@ItsAHabit I think that’s a false fear. More citizens placing demands on government also equates to more taxpayers paying to meet those demands. Certainly we have to debate what we do and don’t want government to do. But the notion that privatizing an activity makes it free, or even cheap, is not borne out by fact. Look at the cost per man for the US Military versus the cost if you hire Blackwater mercenaries (Oh excuse me, Ze pronounced She) to protect us.
From the pain of the Depression through the 60s, lots of citizens voted to have government do more and more for them. Democrats ran as Santa, promising that this, that and the other could all be ours with no cost. We’d do it through eliminating waste and increasing efficiency in government.
With Reagan, Republicans, who used to claim it was hard to run against Santa Claus, hit on a better Santa. Just give money! We can slash your taxes and keep giving you everything you’re getting now. Arthur Laffer even came up with The Laffer Curve (which is laughable enough to deserve the name). It is a crudely drawn bell curve not representative of real data distributions. And even it shows that Revenue Peaks at some particular tax rate. Unfortunately, it doesn’t show what that rate is, and proponents of it have made the absurd claim that tax reductions always increase revenue.
Of course, if that were true, we could enact a tax rate of negative 1,000,000% and cut a check in the high millions to every tax filer, which would pay off the National Debt and put the government revenues through the stratosphere. It’s laughable. But until recently, it won votes. It’s not clear we aren’t in for yet another lesson for the something-for-nothing crowd.
But I have confidence they will eventually learn. As Abraham Lincoln said,
“It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time;
you can even fool some of the people all of the time;
but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”