“(DON’T) THROW SOME MEAT AT ‘EM!”

5/2/10

I highly recommend Steve Chapman’s Commentary piece in today’s (i.e., Sunday, 5/2/10’s) Chicago Tribune, in which he argues that the “starving the beast” approach to government, long advocated by conservatives from Ronald Reagan to Sarah Palin simply does not work. I sent Steve the following letter in response to the article, and I think it bears posting on the Pontificator:


5/2/10

Great Commentary piece today, Steve, on the theory that we can somehow reduce the government by starving the beast, as advocated by deep thinker Sarah Palin. Especially brilliant was your application of basic microeconomic principles to government, to wit:

“If you want people to consume more of something, you reduce the price.”

We have reduced the price of government, or at least its immediate price, by living on the next generation’s credit card. Should we be surprised that government has grown exponentially, even under such self-styled champions of small government as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush?

I used to eschew such schemes as balanced budget amendments as mere backdoor ways for politicians to justify tax increases, as in “Hey, I don’t want to raise taxes, but the Constitution now says I have to, so too bad for you.” Over the last few years (about ten, really), I have come to realize that there is little resistance to the growth of government if such expansion costs us the mere interest on the accompanying expenditures, especially at today’s low rates. But if people were forced to actually pay for the government that they, or their elected representatives, are demanding, the citizenry could do a more enlightened cost/benefit analysis. Under these circumstances, more government would lose in most cases.

Or perhaps by assuming that the current prime time TV addled generation of Americans can even approach an “enlightened cost/benefit” analysis, I am suspending my cynicism to a much greater degree than is warranted.

Thanks, Steve; keep up the good work.