Dear Friends,
It seems to me, a heroin addict will not willingly stop taking heroin, until he or she reaches rock bottom. It is a matter of human nature. When someone is addicted to something, no matter what it is, the craving is stronger than the will. We might know in our hearts we should stop, we might understand with our minds that the addiction is killing us, but as the Greek referendum shows, most cannot fight their own cravings. The will is weaker than the desire. It has been said that our intellect is like a rider, and our emotions are like an elephant, the rider has some control over the elephant, but if the elephant desires to go one way, no matter what the rider does they cannot force the elephant to change direction. Moreover, our logic can desire to get something done, but the power to do it lay in the elephant it is riding. As to Greece, they are addicted to government spending, they feel it’s cancer spreading through the body economic, they understand it is killing their wealth and hopes, but they just cannot give it up. The example of Greece is one everyone should heed.
Government spending is like a drug, it seems harmless at first, it makes life seem better and once started it quickly becomes a habit. Those who become dependent on it, government employees, people on the dole, rent seekers, bureaucrats, cronies and oligarchs… realize their lifestyle would come to a crashing halt if the government was to cut spending. Moreover, government spending must be increased in order to get the same results. Eventually, like a drug destroys a human being, the addiction to government spending must destroy a nation’s economy.
Raising taxes to “solve” the spending problem is like increasing the dosage of heroin. It is always much easier to raise the dosage then to quit the drug. Ask any drug counselor and she will tell you the solution to a drug problem is not to increase the dosage, or the availability of it, the only solution is to quit cold turkey. That solution is never acceptable to those in power who are both pushers and addicts. To them, the solution seems obvious, take more money to plug the deficit the addiction to spending creates. We all know however, raising taxes never result in a plugged deficit, that “solution” is the path to self destruction.
Like a drug addiction, lowering the intake, or in the case of government spending, does nothing to stop the addiction, it only makes the cravings harder to resist. If small measures are taken to cut spending, say, cut funding for science research, is like an alcoholic changing to drinking only wine. It does nothing to stem the addiction but it gives the addict an excuse to keep the addiction going. Small cuts in peripheral spending are only ways to absolve themselves.
The addict will rationalize their addiction by saying she had a bad upbringing, he lives in poverty and the world is too unkind. In the same way, governments, and the people who are addicted to government spending, rationalize their addiction by claiming they are “helping the downtrodden,” the poor are incapable of surviving without a handout, how can you begrudge a bureaucrat a good salary, if you are against their addiction it shows you are a hateful person… The rationalizations are a numerous as grains of sand on a beach and just as abrasive to the body politic as sand is in a car’s engine.
Every drug counselor will tell you an addiction to drugs makes the person do things she would otherwise never do. Up to and including prostituting herself to get more heroin. Government is no different, that addiction to government spending creates such a strong incentive to corruption cannot be denied, but the addict will deny it to their death bed. A government that is addicted to spending cannot control themselves, like a little girl who must have Oxycontin, else she feels her bones are breaking, and will do anything to get it. They both justify their corruption to themselves… because they have to.
Once a people have become addicted to corrupt government spending and living off the work of others, even if they have eschewed that lifestyle for a long time, once it is started again, they go back to the level of addiction they had in the past. Like an alcoholic, if he is on the wagon for ten years, then takes one drink, he takes up where they left off and go back to being a raging alcoholic. That is why so many once great peoples and nations never seem to be able to get back to being great. The addiction to out of control government spending is too great for their will’s to overcome. Examples are legion, Greece, the font of democracy, is just one.
The best policy, like heroin, is to never open that door to start with. Keep spending and the size of government as small as possible, limit the role and scope of government to standards, and keep government from creating regulations, set strict limits on the level of taxation and back them up with real penalties for a legislature, executive or judiciary that violets them. Force government to avoid taking that first puff from the crack pipe, and you will go a long way to protect you nation and people from that terrible addiction, and addiction that must end in ruination. All spending however, even limited spending, is an incentive for more, and so all governments must eventually become addicts. It is the nature of humanity to be thus.
That government spending is like a drug is obvious, once you think about it for even a moment, but those who are addicted, like a heroin addict, will argue they are not addicts and become enraged at the mere mention of quitting. Cutting spending a tiny fraction is only a rationalization, it does nothing to stop the addiction, but only makes the addict believe he can control it. The reasons for government spending are innumerable, just like the reasons a heroin addict has to rationalize their addiction, but in the end are mere sophistry. Sadly, once a great nation has become addicted to government spending, that nation and people will always be addicted, no matter how long they have been on the wagon. The only way to stop an addiction from ruining a human life is to stop cold turkey, the only way for a government to really solve the economic problems that an addiction to government spending creates, is to cut government to the bone. Unfortunately, no government once addicted, will do that until the economy comes crashing down. Like Argentina, once they get back on their feet, they put the needle back in their arm the first chance they get.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
