Government is Untenable
Posted by Alex R. Knight III on Aug 11, 2009 in Commentary • 4 commentsAccording to a recent report done by the Associated Press, the current economic recession is having a major impact on government. Tax revenues are expected to drop this year by as much as 18% — the steepest decline since 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression.
On account of rising unemployment and corporate downsizing, individual income tax receipts are down 22% from this time last year. Corporate income tax payments are down a whopping 57% from during the same time frame. Social Security taxes paid in have dropped for only the second time since 1940, and Medicare taxes for the third time ever. This, while the federal deficit has risen to $1.8 trillion. The U.S. national debt now exceeds $11 trillion.
What is the response to this by politicians? You guessed it: More borrowing, more spending, and more expansion of government. Obama and the Democrats are continuing to push through to passage what will amount to a massive government takeover of health care, at a cost of an additional $1 trillion over the next ten years. Bills just completed by the U.S. House of Representatives would also boost other domestic spending by 11% in 2010, and military spending overseas by another 4%. It gets better: Social Security entitlements will be impossible to pay out much earlier than governmental projections of just a few months ago. Highway, public transportation, airport, and other infrastructure projects are in limbo as fuel and other tax receipts remain in decline. “Our tax system is already inadequate to support the promises our government has made,” says Eugene Steuerle, a Reagan-era Treasury Department official who now serves as vice president of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. “This just adds to the problem.”
Well, where does one look for solutions? Clearly, the present situation is untenable. Politicians cannot continue to look to the Federal Reserve to print money at interest in exchange for government securities. Such smoke and mirrors have already been used to stretch things too far. The inevitable runaway hyperinflation and double-digit interest rates that will ensue promise catastrophe on a global scale unlike anything the world has ever witnessed. Food shortages, civil unrest, and even world war then become very real possibilities – not mere apocalyptic spectres.
Would such a tangled, perverse set of circumstances have much chance of arising in a true free market – meaning, a laissez-faire marketplace absent the existence of political government? In short, the answer is no. A voluntary exchange of goods and services either by direct barter, or use of mutually agreed upon commodity currencies (such as gold or silver, for example) would scarcely suffer the deadweight of state socialist monopolization kept running by compulsory taxation. Moreover, since willing customers rarely if ever purchase what they don’t want or need, the surfeit of wasteful “pork-barrel” spending would be ended permanently. Programs and agencies that have no purpose other than to bolster and cement the institution of government in place would disappear overnight. Nearly everyone would be more prosperous and have far greater choices – without worrying about economic ruin, starvation, war, or martial law.
It is time for Americans to remove their blinders and stop playing political shell games. Not only is government unnecessary, it is wholly undesirable. For that matter, not only is government undesirable, it is untenable if society and civilization are to survive.
Most of the $3 trillion jump in borrowing is for purchasing financial assets which will be sold for profit, which is different than buying to cover operations.
As far as the transportation system, it is only underfunded because gas taxes (especially on deisel) are too low. These constitute a user fee. Now, if the will to raise the fee is not there, we can always privatize the highway system – as I am in favor of – however don’t expect roads to be cheaper if we do that. Since profit will be built in under a corporate model, tack on 10% to the whole after you raise fuel taxes enough to cover current operations. Road systems are a natural monopoly. Don’t think you can have them without monopoly premiums. The only way to not make the fees onerous is for these monopolies to be owned in part by local employers and for those employers to be owned by their employees. Again, solidarity is your only way out.
As for pork barrel spending – the vast majority of it is at the behest of the local governments and local industry. Most of it would likely be spent anyway. Most pork barrell infrastructure is called federalism.
The only way out of military spending is for developing nations to adopt political systems similar to this one – or at least have a peasantry raised from poverty in spirit to a love for freedom from both international and local elites – and the economic power to back it up. The only way to get there is solidarity, both among themselves and with American organized labor. Get rid of Taft-Hartley and Right to Work and we’ll talk about actually getting results.
It is clearly time to pursue alternative payment methodologies and starve the state. There is no reason to work for anyone who withholds taxes – laziness isn’t reason.
The government is untenable, just as you say. And getting more so as technologies such as eCache, Loom, Trubanc, and this new thing involving Pecunix get going. Tech such as virtual privacy networks (I’m fond of Cryptohippie) and the onion router vastly change the dynamics of basic individual economic interactions. And bitTorrent is the end of copyright.
As TE Lawrence said when he led 50 men across the Empty Quarter to attack Aqaba, “It’s going to be fun!”
“TE Lawrence… led 50 men across the Empty Quarter to attack Aqaba”.
He never did that. In fact, he never got anywhere near the empty quarter, which is in the south east of what is now Saudi Arabia, just inland of the mountains forming the border with Oman.