Why Al Franken Should Not be in Politics

Is he an economist? No? Enough said.

But I'll say more anyway.

Universal single payer health care? How about another idea, a much more foreign one: a free-market approach. Increasingly higher quality and increasingly lower prices happen in other parts of the market, and it's time the medical field follows suit. Not completely free market, but much more than it currently is (hardly any). With some high-tech procedures and operations where the demand for them is almost fixed, i.e. inelastic, then maybe something there to make it more affordable. But, insurance, common medical bills, etc? They should be subject to the market. Try it, and watch it work. Managed competition doesn't work, universal health care will probably result in the tanking of the economy in the few years after it's instituted.
http://catoinstitute.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6407

Education: Should also be subject to a free market approach. Teaching standards and education failing in some schools? Fire the teachers that suck /let the market provide incentives for them to improve - stop pandering to the teacher's unions. Don't give the schools and teachers subsidies to fund efforts to 'improve' the teachers. In the free market, incentives are extremely important in the supply and demand of labor, and without them, quality suffers for it. Excessive testing is a result of government funding - the schools must make the students test all the time, to show the "progress" their students are acheiving, only to get the money from the government. Al's solution is more government intervention to solve a problem that was created by governement intervention in the first place.

Worker's Pay: Raise the minimum wage? Is he retarded? You know what raising the minimum wage does, generally? It erases the low paying jobs, and increases unemployment, and hurts the economy, and therefore the standard of living for everyone. Duh. He also wants to increase workers' rights to organize. Okay, and? They already have rights to organize, big deal. Unions may have been good and necessary in the first part of the century (although that's debatable), but not anymore. Unions have no place in politics anymore, as they only screw up the market systems. Unions want workers to be paid 15, 20, 25/hr plus benefits, and then they want cheap goods, too? Sorry, that's not the way it works. Higher pay and higher prices, or lower pay and lower prices. Can't have both and still have the economy be prosperous. Besides, either way, your standard of living will go up because of the markets.

Social Security: What the hell? Keep it? He must be retarded. It was never designed to work long term. It was barely designed to work at the time (the great depression) and was only meant as a temporary fix. With 2/3 of the population retiring by 2015 or so, we young people will be paying for their retirement, and we'll be paying a much larger share than they had to pay when they were young. Ok, so they paid into SS for the entire lives. But, those funds can be used on anything, like taxes, so the money they paid isn't the money they'll get. But, that's not my fault. It's their fault and the government's fault, and we're supposed to pay for that? I don't think so. Social Security will definitely bankrupt this nation. If retiring people haven't saved, and haven't invested, then why the hell should we have to pay for their mistakes?

And, although he's not running on this platform (wisely), gun control: He's a huge supporter of gun control. Don't even get me started on this. A good indicator of how a politician, or even a person, thinks is his views on guns and self-defense. If he doesn't like them, and doesn't trust people with them, guess what? He doesn't have any respect or trust in the people. Putrescent.

Stop supporting this idiot for office.