Category: too much government

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall tax policy too much government

Legislative Dreamin’

California voters love their state’s process for placing initiatives and referendums on the ballot. 

Legislators? Most take a much dimmer view. This year they’ve been blaming voters for spending the state into bankruptcy through the initiative. Additionally —  and please hold your laughter — they claim that initiatives have tied the hands of legislators who would otherwise have better managed the state’s finances.

Enter Bob Stern of the Center for Governmental Studies. At a recent public hearing of the Senate and Assembly Select Committees on Improving State Government, Stern told legislators, “Most of the ballot-​box budgeting has come from you.”

Stern was referring to a Center study that looked at all ballot measures over the last 20 years that required additional spending. Stern found that three out of four measures costing money were put on the ballot by legislators, not through the citizen initiative. He also found that the legislature’s own ballot measures cost the state $10 billion, while citizen initiatives cost only $2 billion.

Of course, an even bigger issue is the wild spending spree by California politicians with no ballot box input from voters at all. While state tax revenues have increased a whopping 167 percent over the last two decades, government spending shot up 181 percent.

Voters aren’t perfect, but anyone with a lick of common sense knows the answer to controlling government spending isn’t to free the politicians from voter restraint.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption too much government

Look for the Union Babble

I have a very controversial position today. Sorry if you disagree, but I feel I must speak out.

Here goes: In my view, it is okay for boy scouts to do good deeds.

There, I said it. Sorry if you find my view repugnant. Eh? What’s that? You agree with me? Great! I always prefer it when you and I are on the same page.

Sadly, though, the president of a Pennsylvania chapter of the Service Employees International Union does not agree. Nick Balzano is upset that 17-​year-​old Kevin Anderson cleared a path so people could better enjoy a river. Kevin is pursuing an Eagle Scout badge and did the work voluntarily.

Balzano threatened the city of Allentown because it had recently laid off some union workers. He thinks it’s a sin to not only reduce labor costs but also get some work done for free. I think Balzano should try for a couple merit badges of his own. Maybe a logic badge and a common sense badge, for starters.

Turns out a lot of people agree with me. Balzano has resigned in the wake of a firestorm of protest … without learning a thing, apparently. He insists he’s got nothing against boy scouts. He’s just “trying to protect my jobs.” 

Let’s hope his union never gets a city contract to help little old ladies cross the street.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom too much government

Personal Liberty Allowance

In a time of expanding surveillance and shrinking liberty, the citizens of Great Britain are now threatened with yet another massive assault on their rights and dignity.

A certain Lord Smith of Finsbury wants the government to lord it over Her Majesty’s subjects even more obnoxiously by slapping them with a “personal carbon allowance.”

This carbon allowance would be enforced by giving everybody a personal ID number. Britons would have to supply the number whenever they buy anything, from gas to airline tickets, affecting their carbon output. Presumably, vendors would check a customer’s newest proposed purchase against some database. Only so many logs you could toss on the fire and then you’re out of luck, unless you buy more carbon credits.

The proposal is vicious in itself. But the potential for “abuse” of such an abusive protocol is also massive. In an age of rampant credit card fraud and identity theft, how hard would it be for a sales clerk in the proposed regime who has used up his own quota to “borrow” somebody else’s carbon-​permission ID number? 

If the British government wields this latest Orwellian bludgeon and the citizens don’t rebel, they’ll accept anything. We Americans may shake our heads in disbelief, but we’re hardly immune to such eco-​totalitarian trends. 

It can happen here. After all, Lord Smith’s proposal merely takes the obsession over carbon emissions to its logical — and absurd — conclusion.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Multiplication and Division

John Maynard Keynes’s most popular notion was his infamous “multiplier” effect. Spend some government (taxpayer) money, and the effects “multiply” in the economy, as if the Invisible Hand were on speed. 

The truth is the reverse: “the divider” effect. Create government jobs and progress in the marketplace “divides” as a result of the increased taxes needed to support the jobs. 

Our orator-​in-​chief also says he’s in the business of “saving jobs.” Like most politicians, he loves “multiplier” talk, because it gives him the green light to spend.

But, like the bank bailouts, what’s really happening with stimulus spending is that some people are getting raises and bonuses while the unemployment rate goes double-digit.

The actual multiplier effect regards talk. For every dollar government spends, politicians claim umpteen more jobs “saved.” It’s not reality. The multiplication effect occurs entirely in rhetoric and in PowerPoint presentations. 

The New York Times tells us how “the federal government spent $1,047 in stimulus money to buy a rider mower” for a cemetery in Arkansas. Then, “a report on the government’s stimulus Web site improbably claims that that single lawn mower sale helped save or create 50 jobs.”

The magic of this sort of job creation doesn’t rest upon the logic of markets. Here the magic lies simply in the lying. The “multiplier” multiplies because politicians tell multiple lies.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies responsibility too much government

$800 Billion Gorilla

It somehow didn’t come up.

Last week, when President Barack Obama met with Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, there was reportedly no discussion of the fact that our country owes China over $800 billion. 

Just suppose you owed someone $800 bucks … or $800,000. Do you think it could affect the relationship?

What about nearly a trillion dollars?

The Obama Administration just announced that American-​Chinese relations are “at an all-​time high.” But a story in the Washington Post compared our relationship with China to the nuclear stalemate of the Cold War, known as “mutually assured destruction,” or MAD. We’re dependent on them for future loans; they’re dependent on us to pay back old loans and new.

Kenneth Lieberthal of the Brookings Institution explained that “the Chinese can pull the rug out from under our economy only if they want to pull the rug out from under themselves.”

Reassuring? Not very. 

Why have we allowed a foreign power to gain such leverage over us? 

Because our politicians cannot — will not — limit their yearly spending to the trillion-​plus dollars in revenue from American taxpayers.

When it comes to debt, China’s tyrants  have taken better care of their country than our politicians have of ours. But we needn’t cede them control. Far better simply to stop borrowing billions from Beijing. 

How? Slash spending. If our politicians can’t do it for us, maybe they can do it for their Chinese allies.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

Gross Jobs

The president says he’s creating jobs. I’m skeptical. I guess there are some things government can do to ensure that jobs get created, out there in the bill-​paying, profit-​making world. But these do not include spending trillions of borrowed money.

And neither do they include simply giving more money to state and local governments.

The truth about Obama’s much-​ballyhooed job creation is that more than half of his alleged new jobs turn out to be government jobs.

Government jobs don’t count, Mr. President. 

Remember, many things governments do actually drain us. Jobs in the marketplace, on the other hand, serve real consumer demand, make us all better off. They also help pay the taxes for those government jobs. Employing more people in government means needing more real jobs to pay for the government ones.

And how much work do politicians cause us to engage in just to unbury ourselves from their silly, wealth-​extracting regulations? I know, I know: Every time they add on some new complication to the tax code, jobs emerge in the accounting and tax-​consulting industry. But this doesn’t exactly make us better off, does it? Not on net.

This lesson applies generally. Here’s the bottom line. Government can borrow and tax to spend to create “gross jobs.” Sure. But on net, after balancing the collective books, we’re not better off.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.