By Michael Tanner
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
When one moves beyond all the budget numbers floating
around Washington these days, much of the debate over future policy boils down
to a question of the size of government. The Left often dismisses this issue as
symbolism or rhetoric, but it is much more than that.
The question of big government vs. limited government is
not an abstraction. How we answer that question has real consequences for real
people. For example:
1. Big government is unaffordable. This year, the federal
government will run a budget deficit of at least $845 billion. This does
represent a decline from the deficits of recent years, but emergency
appropriations or any slowdown in economic growth could easily push it back up
toward $1 trillion before the end of the year. Although deficits are expected
to continue declining for the next few years, eventually bottoming out at $430
billion in 2015, this is a temporary phenomenon, and by the end of the decade,
we will be climbing back toward annual deficits of $1 trillion.
Moreover, our debt, already $16.7 trillion, more than 103
percent of GDP, is expected to exceed $26 trillion by the end of 2023. Throw in
the unfunded liabilities of programs such as Social Security and Medicare and
our real debt runs between $79 trillion and $127 trillion.
In fact, the Congressional Budget Office said in 2008
that in order to pay for all currently scheduled federal spending, both the
corporate-tax rate and top income-tax rate would have to be raised from their
current 35 percent to 88 percent, the current 25 percent tax rate for
middle-income workers to 63 percent, and the 10 percent tax bracket for
low-income workers to 25 percent. It is likely, given increased spending since
then, that the required tax levels would be even higher today.
2. Big government is incompatible with economic growth.
Economists debate the exact relationship between the size of government and
economic growth, but few argue that government can consume an unlimited
proportion of the national economy without its having a significant impact on
that economy. For example, a pair of studies by Harvard’s Robert Barro found
that “public consumption spending is systematically inversely related to
economic growth,” and that there is a “significantly negative relation between
the growth of real GDP and the growth of the government share of GDP.”
Similarly, an empirical analysis of 23 OECD countries by
James Gwartney and his colleagues found that a ten-percentage-point increase in
government consumption as a share of GDP reduced the growth rate of real GDP by
one percentage point. Numerous other studies, including those from the World
Bank and the International Monetary Fund, have also shown that as government
grows, growth slows.
3. Big government doesn’t work. Quickly now, can you name
three government programs that work? And if you have to reach back to the GI
Bill, you lose.
The further government gets from its core functions, the
more it gets involved in areas where it just isn’t qualified to do a very good
job. We have 126 separate federal anti-poverty programs, at a cost of $668
billion per year, yet poverty has hardly been dented. We spend more on
education every year, but test scores remain stagnant. The stimulus bill spent
as much as $540,000 for every job it created. Social Security is a giant
pyramid scheme. Medicare and Medicaid are models of inefficiency.
Perhaps worse, government intervention crowds out the
private actions of civil society, which are far more effective in addressing
people’s needs. Big government doesn’t only make it harder to care for
ourselves and our families; it also makes it harder to care for our fellow man.
4. Big government breeds corruption. Corruption is
endemic to big government, and it goes far beyond the occasional scandal about
congressional bribery, nepotism, or Dominican prostitutes. It goes without
saying that pampered politicians — desperate for reelection and with the power
to dispense favors, reward friends, and punish enemies — are prone to
temptation. But the real corruption goes much deeper.
Washington is a town with 12,390 registered lobbyists and
a special-interest association on every corner, from the American Dehydrated
Onion and Garlic Association to the National Balloon Council. But why are they
there? Because the government is involved in everything from dehydrated onions
to balloons.
You can decry the influence of lobbyists and money on
politics all you want, but those who are taxed, regulated, paid, hired, or
controlled by the government are naturally going to try to influence how they are
taxed, regulated, paid, hired, and controlled. Nor should it be a surprise if
these interests try to rig the game in their favor by, say, securing special
tax treatment for themselves or encouraging greater regulation of their
competitors.
5. Big government limits freedom. Perhaps most important,
the debate over the size of government is about the ability of people to make
decisions for themselves and be responsible for their own lives. Every dollar
that big government spends the way it wants is one less dollar that individuals
have to spend the way that they want. As Frédéric Bastiat put it in his parable
of the broken window: If the shopkeeper with the broken window hadn’t had to
pay to replace it, “he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes or added
another book to his library.” Or to put it in today’s context, he might have
purchased health care, saved for his retirement, or donated to charity. He
might have started a business or hired workers. Or he might have spent it
entirely on frivolities. Whatever he might have done, he is now deprived of
that choice.
Moreover, when government tells us how to save for our
retirement, what health insurance to buy, what charities to support, what to
eat, or whom we can marry, it forces people to live by the government’s
standards rather than their own decisions. It prevents people from pursuing
their own goals and objectives, merely because people in government believe
that those goals are mistaken. But, as Milton Friedman warned:
This is why the fight over the size of government really
matters. Big government leaves us poorer and less prosperous. And it fails to
alleviate our social ills. But most significantly, big government denies the
unique value and self-worth of every individual.
And that is why, on both the left and right, those who
would try to harness big-government to their own ends will ultimately fail.
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