Wednesday, December 08, 2010

Link of the Day

If you haven't read the excellent The Economic Incompetence of the Political Class yet, you should. Here's a tidbit.
In the U.S. at least, the looming debt crisis among states and municipalities also reflects a lack of diligence on the part of the citizenry. This can be attributed in part to a naïve assumption by the electorate that those in government, freed from the profit motive, could be trusted to do what was "right" for the community as a whole.

Instead, what we now can see is that elected officials, following a power motive, can be as greedy and irresponsible as anyone in the private sector. In many cases, officials from both parties have been captured by powerful interests, including public sector unions and recipients of transfer payments. As a consequence, they have willfully committed current and future taxpayer money to benefit those with political power at the expense of the community as a whole.
Emphasis mine, placed there to reinforce the notion that the election of Jerry Brown will be the high water mark for progressives and liberals. The notion in italics is at the heart of the philosophy that lead us to endlessly grow the size and scope of government.

More and more and more and more leads to a POP!

1 comment:

Kelly the little black dog said...

This figure really needs to be normalized by population.