Website owner: James Miller
Unfunded mandates
The following is from Thomas Sowell. Barbarians inside the Gates. pp. 74 - 76
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Unfunded mandates
NOTHING SO EPITOMIZES CONTEMPORARY LIBERALISM as unfunded mandates, in which the federal government establishes programs and forces the states to pay for them. The very need to weigh benefits against costs—the essence of economics—is evaded by this irresponsible exercise of arrogance. It is like impulse buying and charging it to somebody else's credit card.
The great hysteria in the media about the wonderful programs that will be lost if unfunded mandates are stopped misses the whole point. If these programs are as wonderful as they are said to be, then they should be paid for. Nothing is easier than to make a verbal case for almost anything, but are you willing to put your money where your mouth is?
If you are not even willing to put the taxpayers' money where your mouth is, there is something wrong somewhere.
The number of things that are beneficial vastly exceeds what any nation can afford. That is why both individuals and organizations must weigh trade-offs all the time. Unfunded mandates, hidden taxes, and a whole range of environmental restrictions, are all ways of making costly decisions without having to weigh those costs against the benefits.
It is government by magic words, whether those words are "safety," "minimum wages," or "clean air."
Can anybody be against "safety"? Not verbally and not politically. But, in real life, do we go around in suits of armor?
Do we refuse to drive or ride in cars? Of course not. We weigh the risks against the benefits.
Only in grandiloquent political rhetoric do we claim that safety must be achieved at all costs. We can do it there only because those costs are to be paid by somebody else. When even the big spenders in Washington are not willing to pay from the federal treasury, then we have lost all sense of trade-offs. We have become like small children who want everything—and cry if we don't get it.
What is the minimum wage law but an unfunded mandate imposed on private organizations? If everyone deserves "a living wage" or "a decent standard of living," then why don't those who think that way supply these things? If it is "society's" responsibility to see that no one falls below some economic level, then why don't we raise the taxes and pay for that level?
Why is someone who runs a print shop or a bakery more responsible for other people's economic level than someone who works in a thousand other occupations? TV pundits and editorial office saints often make more money than the great majority of businessmen. Why single out employers to dump this responsibility on?
We all want clean air and water, don't we? The only problem is that there has never been any such thing. No water and no air has ever been 100 percent pure, at least not since Adam and Eve made the wrong decision back in the garden. There are different levels of impurities with different levels of consequences.
No one wants to breathe air full of sulphur or drink water with sewage in it, so it makes sense to remove some impurities—but not every trace of everything that every hysterical crusader can think of. There are wells being shut down by the government because they have traces of chemicals more minute than you can find in a bottle of soda or a can of beer.
Any one of us could make the air in his own home cleaner by installing all sorts of costly filters and we could eliminate many impurities in water by drinking only water that we distilled ourselves. But we don't do that, do we? We think it is too costly, whether in money or in time.
Only when we are putting costs on other people do we go hog wild like that. Making us pay is one way to make us think.
Environmental agencies have been having a field day putting restrictions on how other people can use their own property. These restrictions may cut the value of the property in half or even reduce it to zero. There is never a lack of pretty words to justify this.
But what if those agencies had to compensate the owner for the losses they have imposed on him?
If the restrictions' benefits to "society" outweigh the losses to the owner, then it makes sense to pay the money and everybody ends up better off. But when you confiscate property by the back door, you can just say some lofty words and keep going. You don't have to weigh anything against anything.
In reality, many of the things being financed by unfunded mandates or imposed on businesses and property owners are not for the benefit of "society." They are for the benefit of the careers or the egos of those who promote programs. That is why things that cannot be justified have to be financed under the table.
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10 June 2024
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