Voice For Liberty in Wichita

Should a special license-plate program for California government workers allow them to drive without regard for traffic laws? Is it possible for a firefighter to earn more than $200,000 in a year?
The Foundation for Economic Education reports on these and other matters in Government Workers Are America’s New Elite.
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A press release announcing the new book by Peter Schweizer Makers and Takers contains this sentence:
Schweizer argues that the failure lies in modern liberal ideas, which foster a self-centered, “if it feels, good do it” attitude that leads liberals to outsource their responsibilities to the government and focus instead on themselves and their own desires.
What [...]

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This week, Kansas Liberty has a very fine editorial titled The KC Chamber: Enemy of Life, Enemy of Business. Prominent is the mention of the work of my friend the Kansas Meadowlark in revealing the funding of the The Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce. See Greater Kansas City Chamber PAC, Awash With Cash, Forms [...]

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From Voters Want Less Pork, Even in Their Own District, July 24, 2008 Wall Street Journal:
The Club for Growth recently conducted a nationwide poll on government spending, and the results were exactly the opposite of what most politicians have been saying for years. Voters are fed up with Washington’s out-of-control spending. Politicians aren’t representing the [...]

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A Christian Science Monitor article Efforts to regulate ‘Wild West’ markets are long overdue contains a number of misstatements.
For one thing, characterization of the American West as “wild” in the sense that mayhem prevailed, and that life and property were not safe, is not correct. An article in the Journal of Libertarian Studies titled An [...]

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I am running for Republican precinct committeeman. The Wichita Eagle sent me a request to answer some questions to appear in a voter’s guide. These are the questions asked (to the best of my recollection; I didn’t record the text of the questions and now I can no longer log in to the system to [...]

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From the Goldwater Institute (www.goldwaterinstitute.org):

A recent Arizona Republic letter to the editor lamented the fact that our government funds war, but not universal health care. The writer asks what that says about our values. That letter got me thinking, what does government spending say about our values?

In the book Who Really Cares, economist Arthur C. Brooks points out that Americans who believe in limited government give more to others on average than those who believe in active government. Believers in small government give more time, money, and even blood. They give more to secular causes, too. This is not to say that there are not very generous individuals of every political stripe. The issue is one of emphasis and how much values are, in fact, reflected in a government budget.

The Wall Street Journal just published an article on the revival of the “religious left.” The religious left, mostly left-leaning clergy, agitates for increased minimum wages and social program spending.

One must wonder, though, how virtuous a society is when traditionally charitable giving must be forced on people through taxation. Perhaps those who recommend such a policy are too unwilling to give of themselves. As Dr. Brooks’ research suggests perhaps one’s values are best reflected in one’s personal spending rather than in the spending of other people’s money.

An excerpt from the book Who Really Cares, by Arthur C. Brooks (See www.arthurbrooks.net):

Let us be clear: Government spending is not charity. It is not a voluntary sacrifice by individuals. No matter how beneficial or humane it might be, no matter how necessary it is for providing public services, it is still the obligatory redistribution of tax revenues. Because government spending is not charity, sanctimonious yard signs do not prove that the bearers are charitable or that their opponents are selfish.

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I received this in an email from Ron Paul’s campaign:

As my great mentor Ludwig von Mises showed, government meddling in the economy creates conflict, as special-interest groups seek to rip us off through big government. The voluntarism of the free market, on the other hand, brings social cooperation and peace.

I have never heard Ron Paul describe Ludwig von Mises as his mentor. Now I know I really like Ron Paul!

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The economist Walter E. Williams has recent column that places the recent lobbying scandal in proper perspective.

Professor Williams explains to us that given the “awesome growth of government control over business, property, employment and other areas of our lives” Washington politicians (and I would add state and local politicians too) are in the position to grant valuable favors. “The greater their power to grant favors, the greater the value of being able to influence Congress, and there’s no better influence than money.”

Continuing: “The generic favor sought is to get Congress, under one ruse or another, to grant a privilege or right to one group of Americans that will be denied another group of Americans. A variant of this privilege is to get Congress to do something that would be criminal if done privately.”

“Here’s just one among possibly thousands of examples. If Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) used goons and violence to stop people from buying sugar from Caribbean producers so that sugar prices would rise, making it easier for ADM to sell more of its corn syrup sweetener, they’d wind up in jail. If they line the coffers of congressmen, they can buy the same result without risking imprisonment. Congress simply does the dirty work for them by enacting sugar import quotas and tariffs. The two most powerful committees of Congress are the House Ways and Means and the Senate Finance committees. These committees are in charge of granting tax favors. Their members are besieged with campaign contributions. Why? A tweak here and a tweak there in the tax code can mean millions of dollars.”

What is the solution? I believe, and I know Dr. Williams does too, that we should reduce the power that government has over our lives. I believe we should rely more on free markets for solutions to problems, as these markets are composed of people voluntarily entering into transactions, rather than a coercive government forcing decisions on us based on who lobbied the hardest. Dr. Williams also relates this story and solution: “Nearly two decades ago, during dinner with the late Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek, I asked him if he had the power to write one law that would get government out of our lives, what would that law be? Professor Hayek replied he’d write a law that read: Whatever Congress does for one American it must do for all Americans.”

Hayek also wrote in his book The Road to Serfdom: “As the coercive power of the state will alone decide who is to have what, the only power worth having will be a share in the exercise of this directing power.” We are well down this road, where government becomes more important than liberty and individuality. This is the battle we need to fight. Lobbying scandals are just a symptom and manifestation of the larger problem.

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Winning Lawsuits: How Being Irresponsible Pays Off
Sarah McIntosh, Flint Hills Center for Public Policy

They are everywhere — in the office, on the street, in the malls, and even in your house. They can end up costing you hundreds of thousands of dollars. No, it’s not pests I’m referring to. What is this pervasive problem, you ask? Torts.

Simply put, a tort is a negligent or intentional civil wrong. Tort law has been around for a long time, but in the last couple of decades tort liabilities have expanded exponentially.

It used to be that if you invited someone to your house you were responsible for taking reasonable steps to protect people from hazards in your home. Now, however, in many states you are responsible for protecting people who you did not invite — even people breaking into your home.

Our culture has changed in the United States. Instead of treasuring personal responsibility and property rights, we reward people who act unreasonably and unlawfully.

Take for instance the case of the homeowners in Pennsylvania who lost a $500,000 lawsuit to someone who broke into their home. When the robber left their house he tried to escape through the garage. The automatic door opener was not working, however, and since the door to the house had locked when the robber shut it, he was stuck in the garage. He spent eight days living on a can of soda and dry dog food. He was awarded that $500,000 for his “undue mental anguish.”

The robber broke the law and violated the homeowners’ property rights and still thought he had the right to compensation for anguish brought on by his own illegal behavior.

Or what about the man who won $74,000 plus medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand? The neighbor didn’t see that the young man was busy stealing his hubcaps.

Should this outcome be surprising? Maybe not. We have been on this path for decades, a path of transforming right and wrong not based on our own actions or rights but because we don’t like to see people physically or emotionally hurt. So, we ignore the fact that the party held liable is “hurt” by forcing compensation to make ourselves feel better for the irresponsible person’s pain.

For instance, a jury awarded a woman $780,000 after she broke her ankle when she tripped over a toddler running inside a furniture store. The store had to pay for her pain even though the running child was her own. Apparently the jury ignored the fact that the woman had a responsibility to control her own child. Is this really the direction we want to take our society?

Do we want to live in a world where we aren’t expected to take responsibility for our misbehaving children, or our own stupid actions? While that may sound comforting to some, it means that EVERYONE is potentially liable. If you have any assets, watch out.

We have created a culture that is quick to blame others for our own mistakes. Take the case of the woman who sued Winnebago when she set the cruise control to 70 on her RV and left the seat to make herself a sandwich. Apparently Winnebago should have explained in the owner’s manual that cruise control isn’t the same as automatic pilot.

The consequences of these lawsuits are that whenever we buy something we have pages of warnings about products that seem to grow more ridiculous yearly. We create a societal cost by shifting the blame. When companies are sued, their costs are born by their future customers. When individuals are held to too high of a standard in their homes, society starts to lose out on the value of spending time with people in their homes.

We also lose some freedom when these behaviors are allowed. We lose the freedom of how we want to live in our own homes. Should we put up warnings for those breaking in? Should we leave some extra food and water in the garage just in case?

As society breaks down along these lines, more and more laws will be created to legislate “fairness,” compensation, and morality. Children will learn to blame others for their own bad acts. No one will be responsible for themselves but everyone will be responsible for everyone else.

When unreasonable, risky, or stupid behavior is rewarded, everyone ends up paying. Is that what we want?

Sarah McIntosh is Vice President of Programs for the Kansas-based Flint Hills Center for Public Policy. A complete bio on Ms. McIntosh can be found at http://www.flinthills.org/content/view/24/39/, and she can be reached at sarah.mcintosh@flinthills.org. To learn more about the Flint Hills Center, please visit www.flinthills.org.

The Flint Hills Center for Public Policy is an independent voice for sound public policy in Kansas. As a non-profit, nonpartisan think tank, the Center provides critical information about policy options to legislators and citizens.

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Dan Mitchell summarizing John Fund:

….lobbyists visiting Capitol Hill are bound by House and Senate ethics rules that cap most individual gifts at $50 per elected official or staffer, with an annual limit of $100 per recipient from any single source. But local governments, public universities and Indian tribes are exempt from the limit, so they are able to shower members and their staffs with such goodies as luxury skybox tickets to basketball games and front-row concert tickets. Having members or their key aides attend such free events in the company of glad-handing university presidents and local government officials winds up costing taxpayers a pretty penny. Much of the explosive growth in earmarks has been directed to local governments and universities. …Universities and colleges spent at least $75 million in 2005 on lobbying according to a study by USA Today. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that $2 billion in grants flowed into higher education in 2003. …The same lobbying rules that apply to private-sector lobbyists should also apply to taxpayer-funded government lobbyists. …Disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff once told me that he built his lobbying business in such a way that all his major clients were Indian tribes and local governments, in part because he knew he could wine and dine power brokers on Capitol Hill without breaking any laws.

From “March Madness — Public-sector lobbyists lavish gifts on congressmen and their staffers. The scandal is it’s perfectly legal” located at www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110009776

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Here’s why we should listen to the economist Walter E. Williams. From a column of January, 2007.

The kind of rules we should have are the kind that we’d make if our worst enemy were in charge. My mother created a mini-version of such a rule. Sometimes she would ask either me or my sister to evenly divide the last piece of cake or pie to share between us. More times than not, an argument ensued about the fairness of the division. Those arguments ended with Mom’s rule: Whoever cuts the cake lets the other take the first piece. As if by magic or divine intervention, fairness emerged and arguments ended. No matter who did the cutting, there was an even division.

…

We have a set of rules that are known, neutral and intended to be durable. Those rules were created by our founders and embodied in the U.S. Constitution. Those rules have been weakened by a Congress of both parties that picks winners and losers in the game of life. The U.S. Supreme Court, which was intended to be a neutral referee, has forsaken that role and become a participant. All of this means we can expect a future of bitterly fought elections and enhanced conflict.”

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It is amazing to read the words of Bastiat, written over 150 years ago, but applicable today:

Your principle has placed these words above the entrance of the legislative chamber: “whosoever acquires any influence here can obtain his share of legal plunder.” And what has been the result? All classes have flung themselves upon the doors of the chamber crying: “A share of the plunder for me, for me!”

– Frédéric Bastiat, Selected Essays on Political Economy [1848]

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Writing from Charlotte, North Carolina

One of the appeals of big government is that is has so much to offer everyone. Those, myself included, who want government to radically reduce its size, intrusiveness, and power have nothing to offer except freedom and liberty. Sadly, those things don’t seem to matter to many people today. Or perhaps people have forgotten what these words mean and how much government infringes on both.

How has government become so big, and why are calls for smaller government so unpopular? In an article titled Handing Out The Goodies, Gene Callahan quotes Jim Henley as follows:

At bottom the problem is this: limited-government types, conservative or otherwise, don’t much like politics. We think politics should retreat from broad areas of economic and social life rather than advance into new ones.

We’re exactly the sort of people who are going to suck at political activity.

And we haven’t got a lot of goodies to offer. The State-Capitalist GOP can offer businesses all sorts of subventions. All we can offer them is “a chance to compete on a level playing field.” The Christian Right can offer busybodies a country in which the police enforce their morals on the unrighteous. All we can offer them is the right to try to hector the unrighteous into agreeing with them. The national-greatness right can offer the chance to kill foreigners and Do Good and feel part of a grand enterprise. All we can offer is boring old peace. The welfare state left can offer people oodles of other people’s money. We got squadoosh.

Political success comes from energizing defined constituencies and we ain’t got any.

Mr. Callahan’s article continues to explain how coercing people to spend more than they freely want to on government makes them worse off. It reduces their wealth and well-being. This is because when the government takes from one and gives to another, there is no improvement in peoples’ lives. One person’s gain exactly equals one person’s loss.

In market transactions, however, both parties are improved, as people enter into only those transactions they believe will benefit them.

The coerced transactions that the government forces upon us benefit one person or group at the expense of another. Now as government becomes larger and more intrusive (and it has under administrations in a long time, including that of President Bush) it has more methods at its disposal to benefit one person at the expense of another. There arises a powerful incentive to lobby the government for favors. As Mr. Callahan explains:

Once this process is set in motion in some society, an ever greater part of its members’ efforts to improve their lives will tend to be directed towards manipulating the political system into sending as many of the goodies it hands out in their direction as possible. Of course, that activity, unlike the voluntary exchange of goods and services characterizing a free market, is a zero-sum game, where every gain of mine is offset by a loss of yours. But the losers in one “round” of the game are thereby inspired to devote even greater effort towards ensuring the next round goes their way. And the existence in every society of power-hungry individuals, who will come to realize that they can exploit this struggle over cuts of the distributive pie for their own ends, ensures that there will be no lack of “leaders” intent on organizing these competing interest groups and assuring them that their demand for more goodies is an expression of justice itself.

All this effort spent getting the government to grant favors, be they subsidies for arts, culture, or museums in Wichita; or businesses seeking tax abatements, industrial revenue bonds, subsidy, preferred treatment, or set-asides; or the outright asking of government for money, all this is economically unproductive and diverts time and effort from value-producing activities. We would all be wealthier and better off if government would stop coercing us into making transactions that don’t benefit both parties.

The problem is that with government spending there is a third party involved, that being the politicians that gain favor with groups and individuals by sending them someone else’s money, and with that, taking away a big chunk of freedom and liberty.

This is the system that is so entrenched and growing so fast that calls to end it and return to a limited government are brushed away as laughable and untenable. That is a sad realization.

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Writing from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

In a June 20, 2006 Wichita Eagle editorial, Rhonda Holman writes about the WaterWalk project in Wichita.

Evidently there is controversy over the public not knowing the name of the “destination restaurant” that is being courted and favored with a gift of $1 million. To me, the controversy is not the identify of the restaurant or when and how the city should conduct its negotiations, but that we are paying for a restaurant to be built.

We are not lacking for fine restaurants in Wichita. On both the east and west sides of town (and other parts, too), many excellent restaurants have been opened recently, and more are being built as I write. The Eagle has even reported on their astonishment at how many there are.

The problem is, I believe, that these restaurants were not built where Ms. Holman and our local government leaders feel they should have been built. But that’s not a problem, except to her and them.

The people who built these restaurants did so by investing their own money, or the money that others entrusted to them. These people did so voluntarily. They presumably built their restaurants where they thought they could earn the best return on their investment. And having invested several million dollars of their own money in the restaurant, they have a strong incentive to make the restaurant a success.

But that’s not good enough for Ms. Holman. Evidently she does not appreciate the sacrifice that people have made in order to accumulate the funds needed to make these spectacular investments. She may not be aware of — or maybe she does not respect or value — the tremendous effort and work it takes to run a successful restaurant.

Just because these people did not build their restaurants where she (and our local government leaders) thought they should have been built, she wants to tax them — and the rest of us, too — and give the proceeds of that tax to a new competitor.

Is this the type of behavior by our local government and our town’s leading newspaper that is likely to lead to other new private investment?

Ms. Holman’s editorial stance, along with the actions of our local government leaders, constitute a slap in the fact for those who have been foolish enough (we can now conclude this) to invest money in any industry in which the government is likely to set up their competitor.

This harmful attitude is summarized in this plea to get the WaterWalk project moving faster, “… so that citizens not only can see where their money is going but also soon start enjoying more of their investment.”

Making an investment, I might remind Ms. Holman, is something that people do voluntarily because they believe it is in their interest.

The WaterWalk project and the new downtown restaurant are being paid for by taxes. The expenditure is being made to serve the interests of politicians, subsidized developers, and people like Ms. Holman who believe they know best what to do with others’ money. There is a tremendous difference between the two.

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A column by economist Thomas Sowell Preserving a Vision–at the Expense of the Facts tells just how harmful big-government liberalism is to those it aims to help. In particular, black families have been harmed. “… the black family, which survived centuries of slavery and generations of discrimination, has disintegrated in the wake of the liberal welfare state is only one example.”

After the end of slavery, blacks started to advance in America. Even though they were often discriminated against — both informally and formally by government, as in the case of Jim Crow laws — they were making progress in education and economically, too. But then government gets involved and wants to “help.” Here’s the legacy:

One of the most telling examples of the social destructiveness of the left’s welfare-state vision can be found among the white slum dwellers in Britain described in the brilliant and insightful book “Life at the Bottom” by Theodore Dalrymple.

There it is not possible to blame social degeneracy on slavery, racism or any of the other things cited as causes of the behavior and consequences found among blacks in American slums. Yet the results are virtually identical, right down to children beating up classmates for trying to get an education.

But the left will not admit its mistake, and continues to doom a class of Americans to failure.

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Writing from Miami, Florida

Would you rather live in a republic or a democracy?

In an article by the economist Walter E. Williams (Are we a republic or a democracy?) we discover the difference between a republic and a democracy:

So what’s the difference between republican and democratic forms of government? John Adams captured the essence of the difference when he said, “You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe.” Nothing in our Constitution suggests that government is a grantor of rights. Instead, government is a protector of rights.

In recognition that it’s Congress that poses the greatest threat to our liberties, the framers used negative phrases against Congress throughout the Constitution such as: shall not abridge, infringe, deny, disparage, and shall not be violated, nor be denied. In a republican form of government, there is rule of law. All citizens, including government officials, are accountable to the same laws. Government power is limited and decentralized through a system of checks and balances. Government intervenes in civil society to protect its citizens against force and fraud but does not intervene in the cases of peaceable, voluntary exchange.

Contrast the framers’ vision of a republic with that of a democracy. In a democracy, the majority rules either directly or through its elected representatives. As in a monarchy, the law is whatever the government determines it to be. Laws do not represent reason. They represent power. The restraint is upon the individual instead of government. Unlike that envisioned under a republican form of government, rights are seen as privileges and permissions that are granted by government and can be rescinded by government.

I suppose that if you happen to hold the same beliefs as the majority in a democracy, you’re in a good position — unless you want to let others believe and live differently.

Another good article by Dr. Williams on this subject is How to create conflict.

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Writing from Miami, Florida

Last week I explained how a column in The Wichita Eagle (see How a Good Column on the Bad Lottery Fell Apart) started out well but took a sharp turn downwards.

What Mr. Scholfield did to destroy this potentially valuable newspaper column was to propose higher minimum wage laws as the solution for people who aren’t paid enough. He even proposes a living wage law that reflects the costs people face rather than the value of what they are able to produce.

Either of these proposals will harm the very people that Mr. Scholfield seeks to help. As Milton Friedman writes in Capitalism and Freedom:

Minimum wage laws are about as clear a case as one can find of a measure the effects of which are precisely the opposite of those intended by the men of good will who support it. Many proponents of minimum wage laws quite properly deplore extremely low rates; they regard them as a sign of poverty; and they hope, by outlawing wage rates below some specified level, to reduce poverty. In fact, insofar as minimum wage laws have any effect at all, their effect is clearly to increase poverty. The state can legislate a minimum wage rate. It can hardly require employers to hire at that minimum all who were formerly employed at wages below the minimum. … The effect of the minimum wage is therefore to make unemployment higher than it otherwise would be.

The great appeal of a higher minimum wage, or a living wage rate as some localities have passed, is that it seems like a wonderfully magical way to increase the wellbeing of many people. Those earning less than the new lawful wage and keep their jobs after the increase are happy. They are grateful to the lawmakers, labor leaders, newspaper editorialists, and others who pleaded for the higher minimum wage. News stories will report their good fortune.

But as Frederic Bastiat wrote a long time ago: “Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference — the one takes account of the visible effect; the other takes account both of the effects which are seen, and also of those which it is necessary to foresee. Now this difference is enormous, for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favourable, the ultimate consequences are fatal, and the converse.”

The not-so-visible effect of the higher wage law is that demand for labor will be reduced. Those workers whose productivity, as measured by the give and take of supply and demand, lies below the new lawful wage rate are in danger of losing their jobs. As Dr. Friedman says, the law says if you hire someone you must pay them a certain amount. The law can’t compel you to hire someone, or to keep workers on the payroll.

The difficulty is that people lose their jobs in dribs and drabs. A few workers here; a few there. They may not know who is to blame. The newspaper and television reporters will not seek these people, as they are largely invisible, especially so in the case of the people who are not hired because of the higher wage law.

If we are truly concerned about the plight of low-wage workers (and I am very concerned, personally), we can face some harsh realities and deal with them openly.

The simple fact is that some people are not able to produce output that our economy values very much. Passing a law that requires employers to pay them more doesn’t change the fact that we still don’t value their output very much. So a law that requires these employees to be paid more than their output is worth means, in all likelihood, that their jobs disappear.

Some may say that it is a harsh judgment to say that someone’s work isn’t valued very much. But it really isn’t the greedy evil employers that make that judgment is it? If so, why are some employees, say physicians, paid very well? Is it because the hospital likes to pay high salaries? Or that we as healthcare consumers like to pay high doctor bills? Instead, it’s realizing that we place a high value on the output of a physician. And because it’s difficult to become a physician, and therefore the supply of physicians is low, we have a situation where there is a high demand for something that is in short supply. That means high wages for physicians.

Henry Hazlitt, writing over 50 years ago in his important work Economics In One Lesson explained how to increase wages:

The best way to raise wages, therefore, is to raise marginal labor productivity. This can be done by many methods: by an increase in capital accumulation — i.e., by an increase in the machines with which the workers are aided; by new inventions and improvements; by more efficient management on the part of employers; by more industriousness and efficiency on the part of workers; by better education and training. The more the individual worker produces, the more he increases the wealth of the whole community. The more he produces, the more his services are worth to consumers, and hence to employers. And the more he is worth to employers, the more he will be paid. Real wages come out of production, not out of government decrees. (emphasis added)

One way to increase the value of workers’ output, as explained above, is education. Sadly, as documented in many articles on this website, our public education system is failing children badly.

Capital — another way to increase wages — may be a dirty word to some. But as the economist Walter E. Williams says, ask yourself this question: who earns the higher wage: a man digging a ditch with a shovel, or a man digging a ditch using a power backhoe? The difference between the two is that the man with the backhoe is more productive. That productivity is provided by capital — the savings that someone accumulated (instead of spending on immediate consumption) and invested in a piece of equipment that increased the output of our economy. Those who call for higher taxes make it more difficult to accumulate capital.

Technology, innovation, and efficiency improvements are important, too. But I feel the two most important things that government can do to help low-wage workers are these: First, get out of the way of progress in education. Let parents have more control over education. Let markets rather than bureaucrats shape the future of education. Second, eliminate taxes and policies that promote immediate consumption rather than saving and investment, that is, eliminate policies that work against the accumulation of capital.

If the solution was really as simple as Mr. Scholfield claims, that in order to increase the wellbeing of low-wage workers we could merely pass a law, shouldn’t we be outraged that this law wasn’t passed a long time ago?

Then, if a law is passed to raise the minimum wage to x, shouldn’t we insist that it have been increased to x + $1, or x + $2, or x + …?

No, the solution to low wages is much more difficult than that.

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A column by economist Walter E. Williams (Why we’re a divided nation) strongly makes the case for more decision making by free markets rather than by the government through the political process.

When decisions are made through free markets, Dr. Williams says, both parties win, because in a free market, parties voluntarily enter into only those transactions that benefit them.

When decisions are made for us by the government, however, it is almost always the case that one party’s gain is someone else’s loss. Therefore, there is conflict. The more decisions made through politics, the more potential for conflict. Coalitions arise in order to try to get more from the government, and the most effective coalitions “are those with a proven record of being the most divisive — those based on race, ethnicity, religion and region.”

The final paragraph of the column is this: “The best thing the president and Congress can do to heal our country is to reduce the impact of government on our lives. Doing so will not only produce a less divided country and greater economic efficiency but bear greater faith and allegiance to the vision of America held by our founders — a country of limited government.”

In an earlier post, I mentioned some columns by Dr. Williams that I thought were important. This column is certainly one of his best, as it very simply, in one short page, shows us a major fault in our current political landscape.

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The economist Walter E. Williams has a column dated January 18, 2006, that places the current lobbying scandal in proper perspective.

(We should caution Democrats against overindulging in schadenfreude [enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others] at this time. Democrats took money from Jack Abramoff too, and if there were more Democrats in positions of power, you can be sure there would be more money given to Democrats.)

Professor Williams explains to us that given the “awesome growth of government control over business, property, employment and other areas of our lives” Washington politicians (and I would add state and local politicians too) are in the position to grant valuable favors. “The greater their power to grant favors, the greater the value of being able to influence Congress, and there’s no better influence than money.”

Continuing: “The generic favor sought is to get Congress, under one ruse or another, to grant a privilege or right to one group of Americans that will be denied another group of Americans. A variant of this privilege is to get Congress to do something that would be criminal if done privately.”

“Here’s just one among possibly thousands of examples. If Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) used goons and violence to stop people from buying sugar from Caribbean producers so that sugar prices would rise, making it easier for ADM to sell more of its corn syrup sweetener, they’d wind up in jail. If they line the coffers of congressmen, they can buy the same result without risking imprisonment. Congress simply does the dirty work for them by enacting sugar import quotas and tariffs. The two most powerful committees of Congress are the House Ways and Means and the Senate Finance committees. These committees are in charge of granting tax favors. Their members are besieged with campaign contributions. Why? A tweak here and a tweak there in the tax code can mean millions of dollars.”

What is the solution? I believe, and I know Dr. Williams does too, that we should reduce the power that government has over our lives. I believe we should rely more on free markets for solutions to problems, as these markets are composed of people voluntarily entering into transactions, rather than a coercive government forcing decisions on us based on who lobbied the hardest. Dr. Williams also relates this story and solution: “Nearly two decades ago, during dinner with the late Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek, I asked him if he had the power to write one law that would get government out of our lives, what would that law be? Professor Hayek replied he’d write a law that read: Whatever Congress does for one American it must do for all Americans.”

Hayek also wrote in his book The Road to Serfdom: “As the coercive power of the state will alone decide who is to have what, the only power worth having will be a share in the exercise of this directing power.” We are well down this road, where government becomes more important than liberty and individuality. This is the battle we need to fight. Lobbying scandals are just a symptom and manifestation of the larger problem.

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Arthur C. Brooks, writing in the January 16, 2006 Wall Street Journal, debunks a stereotype about conservatives (those in favor of smaller government) being less compassionate and caring than those who are in favor of more government spending on social programs.

Professor Brooks tells us that according to the General Social Survey in 2002, “the proponents of government spending are six percentage points less likely to give money to charity each year than the opponents, and a third less likely to give money away each month.” But that’s money. What about something else, like donating blood? “Once again, it is those opposed to government aid. These supposedly uncompassionate folks are 25% of the population, but donate more than 30% of the blood each year. Meanwhile, supporters of government spending to the poor are 28% of the population, but donate just 20% of the blood. If the whole population gave blood like opponents of social spending do, the blood supply would increase by more than a quarter. But if everyone in the population gave like government aid advocates, the supply would drop by about 30%.”

Is this an example of “do as I say, not as I do?” Or are advocates of big government really more comfortable with government-run social program than private programs?

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Arthur C. Brooks, associate professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Public Affairs, has a commentary in the December 8, 2005 Wall Street Journal titled “Money Buys Happiness.” Rich people, the author tells us, are much more likely to say they are happy. Although we are becoming richer as a whole, the percent of people saying they are “very happy” is the same today as it was 30 years ago. Some people say it’s the rich having relatively more than others that makes them happy. This excess happiness of the rich being bad, they say, we should use progressive taxation to improve our “moral fiber” by making after-tax incomes less divergent.

But is this a good idea? “In fact there is another explanation for unchanging happiness levels over time which is rather less supportive of income redistribution. As incomes rise, so generally do levels of government revenues and spending, and there is evidence that these forces work against personal income on the overall level of happiness. For example, a $1,000 increase in per capita income is associated with a one-point decrease in the percentage of Americans saying they are ‘not too happy.’ At the same time, a $1,000 increase in government revenues per capita is associated with a two-point rise in the percentage of Americans saying they are not too happy. In other words, not only can money buy happiness, but it may be that the government can tax it away as well.”

Mr. Brooks also tells us that donating money and time — that is, the giving of charity — illustrates the link between money and happiness: “Givers of charity earn substantial mental and physical health rewards, even more than do the recipients of charity — empirical evidence that it is indeed more blessed to give than to receive.”

The actions of government can swamp private charity efforts. In the week after hurricane Katrina, I read that private donations had reached $600 million. I thought that was wonderful, until the next news story told me that Congress had just approved some $60 billion in relief, that being described as merely the down payment on the final spending. Government spending overwhelmed private charity, even though not many seem satisfied with the government response, and there are many stories of effective help supplied privately.

So when government taxes us to pay for programs that take the rightful property of one person and give it to another to whom it does not belong, government harms us in two ways: it taxes away happiness and reduces our capacity to engage in charitable activity.

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Writing from Orlando, Florida

The November 16, 2005 Wall Street Journal contains an editorial titled “Fiscal Chicken Hawks.” This article reveals the trivial amounts of federal spending that is being fought over: “The reality is that over the next five years the total federal budget is expected to exceed $13.855 trillion. The Republican faux-Slimfast plan basically erases the rounding error, or the $0.055 trillion, and leaves the $13.8 trillion untouched. To put it another way, the GOP plan reduces the increase in the federal budget by a microscopic 0.25% over the next five years.”

Faced with even this barely noticeable reduction in spending, advocates of big government are in full fighting trim: “Their Congressional leaders, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, have denounced even these paltry GOP savings as ’shameful’ and ‘immoral.’ They even brought a dozen Katrina Hurricane victims to Washington, trotted them out in front of the national media, and proceeded to lambaste Republicans for shredding the social safety net.”

The reality is that federal spending, even under a Republican President and Republican-controlled Congress, has been increasing rapidly, and will probably continue the same way: “For the past five years federal spending on anti-poverty programs has increased by 41%. Medicaid, which provides health care for the poor, is scheduled to grow by 7.9% a year, and under the GOP plan it would grow by 7.5% a year. Either way the program expands by more than double the rate of inflation through 2011.”

But there is good news. By switching to GEICO, I saved a lot of money on my car insurance. Seriously, our own home state senator has been up to some good work: “Senators Sam Brownback of Kansas and John McCain of Arizona have joined with five first-term Republicans to propose some genuine cost cutting. Their plan would delay the Medicare prescription drug bill, adjust Medicare benefits to seniors with incomes of more than $80,000 a year (or $160,000 for a couple), cancel highway pork projects, end dozens of obsolete spending programs, and cut all domestic discretionary spending programs by 5%.”

Federal and state spending continues to grow rapidly. Politicians seem unable to resist its allure. If we would realize that almost all this spending is taking money from one person and giving it to someone else to whom it does not belong, we could evaluate this spending in its proper moral context.

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Writing from Orlando, Florida

An excellent article by David Boaz of the Cato Institute titled “Catastrophe in Big Easy Demonstrates Big Government’s Failure” (available here: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=4819) explains how miserably the government at all levels performed before and after Hurricane Katrina.

The disaster started long before this year, when government spent a lot of money in Louisiana, but didn’t protect it from hurricanes: “During the Bush administration, Louisiana received far more money for Army Corps of Engineers civil projects than any other state, but it wasn’t spent on levees or flood control. Surprisingly enough, it was spent for unrelated projects favored by Louisiana’s congressional delegation.”

After the hurricane struck, it seemed that government spent most of its efforts trying to keep out the scores of private-sector entities that were responding to the need. “Meanwhile, despite FEMA’s best efforts, immediately after the hurricane the private sector — businesses, churches, charities, and individuals — began to supply services to the victims.”

What really hurts is to realize who it is that suffered the most. “Who were the people who suffered most from Hurricane Katrina? The poorest residents of New Orleans, many of them on welfare — the very people the government has lured into decades of dependency. The welfare state has taught generations of poor people to look to government for everything — housing, food, money. Their sense of responsibility and self-reliance had atrophied. When government failed, they had few resources to fall back on.”

After all this, who could want more government? It seems that some do — quite a few, according to The New York Times, which today published an article titled “Voters Showed Less Appetite for Tax Cuts.” It contains this sentence: “It may be, some analysts suggested, that after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and this year’s Gulf Coast hurricanes, Americans saw the value of government investment in infrastructure, public safety and other services and are now more willing to pay for it.”

I think if people looked at the job that government does, compared with what the private sector can do even when it is not required to do so, they would realize that more government is not the answer.

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Writing from Lexington, Kentucky

There is a problem when government interferes with what people should be doing for themselves. Government can destroy the incentive to provide for yourself and your family.

For the families of victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorists attack on New York, a board determined how much the family should receive in compensation based on a variety of factors, including the age and earning potential of the deceased. Then, the award was reduced by the amount of any life insurance the deceased had. We should ask what is the message given when government does this? What is the incentive to forgo current spending in order to buy life insurance, when the government may take the benefit that you paid for away from you? That’s exactly what happened to the people who had their own life insurance. The government took it from them, and they were worse off for having it. Conversely, for those who did not provide their own insurance, the government provided it for them, at no cost.

For those who suffered losses due to floods from hurricane Katrina in Mississippi, that state’s attorney general is suing insurance companies to force them to pay for flood damage, even though the usual homeowner’s policy fairly shouts that flood damage isn’t covered. If Mississippi succeeds in forcing insurance companies to pay for flood damage, what message does that send to those who sought to protect and provide for themselves by paying flood insurance premiums for years? At minimum, the government ought to refund the premiums they paid, if government is to give the same benefit to those who paid no premiums.

These two examples illustrate how, in an effort to appear compassionate and help unfortunate victims of tragedy, government destroys the incentive to provide for one’s own self and family. When government forces the same outcome for everyone, the same result for those who sacrificed and prepared and for those who didn’t, we might ask why even bother preparing?

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