Government Derangement Syndrome

Politicians, Especially Liberal Democrats, do everything in their power to seem as if they are solely responsible for making goods and services more affordable. They want the voters to believe that they have some mystic control of the free-market, and go about imposing that belief by promising the world to the unsuspecting American voter. Free health care, cheap housing, cheap food, cheaper energy, cheaper gas and everything else they sell to the people they “serve”. They do these things because they need to sell the illusion of importance in order to hold onto their power. They need to make people dependant. The cold hard reality is that the government can’t make anything less expensive than it is. All they can do is lower the taxes and regulations that drive costs on private business (large and small).

They have no power over supply and demand, nor do they possess the power of mass persuasion that would change behavior in the market. Not only are they unable to do the things they promise for their constituents, often government programs aimed at “fairness” have the opposite effect of their stated intention.

Rent controls lead to less available rental units. Price controls lead to less available goods, and minimum wage laws lead to less available low wage employment opportunities. The government cannot make an employees’ production more valuable simply by mandating it. They can’t make a rental unit more affordable by setting the maximum price. However. they can encourage people to hold on to rent controlled apartments. They can impose disincentives for the creation of competing apartment buildings. They can watch, as brand new apartments become urban trashcans - ruined by lack of care from landlords and owners. Why would the owner spend anything to make it better? He can’t charge any more. He’s essentially a non-profit. All these things the government does out of a sense of fairness create incentives for LESS effort, LESS production and WORSE conditions for those already in the lowest percentages of income.

If you think government can fix anything, just go down the list of government programs. They are consistent only in their failure. Medicare, medicaid, the war on poverty, the war on drugs, no child left behind, education in general, affordable housing, Green energy, and of course the great success, Cash for Clunkers.

Cash for Clunkers really makes me laugh, as Edmonds.com just released a study showing the cost to the taxpayers per car in the Cash for Clunkers program, was just over 24,000.00 a piece.

Yet here we go already, with rhetoric spewing from the White House over the huge success of the stimulus in its efforts to save the economy. The economy is not recovering, or on the road to recovery. We are in an artificial bump created by the printing of new money, and the massive growth spending spawned from America’s “hope for change”.

What is so amazing is that people continue to rely on government in a country that has thrived in free markets, and crashed under government intervention. People want to believe that there is a magic wand of market correction, which will avoid recessions and keep America in constant and never ending prosperity. But free-markets have highs and lows. They only get out of control, when the government props sectors of the market up with tax incentives that don’t allow the prices of goods and services to be what they actually are. Right now, the government is going crazy with self-congratulations over a 3.6% rise in the GDP. The problem is, they are directly responsible for almost all of it. 3 of that 3.6%, is directly attributed to the government injecting money into our economy. We are not in recovery. We are preventing recovery, and we can’t continue to prevent it indefinitely.

Every dollar spent in government is a dollar taken from private production and real growth. Every job created is one less job in the private, moneymaking economy. People need to wake up to the lies that our government is telling us and take control of our own lives. We are supposed to be a republic of individuals, not an aristocracy ruled by the politicians.