Concrete Results

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Concrete Results
by Raymond Green, Guest Contributor

August 19, 2002

Raymond Green Only time can tell whether the implementation of particular behaviors is productive or not. Time allows for concrete results to occur rather than relying on ideological theory. Knowing that, why does liberalism – and the big government mentality that it encourages – continue to “progress” when we can see obvious results from say…California.

California, speaking from experience, is the epiphany of big government and a picturesque example of liberal mentality. Just recently, California’s liberal governor, Gray Davis single handedly caused California’s own energy crisis and signed legislation restricting SUV ownership. Currently, if California residents go over an “allotted” amount of energy per household, the rate per kilowatt doubles and in some cases triples or quadruples. If an automobile doesn’t meet certain fuel emission standards in California, that automobile (namely SUV’s) will be outrageously taxed or potentially even prohibited.

Davis’ big government mentality has limited entrepreneurship, and in some cases – like Mars Music – even resulted in big business leaving the state. The results of anti-capitalism legislation are evident in California’s unemployment rate, which is consistently higher than the nation’s average.

In addition to the largest debt in the nation and ranking near last in every aspect of public education, other things that come to mind when thinking of California: illegal immigrants being granted driver's licenses and student aid to attend school; classes offered with tax dollars to teach employees how to sue their employer; a gay flag being flown over a city hall – right along with the United States flag – during a gay pride parade; the worst epidemic of AIDS in the nation; unconstitutional gun control, and a San Francisco court that declared the words “under God” unconstitutional. Big government certainly doesn’t work well with business – ask any small business owner trying to jump through the thousands of time-consuming hoops California demands and at the same time operate a business.

Big government certainly doesn’t work well for basic economics; if it did, California would be in the best financial shape in the nation, not the worst. Basic economics tells us that spending more than you have dramatically increases the probability of debt – Visa and MasterCard make billions every year of this simple theory.

Davis’ plan to fix all this is (surprise, surprise) more taxes. The latest victims to liberal “taxology theory” will again be tobacco (like we didn’t see that coming), businesses that will have workers compensation increase another 20%, and new on the list, satellite television – which is estimated to have taxes increase by an additional 5%.

More taxes don’t increase morale. In fact, they don’t even contribute to altering the behavior they are designed to change. Besides taxes being inefficient in altering lifestyles like eradicating smoking and SUV ownership, it’s unethical for the government to abuse such a power designed to merely finance the necessities of the government itself.

The results are in: Big government is not effective. In every aspect that it has been applied, it has failed. Unfortunately, instead of taking heed to California’s mistakes, the country as a whole is following a failing example and taking a more liberal approach to public policy. The federal government is growing – even with a supposed conservative president in office – and state governments are more commonly taking a more “progressive” approach towards legislation. But if “progressing” means progressing towards a national state of oppressive government and abusive taxes that California currently practices, we are in fact regressing towards the state of government that our Forefathers sought to declare us free from. I hope that as Americans, we will wake up to the negative effects of liberalism before we allow the government to get so big there will be nothing we can peacefully do about the oppression. ***

Photo of Raymond Green courtesy of staff files

Be sure to visit Raymond's site at http://www.supportnospin.com