The Hand That Leads Us Pro-Con Is The Government Helping Us To Death, Or Do We Need Help To Remain A Community?
Three pillars of the welfare-state establishment have just released a poll indicating that Americans hate their government - and aren’t all that crazy about each other. The Washington Post, Harvard University and the Kaiser Family Foundation have concluded that the cause for this malaise lies not with Uncle Sam, but with ourselves.
The survey says nothing shocking. A little more than three quarters of the public trusted Washington in 1964, but only 25 percent does today. The slide in confidence began with the Great Society and abated only during the Reagan presidency.
We also suspect our neighbors. The proportion of Americans who consider their compatriots trustworthy has tumbled to 35 percent from 54 percent in 1964.
These results baffle some Washington wonks. They argue that government spending has risen to meet the needs of the populace, so what’s the problem?
The answer is: The help is killing us.
Most federal programs assume that beneficiaries need special aid just to survive. Yet as Washington subjects more people to its ministrations, the imputation of incompetence also spreads. At first, Congress didn’t trust poor folks to visit doctors. Now, the compassion cops micromanage hiring and production decisions in most of our major industries. Lawmakers insist on rendering assistance everywhere - not because we think we need it, but because they do.
A few indices measure Washington’s lack of faith in the average American:
Uncle Sam maintains an army of more than 136,000 souls to write, interpret and enforce the federal tax code. Citizens shelled out more than $13.7 billion last year to billet this force - a 650 percent jump from 1955, even after adjusting for inflation.
The number of words in the Internal Revenue Code has jumped from 1 million in 1955 to nearly 6 million. The Tax Foundation estimates Americans spend $200 billion just filling out the forms.
In the Federal Register, the number of pages devoted to new rules exceeded 68,000 last year, a slight decrease from the all-time high established in 1993.
These strictures can make it difficult to do even simple things. In the February issue of Reason magazine, Tama Starr, owner of a New York sign company, describes the hurdles she encountered in trying to erect 15-foot-tall letters atop a factory roof.
The basic contract took two-and-a-half pages, while affirmative-action rules filled another 101 pages. The Justice Department wanted her carpentry staff to fit the following description: 42.74 percent minority, 1.58 percent female. The iron-workers profile was slightly different: 58.53 percent minority and 7.63 percent female. Painters: 62.57 percent minority and 3.52 percent female. The feds insisted that at least 12 percent of the construction dollars go to minority-owned businesses and 5 percent to firms with female ownership. This is just a fraction of what a soul must endure to build a sign!
Americans long have recognized that high taxes and inane rules slow down the economy. More recently, we have concluded that an aggressively helpful government is immoral as well.
America’s founders recognized two defenses against this kind of mayhem - private property and religious faith. Both have become endangered.
Feds have inserted themselves as intermediaries between businesses and individuals - thus sundering the old distinction between economic and political power, and turning private property into a spoil that lawmakers may nab in the name of fairness.
The Almighty also has taken it on the chin. Public schools may teach Zoroastrianism and Gaia worship, but not the Judeo-Christian canon.
Nowadays, when we see some soul curled up on a grate, we say, “Somebody ought to do something about that,” rather than, “What can I do?” We have reduced caring to an entry in the federal budget.
These trends make it easy to interpret the poll. Americans don’t trust the government because it doesn’t trust them. They look askance at each other because lawmakers have turned neighbors into political gladiators.
Incivility doesn’t call for government action; it stems from it. So the poll’s sponsors are right about one thing: If we let “compassion” continue to sow discord and doubt, we will deserve the blame.
xxxx
For opposing view, see Ellen Goodman’s column under the headline: The hand that leads us