More government isn’t the answer to our problems, more government is the problem. That’s a paraphrase of Ronald Reagan’s quote and it’s true in many cases today.
(And, BTW, as Ramesh Ponnuru has pointed out, most people using the quote leave out the beginning which mentioned the situation at the time, important because without it some use it to mean that Reagan didn’t believe in government at all.)
Health care reform moving through Congress could be reason enough to recall this quote. But, there are other happenings that bring it to mind and show why the prevailing Washington mindset of always growing government should be challenged.
*Often all we really need more of is responsibility, personal and institutional (which, in the final analysis, is also personal).
For example, Bloomberg this morning featured clips from a gathering this week about the financial collapse. Some of them showed Morgan Stanley’s John Mack praising thenewfound enthusiasm of the feds for regulation.
He said regulators are now in MS offices continuously, asking questions about what the company is doing and why. Mack said, essentially, that he loves it because it really gets him and others at MS to think about what they are doing.
What an astounding viewpoint from anyone, let alone the CEO of a major firm. It might as well be a complete abdication of responsibility, on personal, professional and fiduciary levels. Company management should always be thinking about what it is doing and why, regardless of whether federal regulators/regulations are present.
Government limits on private compensation go beyond its bailiwick, but comments like these, and results of the recent past, are why worries about the “best and the brightest” leaving Wall Street seem misplaced.
Elsewhere, it was recently reported that the U.S. Senate was looking at regulating texting while driving. One approach suggested was making states an offer they couldn’t refuse: withholding federal (i.e. taxpayer) transportation funds if they don’t ban the practice.
All this time, effort and money spent at the height of governmental power for something that should be as simple as drivers taking the responsibility for not texting while driving.
And this week in Ohio there was a story about state government wanting to do more to combat childhood obesity, from mandating what’s served in the cafeteria to requiring more physical education during the school day.
The goal is as nice as it is unnecessary for state government to spend time on such “solutions.”
Surely the local cafeteria administrators can figure out menus that make sense.
And local teachers, principals and school boards can see if the student body is growing in a bad way, developing their own approaches to cutting waist(s).
Most importantly, it’s up to parents to be the biggest – no pun intended – influence on whether their kids are obese. For this, as in so much in life, no state intervention is necessary or warranted.
Government growth need not, and should not, be inevitable.
