Beverly Watts Davis Quotes

Very few governments have the money to meet the needs of their people….The private sector has most of the resources.

I have watched as the Government stepped up the process of dismantling the State, throwing thousands of people onto the scrapheap, abolishing job creation and training programs.... I watched them maniacally cutting back programs ranging from industry R&D to family planning to dental hospital services for the poor. I watched this Government create a crisis of confidence in the higher education sector and attack our public school system.

Like many people, most Libertarians feel empathy and sympathy for less fortunate people. But they know you can't have perfection in a world of limited resources.

Government just simply can't do everything for everyone.

Could we do without the social safety net, without Social Security, without Medicare, without farm subsidies, without unemployment compensation, without school lunch programs, without housing assistance? Of course we could. But we would not be a civilized society and we would not be an American nation any of us would be proud of.

There is no escape from the cost of public needs.

Happiness statistics may be most valuable in smaller, local discussions. Understanding how different sorts of programs affect the well-being of citizens would be enormously helpful to a mayor choosing between building a new bridge or offering a tax cut.

Demands for equal financing of sewers, streets, and garbage collection would make more sense than proposals for equal financing of the schools, since some plausible connection may be inferred between the amount of money expended, e.g., for roads, and the quality of service resulting to the taxpayer.

We should be tough on a bureaucracy that fails to turn aid money into critical services for the poor.

We define poverty as a shortage of material goods, which justifies the production of more and more material goods. It does not occur to us that it might be more realistic to regard it as an aberrant situation in which more material goods are required than can actually be produced, for then the solution would be to create those socio-economic conditions in which less goods rather than more were required.

A country is not a business and a government should stand for much more than economic efficiency.

When efforts are made to shape policy based on budgets rather than the public good, then the needs of the people will not be met.

We need government to do for the people what they cannot do for themselves.

All affairs which concern this state only are to be determined by our representatives coming from all parts of the state; all affairs which concern the Union at large are to be determined by representatives coming from all parts of the Union. Thus, then, the general government is to be taken care of, and the state governments to be preserved.

A bureau that benefits a well organized interest group will fare better in getting the sinews for administration than a bureau whose benefits are diffused over unorganized consumers or whose function is to restrain rather than to confer benefits.

The classical case is that of the starving man who steals a loaf of bread. That he should be allowed to go free is understandable enough; but it is less understandable that 'society's' obligation not to let him starve should devolve upon one baker chosen at random and not on society as a whole.

It is right to be forward in the defense of the poor; no system that is not just as between rich and poor can hope to survive.

It's good to pay high taxes - you have free schools, free universities. It's a much more decent society than those where everybody pays their own way, and some people don't get anything.

I hear people saying we need this and we need that as a society, but is it really fair for the government - i.e. the taxpayers - to provide people with cell phones? I don't think so.

You go to your public library, or you call your fire department or police department, what do you think you are calling? These are socialist institutions.

You know it's funny, when it rains it pours they got money for wars, but can't feed the poor.

wouldn't you like to make sure all those millions you give to Uncle Sam went to schools and hospitals instead of nuclear warheads?' As a matter of fact, he would. Playgrounds for big kids, preschool programs to little ones, and mandatory LASIK surgery for NFL refs.

It shouldn't be a matter of who deserves help or not, but of whether we want to be a country that allows its neediest to continue to need. Condemnation of individuals and their choices mutes all these other really important logistical questions about funding and budget and politics.

Look, there are people hurting in this country. We have to find solutions to make their lives better, right?

It's all about the choices we make as a society. We can choose to have poor schools and parks and higher tuition at Rhode Island's colleges. But we should make an active choice.