{"id":129,"date":"2009-09-20T21:02:14","date_gmt":"2009-09-21T01:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/?p=129"},"modified":"2009-09-21T08:18:37","modified_gmt":"2009-09-21T12:18:37","slug":"its-the-waste-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/2009\/09\/20\/its-the-waste-stupid\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s the waste, stupid!"},"content":{"rendered":"

On September 15th, like many Americans, I made my third-quarter estimated state and federal income tax payments.\u00a0\u00a0 I spent about an hour figuring out how much money I needed to send in, and about another hour driving to and from, and dealing with, the post office.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I can’t get those two hours back.\u00a0\u00a0 But it wasn’t the large checks that really got me steamed, as much as the thought of how the money would be spent.<\/p>\n

Imagine a scenario where a genuine solution to a long-time affliction against humanity could be reached simply by raising a large sum of money, but at the same time, there were no income taxes. \u00a0 Say it was going to cost, in the form of a one-time <\/em>payment, 10% of your annual income, to cure cancer.\u00a0\u00a0 To truly cure it.\u00a0 To be able to relegate it to the proverbial dustbins of history.\u00a0\u00a0 Who wouldn’t gladly write the check?<\/em><\/p>\n

By tremendous contrast, what form of government spending produces such a feeling?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I believe it is exactly this contrast that gets to the root of the anger we see today about a government running itself seemingly out of control.\u00a0\u00a0 There is a gut-feeling that much of our tax money, much of the costs of government, much of the regulatory barriers to whatever, much of the debt we’re incurring, just amounts to so much waste.<\/p>\n

\"September<\/p>\n

Try to think for a moment of the specific things that you think the government should be charged with doing.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Beyond the important but abstract things like enforcing the rule of law, most of us would consent to pay for some specific services, such as a national defense or even a public highway system. \u00a0 But it’s tough for any one person to come up with a long list of things.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The framers of the US Constitution thought about such things and came up with their own list.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s very short, and it’s spelled out largely in Article I, section 8<\/a> This, of course only deals with the federal level, and notably, the tenth Amendment<\/a> ascribes all other powers to the states. \u00a0 Almost none <\/em>of the issues that occupy today’s headlines remotely fit the list, and as of 2004 the Federal Register had nearly 80,000 pages.<\/a> It’s safe to say there are more today.<\/p>\n

So have we cured cancer?\u00a0 Or hunger? \u00a0 Or homelessness?\u00a0 Is there a chicken in every pot?\u00a0 How about an iPod? Can government succeed <\/em>in such efforts?<\/p>\n

To suggest that it can not is not to be pessimistic, or unpatriotic, or even anarchistic.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 To suggest that it can not does not mean that individuals should not try on their own, or even in groups both big and small, to do what they can.\u00a0 It boils down to a question of who decides.<\/em> Who decides <\/em>what problems should be tackled? \u00a0 Who decides <\/em>what should be spent on them?\u00a0 Who decides <\/em>what level of service or result is appropriate, and at what cost?<\/p>\n

Are there incentives in place for government to succeed?\u00a0\u00a0 What happens when it fails?\u00a0\u00a0 In the private sector, capital is raised through voluntary<\/em> means based on a\u00a0 service provider’s potential to meet some need. \u00a0 Often, but not always,<\/em> there is a rate of return for the capital provider. \u00a0 When the service provider succeeds it is rewarded with more capital.\u00a0 If it should fail, capital providers look elsewhere.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No such feedback mechanism exists with government.\u00a0 It’s worse than that, because with government, the capital raising process is involuntary<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Getting back to writing that one-time check,\u00a0 I believe most of us would write it because most of us have a sense of genuine charity.\u00a0 Faced with a genuine need and the distinct possibility of making a difference, we rally to the cause.<\/a> Indeed, all of the major religions call upon us to be charitable.\u00a0 And there’s the rub:\u00a0 taxation, directed by politics, even when the proceeds are to be used for supposedly noble goals, is not charity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On September 15th, like many Americans, I made my third-quarter estimated state and federal income tax payments.\u00a0\u00a0 I spent about an hour figuring out how much money I needed to send in, and about another hour driving to and from, and dealing with, the post office.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I can’t get those two hours back.\u00a0\u00a0 But it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":144,"href":"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions\/144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/civilsocietytrust.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}