(original post May 2011)
By James Craig Green
Today, the size and scope of American government have grown far beyond the design of the Republic’s founders. It tries to be everything to everyone - intervening in everyone’s lives for the common good or public interest. This forceful elevation of the collective over the individual has produced nothing but false hope, tyranny and unsustainable debt, undermining the markets and property rights that prevented or limited them before. In short, government, producing nothing without destroying something else, is eating America alive. The best proof for this is 16 TRILLION dollars in admitted public debt, much of it owed to foreign banks, plus another 50 trillion in unfunded liabilities for future government promises like Social Security and Medicare (See: http://www.pgpf.org/). Baby boomers are retiring, reversing their decades of positive contributions.
The American Republic began with limited size and scope to prevent it from becoming what it is today. Unlike the democratic French Revolution that produced the Reign of Terror, the guillotine and the Emperor Napoleon; the American Revolution was based on respect for the individuals and their property rights that produce the wealth all collectives need. Ignoring or minimizing property protection has been a common theme of every government, including the federal government of the U.S. It is now a bloated, destructive monster, spending almost 50% of GDP for the first time since WWII - an eightfold increase in percentage over the last century, without including the costs of its oppressive mandates. Today, it conspires against America, promoting its self-serving illusion of security over freedom while waving the flag to cheering millions addicted to its "free" lunches.
The U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights have been largely ignored or re-interpreted by all three branches of government, to appease every special interest that can package itself with the magic words, public interest. Presidents, congresses and courts have destroyed the Founders' dreams.
A Different Animal
Today’s American government has made important things like protection and dispute resolution trivial -- confused and diluted by an endless growth of new laws each year to appease every whim of the collective mob. The People, a phrase never or vaguely defined, encourage legislators and their friends to create huge unearned advantages (jobs, contracts, handouts, economic restrictions) for some over others, by force of law.
The law has become a hammer instead of a shield.
Some may agree with the inherent problems of today's government, but may be cautious to support fundamental changes too rapidly or too sweeping in their scope. However, today's unprecedented and unstable economic conditions beg you to consider the following:
1. Most Americans feel they are entitled to your money, and need only vote to get it - unlike the work ethic that existed before the New Deal and other government welfare programs.
2. Government should be limited to people and property protection; NOT guaranteeing jobs, insurance or success. It cannot protect your property by giving it to others.
3. The next economic crash will again be sudden and unexpected. No political action can prevent it, despite false promises from Republicans and Democrats. Words are cheap.
4. Prudence suggests a backup plan for those who still believe the economy is fixable by politics, with a soft landing. This is not your grandfather's; nor Founders' America.
5. Creating alternative networks and institutions that do not depend on government may become essential if pessimistic scenarios occur. Do you believe Obama's projections?
In 1917, the Soviet Union was created to implement the ideas of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto that took Europe by storm after its publication in 1848. The Soviet Union eventually failed from its forced collectivism, but not before starving and murdering tens of millions of its citizens and relegating others to lifetimes of poverty and tyranny. As a lifelong, card-carrying member of the American Communist Party once told me, Communists believe the means of production should be owned by the Public.
A Silly Little Word
There it was, stripped naked for all to see - that awful, nebulous little 6-letter word that encourages people to excuse, and celebrate, their destructive tendencies without accepting responsibility. It is that word - public - that allows the plunder of innocent people for any grand, stupid, fantastic, or destructive purpose without blaming anyone. This silly little word is why public interest is a euphemism for tyranny, public servant for parasite and public property for socialism. Almost half the land in the U.S. is owned by government, with the remainder taxed to provide a cash cow for any and all public purposes. By this measure alone, America is already HALF socialist, sacrificing essential people and property protection for too many subsidized, free-riding voters. Read the Communist Manifesto to see where progressive taxation came from.
Forceful collective action, like any lynch mob, disguises and minimizes the responsibility of each individual. This allows Democrats and Republicans to constantly grow government for the benefit of their friends, despite rhetoric to the contrary. Too many of your fellow citizens, perhaps yourself, depend on this insane collective gang bang for their livelihoods. It gets worse each year, now seeming likely that only economic collapse will stop government's cancerous growth.
Ultimately, this process will reverse itself, but not because you voted for or against someone, or promoted some public policy, or fought against a tax increase. It will happen because a sizeable minority of productive people, at great risk to themselves, with the most rare and difficult kind of courage (opposing the majority) will take back their lives and choose not to support, excuse or placate this bloated monster. At this critical time in its history, America desperately needs people like Thoreau, Gandhi and Rosa Parks more than the self-absorbed politicians who pimp for your vote so they can continue to increase government every year. Read Thoreau's Civil Disobedience.
Like so many others, American government has learned to promise endless prosperity without effort or responsibility. To break this destructive cycle, we must build new institutions that help us instead of hurt us – from the ground up, not from the top down, which has always been tried and has always failed. The U. S. Government is repeating the same mistakes of the Roman Empire and the Soviet Union, and its economy will collapse for the same reason – you can’t consume more than you produce forever. Today's unthinkable will be tomorrows necessity.
It’s long past time for Americans to take back their lives, property and dreams from a fog of collectivism and the lies that are public interest, public service and public property.
Government is the great fiction by which everybody expects to live at the expense of everybody else - Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)
Showing posts with label spending. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spending. Show all posts
Friday, April 5, 2013
Saturday, June 25, 2011
HERITAGE on GOVERNMENT SPENDING AND REVENUE
by James Craig Green
The Heritage Foundation recently released its 2011 BUDGET CHART BOOK on Federal Spending, Federal Revenue, Debt &Deficits; Deficits and Entitlements; each of which comprise major tabs at the top of its main page. Please note there are two Chart 5's below, one from the Debt and Deficits tab (with presidents' pictures) and one for Federal Revenue. Following are some excerpts to illustrate high points:
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Please note that under Republican presidents, government spending has been much greater than under Democrats... that is, before Obama. Most recently, George W. Bush became the first president in more than 100 years to not veto a single spending bill in his first term in office. Also, his enthusiastic support for the 2003 Medicare prescription bill he signed into law was called "the most irresponsible law since the sixties," by U.S. Comptroller General David Walker. But, Obama is becoming the all-time champion of U.S. presidents for increasing government size regulation and scope, while punishing the markets that produce all wealth.
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This Chart 5 is from the Federal Revenue section, not the same as Chart 5 from the Debt and Deficits section. This Chart is the very best argument against Obama's recent claim that "taxing the rich" can significantly increase government revenue. In 1945, the year of my birth, the highest individual tax rate was 94%. In 1950, the rate was 91%. It declined to 70% in 1965, 50% in 1982, 28% in 1988, up to 40% in 1993 and finally down to 35% in 2003.
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My Criticism of the Heritage Plan:
First, to concede half the federal budget to entitlements forever is the height of both stupidity and naivete. Stupidity because of the repeated falure of socialist governments around the world (based on entitlements instead of production) and naive because of the tendency of government to grow much faster than projections. However, unlike anything we've seen from a pathetic, anti-free-market Republican House of Representatives, at least the Heritage budget includes real cuts, instead of just trivial reductions in future spending growth. That's probably because none of the Heritage study authors (to my knowledge) are trying to get elected to Congress.
Second, please note on the last graphic there are no cuts for so-called Defense Spending. As I have been pointing out for three decades, very little of what I prefer to call Military Spending is for national defense. Too many of my conservative friends are locked into the idea that everything in Washington, D.C. is bureacratic, inefficient, wasteful and largely fraudulent, EXCEPT FOR the military and its contractors... and, of course, their own jobs.
As the last graphic shows, military spending has declined from about 6-8% of GDP during the Vietnam War to about 5% of GDP today. Well, since the Soviet Union finally collapsed of its own weight, I would hope so. But, as long as conservatives refuse to see the same bureaucratic, inefficient, wasteful and largely fraudulent forces at work in the U.S. military as with every other portion of government, no department should retain its current funding.
When it was called the Department of War, its purpose was defense.
Now that it's called the Department of Defense, its purpose is war.
--Jack Swigert, former Apollo 13 astronaut, just before his election to Colorado's Sixth Congressional District (1982).
The U.S. military, annually funded by Congress, has become an instrument of the President's foreign policy with little concern for the U.S. Constitution which Congress, the President and Supreme Court are sworn to uphold and defend. Today, U.S. military forces are in more than 170 countries around the world, with broad, nebulous and often conflicting missions. As Congressman Ron Paul has pointed out repeatedly, its purpose should not be nation-building or serving as the world's policeman, but should be focused on defending the U.S. from attack. It has become just another jobs program for bureacrats, military contractors and politicians who keep funding and building more sophisticated weapons designed to defeat the armies of the past. The fact that Republicans cannot find one dollar to cut from this bloated monstrosity is a testament to their insincerity toward solving the problems of the federal budget. Today's annual military spending budget is about the same percentage of GDP as Social Security.
While I applaud the Heritage plan for its breadth, much bolder than any elected official can accept, it's clearly partisan, and as such, insures its own failure in Congress.
Despite my criticism, I encourage you to consider the details of the Heritage plan, as it contains some very good ideas if America is ever to get back to its libertarian roots instead of the welfare/warfare state it has become.
The Heritage Foundation recently released its 2011 BUDGET CHART BOOK on Federal Spending, Federal Revenue, Debt &Deficits; Deficits and Entitlements; each of which comprise major tabs at the top of its main page. Please note there are two Chart 5's below, one from the Debt and Deficits tab (with presidents' pictures) and one for Federal Revenue. Following are some excerpts to illustrate high points:
Please note these figures, up to about $36,000 per household by 2020, do not consider the tens of trillions of dollars that have been promised to future recipients of social security, medicare and medicaid which would increase them about tenfold. Heritage does deal with these later, conceding to them ten percent of GDP forever. Please don't make the mistake of confusing these figures for total government spending with amounts received by households. See my April 2011 blog post on WHO BENEFITS AND WHO PAYS FOR GOVERNMENT? to see that 40 percent of Americans pay into government more than they receive, while the remaining 60% majority gets more from government than they pay in. Is this what Karl Marx meant by "winning the battle of democracy?"
Please note that under Republican presidents, government spending has been much greater than under Democrats... that is, before Obama. Most recently, George W. Bush became the first president in more than 100 years to not veto a single spending bill in his first term in office. Also, his enthusiastic support for the 2003 Medicare prescription bill he signed into law was called "the most irresponsible law since the sixties," by U.S. Comptroller General David Walker. But, Obama is becoming the all-time champion of U.S. presidents for increasing government size regulation and scope, while punishing the markets that produce all wealth.
This Chart 5 is from the Federal Revenue section, not the same as Chart 5 from the Debt and Deficits section. This Chart is the very best argument against Obama's recent claim that "taxing the rich" can significantly increase government revenue. In 1945, the year of my birth, the highest individual tax rate was 94%. In 1950, the rate was 91%. It declined to 70% in 1965, 50% in 1982, 28% in 1988, up to 40% in 1993 and finally down to 35% in 2003.
My Criticism of the Heritage Plan:
First, to concede half the federal budget to entitlements forever is the height of both stupidity and naivete. Stupidity because of the repeated falure of socialist governments around the world (based on entitlements instead of production) and naive because of the tendency of government to grow much faster than projections. However, unlike anything we've seen from a pathetic, anti-free-market Republican House of Representatives, at least the Heritage budget includes real cuts, instead of just trivial reductions in future spending growth. That's probably because none of the Heritage study authors (to my knowledge) are trying to get elected to Congress.
Second, please note on the last graphic there are no cuts for so-called Defense Spending. As I have been pointing out for three decades, very little of what I prefer to call Military Spending is for national defense. Too many of my conservative friends are locked into the idea that everything in Washington, D.C. is bureacratic, inefficient, wasteful and largely fraudulent, EXCEPT FOR the military and its contractors... and, of course, their own jobs.
As the last graphic shows, military spending has declined from about 6-8% of GDP during the Vietnam War to about 5% of GDP today. Well, since the Soviet Union finally collapsed of its own weight, I would hope so. But, as long as conservatives refuse to see the same bureaucratic, inefficient, wasteful and largely fraudulent forces at work in the U.S. military as with every other portion of government, no department should retain its current funding.
When it was called the Department of War, its purpose was defense.
Now that it's called the Department of Defense, its purpose is war.
--Jack Swigert, former Apollo 13 astronaut, just before his election to Colorado's Sixth Congressional District (1982).
The U.S. military, annually funded by Congress, has become an instrument of the President's foreign policy with little concern for the U.S. Constitution which Congress, the President and Supreme Court are sworn to uphold and defend. Today, U.S. military forces are in more than 170 countries around the world, with broad, nebulous and often conflicting missions. As Congressman Ron Paul has pointed out repeatedly, its purpose should not be nation-building or serving as the world's policeman, but should be focused on defending the U.S. from attack. It has become just another jobs program for bureacrats, military contractors and politicians who keep funding and building more sophisticated weapons designed to defeat the armies of the past. The fact that Republicans cannot find one dollar to cut from this bloated monstrosity is a testament to their insincerity toward solving the problems of the federal budget. Today's annual military spending budget is about the same percentage of GDP as Social Security.
While I applaud the Heritage plan for its breadth, much bolder than any elected official can accept, it's clearly partisan, and as such, insures its own failure in Congress.
Despite my criticism, I encourage you to consider the details of the Heritage plan, as it contains some very good ideas if America is ever to get back to its libertarian roots instead of the welfare/warfare state it has become.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
MARKETS WORK - GOVERNMENTS DON'T
By James Craig Green
Markets work because they punish failure.
Governments don't work because they reward it.
Governments are more popular than markets, because they make it easier for people to avoid the short term consequences of their mistakes. But, reality eventually catches up, sometimes taking decades or lifetimes.
The ruthless, adverse consequences for mistakes that make markets work (economic losses) are what most people try to avoid at all costs. Like all collectives, governments tend to reduce or eliminate personal responsibility by melding individual actions into the group. As political organizations, this means they focus on short term election cycles, popular opinion, instant news and other political considerations, at the expense of long term prosperity and stability. This unfortunate characteristic is built into government genes, so-to-speak.
Markets encourage production - the source of all wealth - but this is not easy. It requires savings, hard work and risk, driven by the profit motive - the engine of production. Most new businesses don't last a year. The dedication and stress of starting and running a successful business for years or decades is completely lost on economists, politicians, planners, government employees and other beneficiaries of un-subsidized businesses' productive efforts. Few financial analysts have any idea what this takes, or how much of your life it can consume, successful or not.
As Adam Smith pointed out in WEALTH OF NATIONS, you don't get your supper from the butcher or baker's public spirit, but from his own self interest. This, in a nutshell, is what produces virtually everything useful you have purchased in your lifetime.
Though government can create jobs and produce useful goods and services, it does so at the expense of the productive private sector upon which it depends. On balance, government is a net consumer, not a producer. If it were a business, it would have long since gone bankrupt. This adverse economic impact can only be justified as a cost worth paying for things such as national defense, protection of people and property and an impartial court system. As the American Republic's founders intended, the size and influence of government should be limited to these and a few other things. Even these can only be justified if they are truly for the general welfare of all, and not for the specific welfare of some at the expense of others.
Markets are based on choice. This means both parties to a transaction must agree, each perceiving a benefit, before a deal is made (win-win). This produces a net gain to both, because each traded for something s/he wanted more than what s/he had before the transaction.
Government is based on force. This means one party gains at the expense of another's loss (win-lose). Although this is sometimes considered a wash (or even a benefit) by some, the process of forceful taking almost always produces a net loss. If you want a cheap car, go to a government auction. You win, but taxpayers and the economy lose more, because money taken from them was not as wisely spent as money they spend on themselves. During the Great Depression, the government poured milk into gutters and slaughtered baby pigs to "keep agricultural prices high." This is the chronic insanity of government when it goes beyond its protective role and enters the economic sphere. It destroys wealth while pursuing fools' errands from its extreme economic ignorance.
Please read Lawrence Reed's pamphlet, GREAT MYTHS OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION. If you are a serious advocate of human liberty and believe in the Founders' promise of a Constitutional Republic limited to a few, really important, protective powers, why not purchase a hundred of Reed's pamphlets about the Great Depression and give them to your friends or others receptive to the ideas contained there?
Government can't plausibly bail out bankers and Wall Street investment firms, then claim the free market is to blame, but it can do so politically, which defines the art of providing something-for-nothing at someone else's expense.
The American Republic is in trouble because of too many promises, made to too many people, which the government has no way of keeping due to its unprecedented levels of public debt. Only when it gets back to its primary purpose, to protect individual rights and adjudicate disputes, will it become sustainable, and maybe even worth the money it sucks out of the economy every year.
You can't fool all the people all the time, but you can do it long enough to run a large country. - Anonymous
Markets work because they punish failure.
Governments don't work because they reward it.
Governments are more popular than markets, because they make it easier for people to avoid the short term consequences of their mistakes. But, reality eventually catches up, sometimes taking decades or lifetimes.
The ruthless, adverse consequences for mistakes that make markets work (economic losses) are what most people try to avoid at all costs. Like all collectives, governments tend to reduce or eliminate personal responsibility by melding individual actions into the group. As political organizations, this means they focus on short term election cycles, popular opinion, instant news and other political considerations, at the expense of long term prosperity and stability. This unfortunate characteristic is built into government genes, so-to-speak.
Markets encourage production - the source of all wealth - but this is not easy. It requires savings, hard work and risk, driven by the profit motive - the engine of production. Most new businesses don't last a year. The dedication and stress of starting and running a successful business for years or decades is completely lost on economists, politicians, planners, government employees and other beneficiaries of un-subsidized businesses' productive efforts. Few financial analysts have any idea what this takes, or how much of your life it can consume, successful or not.
As Adam Smith pointed out in WEALTH OF NATIONS, you don't get your supper from the butcher or baker's public spirit, but from his own self interest. This, in a nutshell, is what produces virtually everything useful you have purchased in your lifetime.
Though government can create jobs and produce useful goods and services, it does so at the expense of the productive private sector upon which it depends. On balance, government is a net consumer, not a producer. If it were a business, it would have long since gone bankrupt. This adverse economic impact can only be justified as a cost worth paying for things such as national defense, protection of people and property and an impartial court system. As the American Republic's founders intended, the size and influence of government should be limited to these and a few other things. Even these can only be justified if they are truly for the general welfare of all, and not for the specific welfare of some at the expense of others.
Markets are based on choice. This means both parties to a transaction must agree, each perceiving a benefit, before a deal is made (win-win). This produces a net gain to both, because each traded for something s/he wanted more than what s/he had before the transaction.
Government is based on force. This means one party gains at the expense of another's loss (win-lose). Although this is sometimes considered a wash (or even a benefit) by some, the process of forceful taking almost always produces a net loss. If you want a cheap car, go to a government auction. You win, but taxpayers and the economy lose more, because money taken from them was not as wisely spent as money they spend on themselves. During the Great Depression, the government poured milk into gutters and slaughtered baby pigs to "keep agricultural prices high." This is the chronic insanity of government when it goes beyond its protective role and enters the economic sphere. It destroys wealth while pursuing fools' errands from its extreme economic ignorance.
Please read Lawrence Reed's pamphlet, GREAT MYTHS OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION. If you are a serious advocate of human liberty and believe in the Founders' promise of a Constitutional Republic limited to a few, really important, protective powers, why not purchase a hundred of Reed's pamphlets about the Great Depression and give them to your friends or others receptive to the ideas contained there?
Government can't plausibly bail out bankers and Wall Street investment firms, then claim the free market is to blame, but it can do so politically, which defines the art of providing something-for-nothing at someone else's expense.
The American Republic is in trouble because of too many promises, made to too many people, which the government has no way of keeping due to its unprecedented levels of public debt. Only when it gets back to its primary purpose, to protect individual rights and adjudicate disputes, will it become sustainable, and maybe even worth the money it sucks out of the economy every year.
You can't fool all the people all the time, but you can do it long enough to run a large country. - Anonymous
Monday, May 9, 2011
WHO BENEFITS AND WHO PAYS FOR GOVERNMENT?
Updated 1/19/2013
by James Craig Green
You've probably heard Republicans say a very small percentage of the highest income taxpayers pay the most taxes. And, you may have heard Democrats respond that may be true for the income tax, but what about payroll, sales and other taxes, more equally distributed? Like most public debates, this one provides convenient sound bites for both sides to parrot, while ignoring the bigger picture. But the other day, I came across a report from the Tax Foundation that compares all government spending with all taxes in the U.S.
In 2007, the Tax Foundation published a detailed study of government spending and taxes for the years 1991-2004, allocated to each of five income groups. It contains several tables and graphs, from which I developed the following presentation.
For each of five income groups, my graph below shows the ratio of government spending received to taxes paid, including federal, state and local spending; and taxes of every kind. As you can see from my summary of tax and spending categories taken from the report in the boxes to the right of the graph, the scope of the tax foundation study is much wider than anything you've seen before. I can only hope the tax foundation will do this for more years after 2004.
Below the graph is my table based on data from the report's Figure 1, which I used to calculate the ratio of spending received to taxes paid by each income group. Click on the graphic to enlarge it.
The lowest income group receives about 15 times the amount of taxes paid, and the highest group about one third. A ratio greater than one means that group receives more in government spending than it pays in taxes. A ratio less than one means the opposite.
Since the first three categories are all greater than one, 60% of the people (3 x 20%) get more from government than they pay in. This leaves the remaining 40% who pay more than they get back. This must be what Karl Marx meant by "winning the battle of democracy."
The 2010 congressional elections, after energetic campaigns by tea party and other so-called "limited government" conservatives, were as complete an electoral success as they were a complete failure to reduce government spending. As Congressman Ron Paul recently noted, Instead of the left agreeing to cut social spending and the right agreeing to cut military spending, the right agrees to more welfare and the left agrees to more warfare. Such is the nature of an out-of-control Empire past its zenith.
I assume you knew, but maybe not, that the primary purpose of government is to perpetuate itself. No government in the history of the world has been as successful at this as the current American Empire of Debt described in Bonner and Wiggin's 2006 book by that name.
MY CONCLUSIONS:
1. Although 2004 was more than six years ago, the levels of government spending received and taxes paid by each income group are fairly representative of today, at least compared to decades ago. If anything, it's gotten worse.
2. When 60% of the voting population receives more from the government than they pay, there is no reason for this majority to accept LESS government spending or taxes. The more government spends, the better off they appear to be. Besides visiting Afghanistan, empires have in common the self-destruction of their currencies, from promising wealth they don't have (i.e., unsustainable public debt).
3. There is no rational reason to think the democratic process can ever produce less government spending. Consumers outvote producers, which is cheaper than buying their products. They don't seem to realize, or care, that taking more from producers by force reduces wealth for everyone, by reducing production incentives and replacing win-win trades with win-lose plunder. Thomas Paine said, "What we obtain too cheap we esteem too lightly."
4. Economic reality (i.e., collapse) is the most likely way for government spending to decline. It is already happening with municipal bond defaults, which have caused many towns and cities to lay off police and other emergency services. The same thing is happening to many states who are cutting both lean and fat. Despite having Congress' permission to create unlimited dollars (but not wealth), the Fed and Congress seem to be on the same downhill path as the states and cities.
5. Observe the rule of holes: when you're in one, stop digging.
6. Read my "Unchain the Builders" series on this blog to understand the principles which made the U.S.A. the most prosperous country in the world, and "Subordinate Acts" to understand how the Supreme Court has poisoned American minds against the Constitution, which may be the best republic-restoring tool we have. It needs to be protected, not changed.
by James Craig Green
You've probably heard Republicans say a very small percentage of the highest income taxpayers pay the most taxes. And, you may have heard Democrats respond that may be true for the income tax, but what about payroll, sales and other taxes, more equally distributed? Like most public debates, this one provides convenient sound bites for both sides to parrot, while ignoring the bigger picture. But the other day, I came across a report from the Tax Foundation that compares all government spending with all taxes in the U.S.
In 2007, the Tax Foundation published a detailed study of government spending and taxes for the years 1991-2004, allocated to each of five income groups. It contains several tables and graphs, from which I developed the following presentation.
For each of five income groups, my graph below shows the ratio of government spending received to taxes paid, including federal, state and local spending; and taxes of every kind. As you can see from my summary of tax and spending categories taken from the report in the boxes to the right of the graph, the scope of the tax foundation study is much wider than anything you've seen before. I can only hope the tax foundation will do this for more years after 2004.
Below the graph is my table based on data from the report's Figure 1, which I used to calculate the ratio of spending received to taxes paid by each income group. Click on the graphic to enlarge it.
The lowest income group receives about 15 times the amount of taxes paid, and the highest group about one third. A ratio greater than one means that group receives more in government spending than it pays in taxes. A ratio less than one means the opposite.
Since the first three categories are all greater than one, 60% of the people (3 x 20%) get more from government than they pay in. This leaves the remaining 40% who pay more than they get back. This must be what Karl Marx meant by "winning the battle of democracy."
The 2010 congressional elections, after energetic campaigns by tea party and other so-called "limited government" conservatives, were as complete an electoral success as they were a complete failure to reduce government spending. As Congressman Ron Paul recently noted, Instead of the left agreeing to cut social spending and the right agreeing to cut military spending, the right agrees to more welfare and the left agrees to more warfare. Such is the nature of an out-of-control Empire past its zenith.
I assume you knew, but maybe not, that the primary purpose of government is to perpetuate itself. No government in the history of the world has been as successful at this as the current American Empire of Debt described in Bonner and Wiggin's 2006 book by that name.
MY CONCLUSIONS:
1. Although 2004 was more than six years ago, the levels of government spending received and taxes paid by each income group are fairly representative of today, at least compared to decades ago. If anything, it's gotten worse.
2. When 60% of the voting population receives more from the government than they pay, there is no reason for this majority to accept LESS government spending or taxes. The more government spends, the better off they appear to be. Besides visiting Afghanistan, empires have in common the self-destruction of their currencies, from promising wealth they don't have (i.e., unsustainable public debt).
3. There is no rational reason to think the democratic process can ever produce less government spending. Consumers outvote producers, which is cheaper than buying their products. They don't seem to realize, or care, that taking more from producers by force reduces wealth for everyone, by reducing production incentives and replacing win-win trades with win-lose plunder. Thomas Paine said, "What we obtain too cheap we esteem too lightly."
4. Economic reality (i.e., collapse) is the most likely way for government spending to decline. It is already happening with municipal bond defaults, which have caused many towns and cities to lay off police and other emergency services. The same thing is happening to many states who are cutting both lean and fat. Despite having Congress' permission to create unlimited dollars (but not wealth), the Fed and Congress seem to be on the same downhill path as the states and cities.
5. Observe the rule of holes: when you're in one, stop digging.
6. Read my "Unchain the Builders" series on this blog to understand the principles which made the U.S.A. the most prosperous country in the world, and "Subordinate Acts" to understand how the Supreme Court has poisoned American minds against the Constitution, which may be the best republic-restoring tool we have. It needs to be protected, not changed.
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