Thursday, April 26, 2012

Sheep


I don't know which irritates me more- The incessant class warfare or the insistence that our children's education and the safety of our streets will be in danger if we don't increase the budget and raise taxes, or the sheep that hear these mantras and take them for gospel.
The lessons learned in the Soviet Union have not transferred to many in this country. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Tell that man he may only keep an ever shrinking fraction of his fish and he will not work as hard, and he will resent those who do nothing and yet share in his catch.
The excuse that taxes must be raised in order to balance a budget is only true to the extent that the budget cannot be reduced to the level of tax receipts. To use the excuse that taxes must be raised or children will suffer and crime will run rampant is equally fallacious. It suggests that there is no way to either reduce the cost of education and public safety or to reduce funding for other programs.
A citizenry that blindly accepts such claims without question deserves what it gets. Far too many people have bought into the notion that big government is in their best interest. The interest of big government is growing big government, creating more and more dependency upon government, and reducing or eliminating the influence of the private sector.