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The
Government Is Free! by Steven YatesMichael Gartner is the sort of journalist bound to receive accolades and applause within today’s dominant media. That is to say, not only do his views exemplify unquestioned and unqualified statism, but the very hint of questioning statism or setting limits on the powers of the central government, say, on its power to tax its citizens, brings forth not a thought-out, carefully argued response but a torrent of ridicule. Take for example his column in the April 23 USA Today. Gartner observes that today some Americans are celebrating Tax Freedom Day – the day we all stop working to support government and start working to support ourselves. Gartner inverts this by telling us that as of today, “The government is free!” Whatever can this mean? I’ll let him explain it: “For the rest of the year, you pay nothing for police protection. You pay nothing for the military. You pay nothing for Medicare or Medicaid. You pay nothing to keep our rivers navigable, our air paths clear, our highways patched. You pay nothing to keep our courts open, our campgrounds safe, our water clean. You pay nothing to house the poor or feed the hungry or clothe the needy. You pay nothing to finance our wars on cancer or poverty or terrorism. You pay nothing to finance government – local or state or federal.” This is Gartner’s representation of Tax Freedom Day. We are, of course, supposed to find it ridiculous. But “no more ridiculous than the reverse, which is to say that until Saturday every penny you earned this year has gone to pay taxes.” What follows is a continuation of all the good government supposedly does – “even after Tax Freedom Day.” According to Gartner, we are actually getting a bargain: the millions of miles of roads and streets governments (federal, state and local) maintain, the millions spent in medical benefits, the millions spent on the poor, the billions spent on job training, the millions spent on Social Security, and so on. In light of this, Gartner wonders why anyone would have cause to complain about yielding “one third of our income” to government. “Why isn’t it Tax Bargain Day?” he concludes with the rhetorical flourish of one who clearly believes he has dispatched an opponent unworthy of his journalistic prowess. Perhaps one reason is the belief at least some Americans still have in their inherent right to keep and dispense with their earnings as one sees fit, without reporting every penny to a government agency that had no hand in producing the wealth that actually makes the economy flourish. Perhaps Gartner believes, along with all other statists, that individuals and their earnings both belong to government, to dispense with as politicians and bureaucrats see fit. According to statists, after all, politicians and bureaucrats know better how to spend the individual’s money than the individual himself does. “Do I own my life, or do I belong to the State?” is unasked, therefore, but certainly answered. The use of phrases like tax burden by conservatives is supposed to be ridiculous, in light of all this, as are the calls for tax reform. (Lord only knows what kind of verbal apoplectic fit Gartner would serve up against anyone suggesting tax elimination – or against those wondering if the IRS is even a Constitutionally legitimate agency!) Gartner’s screed illustrates a point many of us already knew: one does not have to have even the most rudimentary grasp of economics to be a respected journalist in today’s America. (In fact, a grasp of sound economic principles is more likely to hold you back in today’s newsroom and editorial environment.) This, of course, leads to what is missing from Gartner’s stance: the very idea that anyone other than government is suitable to fulfill the tasks listed. This is, indeed, Gartner’s stance, that without the heavy, intervening hand of government, food would be inedible, water would be too dirty to drink, planes would fall out of the sky, our homes and workplaces would be unsafe, our streets and roads would disintegrate, our elderly neglected, our sick untreated, our children unschooled, etc., etc., ad nauseam. If Gartner actually had any grasp of economic reality, he would realize that this is a losing proposition, and that his “bargain” is one of the great illusions of our time. For if we look at certain of the endeavors only government is supposed to be able to do, we find it is doing them poorly, and there may well be valid reasons for thinking the private or nonprofit sectors can do them better. For example, many of the streets and roads it supposedly maintains are in shambles. This is minor league stuff, however. After 9-11, federal power took a quantum leap. The new reigning dogma became that only the federal government could run airport security. People continue to get weapons through the checkpoints staffed by illiterates who are searching 80-year old grannies and confiscating nail-clippers from bespectacled computer nerds. This sort of thing has done incalculable damage to the airline industry. Many people are simply refusing to fly if they can drive – not because they fear more terrorism but because they don’t want to put up with procedures that in all likelihood wouldn’t have stopped 9-11. And then there are those activities that arguably the federal government shouldn’t be doing at all. Social Security is now the most longstanding coercive federal program for redistributing wealth in U.S. history. Couldn’t its purposes be far better served by allowing more individuals to keep the fruits of their labors and place part of them in private IRAs or similar interest-drawing accounts? After all, many of us under 50 have paid dearly into it – it isn’t as if we had a choice! – and are unconvinced it is still going to be there when we get older. Or consider the plight of the poor and the impoverished, about which collectivists such as Gartner profess such great concern. Without the heavy hand of the welfare state and the dependency it has created over several decades, perhaps there wouldn’t be so much poverty. There would be more incentives to work – and more good-paying jobs. It is a cinch that if welfare handouts are available, there are people who will have their hands out. Moreover, without the family-destroying tendencies of radical feminism, easy divorce, both parents having to work to pay their expenses after taxes, probably more families would have stuck together over the past half century, and those that have stuck together would be somewhat less dysfunctional. There would be fewer neglected elderly, and fewer neglected “latchkey” children. In the last analysis, we suffer economic woes because government (and the Federal Reserve) labor under the illusion that the economy can be micromanaged from a central point. If this idea were abandoned, the economy would begin to flourish as never before. For if businesses both small and large were not also being taxed to the cleaners, perhaps their owners would be in a better position and have a better incentive to create more and better jobs. Prices would be lower, because there would be fewer taxes passed on to consumers. This would mean more sales, greater profits for the companies, more expansion and still more jobs. Entrepreneurs could thrive without fear of the heavy hand of the IRS. All these factors, and more besides, would result in fewer poor. Not to mention more freedom for everyone, rich, middle-class or poor. Finally, consider the military spending that Gartner trumpets. One reason the federal government spends so much on the military is the need by our global-minded elites to police as much of the rest of the world as possible, whether in the name of the “war on terrorism,” oil, simply because the elites like power, or (what is most likely) all of the above. Statists, of course, take not just the necessity but the fundamental benevolence of huge, expansive government for granted, and we are supposed to find contrary views ridiculous – worthy only of the Menckenesque horselaugh. The real howler in Gartner’s commentary, however, is this statement: “[Government] spends $360 billion a year on educating 47 million youngsters in public elementary and secondary schools.” Countless observers and commentators have shown that government schools are abysmal failures, and continue to fail despite one quick fix after another. There is abundant and growing evidence that homeschooled children and youth are outpacing their government-schooled counterparts in every subject, including the mere ability to think. This latter should be no surprise. Government schools do not teach thinking but rote conformity – the fruits of progressivism, outcome-based education, and other fads of the sort that only state-worshippers are capable of producing. Now, with school-to-work programs everywhere, a vocationalism aimed at producing human worker bees is quietly burying the sort of traditional education that once produced citizens. It is completely beyond statists that if government at all levels were out of the education business altogether, the result might be not just citizens who are employable but citizens who are employable, literate and independent-minded. Citizens capable of evaluating for themselves the role they wish government to play in their lives, that is, which may be very little or none at all. On the other hand, maybe the Michael Gartners of the world of contemporary journalism do realize this, and it scares the dickens out of them on a subliminal level. After all, they must know that many of us are getting nearly all our national and international news from the Internet, not the print editions of New York Times or USA Today. They must know on some level that Christian homeschooling is now the fastest growing independent educational movement in the country. They must know that we would be laughing at the Ionesco-comedy antics of airport security personnel – except that the destruction of our liberties is not funny. They must know that some of us have very grave doubts about Bush’s war, as we wonder why people are still dying in Afghanistan even though Bush declared “victory” months ago. One may, finally, ask where the U.S. Constitution authorizes the activities Gartner lists. Gartner, of course, never mentions the Constitution. (Surprise, surprise!) But he is hardly alone on that score. There are no mentions of the Constitution in any recent eulogies to large, expansive government written by major journalists today, or any sign that major journalists have even read it. In today’s dominant media culture where statists rule supreme – which includes nearly every major outlet – the Constitution is a dead duck. Unless, of course, some upstart questions their right to spread disinformation and untruths to the public, whether the subject is the economy, government schools, or the “war on terrorism.” Then they go scampering under the security blanket supposedly provided by the First Amendment. April 27, 2002
Copyright © 2002 LewRockwell.com |
