Why things won't change much , except your debt increasing by Logical Premise
(statist)
Friday, December 11, 2009
I haven't written an article here in some time -- after the selection of Sarah Palin, it became obvious to me that my chosen candidate (McCain) was going to lose. Many friends of mine were shocked that as a black man I didn't support Obama. But honestly , I found I couldn't. Obama is , at best, an autocratic socialist and at worst a communist. He is not a statist, as he isn't doing a single thing to reduce waste and inefficiency nor strengthening the economy.
There is a difference in being a statist and being a communist. The distinction is subtle, but I assure you it exists. The statist requires uncorrupted government to make critical decisions to correct the deficiencies of human character that lead to corruption, the communist seemingly uses government to feed their own goals while making token attempts to place the masses. The statist wants a government to be just that -- a governor, a regulator, to keep the engine from racing out of control or give it more gas when needed. The communist is just like your son when he gets his hands on your new car, revving it too fast and not taking care of it as long as he has fun.
And of course, eventually they crash. That's what's ahead. The crash.
A quick review of the past years is not encouraging -- the economy is shredded, our government has spent more money than anyone in their wildest dreams would have expected, and most importantly, We have expended more time and effort on "fixing" the economy in the most ham-fisted and idiotic ways possible, without even making a token attempt at repairing
the underlying fiscal damage that caused it
the underlying lack of corporate responsibility that allowed it
the underlying lack of government supervision that was supposed to stop it
Given all of this, it's understandable that many political parties think their stars are ascendant. The Republicans are giggling, cleaning their guns, and letting Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin paint targets on their own feet, and the Democrats are grimly attempting to shove through as much senseless spending as possible before the next congressional election. You'd think -- hope -- that someone, anyone, would say "this is madness!" and try to change the direction the country is heading.
Sadly, I'm here to tell you -- nothing much is going to change.
Everyone who is a regular reader of this site has seen the anger and frustration evident at the various Tea Parties and what not. (We will condescend to ignore, for the moment, the lunatic fringe of racists, survivalist nut jobs, and other wackos that adorn such events like verdigris on bronze.) We've seen the common man lose his job to foreign outsourcing or economic collapse whilst the government expends billions on bailing out banks too incompetent, malfeasant or , Maker help me, flat out criminal to not manage to lose billions upon untold billions of dollars.
We've seen the CEO of a major corporation fired by the government. We've had the indignity of having a nut job murder our brave soldiers on their own military base while preparing to go to war to defend this country and this cretin was actually distantly connected to the Obama administration.
Now , the miracle workers plan to "fix" healthcare. You would think, on some level, surely the average American is willing to try Something New. Something not designed to , I dunno, bankrupt him or drive his entire subdivision into foreclosure or ensure his MBA is used for something more than a coaster while he works for minimum wage at McDonalds.
It is not going to happen. People aren't going to demand anything more out of the system than what it has been giving out the past quarter century -- empty promises, spending on whatever hot-button issues the party bases have, and lots of waste.
It is not going to happen because , quite frankly, you've already gone over the line. You've gone into a society where it's all about the axe grinding, where nothing else matters except you show those stupid (insert other party name here, with obligatory insult) how America is Supposed to Be.
Welcome to ObamAmerica, where the answer to absolutely every problem is to hurl money at it until one of two outcomes happens:
The problem goes away when another problem pops up. (Bank collapse -> foreclosures -> automotive industry -> CEO pay -> Medical Insurance -> Afghanistan?) ... or
The other party gets into power and taxspends it's way into an entirely different set of problems without solving any of the previous administrations messes.
Now, I know, people are reading this going "...this statist guy is some kind of nut. Surely, people in America are smart, independent, capable of standing up for their freedoms, etc."
Might I point out that not ONLY did a large portion of the country vote the current , ah, administrator into office, but that a large portion of the country is silly enough to believe that if you vote the current party out and another one in that things will actually change?
The various administrations that we keep tacking on to the government now employ more people , or cause more indirect employment, or purchase more services and equipment, than I suspect private industry does. We are on the cusp of literally having an economy that basically services the government, the military, and more spending, funded by more shady investments, foreign investments, and the like. (BTW, you might wish to learn to speak Mandarin or at least Pinyin soon. Big5 is also handy. Those are Chinese speaking and writing languages.)
Let's get to the facts:
Our current national debt is .. ahem .. twelve trillion dollars. To be precise, it is 12,084,361,748,000. Your share of that is $40,000. Times Square's National Debt Clock, which has been tallying up money owed by the U.S. government since 1989, is running out of spaces. They had to take off the dollar sign to make it fit.
Our current deficit is 1.4 trillion dollars.Whee!
There are over 1.8 million DIRECT federal jobs. Their average salary is $64,000.
It's estimated that for each federal job, 2 to 3 employees are working in support of that.
When your government has almost as many employees , just on a federal level, as Wal-Mart, and blows through 3 billion dollars of debt a day , no fiscal program is going to turn this around. No amount of speeches, campaign promises, or vows of economic belt-tightening are going to fix it.
You can't fix it because it's now a part of the economy. You rip it out and you're going to kill millions of jobs. What are you going to replace them with? Public works programs? (Libertarians would catch fire.) Industry? (Americans cannot survive on the wages it would take to make our industry worthwhile even if we didn't mind polluting the environment). Financial services? (Do I even have to go over this one?)
The government is becoming a big part of the economy. It started with the expansion of the DEA all those years ago with the war on drugs, and it's gone in depth since then, with Medicare and Medicaid and all the supporting billing companies and equipment companies, with the TSA and all it's subsidiaries, with the Homeland Security Department and the spawn of mercenaries and pencil pushers it's created, with the EPA expanding to monstrous size, and now (most likely) with whatever stygian monster departments get dreamed up to "improve quality health care".
Look , as a statist, I like government oversight, but only when it's competent, regulatory, and employs a light foot. Crushingly heavy laws like Sarbaanes-Oxley just create additional jobs for accountants (trust me, I know) but do nothing to curb other deficiencies as seen by the recent market meltdowns. There is a difference between a mother watching her son ride his bike down the road to make sure he doesn't fall off his bike and a pack of bodyguards strapping the kid into a crash suit and giving him two minutes to go on a stationary bike.
Prudence does not equal domination. Until the people of this country can actually see that , nothing will change. And face it -- most people are too busy just working away or trying to make it or getting through life to sit down and think critically about what this nation has become.
We all have our beliefs of what the best course of action is, but one ingredient, regardless of where you stand, should be obvious -- the Obama administration must go. When your spending is so out of control that even the statists cannot approve, you are right on the edge of spending the people's money without benefiting them.
If you're taking my money and spending it on things that neither benefit me , nor my community, nor even my country, then really it's sort of like taxing me without giving me an actual say in what you do with it.
Didn't we have a big fight over that at some point in the past?
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I am confused. I thought you were a statist. Based on what you are writing here you sound more like a centrist than a statist.
You say that you "like government oversight, but only when it's competent, regulatory, and employs a light foot." But that does not exists. If it does please tell me where?
Governments naturally are wasteful, bureaucratic, slow, etc... There are NO competent governments.
I believe what he's saying is that supporting government when necessary makes one a statist, even if you may not be a full-blown totalitarian. It's an intriguing idea, and at the simplest level, it makes some sense. Any function that private enterprise cannot fulfill, or any social liberty that is not satisfactorily protected, his argument is that government should step in.
This sounds like a basic theory of government overall and not a carte blanche entitlement to expand federal power for no reason or for redistributive means (communism). Hence what he means by giving government "gas" when it needs it.
I was thinking more that a satist will be more of a totalitarian where EVERYTHING is regulated by the government instead of just certain things. It seems to me that when somebody supports givernment when they think is necessary and not just for almost everything will make you a centrist.
Should government dicate how many children if any you can have?
Should government dictate the following things:
Who you can marry if at all; Where you can live; How much you should be paid; What job or career path are you required to do; What are you allowed to say in public; etc...
In summary I want to know what separates a statist from a totalitarian regime and thus I am confusing your view of what a statist is with a centrist.
Posted By: Jahfre Fire Eater
Date: 2009-12-13 16:08:32
Hi Logical Premise,
I hope everyone figures out your proper label and how to define it. However, those distinctions aren't of any interest to me. As to the point of your article, I agree, nothing much will change as long as folks are willing to be distracted by national spectacles to the point that they avoid ensuring their local school boards, fire boards and county commissioners are not turning their back yards into bloated entities dependent on an ever-growing central government to supply their cash-flow.
Statism basically believes that governments are a neccessary control to ward against natural human tendencies. The more freedom people have in there personal lives, the more careful society has to be in how people chose to exercise it.
To your somewhat mocking questions, TRD:
1. Statism believes what happens in your home is up to you. Shit like gay marriage or personal drug use are completely irrelevant to society as a whole and every attempt to use government to regulate morality is a corruption of government's stated role as organizor and arbitrator.
2. Statism believes (as I have stated in many other articles I've written on this site) that control of people's lives is bad. Limiting what you are allowed to do is not the same as limiting what you are not allowed to do. A totalitarian regime is interested in remaining in power against the will of the people and in controlling the people so they don't revolt. A statist regime is basically put in place by the people to manage what, quite frankly, the people are too lazy and sorry to do on their own.
3. Statism does not care where you work, who you marry, or how many kids you have, or even what you make. It certainly does not care what you say in public. Statism does not care if you own a gun, but it has the rights to know how many you own and say you can defend your house with a pistol or shotgun (or 5) and don't have any need or use for a fully-automatic machine gun. Statism does not care if you protest but has the right to monitor your every action in public. Statism could give a shit if you don't like paying taxes as long as everyone , regardless of wealth, is paying the same proportional amount.
Statism is not communism becuase communists believe everything should be owned by the people, statists are more elitists and think everything should be owned by the sucessful. Statism is not socialism because socialists think everyone is equal, but statists believe that the top 20% of society achieves things and should rule while the other 80% don't care, never have cared, and will follow any idiot who gets in office (points to the past four presidents as proof).
Statism isn't facism, since it pushes the idea that government must be free of corruption,transparent, and efficient, free of lobbyists, and accessible to everyone. At the same time, statism has ZERO use for the rantings of people who feel their freedom is limited simply because they disagree with how the government choses to organize society.
I've wrtitten other articles about Statism or Government First on this site, most of them raising horrified gasps from libertarians on the site. There is also a FAQ about statism at world.std.org, but that's down right now.
IN a nutshell. Statism is NOT the opposite of Libertarianism. Statism is the opposite of Anarchism.
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