Pew Research has come out with a new poll. I know it’s difficult to believe but people complain of big government.
Only 22% feel that big government is acceptable. Would you like to be in that elite group? Would you care to guess where my sympathies lie?
I would appreciate you reading this post and letting me know not just where you stand but whether this caused you to reassess the issue to any extent.
First allow me to confess. I have been audited three times. Once they discovered it was a clerical error and that they owed me more than what they had claimed I owed them. Another time I went to tax court sans attorney and my bill was reduced by a little more than half. The last time they wanted to avoid tax court and negotiated an amount that was almost reasonable.
You really get to experience the power of the government through the auspices of the IRS. I know that, had our resources and power been comparable, I would have not had to pay any extra those last two times. As the song goes, you have to know when to fold them.
I also had the opportunity to experience the power of the government as meted out by sergeants in general and one captain in particular. The captain denied me the right to marry. He ignored the evidence of the Korean ceremony we had as an option after his denial. His actions meant that the only time I saw my wife in the following three years was when I paid for a trip as a civilian to marry again in the American Consulate.
My wife was pregnant when I was shipped home ahead of schedule and my son died without me ever having seen him. I don’t imagine too many members of the Tea Party have more reason than I to be concerned about the power of big government.
After fifty years my perspective on the subject is somewhat less the prisoner of passion than formerly. I am aware that there are dangers. I am aware that there are abuses. But, I am also aware that the issue is not as simple as one person’s subjective experience.
You have probably heard of the SEC bringing fraud charges against Goldman Sachs this past week. Although Senator Dodd says the financial reform bill he is putting together would have kept that fraud from occurring, many say that the government has all along had the tools to remedy that problem. If that is the case, one might think that the problem to this point is not that the government was not sufficiently large but that there was at least one part of the government that was not doing its job.
I imagine that I would find many agreeing that if the government already has the size and the tools to accomplish its obligations we might be well-advised not to be precipitous in enlarging it. That really isn’t a tough call.
If as they say, the government has the tools to protect us from Wall Street, do they really have the size? One case against the financial industry may require reading hundreds of thousands of emails and a host of other documents. It requires battalions of forensic accountants. It requires specialized legal teams. With the scope of the problem, one case at a time would be analogous to trying to empty an ocean one thimble full at a time. The SEC must be greatly enlarged.
It would help to give the SEC as much authority as the FDA. The FDA fails to use its authority on behalf of consumers but that is due to the relationship its staff and executives have with the industry. That needs to be rectified. Just making the SEC larger and giving it greater authority is insufficient. We have to demand they protect the right segment of our society.
What authority should we give the SEC? One way to cut down on the need for unlimited staff would be to re-engineer the front end of the system. We should prohibit the financial industry from offering any new products without permission. This is at least the supposed policy of the FDA. Such a policy could have prevented Credit Default Swaps and other forms of derivatives. Or, it could have insured that the government knew they were coming, what they were, understood the dangers and imposed real regulations and rules.
The issue of enhancing our protection from the Wall Street mafia seems to find that rare commodity, bipartisan support. We expect to find substantial agreement that a large military comes in handy, when it is not being used as a police force. There are obviously other areas that require a government with sufficient resources to serve and protect us. Think mine safety inspectors, food inspectors, port inspectors, et al.
There admittedly are areas that could be run with fewer people. At least 60% of our prison population is due to nonviolent drug offenses. You don’t always get to see or recognize the money and other resources being spent on this. It clogs our courts. It consumes law enforcement resources and manpower. One of every four prisoners in the world are in U.S. prisons. Are we that bad as a people? Or, do we always vote for whoever is ‘toughest on crime?’
I am certain that you know of other areas of need for big government and other areas where it could be reduced.
Some government services actually bring us social and financial benefits. The state parks system in Tennessee has been voted the best in the nation. A recent study found that for every dollar the state spent on this system it saw a return of $16. So, what do we do? Do we listen to Blue Dog Democrats and Republican fiscal conservatives and cut the parks budget? We shouldn’t but to them such a government service is considered low-hanging fruit. Cut. Cut. Cut.
It isn’t as simple as ‘the government is too big.’ Nor is it a simple ‘the government needs more resources.’ It’s both. It’s neither. Government is complex. And, it is not going away; nor should it. We have the responsibility to decide where government can serve us and where we need it to butt out. We can’t do this to our best advantage with ideologies, slogans and shouting at each other.
With well over 300 million souls to be responsible for, one shouldn’t expect a small government. With a society as complex as ours is, we need services. With all of the dangers we face, in our local and national security, mad cow disease, botulism, Wall Street, internet and other fraud, medicines that kill, increasing stress that affects and endangers us, Toyotas and all of the rest, we will frequently find a place for government.
As I’ve stated in previous posts, the present economy doesn’t inspire us as individuals to go on a spending spree. Neither does it have that effect on businesses. Local and state governments are cutting back, adjusting to greatly reduced revenues. The economy needs stimulation. People need jobs. The federal government is the only entity with the resources to do that.
It would have been nice if we hadn’t partied so hardy on credit when the economy was in better shape. We would have less of a problem accepting temporary but necessary deficits to help us ride out the hangover. We could have a 10-year recession as Japan did or we can bite the bullet and pay for our economic sins.
Much of the Tea Party thrust is for small government. They are puppets. Most all of the behind-the-scenes organization for this phenomenon is being paid for by big money interests. They want distraction from actually dealing with our problems. They want a government that has not the resources to police their activities. I wish these people in their tri-corner hats and parading around with misspelled signs would take a break – take time to think. They don’t have any solutions. They have slogans and cant.
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{ 11 comments }
Is that a compliment or an insult? Sometimes writing comes more readily but rarely easily.
Writing comes more easily if you have something to say.
I agree with your overall conclusions. However, I see no benefit to referring to members of the Tea Party as “teabaggers”. Do you?
You are right. I am properly admonished.
However, I have difficulty acknowledging that they have any valid claim to association with what tea party means in its historical context.
I can appreciate their anger, however misdirected. However, I have every reason to hold in contempt those waving the signs for which they have become famous. I have every reason to hold in contempt those who are organizing and using them. I just should express that contempt other than with that particular word.
Ed,
I edited the post to replace the word.
Wow! I didn’t imagine I had that kind of power.
It is an amusing anomaly. I suspect a rip in the space-time continuum.
I appreciate that your well-educated conclusions so closely match my mostly home-schooled ones.I no longer feel quite so alone in my POV. We even share musical tastes; I mostly don’t care for country, though I admit an affection for Chet Atkins and Patsy Cline. My eldest paternal uncle built guitars for Gresch. My paternal grandfather was a bricklayer at Oak Ridge during WW2. He never spoke of it, even 30 or 40 years later. Those guys could keep a secret.
POV might have something to do with education but primarily it springs from values.
I confess to finding an occasional country music piece that I like but I am, thankfully, unfamiliar with the bulk of it.
I have to consider keeping secrets a virtue as I was in military intelligence and worked with the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the Department of State’s service and the smallest (and best) intelligence agency of the government.
You have articulated very clearly what I have been voicing in the wilderness for years.Would you agree the major source for our national woes can be traced to individual greed?
It certainly ranks high on the list.
I think people are taken with a simplistic social Darwinism – survival of the fittest. They see it as the stronger besting the weaker.
As a geologist said back in the mid-1920s, the development of lungs to accomplish what gills once handled did not involve one being stronger or meaner than rivals.
Most of our advancements in the past 20,000 years or so involved helping our kind against enemies, either strangers or other animals or some other threat. This began with a family group, then to expanded to a tribe, a clan and so on to larger and larger groups.
That is the opposite of greed and other such egocentric personality disorders. They actually retard and otherwise harm the group. They are primitive and regressive. These people may momentarily triumph by the accumulation of wealth or power but at the temporary expense of others of their group and the progress of the group as a whole.
It isn’t neuroscience. The evidence is clear.
By the way, I’m presently located in the Nashville suburbs.
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