Friday, March 19, 2010

Onward They Marched, Spiraling Down, Down...


Government dependence is a downward economic death spiral. It is a cycle wherein the people receive largess from their government, and the government, evermore pressed to come up with the means to pay for it, exacts wealth by force out of the population. This exacting of wealth bleeds dry the important arteries of the economy. Lower wages and higher unemployment are the only possible result of fueling massive government machinery. It is simple: money that would have invented a new technology or new medicine or perhaps started a new business - with the inevitable hiring of new workers - is now pilfered, taken into the leviathan federal bureaucracy, as it trickles its way down through highly paid managers, unions, myriad federal employees, and finally to the receivers of the "free" government benefit. One need only look to the examples of the Big Government experiment that other nations have so eagerly set before us : high unemployment, soaring taxation, quicksand-thick regulation over businesses and private citizens, low or no economic growth, and national debt so staggering one is incredulous of the amount. Merely wishing for and imposing on the people "free" health care or any other entitlement does not change the real underlying costs of those things: the precious resources of time, energy, materials, finances. The death spiral gains momentum at an invisible inflection point: when those who must eventually pay for these "benefits" are politically outnumbered by those who either receive them or are employed in delivering them, for the latter will always vote for more.
© The Pantheon Journal

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