Can this be good?

Really? Can it?

AN UNWRITTEN PRINCIPLE OF THE LIBERAL FAITH has been that government must expand to whatever extent is needed to get the job done. No liberal has ever been heard to say that the government has grown too large, or should be reduced. . . . At all levels, federal, state, and local, government now disposes of at least one-third of GDP. In European countries it is closer to half . . . .

If the American figure is accurate, that means that a small minority of the population is making decisions about a huge amount money.

On top of this, these people are politicians and bureaucrats, who are little noted for their addiction to 16-hour days, minute-to-minute market surveillance, innovation, or compensation systems to reward innovation. Not by accident did someone hit on the the expression, "Close enough for government work."

When your Colonel was a federal bureaucrat earning top dollar at the trough, it was a rare day when I did not depart for home sometime within the official temporal boundaries of happy hour. Had I been motivated to turn out some stellar piece of work (I always tried), the chances of its avoiding modification or revision were slim to nonexistent — after the assignment had been made by superiors hard wired to the political grid formed by agency heads, the president, politicians and staff in the Congress, the Washington Post, and the Chinese, Saudi and Freedonian Ambassadors.

Ok, I'm kidding about the Freedonian ambassador, for gosh sakes.

Bottom line: if liberty is in part about controlling what you produce and own, having a whole lot of unmotivated people with politics, values, and goals vastly different from your own disposing of one-third of your property is, when you get down to it, an amazing situation. Tax Freedom Day, i.e., the day after which the average American taxpayer ceases to work simply to pay taxes is now in early May of each year. January, February, March and April the taxpayer works for the government and for all the ends and purposes that lobbyists, foreign governments, and political opportunists can devise for him (you).

I know types who think it's noble and grand to pay taxes. It's a sediment that they base on a limitless faith in the rightness of government programs.

I do not share it.

"The Decline of the Liberal Faith." By Tom Bethell, The American Spectator, 3/23/05.