President JFK’s words from his inaugural speech, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” were repeated often during my childhood. Over the past 60 years, there has been a definite shift from that once famous proposition to the idea that the government is the solution to what ails us. Instead of identifying and addressing the underlying cause, we simply ask the government to spend money to resolve it.
There is a great deal of irony because we complain ferociously about government inefficiency, especially when renewing our driver’s licenses, calling the IRS about a penalty notice, and being outraged by lax oversight that allows massive Medicaid fraud.
Regrettably, money generally does not solve problems and often contributes to their growth. Ask the rich how often using money to address their children’s issues enabled and furthered their decline into more severe, deeper-seated problems.
Exemplars
Higher Education. The prevailing answer to unaffordability is more government support (grants) or facilitation (loan guarantees) for students and colleges. “We” pay scant attention to overly nice facilities, exorbitant salaries, and professors working too few hours.
If former students cannot repay their loans, they ask the government to forgive them rather than the college, which may have provided poor education, or the student who chose a low-income-earning major or is slothful.
State and federal governments fund more than 40% of public colleges’ revenue; tuition payments account for less than 25%. Government support has created a system in which revenue is not based on what the market can bear (student-paid tuition) but on what can be charged, taking government support into account.
This message is not a call to cease financial assistance, but rather a question of whether it is right to have a system that can exist only if propped up by the government.
Healthcare. If healthcare is unaffordable, the immediate response is that the government must do more. Recently, a political party recommended discontinuing a temporary COVID-related subsidy, and the public howled about its heartless desire to bankrupt and kill its poor citizens.
While we cry that medical care is too expensive, do we seriously consider whether hospital facilities should rival St. Peter’s Basilica, insurance companies should earn obscene profits, and Hollywood musical medicine commercials should dominate our TVs?
The government pays 50% of health care expenses, and we spend 700% more per person (adjusted for inflation) than in 1970. Healthcare charges are not set by what patients can afford or need, but by what the healthcare system can extract, given government support.
Now What?
I am not a libertarian advocating the abolition of the government. There are certain national issues that only the government can address, such as national defense, air travel regulation, and foreign affairs. Moreover, a dramatic decrease in government spending would cause an economic collapse (federal spending accounts for more than 20% of our gross domestic product).
Nor do I seek a nostalgic return to the good old days, which, like today, were not all good. Government intervention and support, despite their shortcomings, have improved our society. Perhaps we have too much of a good thing.
How do we reduce the government’s role (and spending) while maintaining an appropriate level of government intervention? While no one today possesses the Wisdom of Solomon, we can and must take steps to reverse the tide. Taxing the rich – everyone who earns more than I do – will not solve the problem; it only encourages the government to spend more, currently $1.33 for every dollar collected.
How can we get the genie back in the bottle? We can look to an opposing movement once thought impossible. Currently, one political party is selecting socialist candidates who reject our country’s long-standing allegiance to free-market capitalism. We need a countermovement, not to preserve an ineffective and unsustainable status quo, but to forge a better path.
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I am afraid that with this topic I bit off more than I could chew in a single blog post. Maybe I can accomplish nothing more than fully exposing the scale of the issue and offering hope that a realignment is possible. Vote/act accordingly.
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