Thoughts on the US government
It is incredible how accustomed we have become to the current state of affairs in the United States. Every major story in the news shows the hand of government reigning supreme with no end in sight. Every day the government continues its massive orchestration of the economic affairs of the US and, to a large extent, the world. The Fed continues to prop up failing banks and financial institutions that are “too big to fail.” With the bailouts come increased authority for the federal government, more burdens on business, and more taxes on individuals. First the Fed causes an artificial boom through its inflationary, cheap-credit policy and then everyone is shocked when everything collapses. And then when everything collapses, the government steps in to bail out the banks at the expense of the taxpayers to avoid the dreaded deflation that naturally should occur. Prices need to fall because there was malinvestment across the entire economy, spurred by false signals caused by poor monetary policy. But the government is operating under a defunct Keynesian economic theory that says that the government needs to step in where individuals won’t in order to prop up prices and bring back the “animal spirits” of the consumer. The upshot is that the government is just doing more of what it did that caused this whole mess in the first place: pumping out trillions of debt (which we don’t have) in an effort to cause inflation at all costs. It is not at all clear that deflation would be the worst thing. In fact, good economic theory suggests that deflation is THE only cure for the ailing economy. Instead, the government is teetering on the brink of a major fiscal crisis in order to avoid this very cure. None of the stimulus has worked. Can anyone seriously believe that the member of the government are capable of “getting it right?” Are we really to believe that the partial members of government, who are mainly interested in protecting their careers in government and engineering some social agenda that they believe will pay dividends in the future, can get us out of this mess and restore economic prosperity? After all of the childish games play themselves out in the “deliberations” of our elected officials, is it really likely that what will emerge is some sensible and coherent resolution to our problem? New regulations will have more unintended consequences and the liquidity pumped into the system will either fail or cause excessive inflation. Either way, if the stimulus does nothing, which appears to be the case, America will be left with a huge mountain of debt. We cannot suddenly expect the government to come up with the political will to curb its appetite for debt. The only way out is a cataclysmic fiscal crisis unless the government rapidly changes course and finally gives up on the theories it has been operating under.
Just over the past few days we learned about how Nebraskan Senator Nelson’s vote was basically bought in exchange for a promise to divert taxpayer money to the constituents in his state. This should infuriate people! Most votes don’t even want this health care bill and yet the agenda is being pursued aggressively, with the administration using whatever tactics necessary to secure votes. Majority rule itself has theoretical problems. The basic problem with democracy is that there is no guarantee that the will of the majority will reflect virtue and if majority is the law, then it is basically a sanctioned mob. Think about it: if enough people want to vote for some agenda that serves their interests, they can compel everyone else under the force of law to part with their money and property in pursuit of the agenda. This could apply even if only 51% of the country desires the policy! But wait, right now only 32% (or some number close to that) even wants this health care bill! Yet Congress insists on shoving this bill through its “process” in order to ensure that its agenda comes to fruition. There isn’t even democractic representation in this country any more. Nelson’s little ploy sums perfectly the way the government operates. The government is made up of human beings who have spent their lives ambitiously pursuing “careers” serving the “public interest.” In other words, these guys have spent their lives advancing themselves so that they can some day make decisions for everyone else. Not exactly a comforting thought.
It is chilling to see how the worst fears of the framers have become reality. The framers carefully crafted a system of government in which the many factions and interests in the nation will be balanced out through separation of powers and checks and balances so that no one interest can dominate the rest of the population. This is exactly what is happening now. Obama and other members of the government have a dream of putting in place a vast social agenda that will shape the course of this country. With enough strong-arming, they can implement their agenda – of course they need to tax the citizens in order to do it since there is no such thing as the “public sector” in reality. Anything the government does can only be done because of and in spite of the citizens. The US government was intended to be a government of enumerated powers. There is no constitutional basis for most of the functions and powers that the federal government enjoys today. Think about: the basic image of the federal government as it stands right now is so incredibly at odds with the image that the framers had around that the framers would surely revolt if they were alive today. The government controls the monetary affairs of the country through its control of the money supply and is now reaching into the arena of health care and taxing the citizenry in order to do it.
People think you are a quack when you speak of revolt, but ask yourself this: do you think its really such a stretch to suggest that the framers of the Constitution would revolt if they witnessed the overload of government power that is in place today?
