Financial Incentive Quotes
This is an excellent statement of an ultra conservative view of welfare where the welfare recipient is “punished” for succeeding by losing all or part of the welfare payment. On the other side is a need based philosophy. If someone is in need, welfare will help. But once the person is on his feet and no longer has the degree of need, the welfare payment is ended and the funds are available for someone else is in need.
The implication of the investment in infrastructure and education is that the state must tax people at a rate that would pay for it. But if the rate is too high, he argues, people will not make a sufficient profit from their work.
The president was himself an evangelical Christian and he had gone out of his way to issue executive orders authorizing payments to be made for church operated social service activities where proselytizing was permitted. Many Americans thought bush had jumped over the wall separating church and state and yet some of the evangelical Christians kept insisting on more and more money.
There was a major debate about Congress changing the copyright law. Copyrights always had a life of 26 years and could be renewed once giving 52 years of monopoly protection. However, the copyright on Mickey Mouse was running out since it had been created 51 years earlier by Walt Disney. The modern Walt Disney company lobbied heavily for a change in the law. Other publishers joined them. Their major argument was that authors and creators of material need to have a strong incentive to write and do all the creative work to produce great materials. The change they wanted was to protect the work for the life of the author PLUS 100 years. The example that was given was the great American writer Nathanial Hawthorne who could not earn much money writing and spent part of his career doing other things. London publishers ripped off his popular books, but we did not have a copyright treaty with England. Valenti, a former eloquent politician and the spokesperson for Hollywood, observed that if Hawthorne had been better protected he might have written many more great works. However, Lessig turned the tables on him by pointing out that the 100 years after the death of the author during which the industry wanted protection would have no possible effect on the writing productivity of the creator. Dead people do not respond to economic incentives. It became clear that the argument of the industry that the change would protect authors and encourage them to create more, was a red herring and the only benefit would inure to the copyright holders and controllers and the author would not benefit at all. It was pure commercial desire to use the Federal law to get something valuable that they never had and the public would have gotten. However, the lobbying campaign was one of the best in American history and a benefit was taken away from the public and awarded to a small group of companies who paid handsomely with campaign contributions. A monopoly that no one could obtain in over 200 years of American history suddenly was obtained by a change in the copyright law.
