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QotD: Government Policy
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. – George Bernard Shaw
If any statement explains how blue states work, it is this one. The number of makers is always fewer than the number of takers. So design policies to bribe the takers to vote for you.
This is certainly the philosophy behind the Democrat’s current Presidential platform: buy the Presidency by promising enough goodies. Medicare for All, free college tuition, and more.
Yet at some point, it hits a law of diminishing returns. Voters realize the wealth promised them by the government will be paid for by themselves. Or enough voters realize they are really participating in a robbery; the benefits they receive are forcibly taken from someone else, and that their own turn will come eventually.
The best defense against this is a healthy economy which leaves enough people feeling they do not need government assistance to survive.
Published in Domestic Policy
Ha ha. You made a funny.
We are in the middle of a dispute in Washington about ‘rule of law’ and ‘defending the Constitution’. President Trump and AG Barr are working to try to get the justice system back in balance. The Democrats are saying they are breaking the law and ‘no one is above the law. This dispute works in a fashion similar to the point being made in the OP.
I also think I see this ‘rule of law’ issue playing out at the next two levels of governing, the States and the cities. States leading by example include California, New York, and Virginia. Cities leading by example include New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. There are others but this needs to stop.
Add Seattle to the “takers” column with its proposed “Amazon tax”. Re-elected city council member and avowed socialist Kshama Sawant is again proposing a tax on big business to fund the homeless-industrial complex. This will simply drive big business out of the city.
Hear! Hear!
The wealth that gets distributed is less than the wealth extracted from the taxpayers because the government has to get its cut.
Governments do not rob Peter to pay Paul, they pay Paul to rob Peter (and keep a cut of the proceeds).
Not true; there a false implicit assumption. People are never satisfied with their standard of living. If they still hold to basic moral principles (thou shall not covet or steal), then they will seek to improve their standard of living honorably, by their own honest labors. If not, then they will seek ever more state assistance in getting what others have produced.
If only government would be as efficient as the Salvation Army.
Revenue $3,736,538,000
Programs $2,962,236,000
Efficiency Rating: 79%
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I like this concept.
Planning to help industrialize them?
And as long as we have lots of immigrants from poor countries, we’ll never get to some balance where we might preserve the system that existed until about 100 years ago.
Or how any State works, for that matter.