Time of the Year Again. Perhaps one of my favorites. National Book Lovers day is tomorrow. A day to celebrate all the book lovers out there. As someone who reads constantly this is one of my favorite days. Who knows maybe I’ll bake a cake to celebrate it.
But that’s not what we are here to talk about. We are here to talk about what books you should be reading for National Book Lovers Day. So I thought I would Write a quick thing on the 3 books I think are most important to read this Year. For those of you who don’t like reading about the books you should read (weirdos) you can check out my YouTube Video on it Here.
For the rest of you Here we go.
The Election is Soon
Let’s start with what I think is the most important thing most people will be doing soon. Voting. Yes, it’s that time again. The presidential elections are sweeping the nation. But many people screw up voting. I don’t mean they vote for the wrong person. I can’t say what person would be best for them in the White House. No, they don’t really look into the issues.
So that’s what we are going to do today. We are going to look at the major issues coming up in the next election. I’m not going to take sides, mostly because this is a teaching channel not a political activist channel, but I do think it can be used to help people learn a great deal.
So, what are the big issues coming up. Well with Bernie Sanders in the race, social democracy is going to be huge. At least that is the biggest issue for me. So, let’s take a quick look at how democratic socialism works in the real world, and compare it to capitalism.
Pro Bernie
Viking Economics by George Lakey, is the first book I choose to read. And I choose it because it was recommended to me with a glowing review by a Bernie Sanders supporter. I thought that gave it some good qualifications for this election.
So, what does the book say in a nut shell?
It says that market forces are too random and the government needs to plan and control the economy like they do in Scandinavian countries. It says that free health care, open boarders, free education and career planning for both those who go to college and those who don’t as well as free housing actually builds a closer more helpful society.
Of course, this model employs a lot of higher taxes but the book makes the case that these higher taxes are nothing compared to what you then get from the government. It means you have a better work life balance, stronger family’s and a healthier population. All this without really lowering your discretionary (after paying for things like food, house, gas and other essential) spending.
Lakey claims that the real reason other have failed at this is they don’t try hard enough. They are to busy coming up with excuses instead of finding a way to make it work. According to him the real problem with unemployment is not that people can’t find a job. It’s that people won’t hire someone if they go on a binder every Friday and aren’t able to come back from it until Wednesday. If you at least had them working from Wednesday to Friday we would get so much more out of the economy.
Anti Bernie
Now the next book is a direct answer to this book. Remember Law 12 of learning? Get both sides of the issue? This is the other side. This book is Debunking Utopia by Nima Sanandaji. Nima Sanadaji grew up in Sweden and got his education there. So why is he such a strong critic of the social Democracy model they have there?
For starters, he says the model is unrealistic and has actually done more harm than good. Sanadaji explains the Nordics success by there strong culture drive for success. This was a necessity because of how hard it was to live in that area. Most of the ground could not be used for farming and a lot of teamwork and hard work were needed just to get by.
He says that this culture built a very capitalistic society and that is where there success comes from. According to him after this success came, they started to implement a more social democratic society doing all the things George Lakey recommend. He says it nearly destroyed the Nordic people, bankrupting them, causing high crime and moral depravity.
According to him they actually have switched back and started to have a more capitalistic society again. He actually makes the case that in some ways, the Nordic countries have a more capitalistic society than America.
I should point out that both of these books back themselves up with research and plenty of examples. I learned a lot from both of them.
The Bigger Issue
Now on to the last book. This one is a little different. It does a pretty good job of getting both side of the issue, even if it leans heavily to one side. I actually couldn’t find one that was written to support the other side. If you can please send me an email to studylessllc@gmail,com. Having said that this might be the most important book in the list. Pay close attention.
The last book is “Power Without Responsibility: How Congress Abuses the People Through Delegation” by David Schoenbrod. I don’t think most people even know about this issue. So, I thought I would give it the light it deserves.
The way our government was set up congress was supposed to be the one’s that make our laws. As life got more complicated congress complained about how hard it was to make all the laws they wanted to make. So, they had this idea. Currently in order to make a law they would go ask a bunch of experts for advice on how to make it and ask them to draft recommendation for how the law would be.
That was all well and good until you are talking to 4-5 different experts on the same law. Then they start to contradict each other and things get complicated. So, they decided to cut themselves out of the equation. They wanted to pass the law-making responsibility on to the experts.
Only one problem with this. That was illegal. So, the courts made a very bad ruling. They decided that congress could guide and oversee what laws the expert made. All they would have to do is tell the experts what outcome they wanted and monitor them to make sure they did as they were told. Thus, committee’s took the power to make laws.
Why You Can do Nothing
The problem with this is, now we can’t vote out bad law makers when they screw us over. The people have no way to stand up for themselves. We can elect a new congressman or women but the committees are still making the same laws.
But it get’s worse. Now that congress does not have control over the law making, they can use that to there advantage when making laws. Now they can take credit for all the good things a law dose because they voted for it. At the same time, they can stand against all the bad things because they didn’t write the specifics. They would have done it differently but that’s not how congress works. Nothing they can do.
Do you see how insidious this is? But wait it get’s even worse.
You see when congress makes a law it has to get through 2 houses, the senate and the house of representatives, before it can go into effect. This means laws tend to be stable and easy to understand. But when you pass the law on to experts, they can make it as complicated as they want. They can create special fringe cases and loopholes big businesses can exploit.
And believe me they can get a lot of money from helping these big businesses. They sometimes even change the law to further help the business that pay them. This means the laws are not made to be fair. They are not easy to understand. And they can change constantly. All this screw the American people.
And what do we get in return? Even more laws and regulations.
In Conclusion
Sorry if this post was a little doom and gloom. I tried to make it as happy and upbeat as I could. But this is a very important topic that many people seem to ignore. But there you have it. three books for National Book Lover’s Day. links to these books are posted bellow so you can go order them now.
for Viking Economics click here
for Debunking Utopia click here
for Power Without Responsibility click here