No, see property rights aren't a service, its just a law of nature. they are completely different to rights that benefit the non-wealthy. oh and bill gates getting rich had nothing to do with government reseach and investment.

I sort of agree with brett here, in that i think the more important issue is making sure noone 'earns' 20 million dollars, instead of just trying to tax it at the end of the year. better structures that don't reward people for insider connections would be a lot healthier. to the degree that anyone is actually producing >20x as much value than average, its because they lucked/networked/etc their way into a limited training slot to receive valueable skills. but conservative have their relio-psych where there is some deep moral thing that millionaires are doing differently from other that makes them 'deserve' big $$ pay

Does sebastian have a point other than that USian doctors, like many others in the US, earn way to much money by making most everyone else suffer? Because it almost looks like he's trying to pretend that Public Option isn't a good idea, despite not have any evidence to support it, other than that socialised medicine is better than private. Sort of like Here is a similar idea: I suggest we cut funding from the War Department, since we spend way more than other countries. Schmastian points out that Canada spends far less, but manages to have fewer casualities. Thus, there must some terrible inefficiency in our War Department, so we had better not cut funding, or we will all be unsafe.

the blithe disregard of reality in favor of the made-up play-time world of pseudo concepts is sure something to behold. I suggest a nobel lit prize for the lot of them. I mean, read this sentence: "And while I don’t think its government-backed (by FCC or by franchise monopoly) providers should be able to set network policies to harm competitors such as Skype or YouTube, I think competition in that field is vital to our well being. The last thing we need is competition-killing regulation of every router and wire in America, increasing the costs of business high enough that only the richest companies can compete, and paving the way to the Socialist dream of Single Payer Internet in America." such alien thought-forms. its the best 'first contact' novel ever written.

Well, extensive debate has shown conservatives have a single idea that could potentially reduce medical costs by .5%, and could be solved in other ways than the one proposed by conservatives. Jay Jerome has certainly proved how Serious conservative are. Thank you, good sir.

the most important policy issue is AGW/energy. And i agree with Sebastian. The conservative bill that is being put together by democrats isn't that bad.

Congress talks a lot about Iran's use of nuclear power. Oh, that isn't waht you meant?

I love that covservatives have spent so long using the words "market" "free market" etc. to mean " give money to rich people " that they literally can't comprehend how a market could be used to increase efficiency.