Enough of us have to have sufficiently done so that we can explain to others the essentials of such a theory of individual rights, and with sufficient persuasiveness that those others, too, come to see the rightness in them. Unfortunately, there are no electoral quick fixes or political sleights-of-hand that can reduce or eliminate the political paternalism and plunder  of the modern interventionist welfare state. The population of the country has increased by around 26 percent during this time period while per capita federal government spending has risen by 32 percent. Rather than gaining the income they desire by offering the consuming public more, better, and less expensive products, they turn to government to get anticompetitive domestic regulations, import restrictions against foreign rivals, or subsidies or government contracts — all at taxpayers’ and consumers’ expense, of course. Therefore, they feel that government at all levels must try to control their diets. A number of other industries -- trucking and, later, airlines -- successfully sought regulation themselves to … They have a strong incentive to lobby for the greatest amount of defense-related spending, and to know every detail and potential rationale to demonstrate that such expenditures are in the national interest and why they are the right ones to get the taxpayer-funded procurement deals. In other words, those of us who believe in and desire liberty and a free society must return to first principles and articulate the same to others. However, the cost of each of the government departments and bureaus and the specific line items in their respective budgets was only a fraction of the overall tax burden. But FDR’s very own treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau, saw the folly of the New Deal, writing: “We have tried spending money. They hope to gain promotions, higher salaries, and more control through discretionary decision-making. It has the power to regulate itself via checks and balances. Oct 1st, 2017 1 min read. In 2015, the Obama White House pressured the FCC to create the Open Internet Order, which has been branded by its advocates as net neutrality. If they do so, they lose the rationale for maintenance of or increase in the budgets and authority without which they have neither their incomes nor positions. Editor: Early one morning last week I observed two guys on my property digging and then planting little blue flags. Each taxpayer will have one extra dollar taken away from them by the government for the year, while each of the 30 recipients of this wealth transfer will annually gain an extra $1 million. The United States has been the world leader in the development of internet technology precisely because it has been relatively unfettered by federal and state regulation. 22 January 2014, 11:35 pm. When conservatives complain about the federal government, we all know the usual litany. As a surrogate for competition, the government regulator can set prices (or limit price increases) to make sure the level of profitability is not excessive. However, I do so in the light of the knowledge that by far the largest number and the most powerful guns and other weapons are in the possession of the government. ... “The respect of the government has not just to be about knowledge and passion; it has to … The next government failure was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which increased U.S. tariffs by more than 50 percent. 02/26/2014 04:09 pm ET Updated Apr 28, 2014 It's been 12 years since the horrifying tragedy that occurred on September 11, 2001, and Americans are just now learning the extent to which our government has tightened its grip on our privacy and communications. The government has gotten too large and cumbersome to be effective anymore – it is out of control – and far too large for any one person to try to control anymore. Results for {phrase} ({results_count} of {results_count_total}), Displaying {results_count} results of {results_count_total}. Over the last several decades, they have attempted to explain the factors behind the growth of government in modern democratic society. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work…. Republicans are more likely to say the federal government has too much power, but from 2002 to 2008 -- under a Republican president -- Democrats were more likely to say it had too much power. If Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Is the Standard, What About Democrat “Kingmaker” Rev. With the recent disclosure of wide-sweeping … If I oppose some special interest group that is trying to get a subsidy from the government, I may save a dollar in my role as taxpayer and consumer (to use the earlier example from Pareto). For a free society to prevail, it is necessary for many people to no longer give even a thought that it is ethically right for them to run to government and take by political power what they would never think of stealing in their private interactions with others. People Only Pretend to Practice Social Distancing, Equity Performance Amid One-Party Rule in America, Judge Temporarily Blocks Cuomo’s Indoor Dining Ban in Ongoing Lawsuit, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Then it won’t matter that most people never have an incentive to know enough to decide whether the Department of Education is spending too little or too much on a common-core curriculum or whether the Defense Department has just the right number of aircraft or ocean vessels to police the world. Porter Stansberry. Richard M. Ebeling, an AIER Senior Fellow, is the BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel, in Charleston, South Carolina. Its governors are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate and serve 14-year staggered terms. Unsuccesful rebellions indeed generally establish the incroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, recently introduced a universal child allowance in an effort to reform federal welfare programs. This move overthrew the spirit of the Telecommunications Act. Yet it seems almost impossible to rein in government. And is there any way to reverse it? We the People, citizens of the United States of America, are relinquishing increasing amounts of control over our lives to the Federal Government, and doing so at an alarming pace. Little is further from the truth. In other words, federal spending has increased by more than 93 percent over the last 25 years. In 2017, there were around 12,550 registered lobbying groups in Washington, D.C. When the Office of Personnel Management held the personal data of 21.5 million people, it was an easy target for hackers seeking access. At the time of this writing, there have been over 240,000 confirmed cases of the disease, and over 9,800 people have died because of the coronavirus. Ebeling lived on AIER’s campus from 2008 to 2009. Only 8% of Americans say the federal government has "too little" power, while 36% say the government has about the right amount of power. The Defense Department’s spending on warplanes and battleships, uniforms and boots, ammunition and weaponry, spying devices and unmanned drones represents hundreds of millions, sometimes billions, of dollars to the various contractors who win and fulfill these military contracts. There is always a variety of government programs and activities that people either think are not worth the money or should not be the business of government in the first place. Read full article. They have the power to cripple an economy, as they did during the late 1920s and early 1930s. COMMENTARY Government Regulation. If properly and effectively understood, it will become the generally accepted notion that every thinking and reasonable person knows that  using the coercive power of the government to compel anyone to sacrifice their life for others is as ethically not right as expecting others to be forced to sacrifice for them. That benefits debtors, because they owe dollars. It is neither an easy nor a quick task to change, in this sense, the climate of opinion about the appropriate moral order to sustain a free, prosperous, and ethical society. After all, even if the Department of Education was abolished, it would save the average taxpayer less than $2 a day, assuming taxes were cut by the full amount. But the same bias would work in these areas of government activity as well, making it difficult to create the necessary political counterweights to lobby for the reduction or elimination of these federal programs. In the absence of government regulation, the monopoly could charge excessively high prices. The government spends too much, taxes too much, borrows too much, and regulates too much. It may be a tastier coffee or frozen dinner, or a more wrinkle-free shirt or suit, or a longer-lasting chewing gum, or better-fitting and lighter-wearing prescription eyeglasses, or a better-quality and less expensive private education, or a wider-covering and lower-premium car-insurance or health-insurance policy. As long as people believe that society or the democratic majority or some empty notion of the general welfare comes before and is above the rights and interests of the peaceful individual, there will be no breaking out of the trend toward the growing size of government and its scope in controlling all of us. This increase in expenditures and revenues over the last 25 years is reflected in the tax burden on the American people. In 2018, the per capita amount of government expenditures was around $12,575 for every man, woman, and child. That goal is worthy, but... Because of offensive tweets posted by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, she was stripped of her committee assignments. Their goal is to obtain through either government regulations or income redistribution what they cannot or do not want to peacefully and voluntarily acquire on the open, competitive market: other people’s money. The dispersed financial burden that falls on each taxpayer as their contribution to these programs nonetheless adds up, of course, to hundreds of billions, indeed trillions, of dollars a year of government spending. But how many taxpayers will have the incentive to wade through all the (unclassified) details concerning the various parts of Defense Department spending to make an informed decision about how much defense spending America needs and of what type, considering that even if some programs were to be cut back or eliminated it would maybe result in a cut in their personal taxes by the equivalent of a few dollars a day? It is fair to say that government regulation has its place. 10 Areas of Life Under the Most Government Control . First and foremost, of course, the federal government, which has atomic and hydrogen bombs, as well as ballistic missiles with which to deliver them, fleets of warships, and thousands upon … Donald Trump is going to build the wall and he is going to save this country. For most individual citizens, their time and attention have a higher value in doing other things. We have never made good on our promises…. Most people, if they see a person drop their wallet, will pick it up and hand it back to them, because as second nature they take for granted that taking what belongs to another is wrong. There are no such incentives within the government bureaucracies, in which the “servants of the people” have monopoly control over certain services and regulatory rules and permissions. The world of plunder can be replaced with a community of free people pursuing mutually beneficial peaceful production. Unable to persuade enough of their fellow citizens to voluntarily contribute sufficient money to buy up and maintain the land they wish untouched by man, they turn to the coercive power of government to get what they want through taxes and regulations. The Commerce Power. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where copyright is otherwise reserved. Discretionary spending went up about 50 percent over this period, while entitlement spending rose by 95 percent. Fortunately, it’s being challenged by the new FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, who has announced he will repeal the FCC’s heavy-handed 2015 internet regulations. Those who manage and work in these government departments and agencies have little or no incentive to solve the problems for which their department or agency was originally created. Just since this century began, annual spending by Washington-based lobbying groups has increased by nearly 50 percent. During the Clinton administration, along with the help of a Republican-dominated Congress, the visionary 1996 Telecommunications Act declared it “the policy of the United States” that internet service providers and websites be “unfettered by Federal or State regulation.” The act sought “to promote competition and reduce regulation in order to secure lower prices and higher quality services for American telecommunications consumers and encourage the rapid deployment of new telecommunications technologies.”. The percentage of Republicans who believe this is typically high, but recently the number of all Americans, Independents and Democrats included, dissatisfied with the federal government has grown to unprecedented levels. Like Reply Challenge. Do this party and these candidates believe that the function of government is to defensively protect the citizens of the country from the clear and present dangers of foreign aggressors, or do they wish to sacrifice the lives and fortunes of Americans in foreign adventures and wars? They officially spent more than $3.37 billion in 2017 to influence legislation on behalf of special interest groups from across the political spectrum, and reflecting virtually every sector of the U.S. economy. The federal government took in over $3.3 trillion in taxes in fiscal year 2018, compared to $2 trillion in 1993, for a 65 percent increase in government revenues compared to a quarter of a century ago. I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started … and an enormous debt to boot!” The bottom line is that the Federal Reserve Board, the Smoot-Hawley tariffs and Roosevelt’s New Deal policies turned what would have been a two, three- or four-year sharp downturn into a 16-year affair. 0. This self-interest prompts individuals and special interest groups to weigh the costs and the benefits in deciding to be for or against various government policies; and they attempt to influence political outcomes through their votes, their campaign contributions, and their lobbying expenditures. Those federal dollars represent a sizable portion of their administrative budgets, take-home pay, and business profits. The 54% who now say the federal government has "too much power" is in the same general range as it has been since 2005. On the other hand, that $68.2 billion is concentrated on the incomes and activities of, at most, several hundreds of thousands of teachers, educators, school administrators, and textbook and school-supply providers. There are many factors which influenced the development of the Virginia plan that gave too much power to the national government. It is structured into the existing political system itself. This is, in a sense, the modern democratic dilemma. They say that individuals in the political arena are motivated by self-interested goals (which can include ideological or ethical ends, as well as financial gains). Singapore government controls civil society too much: activists. The Federal Reserve Board controls our money supply. Not everyone, of course, pays taxes. We are a nation of 325 million people. This is far less than a latte at Starbucks or a lunch at a fast food establishment. A mere faith in freedom without a well-grounded set of reasons for advocating it will not sustain a free society in the long run. The best thing that the U.S. Congress can do for internet entrepreneurs and internet consumers is to send the FCC out to pasture as it did with the Civil Aeronautics Board, which regulated the airline industry, and the Interstate Commerce Commission, which regulated the trucking industry. They can now pay back with cheaper money. One Nation Under Surveillance. The time has come for the United States to be divided into smaller territories, each autonomous and with its own government. We have a bit of control over the behavior of our 535 elected representatives in Congress, the president and the vice president. The federal government keeps getting bigger and more intrusive and more costly. Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. The New American magazine, published twice a month in print and daily online, is the essential news source for freedom-loving Americans. Let’s look at the federal government’s budget. The list of government agencies compromised by hackers continues to grow. Why do they want to be elected or reelected? But sometimes, government actions are more subtle and confusing. The Virginia plan gave too much power to the national government by all the plans James Madison formed to create a new form of government plan which are the Executive Branch, Judicial Branch, and Legislative Branch. The government should NOT be allowed to have as much control as is suggested by the report that the president would have a "kill switch" in times of war. No, the federal government has all the power it needs to perform the will of the people as represented by legislators, the President, and the judicial system. The lobbying and voting incentives, therefore, will be heavily on the side of those who see financial gains from continuing and increasing federal spending on government-funded education. How the American government is trying to control what you think ... a democratic government has an obligation to inform and be transparent. According to public choice theory, this growth in government transcends the political differences in modern democratic society. But there are seven unelected people who have life-and-death control over our economy and hence our lives — the seven governors of the Federal Reserve Board. Someone on the “liberal” side of the political spectrum might be equally critical of some of the line-item spending in the Department of Defense budget, or on subsidies to corporate agribusinesses funded by the Department of Agriculture. Imagine if everyone's personal information, including emails, browser … If this is the new standard,... What a sick joke. Their inept monetary policy threw the economy into the Great Depression, during which real output in the United States fell nearly 30 percent and the unemployment rate soared as high as nearly 25 percent. Enough people will enter the voting booth and ask as second nature , Is this candidate for or against respect for and protection of individual rights? It is a medecine necessary for the sound health of government.” A protective tariff to limit foreign competition, for example, or a regulatory or licensing rule that restricts new domestic rivals can increase my income per year by tens of thousands of dollars, in my role as a producer. The government should be there to prevent people’s rights from being removed; it should not be there to take from some to give to others and it should not serve as a tool to grant some people power at the expense of others. Lilly also added that she believes the U.S. government is exercising far too much control over the masses and their panic stemming from the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S. "Where we are right now feels a lot too close to … We must hone our own understanding of the ideas and ideals upon which the United States was originally founded, and most especially as enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, where it was clearly and explicitly stated that freedom is inseparable from the recognition and defense of those inalienable rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” that are possessed by each and every individual. Report Post. The federal government took in over $3.3 trillion in taxes in fiscal year 2018, compared to $2 trillion in 1993, for a 65 percent increase in government revenues compared to a quarter of a century ago. Does this party platform advocate or oppose private property and free market capitalism? This widening arena of government has become the playground of special interest politicking from both the political left and right by those hoping to gain something through government intervention at the expense of others in society. According to a recent Gallup study, 60% of all Americans believe the federal government has too much power. The average household paid $26,367 in taxes to the federal government in 2018, up from $22,230 in 1993, or an 18 percent increase in 25 years. Both entitlement spending (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) and discretionary spending (including defense) have significantly increased over these two decades. The most broad-ranging power of the federal government has become the Commerce Clause. Here’s my question never asked about the Federal Reserve Act of 1913: How much sense does it make for us to give seven unelected people life-and-death control over our economy and hence our lives? It keeps growing in size and scope in one direction after another. In the free market, there is only one way to gain and retain the business of the consumers from whose purchases market-based enterprises earn their revenues: to solve people’s problems. Breaking out of the dilemma requires a sea change in the philosophical, ethical, and political-economic premises upon which American society operates. When we got rid of those regulatory agencies, we saw a greater number of competitors, and consumers paid lower prices. Sometimes it is the simple desire for power over others, and any material wealth that can come their way through political plunder and manipulation. Pareto suggested that the 30 recipients will collectively have a strong incentive to lobby and even corruptly buy the votes of the politicians able to pass this redistributive legislation. In my opinion the government should only have as much control as necessary to preserve human life and liberty. But when the rich look forward for decades and see nothing but increasing taxes, debts, and government control of their businesses and assets - they will leave. The logic was actually explained more than a century ago, in 1896, by the famous Italian economist and sociologist Vilfredo Pareto. Since the time of Adam Smith in the 18th century, economists have emphasized the productive benefits from specialization through the division of labor. Regulation of monopolies is often controversial. But near the beginning of the 20th century, British economist Philip Wicksteed pointed out, in his The Common Sense of Political Economy (1910), that such specialization also tends to create a bias against the open, competitive market, in which people need to apply themselves in the most productive and cost-efficient ways. But we have no tools other than our minds and our reason and an understanding that it is in our own self-interest to try. Leftists in Power: What Can Constitutionalists Do Now? ... We all make our choices." In the 2018 fiscal year, which ended on September 30,Washington spent a bit more than $4.1 trillion. Those failures were compounded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation. The correlation was stark – among those who strongly agreed government had too much control, 70 percent opposed stricter gun control laws. Why is this important? This was also strongly emphasized by German economist Wilhelm Röpke, in his work The Social Crisis of Our Time (1942). Al Sharpton. Over the last 100 years, there have been fewer and fewer restraints on what is viewed as the proper role of government in society. Posted by: e_gri. "To assume that the government has some type of absolute knowledge is problematic," he says. We have a bit of control over the behavior of our 535 elected representatives in Congress, the president and the vice president. It must become second nature for Americans in general to once more take it for granted that certain things are, well, just not done — more precisely, that it is the duty of government to protect the right of all individuals to their life, liberty, and honestly acquired property, and not to violate those people’s rights. The government should not have complete control over the lives of citizens but a degree of involvement is necessary for order and consistent justice. While you’re pondering that question, consider another: Should we give the government, through the Federal Communications Commission, control over the internet? They gain political office by selling programs and regulations and spending taxpayer dollars for the benefit of various constituent groups whose campaign contributions and votes they hope to receive. Get notified of new articles from Richard M. Ebeling and AIER. It represents creeping FCC jurisdiction, as its traditional areas of regulation — such as broadcast media and telecommunications — have been transformed by the internet, or at least diminished in importance. Why? Wednesday Apr 19, 2017 at 2:00 AM. Then, as a matter of implied first principles, it will be impossible for some in the society to successfully coerce others through the tools of political power because it will be culturally counter to the general habit of the mind that liberty is too precious as both a moral and practical matter to be forgone for even the most attractive short-run gains from political paternalism and plunder. The greatest bulwark against an overreaching government, as tyrants know, is a religious population. Leftists’ “Reichstag Fire” Moment Arrives, 36-Year Study: Children’s Preference for Gender Specific Toys Is Innate, Sen. Hatch’s Retirement Paves Way for Romney: One RINO Replacing Another, Romney’s Family Security Act Redistributes Wealth, Creates Distortions, Grows Government. Imagine that in a country of 30 million people, the government proposes to tax each citizen $1 more and then redistribute the extra $30 million among a special interest group of 30 individuals. But it is impossible for any of us to buy the goods that others offer to us as consumers unless we have first succeeded in earning an income from what we are selling on the market in our own role as a producer. Whatever it may be, in the free market, attracting customers and winning their repeat business requires private enterprisers to make people’s lives easier, more comfortable, and less expensive. In addition, some of those in the government departments, bureaus, and agencies suffer from the psychology of the petty bureaucrat who craves power over others who have to come to them and plead for the regulatory and licensing permissions without which the honest people of the marketplace cannot go about their productive business. For it to become second nature again, people must rediscover the reason for and rightness of an inviolable right of all individuals to their own life, which should not be sacrificed to some mystical and imagined higher good or any collective entity called the nation, the state, or society. Leftists love to praise New Deal interventionist legislation. Government control of the Internet raises many questions about consumer and privacy protection. Government has too much control . There is also a perverse incentive mechanism within the halls of bureaucratic power. Too much money causes inflation, which reduces the dollar’s value. Masking America’s Greatest Natural Monuments. We know when government taxes our income, stops us from using our drug of choice, or when they kick down our door and throw us in a cage. Each of us will be materially far better off if we specialize in what we are relatively more productive at doing and then trade away our particular good or service for what others are offering to sell us. This compares with $2.1 trillion in 1993 (all figures are in inflation-adjusted 2018 dollars). Of course, sometimes people’s desire for political office arises out of pure personal ambition, including the desire to leave their mark on history, their legacy that future generations of little children will learn about in government schools. Government intrusion is often obvious. That is because religious people form communities of interest adverse to government control of their lives; … Health and social care secretary Matt Hancock has convinced himself that UK pandemic failures were the result of too little central power, not too much. In addition, they acquire their incomes not through voluntary transactions but through compulsory taxation. Does the federal government have too much power? Those who run the government bureaucracies desire larger budgets and greater administrative responsibilities over economic and social affairs. This is really the basis for all the material, scientific, intellectual, and cultural advancements of modern civilization. The Great Depression was caused by a massive government failure led by the Federal Reserve’s rapid 25 percent contraction of the money supply. Larger budgets and expanded regulatory authority open the door to promotions and higher salaries in higher government pay grades. But is it worth the cost in time, effort, and expenditure to do so? #3 Taking Total Control Of Our Health Care – The Loss Of Our Health Freedom. Giving the FCC the same medicine would allow our high-tech industry to maintain its world leadership position.