As hard as it may be to accept, a significant minority in this country genuinely believe the government can endlessly create money out of thin air to pay for giveaway programs without consequence. Why else would presidential candidate Kamala Harris propose another $1.7 trillion in new entitlements she intends to hand out like high-calorie sugar candy targeting low-information voters to buy their votes? Even the liberal media seems to have problems with the multitude of new spending initiatives she rolled out the other day. Could this be the beginning of an honest introspection and an end to her honeymoon repeating Biden’s basement campaign strategy and an American press chanting “la-la-la-la” with eyes closed and fingers in their ears?
The Inflation Dilemma: Why Over-Spending Feeds Economic Instability:-
You’d think by now, almost everyone would understand that spending money you don’t have is inflationary, especially while still reeling from the effects of record inflation. But, if you work for the government, inflation doesn’t seem to exist. Government workers are among the only people who have not just kept up with inflation but have advanced at the expense of the taxpayers they ostensibly serve. Additionally, thousands of other agencies and NGOs outside of government are connected at the hip and are similarly insulated against inflation through their financial arrangements. Together, they represent an alternate universe of millions of people invested in inflation, separating our citizens into haves and have-nots.
Talking about government efficiency is an oxymoron. The Post Office comes in for a significant share of scorn by virtually every economist as being unsustainable; there is an inverse relationship between the volume of declining First Class mail, which pays the best, and the personnel and operational costs of the Post Office that are exploding. The consequence? Twice a year, increases leading to further declining volumes. About 640,000 people work for the Post Office, making it one of the largest employers in the world. I think it’s a great way to demonstrate how the entire government works. Think of the Post Office running the country as an easy way to visualize the waste and inefficiencies of government.
The perceived entitlement to take other people’s money is a sickness that permeates almost everyone involved with government over time. Eventually, it is too easy to become “one of them” and start believing in the necessity of those 24 million employees ostensibly working for the rest of us. Except too many aren’t!
The lack of a profit motive makes the government essential socialistic, if not communistic, in design and implementation. How often do you ever hear of layoffs to balance their budgets? How about pay cuts, firings, or significant labor reallocations to be more efficient? It rarely happens because raising the budget with the stroke of a pen is much easier. Government overall is growing at a rate well above inflation because it can. In 1962, federal spending was $707 billion, accounting for 18 percent of U.S. GDP. In 2011, federal spending was $3.6 trillion, accounting for 24 percent of GDP. (The dollar figures are adjusted for inflation.) Continued federal, state, and local government spending advances will reach 33% of U.S. GDP in the next year or two. This level is comparable to wartime spending levels without a war!
If you accept the belief that government at all levels is essentially socialistic, then by any reasonable logic, it is anti-capitalist in outlook. All the features of capitalism that self-regulate, like bankruptcy and making a profit, are non-operative in a government setting. A feature of government, a requirement to spend every budget and obligated dollar each cycle, whether needed or not, has few parallels in business, especially small and medium-sized companies. Government managers understand the first rule of government: You can only increase your power by increasing your budget. And they do so all too well!
Government Regulation vs. Capitalism – The New Rules in Focus:-
As the government becomes more hostile to capitalism, it creates rules and interpretations that it believes are required to reign in the worst virtues of capitalism that the government clearly believes exist. It’s like cannibals grading the quality of humans they intend to consume like the FDA inspects beef. The more government is involved in business, the harder it is to conduct business, and the more government infers that it must regulate it even more. This is what we call a self-reinforcing feedback loop. Government must inevitably kill capitalism for it to continue to grow.
Now, let’s return to the present. The most crucial lesson never taught in schools is the danger of our government to the health, safety, and prosperity of its citizens. At best, government is a necessary evil. It performs essential functions but too many unnecessary tasks that only consume resources that legitimately belong to the people. Government bureaucracies will never admit that. That’s why we have three branches of government to restrain the worst government inclinations while providing for the national defense and arbitrating disputes between the States. Very little more was anticipated by the Founders, who would immediately see how we corrupted their limited government ideals.
This brings us back to who our next president will be and the highly divergent views of the two sides. Harris promises gold and untold riches with less work and less responsibility. She claims her administration will set a new standard of “opportunities” with little to back it up. Her campaign is short of particulars or even an ability to meet constitutional restraints wisely put into place to restrain future tyrants such as herself.
Trump paints a vision of a better future through changes in the administrative state, foreign policy, and incentives offered to companies and individuals that would lead to more money in all of our pockets and a return to a more principled time of working for a living, less subsidization, and less debt. It’s a clear choice, but one side holds the megaphone to the detriment of the other. It will be a close race, and there are those of us who hope God puts his finger on the scale instead of Democrats subverting the vote. We can only hope.
God Bless America.
Allan J. Feifer—Patriot
Author, Businessman, Thinker, and Strategist. Read more about Allan, his background, and his ideas to create a better tomorrow at www.1plus1equals2.com.
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