There’s a great deal I don’t like about libertarian views, but there is a great deal I like about them as well.
One of the greatest is their approach to government spending and economics.
I often wonder what kind of hubris you have to have as a representative, senator, or president to think you know more than anyone who does their job every day, day-in and day-out. We would laugh if Senator Kennedy thought he know how to work on an auto line better than a veteran auto worker. We’d squirm if Rep. Schumer supposed he knew how to do brain surgery better than even the worst practicing brain surgeon in our country. Heck, if President Bush supposed he knew more than a garbage man on collecting garbage, we’d laugh.
Yet somehow, the entire Democratic Party thinks they know better than CEOs and investors in how to raise, spend, invest, and save capital.
The ideal Fiscal Conservative’s goals are simple: Reduce the budget of the federal and state governments dramatically. That means, today we spend, say, $3 trillion, then next year we spend $1 trillion, and the year after that, $50 billion. We only spend money on things that are (a) constitutionally allowed, and (b) actually necessary. And what money we do spend, we spend frugally, valuing value and not total expenditures, the same way a CEO tries to maximize profits by spending efficiently what little money the corporation has.
By keeping money out of the hands of government officials, we keep it in the hands of those who know best what to do with money. Whether it is charitable contributions, investment opportunities, research or simply saving, those who have to make these decisions every day know better tan distant politicians what to do and when to do it. Their jobs depend on it, unlike the politicians.
But more importantly, we take power away from the one entity in our society who has permission to use brute force to do their job, and the one entity where corruption is difficult, at best, to prosecute.
Our current political environment seems to value “punishing” the rich and “levelling” the playing field by having one team play with one set of rules and the other team play with another set of rules. I know what motivates this perception of the economy, and it isn’t a good thing. We need to move beyond envy and covetousness and create a society where people are not only encouraged to succeed, but allowed to.
How do we get to there from here? First, we sponsor massive, real, permanent tax cuts across the board. If the government collects less money, it will have less money to spend. Second, we work hard to balance the budget, not just before the revenues are raised, but afterwards. That is, if we budgetted $50 million, and we only collected $45 million, then next year, we have $5 million less to work with after we use new formulaes to predict revenue that better match reality.
The other part of the equation is changing how people work in our economy. One of the most damaging things I see is the entitlement philosophy where people believe they deserve part of someone else’s hard work and labor for no reason other than that they think they deserve it. This is evident in recipients of public welfare and social programs, but is also evident among employees who think they deserve their job at the expense of the company they work for.
We need to build a society that marginalizes those who have this entitlement mentality and empower those who are willing to go out and create their own wealth. The way to do this is to leave large corporations to survive on their own by cutting off corporate welfare. Simultaneously, we use whatever little government expenditures and allocate them to smaller companies where the ratio of owner to employees is much higher than massive corporations. We also lower the entry requirements into business, making it trivial and cheap for a 14 year old kid to start his own company and own its assets.
Another way to make small businesses more common is to drastically reduce the amount of regulation on the books, regardless if they have a net benefit or not. By keeping regulations complicated and arcane, we require all businesses to have one or more lawyers on call and ready to help them navigate this bureaucracy. This is a cost that most small businesses can barely afford, and a cost that keeps a lot of small businesses from starting or succeeding.
This isn’t going to happen overnight, but it will happen if we stand up for these principles. If we value politicians who promise to drastically reduce revenue, who promise to drastically reduce spending and cut out social programs altogether, and who promise to reduce regulations to simplify what it takes to run a business, then we will see these changes occur over time.
