Why Have Government Do Anything - Road to the Middle Class

THE GROWING Tea Party movement means something. But what? Is it just an expression of frustration at bailouts, bonuses, and the growth of government? Or is it something more?

I had a minor epiphany on this yesterday while reading this article on “the fury to come” from the middle class in Britain.

Forget the G-20 protestors, writes Jeff Randall.

The participants form an itinerant version of Agent Harman’s Court of Public Opinion. They picket summits, spew out grievances and then drift away to squats, welfare cheques or, in the case of one wannabe cannibal, a professorship (albeit suspended) at an institution laughably known as a university.

Yes. Who cares about the bloody street protestors? Anyway, what have the lefty protestors got to complain about? They’ve got their cradle-to-grave welfare state, and it gives them the time and the inclination to behave like the adult adolescents that the welfare state has raised them to be. It’s the rest of us that pay for the welfare state, and the rest of us that ought to be outraged. Especially if you can remember what Prime Minister Tony Blair told the Brits back in 1997.

"This country, any country today, will not just carry on paying more and more in taxes and getting less… the new welfare state must encourage work not dependency… and we cannot say we want a strong and secure society when we ignore its very foundation: family life… [we must] build a country whose people will say that ’I care about Britain because I know that Britain cares about me’… that is the Britain I offer you."

I thought to myself: Why do responsible middle-class people put up with this stuff? We are the people who like to “do for ourselves.” We are sensible and responsible and we build our lives so that, more or less, we can take care of ourselves and not throw ourselves on the mercy of society.

Then the answer came to me. We put up with this stuff because we really do rely on the government for important things.

Most of us feel that we need the government to provide an education system. And a good solid minority would feel that without the government to provide Medicare we would really suffer in our old age. There are also those who feel uncomfortable without a government pension plan like Social Security.

I put it to you that there is something wrong when ordinary people are frightened enough by the ordinary process of life that they feel they need the government for education, health care, and pensions.

Why is this so? Why have we come to the situation where most people feel we need the government to do these important things and put up with it even when government does them badly?

Well let’s think about politics and the interest of the politicians. In a society where the great majority of citizens feel that they need not rely on government for education and health care, the politicians would be very small beer. The only way that they can exert power and distribute benefits is if people feel they need help.

So it’s in the interest of politicians to screw up health care and education so that the average person figures they can’t afford it without help.

How would you set up the health care system to make it too expensive for people to afford on their own? Well, you’d make it “free” for a start. When anything is free, people treat it as if it were worthless; they consume more of it and pretty soon it is so expensive that only through the power of the government can ordinary people get access to very expensive health care. But does it need to be expensive? Suppose most people paid cash for most of their health care? Would it still be so expensive? I don’t think so.

What about education? In today’s America where everyone is forced to send their children to school for 12 years, almost nobody can afford to pick up the tab for school. So we are stuck with government for that, at least.

Well, no. Before the advent of forced schooling, people economized on education. Kids didn’t sit in school for twelve years. They went to work and learned on the job. Of course, 150 years ago most of the jobs were hard manual labor. So children found themselves in mines and mills, and everyone agreed that was a terrible thing.

But not any more. Today, child labor would mean a job at the mall, or an entry-level job in sales or media, or software. In construction, they don’t do ditch digging any more. Ditches, all ditches, are dug by back-hoes or better. Everything is done by power equipment.

You see, if kids went out to work at 12 or 13 they wouldn’t need to be funded for 12 years of schooling. They would learn their basic literacy and numeracy in 3-4 years, and then they would get a job. They could start increasing their skills on the job.

That way the average parent could afford their kids’ education, and they wouldn’t need to rely on the government.

Oh sure. Rich bitches would still want to put their kids into schools that you couldn’t afford. But who would care?

Here’s my New Conservative Agenda. Let’s all work to find ways so that the average responsible person doesn’t feel they have to lean on government for the basics of a decent life.

Because although we need government to keep the peace, foreign and domestic, we really don’t need it for anything else. In fact we’d be much better off, materially and morally and spiritually if we kept the government out of our lives.

Let us remember that there’s always a temptation for politicians to manipulate us into dependency. Because that’s when we’ll agree to give them money and power.

Sphere: Related Content |

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

mysql close 0