Arguing Politics Is To Miss The Point

Last night, my wife and I went to parents' back-to-school night at our daughter's public high school. A couple of the teachers had tangentially political comments to make and one looked like a cartoon character you'd draw of a crazy progressive who waited tables at UCSD's Che (Gueverra) Cafe. Every teacher we met was solidly progressive. I'm certain that, given the political leanings of the education industry, the same little dramas were being played out all over the country.

As I sat there, I thought how surprised these people were going to be when the roof caved in on them. In Chicago, for example, the school system is down $1B and is about to go bankrupt. That led to a very simple thought that, because of articles of secular faith adhered to by the progressives, was probably a complete mystery to the teachers.

The government is simply too large for society.

Really, it's not any more complicated than that. Commercial enterprises pay for the State and if the State gets too big, you have what we have right now - monster debts and deficits leading to school closings, infrastructure rot, pensions reneged and so on. That the progressives fight for more spending and resist the cuts shows how they're a religious movement and not a philosophical one.

When you argue in favor of smaller budgets, the dialog usually goes something like this.

The government is too big.

OK, what would you cut?

Well, we're going to have to cut entitlements because that's where most of the money is being spent.

You'll never cut entitlements. They're too politically popular. In fact, here's a list of Republicans who vote for entitlements all the time.

Which is beside the point.

"The government is simply too large for society" is not a debate issue, it's a mathematical fact. As Detroit is showing us and Japan is about to, to argue politics is to miss the point. Popularity doesn't pay the bills, tax revenue does. If you don't have the income, you can't spend it.

Somewhere out there in the past was a turning point where we as a society decided we didn't need to balance our budgets. I wonder what that was. Keynes, perhaps?

Oh well, it was a nice run while it lasted.