The Government is NOT Your Friend, Regardless of What They Tell You...

Flopping Aces ^ | 10-05-21 | Vince

[Starman417]

Ronald Reagan once said:  "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help." He was right, the government’s not your friend and it most certainly isn’t here to help you.

The dirty little secret about government is that its purpose is not really to make the lives of citizens better, but rather, to accumulate power at the expense of citizens.  Not sure about that? Ask yourself, how many government agencies have put themselves out of a job because they succeeded? There’re a few who technology left behind, like the Steamboat Inspection Service, others that served their purpose like the Defense Homes Corporation, while others were merged into other agencies like the General Land Office, subsumed into the Department of Interior.  In our history there have been less than 100 federal agencies that have actually been shuttered, and most of those existed in the early 20^th century to deal with the Depression or the two world wars.

According to the Federal Register there are 457 different agencies of the federal government.  That’s 457 agencies covering virtually every aspect of American’s lives, most of which are staffed by unelected bureaucrats, all of whom spend your money and many of whom write regulations that carry the force of law enforced by the police power of government. This includes everything from the State Department to the Geographic Names Board to the International Broadcasting Board to the ATF.  And that 457 is misleading.  While it includes a dozen organizations tied to Defense, there are dozens more agencies that come under it that are not listed in the Federal Register such as the DoD Education Activity or the Office of Naval Research.  Wikipedia lists a more realistic, but still lacking 1,500.

The American government has become a leviathan.  It’s everywhere, involved in virtually every aspect of Americans’ lives, and it’s perpetual, regardless of its record of dismal failure.  Two examples:

1) The War on Poverty, AKA the Great Society.  The brainchild of LBJ, the Great Society programs were created to address poverty in America.  They included things like food stamps, Medicaid, Medicare, Headstart, and others.

When the Great Society programs were passed in 1964 the poverty rate was 15%, dropping to 13.9% the next year. By 1969 the rate was 9.7%. Exactly 50 years later, in 2019 the rate was 8.7%. That means that as a result of fighting the War on Poverty for half a century, after spending over $30 trillion, the poverty rate dropped by a rounding error, by literally 1%!

Yet somehow the War on Poverty goes on, with more programs, more money, more regulations, and of course, more employees.  Indeed, DHHS, which manages many of the programs, has a staff of 80,000 and an annual budget of over $1 trillion.

2) Public education.  American public education is really just a jobs program and a revenue-generating program for unions. William McGurn over at the WSJ looks at the performance of schools in the largest school districts.  The level of failure is extraordinary.  For example, in 2019 Atlanta public schools spent $17,112 per student and the result of all of that spending was that only 10% of students were proficient in math and 15% in reading.  So for all of that expenditure, fully 90% failed basic math proficiency and 85% reading.  And this dynamic has been going on for decades across the country.  New York City spends $28,004 per student and 75% of them lack proficiency in math and 81% in reading, while Boston spends $25,653 and has similar marks with 88% failing math and 85% reading.

On average the US spends approximately $14,000 per student in education, (Elem – HS) more than any nation in the world other than Luxemburg. And what do we get for that extraordinary spending?  Not much.  According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2018 American students ranked 15^th in the world for reading literacy, 18^th in science and 37^th in math!  Of all of the things that drive a society to prosperity, particularly in the technologically advanced world we live in today, education is easily one of the most important, and on that score government has failed miserably, spectacularly and perpetually.

If the actual goal was to educate students, the government would give that money to parents in the form of vouchers to kickstart a private / charter school revolution.  Sure, there’d be failures, but it’s hard to imagine how they could fail more spectacularly than the current systems are. But that’s not the goal…

[Nifty]

In the US, there are the traditional low, middle and upper class, which is created naturally by a capitalists society.

But there is also another class - the Government class. This group is created artificially and rivals the upper middle class found in a normal society.

Something is wrong with that.

[dragnet2]

Since the Trump era the government went from simply looting the people and being corrupt, to flat-out evil with bad intentions.

[Starboard]

But...but...wait just a minute. I thought these people were from Washington and they were here to help us. ;)

[GOP Poet]

bookmark

[Starboard]

Pretty accurate comment. Looting wasn’t enough for them; they now want to totally control/dominate us.

Republicans tell us all the time they are for smaller government. Still waiting for them to do something to shrink it.

[butlerweave]

Governments have forgotten who they work for

[Vigilanteman]

You got it. When the left refers to the middle class in positive terms, this is exactly what they mean. The State of New York has a “Working Families” Party which routinely endorses the Democrat (unless they are too conservative). What they mean by that are “Union Families,” overwhelming government unions.

[Vigilanteman]

To them, “public service” means the public is supposed to serve them.

[Diogenesis]

[sauropod]

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