“At least two-thirds of the money assigned to government welfare budgets is eaten up by bureaucracy. Taken by itself, this would mean it would take three dollars in taxes for one dollar to reach the poor. But we must add to this the well-founded estimate of James Payne that the combined public and private costs of taxation amount to 65 cents of every dollar taxed. When we include this factor, we find the cost of government delivery of one dollar to the poor to be five dollars.” - Rollback
Along with the emergence of the Coronavirus and the dreadful number of deaths, millions of individuals and small business owners have been forced out of work as state and federal governments look to stop the disease from spreading. As politicians work to remunerate all who have lost wages and sales, it is hard not to recall the trillions in debt, both funded and unfunded, that are already on the government’s books. These trillions represent promises to pay for inflated pensions, entitlements, benefits, vote-buying, and other special favors doled out for far too long.
In the 1990s, talk radio host, Jason Lewis, used the analogy of the government riding in a wagon with the private sector pulling the handle. As most should know, there is not one government job that would ever exist if it weren’t for the private sector creating the wealth to cover the costs of that job. In the beginning, the wagon was filled with essential government and its employees. Over time, however, the wagon has become bloated with seat fillers, subsidies, taxes, welfare, warfare, foreign aid, special interest, etc., etc., and etc. You name it, the wagon is carrying it. The wagon, buckling under the weight of all this grift, is the focus of this blog.
The current national debt is over $24 TRILLION, while the current unfunded liabilities debt exceeds $137 TRILLION. Unfunded liabilities are mostly promises to pay social security, federal debt, and federal employee pension plans. In fact, several states expect their pension system to fail at any moment and will certainly be looking to the federal government for relief. In addition to all this debt, the government is also responsible for half of all healthcare expenses, with dreams of taking over the whole enchilada.
Creating a list of federal programs, or at least a current count of programs, has proved to be nearly impossible. The National Taxpayers Union noted in an article last year that while a 2010 Act of Congress requested this list, it never actually materialized. In the 2006 book, “Actual Ethics”, author James Otteson compiled his own list of 1,129 federal government agencies as of 2003. One can only imagine the flood of new bureaucracies that have lined the streets of DC in the past 17 years.
Nobel-prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, in a 1999 interview, suggested that only 5 of the fourteen executive departments were justified and the rest should be abolished. Based on his expert knowledge and advice he would keep the Department of State, the Department of Treasury, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, and a portion of the Department of Health and Human Services. These departments would continue their oversight of foreign policy, tax collection, the military, courts, and public health, respectively. With a few exceptions, the remainder of the departments were unwarranted and should be eliminated.
A December 2018 article by Daniel Horowitz from the Conservative Review provides a more recent accounting of these government departments along with the percentage of non-essential employees in each. The list he provided, compiled according to OMB data, noted 10 departments where the number of non-essential employees exceeded 80 percent of their workforces. These included HUD, Commerce, Treasury, Interior, Agriculture, EPA, Education, Labor, and Energy. These departments could and should be downsized or eliminated as many of their services are already being handled on the state and local levels.
In Tom Woods's 2011 book, “Rollback”, Woods provides a more extensive look at the expanding grip of the federal government on our lives and pocketbooks. He goes on to destroy the long-held belief that the government is a benevolent provider by revealing the devastating monetary consequences of their interference. Most importantly, Woods shows a way forward out of the malaise brought on by decades of unaccountable bureaucrats and politicians.
As we work to lift ourselves out of this virus-induced economic catastrophe, we might consider returning to the night-watchman state of the past where the federal government existed only to enforce non-aggression through police, military, and the courts. There has never been a more critical time in the history of this country to roll back to the days of proper and constitutional government.
There are too many people in the wagon, and not enough people pulling. The time to systematically and humanely empty the cart is now.
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