Posted on 06/24/2002 6:32:07 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
Some of the responses to my last article, Turning Freedom Into Free Lunch, effectively demonstrated why the public tends to support government growth. In contemporary America, the state is a super-problem solver and if you don´t support government intervention in an area to solve a particular problem, you must be opposed to that problem being solved.
One respondent wrote, "Any compassionate society takes care of its unfortunate members--the disabled, the elderly, the children of the poor who aren't able to support them (sic). Any ‘free´ society that permits its powerless citizens to suffer isn't worthy of being called civilized--even wolves take care of their own."
Notice the assumption that the choice is between government redistribution of wealth and the mass starvation of the poor. There can be no way to care for the poor without the government forcibly extracting compassion from people´s paychecks. This does not take into consideration that perhaps a compassionate society´s obligation to its unfortunate members belongs to families, communities and individuals, not government. Maybe there is more to compassion than simply endorsing new government programs and supporting politicians who promise to keep as many people as possible on the public dole.
This same response accused me of wanting to tell the nation´s elderly parents that they must live in their children´s spare rooms and church poor houses rather than in their own homes during their "golden years." Never mind that the current Social Security system in fact regressively taxes people who are still working and building their nest eggs to pay benefits to a demographic group that is statistically much more likely to already own their own homes. To my critic, the idea of families supporting their own aging parents is inherently uncompassionate but it is perfectly compassionate to support them by having money withheld from strangers´ paychecks and transferred to anonymous bureaucrats. The adage that charity begins at home should perhaps be replaced with charity begins in Washington.
If I was similarly inclined to equate certain political opinions with personal character, I might turn to my critic and suggest that his support for the welfare state is motivated by his desire to dump his elderly relatives in a home and stick Medicare with the bills rather than open up his own home to them. This would of course be unfair and simplistic. So why is it considered to be fair to accuse critics of government programs of actually favoring the problems these programs are intended to solve?
Criticism of affirmative action is labeled as support for discrimination against women and minorities. Criticism of federal arts subsidies is derided as contempt for the arts and a desire for censorship. If you were against the outrageous farm bill just passed by Congress and signed by President Bush, you must want to bankrupt family farms and make Americans starve. If you criticize the unconstitutional federal role in education, you must want children to be ignorant. If you question the environmentalists´ latest dogma about how we should order the economy and live our lives, you want to pollute and destroy the planet.
Statists don´t engage in debate as often as they engage in character assassination. Rather than arguing about whether government is the solution to a problem, they would rather accuse doubters of not wanting a problem to be solved. This is why left-liberals typically slur their opponents as bigots, pawns of the rich, polluters and oppressors of the poor. It never occurs to them that perhaps their opponents aren´t opposed to spending money on education, health care, environmental conservation and helping the poor. Maybe they disagree about who is supposed to be doing the spending – the people or the government.
People who think that economic freedom is nothing more than "freedom to starve" for the poor don´t understand what freedom has the power to create. Unleashing individuals to achieve and produce provides a true form of social security, creating new wealth and sustaining prosperity. Freedom leads to innovation, creativity, production and growth. Government policies cannot always accomplish what would happen in the spontaneous order. It takes more than a government program for a person trapped in poverty to change their life. No government agency can effectively micromanage a multi-trillion-dollar economy driven by millions, if not billions, of individual choices. Statists ignore the wealth of problem-solving potential that exists outside of government, sometimes even outside of deliberate human design.
This doesn´t mean that there isn´t a proper role for government. But that role should be a constitutionally permissible one, not one that grows incessantly with each demand for a problem to be solved. There are legitimate reasons to oppose attempts to use government for what would otherwise be worthwhile tasks. Pretending that the modern state is the perfect instrument to solve every problem and prevent all human suffering helps no one.
This is true to the point of being an unwritten rule.
I agree for the most part but there is some need for government. It is important that we act as a compassionate society to citizens in dire need. I don't think that most of us would have a problem footing the bill for a quadriplegic kid who's parents were killed in a car accident.
What we have to be more careful about is giving cash, homes, and food to people who are perfectly capable but just too lazy to get off their asses and work for a living like the rest of us. And in fairness, why should they when they are living pretty comfortably doing nothing. We pay for everything from birthing to burying them. We take care of the necessities of living for them and send them a monthly check to boot that they can spend on anything they like. I pass a low income housing complex on the way to work every morning and you would be surprised to see how many of the apartment terraces have satellite dishes on them.
Perhaps I'm just a little bitter that I work 60+ hours a week and am still watching basic cable.
Even in this situation, it should not be a function of government to FORCE compassion through taxation. Benevolence is best left to civic/religious groups which people support VOLUNTARILY and which did a commendable job of helping the poor/infirm until the government stuck its collective/socialistic nose in everything. We, the working taxpayer, we also only supporting those who had TEMPORARILY fallen on hard times and those UNABLE to help themselves as opposed to generations of moochers who see their sustenance as coming from "government" as instead of where it actually comes from, their neighbors.
were also only supporting...
No I don't think most people would have a problem with that. But therein lies the core of the problem. All government tax and spend programs start out with a situational problem that almost all people can agree needs to be solved, such as your example. But once that problem is solved then the government begins to look for a new problem that needs to be solved, and then another, and another and so on. So it then becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. Once they have the legal authority to deprive you of your property, i.e. your hard earned cash, government know no boundaries.
There is a role for government and it was set forth in the Constitution, and it is not to protect us from all the hardships of life. The proper role of caring for the unfortunate in society is in the private sector. Do you believe that the weak and infirmed simply perished before the beginnings of big government?
And it should not surprise you that they have satellite dishes in the projects, keep in mind that the projects was an idea that started out with real good intentions. Why should they try and manage their cash resources for the necessities of life, they didn't have to work for it and besides there's plenty more where that come from. If worse comes to worse you can always work 65 hours per week. Or would you have a problem with that because you are a greedy uncompassionate sort of guy who doesn’t care about the unfortunate among us.
You forgot the attribution, that is one of Ronald Reagan's famous quotes.
It's not that I forgot the attribution, it's just that I forgot where I learned it from.
But thanks for giving credit where credit is due.
YES IT IS!!!
Waitaminute...
One of our local talk-radio guys came up with a similar idea about a year ago. His idea was to have something akin to an air-raid siren go off at 6am every morning Monday thru Friday as a wake up call. At 7am, everyone would have to either be checked in and ready to work or at school. They would spend 4 hours doing maintenance work, mowing, weeding, whatever until 11am at which time they could return to their "homes" for lunch then back at 12noon for 4 more hours of work. The talk show host and I came to the same conclusion: the housing projects would clear out within 3 months, thus, cleaning out the welfare roles.
Politicians and bureaucrats create and implement roughly 3,000 new laws and regulations each year. That number increases on average from one year to the next. Each year they tell us that the new laws are "must-have laws" that people and society can't prosper without. Yet how is it that citizens and the society they make up has managed to not only survive but increase prosperity when they didn't have this year's 3,000 new laws last year or for decades before. Likewise, how did citizens increase prosperity for decades prior to last year's 3,000 new must-have laws? And they do that despite a mountain of laws that they've already saddled with. Thirty new laws a year is probably overkill. But 3,000 is insane.
Seems obvious enough to me that lobbyists and special interest groups seeking to buy access to government power in order to gain unfair competitive advantages would be non existent if politicians weren't putting government power up for sale in the first place. They sell the "little guys" snake oil while they sell access to government power to their cronies.
Politicians and bureaucrats write and implement thousands of laws each year to justify their unearned paychecks and to usurp power that rightfully belongs to the citizens.
It seems obvious to this writer that politicians and bureaucrats think the citizens are as stupid as themselves and can't readily comprehend the bigger picture when given even a small amount of full-context facts presented honestly.
Government intervention into peaceful, private activity -- free association wherein any or all parties are free to walk away -- will make things worse rather than better.
Parasitical Elite vs. Prosperity Creators
If civilization had to chose between business/science and government/bureaucracy, eliminating the other, which is the better choice?
The first thing civilization must have is business/science. It's what the family needs so that its members can live creative, productive, happy lives. Business/science can survive, even thrive without government/bureaucracy.
Government/bureaucracy cannot survive without business/science. In general, business/science and family is the host and government/bureaucracy is a parasite.
Aside from that, keep valid government services that protect individual rights and property. Military defense, FBI, CIA, police and courts. With the rest of government striped away those few valid services would be several fold more efficient and effective than they are today.
Underwriters Laboratory is a private sector business that has to compete in a capitalist market. Underwriters laboratory is a good example of success where government fails.
Any government agency that is a value to the people and society could better serve the people by being in the private sector where competition demands maximum performance.
Wake up! They are the parasites. We are the host. We don't need them. They need us.
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