Less government, please

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

Anyone who has read my columns for more than a week, knows I lean to the right and tend to favor Republicans. What goes unsaid is that, given my druthers, I would prefer less government than even the Republicans seem to offer.

There is the old trope about “Don’t feed the bears because that makes them dependent on human handouts.” I believe that goes doubly or more when it comes to government handouts to humans.

And nearly everything the government does with money (except national defense) is a handout.

I am in favor of governments having a clear set of evenly enforced laws to contain the criminal element. This is something like defense but focused inwardly. Everything else is suspect.

In fact, for everything else, let’s do away with it. This includes social security, Medicare and Medicaid. I’ll be 75 in a few months, and think I could find a way to survive without Social Security. Social Security has been so mismanaged that the returns we receive on our forced contributions are a pittance of what could be earned in a free market economy. I also think you would be surprised how quickly health care costs would decline if it wasn’t for the generosity of the government teats. Really, have you ever seen anything so convoluted as the costs of health care?

Well, maybe, if you have sent your kids to a government-funded higher education institute.

I am on the board of a foundation that provide scholarships to college students at a certain university. Twenty years ago, with an endowment of about $3.5 million, we could fund scholarships at about 55% of annual tuition. Now, with an endowment of about $9.5 million, the portion of annual tuition we can fund has dropped to around 20%. This is a state, not private, university with lots and lots of state and federal funding. I am sure with drastically less state and federal funding, tuition increases could be more nearly kept in line.

It used to be the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did cost/benefit studies before major infrastructure projects such as Hoover Dam were built. It goes like this: Project X is going to cost Y and the increase in economic activity caused by Project X in Z years will pay it off. If this is still done, say for highway projects, the economic studies have not been publicized.

For the solar projects, my own assumptions and back-of-the-envelope calculations say they are not economical at all.

We need a national concurrence as to what are appropriate government-funded activities. We have no mechanism to do this. We have been relying on the loudest pigs at the trough to set our priorities, whether we can afford them or not.

Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.