The Fallacy of “Temporary” Government
July 17, 2009
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Posted by Michael S. Langston
While browsing the world wide inter-tubes, I noticed a fair number of people making an argument along the lines of – "Why not institute a new temporary tax on businesses to pay for TARP?"
First – I do get the point that we should make the companies pay the money back. It makes perfect sense to say, we bailed you out, now it’s your turn to pay up. In my perfect world the money would have never been given, but my world doesn’t exist.
Having said that, the idea itself assumes that an increase in taxes/power is in fact temporary. Historically, governments, and agencies around them, have proven this naive view inaccurate. We have seen that they are indeed very unlikely, without massive political pressure, to ever remove taxes and/or laws and/or new agencies and/or new czars once instituted.
For example, among other "temporary" taxes, the US taxpayer is still paying taxes that were instituted to pay for the Civil War & WWII.
But this is all to be expected. The laws of rationality say these agencies will continue to grow as they continue to want to survive and so will naturally rationalize their reason for existence. IE – it’s a crisis if we don’t solve X! Newt/Hillary/Rush/Franken/"whatever the picture of evil being used by each side is" – will be in charge if you don’t act now!
For an NGO assignment, look no further than Greenpeace. This organization did great works from the 1970′s to the 1990′s, but one can juxtapose those excellent moves into conservation with the radical agendas being proposed today. Even one of the founders, Bob Hunter, of Greenpeace refused to deal with them due to their divergence from rational environmental policies.
Why would Greenpeace and others become radical?
Because once the air & water were cleaner, parks were nicer, wildlife that was endangered started being removed from the endangered list… once they made a lot of gains in the areas they wanted, they start losing their reason for existence. So they naturally moved to a more radical view to continue their existence.
It takes a special breed of politician or lobbyist to stop seeking more power for their respective groups. Therefore, in our system of government, it should be up to the people to constrain governmental power due to this natural creep.
Too bad current candidates running for office only allows me to vote for either the conservative party for big government or the liberal party for big government.
Now there’s a choice!
Categories: Economics
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