Throwing money at a problem doesn’t always solve it.
Take the areas of education, health care, and transportation. The government has been spending more and more money on these areas, but the problems just get worse.
Every year, we spend more educating each student. Almost twice as much as we did 20 years ago. But test scores keep dropping, and most educators admit we’re losing ground.
The cost of health care is going through the roof at the very same time that complaints about the quality of care are also going through the roof. Thanks to government subsidies, government regulation and government mismanagement, a lot of that money goes down the drain.
Meanwhile, if you’ve flown this summer, you won’t be surprised to learn that flight delays have reached an all-time high, 70 percent more than last year. Why is that? The FAA, a government agency, uses equipment that is outdated and unreliable even though better equipment has been available for years. According to the Department of Transportation, preventable flight delays cost airlines and travelers $5 billion a year.
What all these problem areas have in common is that bureaucracies either totally or partially created by government stand between consumers and the services they need. Politicians must stop throwing our money at the problems. They need to get out of the way.
Let those who teach, fly and heal do their jobs. And let the rest of us pay them directly so they know who they work for.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.