Our View - Thursday

On the take

Americans bribed into backing big government

The octopus is an overused but irresistible metaphor for the federal government, given its tentacle-like reach into all our lives. Whatever our position may be on the appropriate size and scope of government — the focus of Limited Government Week activities that kick off Sunday — its ability to co-opt us through favors, bribes and promises of security is both impressive and ominous.

This almost certainly accounts for America’s conflicted attitude on the subject. Many of us claim we want government out of our pocketbooks and business (and businesses), but routinely turn to it for every conceivable sort of assistance. For many Americans, government is the solution of first resort.

Uncle Sam’s ability to bribe Americans with their own money was the subject of a recent story in the Christian Science Monitor, which reported that more than half of Americans receive some sort of income from government programs. And those numbers are expected to grow as the baby boomers begin retiring en mass.

“Slightly over half of all Americans — 52.6 percent — now receive significant income from government programs, according to an analysis by Gary Shilling, an economist in Springfield, N.J.,” reported the Monitor. “That’s up from 49.4 percent in 2000 and far above the 28.3 percent of Americans in 1950. If the trend continues, the percentage could rise within 10 years to pass 55 percent, where it stood in 1980 on the eve of President Reagan’s move to scale back the size of government. That two-decade shrink-the-government trend now appears over, if for no other reason than demographics. The aging babyboomer generation is poised to receive big payments from Social Security and government health care programs.”

The government’s deepening involvement in the “insurance business” — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, but also its bailouts of private pension plans — is making matters worse. The dependency will deepen as the population ages.

Shilling also found that one in five Americans work directly or indirectly for the federal government. Given the growth of state and municipal governments, and the many contractors that feed off them, it’s not hard to see why government is one of the few “booming industries” left in the United States.

Americans are chronically unhappy about how heavily they are taxed, and few feel the money is well spent, the article points out. “Yet at the same time, much of U.S. population is on the receiving end of that tax-revenue stream.” Few seem able to make the connection between the two issues.

Does everyone who works for or benefits from government automatically become a vote for bigger government candidates and ideas? Not necessarily. Undoubtedly, many continue to oppose bigger government, even when they are on the take in some way. But we would be willing to bet that most federal workers and federal dependents vote for Democrats, understanding on which side their bread is buttered. Voting patterns in Fed Central — Washington, D.C. and its Virginia and Maryland suburbs — support our thesis. When push comes to shove, self-interest frequently trumps political ideology.

Americans face a dilemma over government. We “have the yearning for cradle-to-grave paternalism,” Shilling told the Monitor, “but as Americans you also have the carry-over of the frontier spirit of individual opportunity.” And how these tensions are resolved will determine the shape of things, and government, to come.

Limited Government Week, a series of forums running Sunday through Wednesday, is an opportunity to talk more about such issues. This year’s topics include property rights, free market capitalism, eminent domain, regulatory reform and and privatizing government services. For a full schedule of events, contact Jane Muller at Jmuller@uccs.edu or 719-262-4093. Tickets are available at www.uccstickets.com.

Out of the woods

Stripped to bare bones, the debate in Black Forest seemed to be between the desire for self-determination and the fear of more government. The latter trumped the former Tuesday when residents braved a storm to vote overwhelmingly against incorporation.

We didn’t have a dog in the fight. But as dispassionate observers, who played host to some exchanges in the letters section, we believe voters chose correctly. There seems to be some sentiment that county officials don’t adequately represent the area. But that wasn’t enough to justify the creation of a new city — and the new layers of taxation and bureaucracy that inevitably follow — ruled the majority.

It’s refreshing to see people voting against more government, which could also be seen as a vote for self-determination, since incorporation might simply have meant swapping one set of masters (the county) for another (a proposed city).

There seemed to be a slightly xenophobic subtext to the proincorporation argument. Backers seemed to feel that development (read: “outsiders”) must be strictly controlled, betraying an exclusionist mindset the majority wisely rejected.

Rigid adherence to something called the Black Forest Master Plan also motivated incorporation supporters. But that also seemed a flimsy rationale for incorporation. Drawing up such master plans serves some useful purpose, we suppose. But the current fixation on planning is also frequently a power grab by busybodies and control freaks, who want to impose their visions on other people. Such plans, if too rigidly written and followed, are bound to come into conflict with the fact that change is inevitable.

Most folks in Black Forest seem to feel they can get by without more overseers. Bully for them. For those of us living in the city, unfortunately, that battle was lost long ago.