In reality, we have governments for lots of reasons, most of them illegitimate: That ancient instinct toward banditry is powerful, and the desire to make a living by simply commanding economic resources rather than earning them through trade or labor seems to be a fixed feature of a certain subset of human beings. Patronage and clientelism are very strong forces, too, and government can be used to create public-sector salaries or welfare benefits that are well in excess of the wages that political clients could expect to earn in honest work. In the United States, our swollen public-sector payrolls, particularly at the state and local level, are little more than a supplementary welfare state, providing a more dignified form of public dependency for relatively low-skilled and mainly unenterprising people.
The problem for the U.S. political class is that the provision of actual public goods is nowhere near large enough of an enterprise to justify all of the clients they want to pay on the public payroll or all of the large, complex, lavishly funded agencies that they want to establish for the purpose of putting themselves in charge of them. So they have to return to the old protection-racket model: Much of American government today exists simply to stand between you and your own goals to collect a fee.
Lately, our Democrat friends have taken to pointing out that things are done rather differently in places such as Denmark and the Netherlands, where taxes are very high and where — our progressive friends generally leave this bit out — people get a lot more for what they pay in taxes. Once you figure in federal, state, and local spending, U.S. public-sector spending isn’t much different from Canada’s or much of Europe’s or the OECD’s — but what do we get for it?
Been to the DMV lately?
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/426403/government–usually-just-crass-extortion
Funny article from the rightwing National Review
The problem for the U.S. political class is that the provision of actual public goods is nowhere near large enough of an enterprise to justify all of the clients they want to pay on the public payroll or all of the large, complex, lavishly funded agencies that they want to establish for the purpose of putting themselves in charge of them. So they have to return to the old protection-racket model: Much of American government today exists simply to stand between you and your own goals to collect a fee.
Lately, our Democrat friends have taken to pointing out that things are done rather differently in places such as Denmark and the Netherlands, where taxes are very high and where — our progressive friends generally leave this bit out — people get a lot more for what they pay in taxes. Once you figure in federal, state, and local spending, U.S. public-sector spending isn’t much different from Canada’s or much of Europe’s or the OECD’s — but what do we get for it?
Been to the DMV lately?
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/426403/government–usually-just-crass-extortion
Funny article from the rightwing National Review
