- The shutdown is coming to an end…
- How much money has regulation cost the U.S. economy?…
- Can you imagine stock market wins 138 times bigger than Nvidia? If you’re like most people, probably not. But then again, most people haven’t seen this report. But you can see it right now by clicking here.
Dear Reader,
Today my heart is heavy with grief… and the black crepe drapes beneath my window.
That is because the government “shutdown” — the quote marks are necessary — is likely nearing an end.
Last evening Democrats and Republicans of the United States Senate sank their differences, and came to terms on a resolution to keep the government going.
The resolution must scale additional obstacles. The House of Representatives must stamp its approval, for example.
Yet I am confident, alas, that all such obstacles will be cleared.
And that the extended paid furlough for federal employees will soon end.
Democrats Back Down
Here Politico reports the particulars — should they concern you:
- Senators have reached a deal to end the government shutdown…
- As part of the deal, Democratic negotiators agreed to ensure at least eight members from their caucus would vote “yes” on procedural motions to advance the government funding package. That would provide certainty that the 60-vote procedural threshold is consistently met up until final passage, where only a simple majority is required…
- It still needs to pass the House before the government can be reopened.
More:
- The Sunday vote would pave the way for consideration later this week of a legislative package that would fund the Department of Agriculture and the FDA, the Department of Veterans Affairs and military construction projects, and the operations of Congress, for the full fiscal year…
- All other agencies would be funded through Jan. 30, according to the text of a continuing resolution released Sunday.
Congress Kicks the Can Down the Road
Thus Congress once again boots the soda can down the roadway.
You can expect an additional funding rumpus ahead of Jan. 30. And then another… another… and another yet again.
The United States Congress does not authorize annual budgets. It merely consents to “continuing resolutions” of the sort cited above.
Not since the distant year of 1997 has Congress authorized a true budget as such.
I am especially dismayed by the imminent restoration of the United States government’s regulatory agencies.
That is because these agencies enable that government to govern us.
What It Really Means to Be Governed
And to be governed, as Monsieur Pierre-Joseph Proudhon once observed:
- Is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so.
- To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished… drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed;
- Then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored.
- That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.
I could file additional torts of my own. Yet I believe you have the flavor of it.
How Much Has Regulation Cost the U.S.?
Here I ask you a question:
How much wealthier would the nation be today absent 50 years of government economic regulation?
That is, how much wealthier would the nation be… had the United States government left its citizens unmolested these past 50 years?
Your choices are these:
A): 4.6 times wealthier
B): 3.0 times wealthier
C): 1.86 times wealthier
D): 0.91 times wealthier
Yet perhaps the nation would be identically rich today. Regulation counts neither plus nor minus.
Let us then add a further selection:
E): No wealthier
Have you selected your letter?
Could You Use That Money?
Here is the answer: B. The nation would be thrice as wealthy absent 50 years of economic regulation.
This I have on the grand authority of the Adam Smith Institute:
- Federal regulations added over the past fifty years have reduced real output growth by about two percentage points on average… It’s worth thinking about that for a moment. Each individual American, the society as a whole, would be three times richer than they are if there had not been that explosion of regulation of the economy since WWII.
Assume the calculations have accuracy.
Every $1 in your wallet would be $3. Every $100 would be $300. Every $1,000 would be $3,000.
If your account presently runs to $100,000… you would have $300,000 on your hands.
Et cetera, et cetera. Et cetera, et cetera.
The Only Good Bureaucrat
I do not argue that all government regulation is economically destructive. I even concede the possibility that government regulation — on rare occasion — may be benign.
Perhaps, if I am in uniquely generous spirits, even benevolent.
Yet government is like the desert camel. Once the creature gets its snout under the tent, the body soon follows. And the tent’s occupants are immediately in siege.
And once government noses its way into the economy through “sensible” regulation… it holds the economy in siege.
‘If this regulation, then why not this regulation? And why not the next?’
That is, why not more government? It is never enough.
“The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head,” argued the late Henry Louis Mencken.
“Put it in his hand,” he continued, “and it’s goodbye to the Bill of Rights.”
Alas, the gun will soon be back in his hand.
Regards,
Brian Maher
for Freedom Financial News
