As long as there's a pie...

As long as there is a pie, people will want their piece. This is the case, especially if there is a big fat pie and you don't have to pay for your piece. People just can't help themselves. When they see a frenzy to gobble up a pie, they themselves feel a duty to their ego to dive in too.

Look at our congress. Congressmen write legislation typically to send pet projects to their district. These are called pork barrel projects in reference to piglets suckling their mother. I thought today, if congresspeople are sending borrowed money back to their home districts and their constituents gleefully return the favor by voting for them then what incentive do they have to stop. As a matter of fact, I think, that if someone went to congress and promised not to waste tax payers money by sending home pork projects then that congressmen would not last very long in his seat. I think the majority of his constituents would cry 'where is our piece of the pie??'.

Thus our dilemma. America has been the richest nation in the history of the world (by far) for the last 25 years. However, as the receipts to the treasury rose and fell in a normal cyclical manner, the spending by our congresspeople has always gone up. Can someone say deficits/debt? Unfortunately both sides of the aisle have put people in power who can't help themselves and have spent, spent and spent. This has done nothing but put our future generations on the hook for trillions of dollars owed to other nations.

Now we are in 2009 and our new president seeks to spend our way out of a mess that was caused by spending, regulations and destructive banking requirements on loaning money. When he is done borrowing he is going to print more money (inflation????) because he and his colleagues just can't help themselves to just eating the pie. They have to borrow against future pies ... until everything collapses and there are no pies.

Liberal Mental Disorder: Picking wrong bad guys

Liberals claim that government will always perform a service better because they are not driven by profit.

OK. What does that mean? I claim the opposite is true. Let's try to look at government through the lens of a business that provides a service. The government can write a law that will require its "customers" to pay them a certain amount whether the "customers" get anything back or not. And let's not forget that government is not some building down the road. The government is full of people. People, whether in government or not, want what is best for themselves. At least the private sector businessman is required to provide something to his "customers" before he is rewarded with payment. Doesn't that make him more accountable? Doesn't that make him less inclined to be wasteful with every penny? Doesn't that force him to put a price on his service that does not exceed what his customers can pay (free market)?

Quite the opposite is true with the government guy. Because he is not driven by profit he is far less prudent with the money that comes except when it comes to providing his own needs and lining his own pockets. The mere fact that they have the power to make it illegal not to give them more of what the private sector has, when they demand it, is inherently corruptible.

Have you noticed that when people in government get rich solely from being in government, it is more publicly accepted than people who risk everything to provide a service to others and gets rich from it? Why is that? Why is it that Joe Senator, whose only major accomplishment was to get at least 51% of the people in his home state to vote for him instead of the other guy, can get away with amassing a personal fortune through the public trough and influence peddling and not have it seen as immoral?

While likewise, Joe Private Creator, a man who started with nothing and created an entity that is beneficial to the world that subsequently brings him riches is looked at as a pariah who must be punished by Joe Senator by taking a large portion of what Joe Private Creator has made made to be given to Joe Layabout to ensure Joe Layabout's vote every 6 years for Joe Senator?

In the long term we would all be better off if Joe Private Creator were able to keep more of his money to create more and invest more. Joe Layabout would be better off too as there would be more private ventures that would be seeking his employment. And to keep our roads and bridges safe and our police paid, Joe Senator and Joe Local Government would thus have more revenues coming in to fund their pet projects that help keep their talentless rear ends employed in the government.

{This blog is written with the understanding that government has had very good people, like Ronald Reagan, and the private sector has had very bad people, like Bernie Madoff}