Opinion: Government is the problem
By Star Parker
What are the ramifications if the Supreme Court finds the individual mandate provision of Obamacare unconstitutional? This is the provision that requires individuals to purchase government defined health insurance or pay a fine.
I hope it will serve as a wake up call to a nation that I believe is still sleeping through a crisis.
Star Parker
Liberal and open ended interpretation of the Constitution, to the point of rendering it practically meaningless, opened the door to steady growth of the federal government and its inexorable encroachment in our lives over the last half century. The problems we are having today all originate here.
Even if Obamacare is repealed, we still have a major problem in healthcare. Costs keep escalating because there is no real, functioning marketplace in healthcare. Ninety percent of healthcare expenditures are made by third parties – government, employers, insurance companies. All due to direct or indirect government controls.
Our growing burden of taxes and government debt – what now is breaking European countries and about to break us – all stem from the growth of government programs that open ended interpretation of the constitution enabled.
Our private economy, where freedom and the creative spirit are still allowed to operate, is going great.
A miracle is taking place in energy with new domestic production of oil and gas made possible by new drilling technologies.
Oil imports as a percentage of our overall domestic oil consumption has dropped almost 25 percent just since 2005. In North Dakota, where much of this new oil production is happening, production has increased from 10,000 barrels a day in 2003 to 400,000 barrels a day.
Natural gas production has increased 26 percent since 2005. This is producing prices in the United States for natural gas that are the lowest in the world. As result, according to University of Michigan economist Mark Perry, firms that use natural gas, like chemical and fertilizer businesses, are actively talking about returning to the United States.
New technologies abound, with more and more gadgets appearing all the time at lower and lower prices.
Computer equipment that cost $1,000 in 1997 today would sell for about $65, Perry calculated.
So why are we turning more and more of our lives over to the most unproductive, least efficient part of our country – government?
Just over the last four years, government spending has increased to take 25 percent of the American economy from 20 percent.
The result is the most sluggish economic recovery since the great depression. It is a sign of the depressed spirit of the American people that it is actually viewed as good news that unemployment is now 8.3 percent. This is almost two and half points higher than the average unemployment rate in our country from 1948 to 2010.
But while we suffer, Washington parties.
While the national unemployment rate is 8.3 percent, it’s 5.5 percent in Washington, D.C.
According to demographer Joel Kotkin, 2.7 percent population growth in Washington, D.C., in 2011 was the highest in the nation.
He reports that the economy in the national capital region expanded 14 percent since 2007.
Over the last decade, 50,000 new jobs in the federal government bureaucracy were created, along with an increase in local federal spending of 166 percent.
No wonder in a survey just released by Gallup, residents of Washington, D.C., expressed the highest level of confidence in the U.S. economy in the nation.
Isn’t it time to turn this around? Why are Americans still tolerating this?
If we are going to get the nation back on track, we’ve got to get our resources out of Washington and back into the private sector where they can be used creatively and productively. This is how to create jobs.
Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501(c)3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised “Uncle Sam’s Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America’s Poor and What We Can do About It”.
Right on
Amen, All should remember this statement.
She absolutely hits the nail on the head. Her book is an eye-opener too.
Highlighting a strong conservative in a basically liberal publication indicates journnalism is alive and well.
Way to go Kae.
People complain of the economy not progressing fast enough. My view is that slow steady growth will in the long run be the best course of action. I feel that just by looking at two events in the last 20 years bears this out.
In the mid to late 90s the Dot Com industry grew exponentially and caused a stir that created rabid investment in companies that were nothing more than fairy tale ideas on paper (probably 90%+) creating a false sense of security for the many that became millionaires overnight, with those spending like there was no tomorrow. Then the industry crashed in 2000 not only taking down those overzealous investors looking for a piece of the tech pie, but almost tanking the state of California in the process (which was even more exacerbated by our friends at Enron and their nefarious rolling blackouts of electricity throughout the state, perpetuated to keep the rates at an artificially high level)
My second example is the housing bubble bursting in 07-08. In a few short years leading up to this people, who had ABSOLUTELY no business (based on their REAL income) buying over priced homes by obtaining sub prime loans that were based on STATED income, were purchasing homes at a break neck speed. Throughout this time America was being sold a bill of goods and the rest of the economy became so intertwined in this mess that when the bottom dropped out it took out the entire country.
I would have to say that when it comes to matters of economy, being the tortoise might be the best course of action, because as we have seen in the past being the hare usually comes at a severe price!
well “bigger picture” is thoughtful again. Did the expert that wrote the above editorial just inadvertantly skip what caused the latest world-wide recession!!! – it wasnt govenment spending, it was lack of government oversight (begun in the early 1980s by lets guess what administration and yes, bought in to by the Clinton adminstration) into the monitization and untrackable bundling of just about everything you can think of that leads to absurd speculation and overinflated values – in other words an unsustainable economic bubble – folks, there is no free lunch and what goes around comes around – that an unfettered “market” will produce the best outcome for humanity is just a right-wing absurdist fantasy – otherwise when Miss Parker comes down with what are the increasing odds for some industrially induced cancer, it wouldnt actually increase the country’s GDP!
So, Citizen, sounds like you agree – more government is the problem!
Great article, let freedom ring and capitalism grow!
Ms. Parker (no relation) nailed it! But just to add-It’s incredible how every attempt to, not cut the size of government, but merely reduce its future growth, is always met with ferocious and silly outcries of, “people will die on the streets if these cuts go thru!”. Or the misdirection games of, “Go after the rich!”
As this opinion piece illustrates, many resist controlling the size of govt., because many are profiting from govt!
How someone read I agree with the statement “more government is the problem” is perplexing to say the least. Anyway, it isn’t really the issue of what ails society – more or less government? – it’s what government does and whose interests it is designed to protect? Clearly our system of government is designed, in part, to attempt to balance property interests against the interests of those that are not propertied. “Let freedom ring and capitalism grow!” Well two things, JoAnn (and probably way too many others) hopelessly confuse political liberty and freedom with money. It’s “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in the U.S. Constitution – it’s NOT “life, liberty and the pursuit of property” (and although it’s cleat that a certain basic degree of material accumulation is involved in “happiness”, it’s no accident that this latter phrase which was in some earlier drafts was NOT used!).
Are people lame enough to think the only model of a democratic society we can think of is a 100% capitalistic one? And based on your motto above, we should still have legal slavery – afterall, it is the ultimate expression of anything goes capitalism!
1%ers vs 99%ers Enough said.
Think we have too much government now? Wait until Obama Care kicks in full._
Star Parker/Sarah Palin ’12… the all Grifter Ticket
Alex all the 1% of Pharaohs had 99% of schmucks to move the heavy stones to the Pyramids ,why are we any different?
They sure aren’t eating ham today!
Hangs Ups
Ya got that right LOL