Shall We Save the Economy … or the Government?

Vin Suprynowicz
Lew Rockwell.com
Tuesday, Dec 02, 2008

Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt – the latter continued and amplified the former’s policies in a kind of one-two punch, as revealed in Murray Rothbard’s The Great Depression – did all the wrong things from 1930 to 1938.

In an environment of surplus labor but collapsing capital and credit, free-market entrepreneurs put people back to work by hiring men at low wages (giving them the pride of honest work, and the chance to make more as their skills improve) to make things consumers will buy at new, lower prices – can-openers, washing machines, chicken wire, whatever.

Instead, Roosevelt and the Democrats, especially, taxed the heck out of the greedy capitalists – taking away the loot they might have used to hire men at low wages, and eventually even banning the practice.

Our kids are taught in the mandatory government youth camps that Roosevelt’s New Deal “ended” the Great Depression. When? In 1935? In 1936? Unemployment went up, not down, from 1932 to 1937.

My mom is a lifelong Democrat. “But Vin, Roosevelt put people back to work when there were no jobs,” she has always insisted. “They planted trees. They built parks and playgrounds.”

A great example of “what is seen and what is not seen.” The money to pay the men in the Civilian Conservation Corps came from “taxes on the greedy rich.” (Let us not hear of “fairness.” Since Bill Gates receives the same degree of protection from the U.S. Navy as the guy who sleeps under the bridge, the “fair “ share of the bill would be the same for each man. If you want Bill Gates to pay more, at least be honest and call it “his unfair share.”)

But once the money was shifted from private investors to Uncle Sam, there was no longer any incentive for those doling out the cash to put people to work making things that would provide a “return on investment” – things people would buy.

So most of those government jobs involved planting trees, cutting trails, building log cabins and installing nice mosaic tiles in the subway stations – things that are shown to have minimal economic value by the fact pretty much no one would ever pay to enjoy them. It was all a giant boondoggle, totally non-productive in any economic sense. (What is the secondary market in “trails”?)

Let us now savor a delicious historical irony. The folks about to be sworn in in Carson City and Washington City this coming January do not have the excuse of ignorance, because the historic example of 1930–1939 stares them in the face. Yet it appears they are about to do the same thing.

President-elect Obama and the Democrats vow to “tax the obscene profits of the greedy rich” and use the proceeds to “put young people to work” in some kind of big Homeland Security Domestic Peace Corps, handing them green funny money to build windmills or “solar farms” that will generate 15 percent of the power we need (if we’re lucky), which will then to be made to look “affordable” by effectively banning far less expensive nuclear and coal-fired power plants, the latter in order to “halt global warming,” which is minimal, harmless, comes in regular cycles, and is not caused by mankind.

Then, their pals the Greens will file lawsuits, preventing construction of the transmission lines needed to get even that minimal power to market.

It’s perfect!

(You had a question on global warming? See this. Derek Kelly also has it about right: “Instead of reducing CO2, we should, perhaps, be increasing it. We should pay the smokestack industries hard dollars for every kilogram of soot they pump into the atmosphere. … Rather than bringing us to the edge of global-warming catastrophe, anthropogenic climate change may have spared us descent into what would be the most serious and far-reaching challenge facing humankind in the 21st century – dealing with a rapidly deteriorating climate that wants to plunge us into an ice age. … All life glorifies warmth. Only death prefers the icy fingers of endless winter.”)

Meantime, up in Carson City, Nevada Gov. Jim “No New Taxes” Gibbons prepares to make himself a one-term governor by signing onto a hike in the state’s hotel room tax, which is – beginning to notice a pattern here? – precisely the wrong thing to do.

Nevada has entered a recession. Visitor volume is down. That’s our problem.

Our problem is NOT that reduced tax revenues make it difficult to keep paying every arrogant functionary on the government payroll all the raises and benefits they’ve been promised. That falls more properly into the column of “unforeseen benefits.”

To solve the REAL problem, we need to turn Las Vegas and Nevada back into a bargain destination.

What the Legislature thus SHOULD be talking about in their special session in Carson City Dec. 8 is legalizing bordellos and hashish bars in Clark and Washoe counties. But given the utter lack of vision and courage evinced by our current political class, that’s a non-starter. On to Plan B:

To spur economic recovery, slice back the gaming tax by 2 to 4 percentage points, and then eliminate the hotel room tax, all airport landing fees and taxes, all rental car taxes, etc.

This means government, which has been growing without limit for 50 years, would have to be pared back.

That’s so easy you can do it at home. Close every office, department or program that Nevada didn’t have in 1958. (Can you remember anyone complaining in 1958 that Nevada “didn’t have enough government”?) If that doesn’t save enough, try 1908.

Closing down the Department of Motor Vehicles, alone, would make headlines around the world. “Nevada gives up license plates! Not much difference seen in traffic patterns!”

If any of these programs are “mandated by the federal government,” sue at the U.S. Supreme Court, demanding that the federals either drop these mandates or fully fund them. If we lose, eliminate the programs anyway. After all, we’ll no longer have any money to pay for them. If the Supreme Court wants to try levying the taxes, let the justices go from Nevada business to Nevada business, rattling their begging bowls and threatening “There will be consequences!”

To be free, the slave must first refuse the master’s gruel.

Meantime, what’s the biggest single state government expenditure? The government schools, which proudly turn out quasi-literate graduates who can’t name a dozen U.S. presidents and who evince a lifelong aversion to “ever picking up a damned book again.”

But the state constitution requires state funding for only one high school per county. So eliminate school compulsion beyond age 14, and close at least two thirds of the high schools in Clark and Washoe counties, making admission to the remaining schools by competitive examination.

Allow our best government-school teachers – the ones who won’t be laid off because principals will hand-pick them for retention based on how well they’ve been doing with the kids – to say, “You’re the best of the best; for each of you sitting here today there are two other kids out building windmills who’d love to be in this classroom. So if any of you aren’t willing to sit up straight, maintain good order and work hard to make the taxpayers proud, raise your hands now; you’re free to go; we’ll call someone on the waiting list.”

Ask any dedicated teacher how that little speech and a select, “all-volunteer” student body would change things in his or her classroom.

The answer is more freedom, lower taxes, and lots less government. What was the question?

Here is my personal feeling of it all.......
Everything going on in this country evolves around the working legal taxpayers. We have been forced to pay taxes on everything you can imagine, and most of us that do pay taxes do not have access to many programs that have been created by the government, and why don't we have access if for some reason we need help? Seems to me all of us have over payed in taxes for many years. All of these bailouts is a bunch of bunk to me. It is another way in my opinion to take more of our bring home pay, so we will have to depend on the government in the future. I personally would like to see each and every taxpayer refuse to file taxes, all the same year, let our government start sweating for a change just to see how it feels, then just maybe they can understand the pressures we feel each and every day. This election here has opened the door for independents on all levels for 2012. I know there will be some to disagree me about my coments, and that's okay. I am really concerned about my future, my family, and my retirement as well. I think all of us should be.

You'd be surprised how many people feel this way. Is it just me or is this Federal Government doing essentially the same things that Colonial Britian did to the Founding Fathers?

Just a thought...

People can only take so much, and the fuse is about to be lit.........The higher ups (politicians) better wake up and realize just how much is at stake when it comes to taxes and the people that pay them........You are right, so many people have the anger about this very issue......We are headed for disaster, and it is not far away............