“Limited government” is one of the key goals of the Cato Institute and libertarians in general. Research shows that “small governments . . . report better economic performance than big governments.” But it is one thing to compare two governments side by side. It is quite another thing to actually reduce the size of government.
Recent events suggest that shrinking government may be impossible. A slight majority of voters in Britain agreed to leave the European Union motivated, at least in part, by the idea that big-government bureaucrats in Brussels shouldn’t dictate policy to people in the United Kingdom. Yet actually carrying out an exit is proving to be far more difficult than imagined.
Similarly, Donald Trump campaigned for president on a promise that he would “drain the swamp,” which the Antiplanner interprets to mean reduce the size of the federal government. Many Republican members of Congress also claim to support smaller government. Yet, under a Republican Congress, deficits and debt are increasing. Meanwhile, Trump’s solution to many problems is to throw money at them.
Admittedly, part of the problem is one of mixed signals. Some people favored Brexit because, while they supported free trade, they opposed the European Union regulations that went with membership. But other Brexit supporters were xenophobes who resented an influx of foreigners (particularly Muslims) or who actually opposed free trade.
In the same way, some Trump voters wanted smaller government but others were people who resented immigrants and are thrilled to start an international trade war. As Five Thirty Eight says, “Racial and cultural resentment have replaced the party’s small government ethos.”
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But even beyond this, attempting to shrink government raises a whole host of opponents who benefit from large government and government inefficiency. This, of course, is the classic problem with big government: a few people benefit enormously and so have an incentive to promote it, while everyone else loses a little, and so have little incentive to fight it.
Despite the obstacles, some small-government advocates point to New Zealand, which privatized everything from ports to fisheries in the 1980s and 1990s with the support of both the liberal and conservative parties. The country was virtually bankrupt and was forced to privatize just to remain solvent. Yet even there, privatization led to a backlash and in some ways government has grown back to its previous size.
One response to the difficulty in reducing the size of government is to work on other issues dealing with freedom and free markets. But that’s a cop out, especially since ever-growing government is likely to have tragic implications for other freedoms. Waiting for the United States government to become as bankrupt as New Zealand’s was in the 1980s won’t work either; as long as the U.S. dollar is the world currency, the nation’s creditors will have an incentive to let the country go far more into debt than a small country like New Zealand (whose population is about the same as Alabama’s).
Doubling down on an effort to reduce the size of government may mean building alliances with more people and groups. Trump won the presidency by appealing to white working-class voters who felt left behind by big-government policies set by white middle-class and upper-middle class bureaucrats and policy makers. But black and Hispanic working-class families are just as harmed by those policies as white working-class families. Someone needs to figure out a way to bring the entire working-class into a coalition of people who are suspicious of government power. That may be the only way to reduce the size of government in the United States.
First, the Democrats are a socialist party with a dominant communist wing, and the Republicans are a center-left party with a dominant liberal wing. You might remember that the 19th Century Progressive movement was a Republican movement, and that T. Roosevelt and H. Hoover were avowed Progressives. It can even be argued that Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford and the Bushes were liberals. Nixon was probably to the left of JFK. Trump is a populist, not a conservative.
None of these people, neither Democrat or Republican, support the repeal of any New Deal or Great Society program, no one, not one single program. The Republicans cannot even bring themselves to repeal the ban on 100 W incandescent light bulbs.
It is an impossibility to reduce the scope of government in a democracy. Even the growth of the welfare state cannot be slowed. Eventually all non-welfare spending gets squeezed out, especially military and science spending. Nixon killed the space program in order to increase welfare spending.
The bigger problem is that the Democrat move towards identitarian politics and the ongoing reduction in the White population means that the US will become Balkanized, with the voters voting their race and religion before all other considerations. Colin Powell is the prime example.
Balkanized, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic countries are held together by brute force, a la Hussein’s Iraq. When we get there, as we will, the discussions on this blog will seem oddly quaint.
I occasionally lobby at the California state government in Sacramento and the experience has restored my faith in democracy and government. Going in to legislatures to “reduce the size of government” results in the questions:
1) What government programs?
2) What is the savings from shutting down these program?
3) What percentage of the budget is this? Is it significant?
4) Where is the support for shutting down these programs, and where is the opposition?
5) What is the replacement for these programs?
6) What is the documented evidence that these programs do or do not work?
7) How does this policy affect the overall budget?
8) What is the alternative to these programs?
In order to have any success at changing policy the advocate of ‘reduce the size of government” has to have these answers. The average anti-government person simply discovers that they have no answers to most of these questions and only feels that it is to big an gets frustrated when asked to have all the above answers. The Antiplanner commendably has all these answers for transit projects and many forestry and planning issues that has required a lifetime of of careful study. This depth of understanding is necessary to effectively answer the above questions for many other issues such as health care, military spending, social security spending etc.
Over my career I have had the opportunity to discuss government programs and taxes with many people from other countries. I would have expected Danish people to be upset at their huge taxes. One Danish person I met said they got about 50% of they basic pay after taxes and on most of the rest had to pay 23% sales tax when they bought something. However, he then pointed out that his taxes paid for all medical care, all education including higher education and retraining, child day care, unemployment insurance, and a good guaranteed pension. He pointed out that when we add up in the US what we would spend on all this it is comparable in cost to what he paid in taxes. He then wondered why we put up with a system with no guaranteed health care for everyone, not just the elderly (Medicare); and then why so many go bankrupt trying to pay unexpected medical bills; why our pensions can be so small (only social security for many); why students take on so much debt to attend University and so many are prevented attending because of cost; why we con’t have day care for pre-kindergarten children; and on and on. His was a powerful if not necessarily convincing argument.
Therefore I would argue that any “reduce the size of government” has to be specific on what government programs to eliminate and what they cost and what the benefits are. Can they be made more efficient? Would competition work in that market? Without this information “reduce the size of government” is not a valid policy.
Debt’s and deficits have risen regardless of who’s in charge. But the Repub’s need to reevaluate their original philosophy of financial conservatism and paying off their debts.
It’s impossible to negotiate with the government” No, that quote isn’t attributed to any famous conservative like Newt Gingrich or Ronald Reagan, those were the words of George Meany in 1955, the former president of the AFL-CIO, one of the nations largest labor unions. While the founders of the labor movement viewed unions as a means to get workers more of the profits they help create, the government on the other hand their workers however don’t generate profit. They merely negotiate for more of your tax money. When they “strike” they strike against the taxpayers they’re meant to serve. Franklin Roosevelt considered this unthinkable and intolerable. It also means voters get no final say on public policy anymore. Instead whom they elect, must negotiate with unions. Meany was not alone, up thru the 50s unions agreed….that collective bargaining had no place in government, but starting in Wisconsin in 1959, states began to allow it. Back then it used to be “You go work for the government” the pay sucks but there are perks, you cant get fired and the benefits are generous. Now when you include salary and pension obligations they make 2-3 times the nations median income. The influx of dues and members hanged the tune about unions in the public sector and they spread and encompassed the nations major public roles, teachers, transit, etc. Ultimately no mayor or governor has any real power to stop them, the contract is signed almost immediately upon introduction into office it’s that or risk pissing off the states most powerful political donors.
Say the government passes a small 500 million dollar raise to support their government workers. That’s a lot of cash but since the total cost is spread among so many taxpayers they only see a 5 cent tax increase, a nickel. The taxpayer get’s dinged for five mesely cents, really has no incentive to be outside all day protesting it. Would you spend all day protesting yelling at the top of your lungs over a nickel a year? That’s why government always grows bigger, whenever there’s a proposal that boosts spending, the group that benefits fight for it, meanwhile the taxpayer shrugs the extra nickel…….but those nickels add up. And this explains California’s last decade, a cycle of taxation, spending, taxation, demanding we tighten our belts while their spending splurges. It offers a coming attraction of the future of the US as a whole.
LazyReader: What is your source and actual referenced data for “when you include salary and pension obligations they make 2-3 times the nations median income”?
@ Paul:
In 2016 federal civilian workers had an average wage of $88,809, according the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). By comparison, The median wage for all American workers was $ 44,148 a year for a 40-hour work week in the final quarter of 2016, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s twice, maybe I’m miscalculating by using average and medians. The discrepancy is enormous and doesn’t include overtime pay, sick leave (which federal workers use with gusto). Roughly 1 in 5 of those on the government payroll has a six-figure salary.
In December of 2017, a group called Open the Books, released a report chronicling their salaries, including an interactive map of the 2 million federal bureaucrats by ZIP code, is meant to educate taxpayers on where their dollars are going.
https://www.openthebooks.com/map/?Map=5874&MapType=Pin
When federal employees reach the third anniversary of their employment, they’re given various perks.
They get eight and a half weeks’ paid time off, plus 10 holidays, 13 sick days, and 20 vacation days.
I would have expected Danish people to be upset at their huge taxes.
It’s easy to pay high taxes–it’s easy to share stuff–when the vast majority of people look, talk, and pretty much think exactly the same, as is the case in Denmark. Compared to the racially diverse United States, Denmark is lily-white, with racial demographics similar to ultra-white Vermont.
Why is it that US leftists pine for the lily-white welfare states of the Norden?