Government is taking us a long way down the Road to Serfdom. That
doesn't just mean that more of us must work for the government. It
means that we are changing from independent, self-responsible people
into a submissive flock. The welfare state kills the creative spirit.
F.A. Hayek, an Austrian economist living in Britain, wrote
"The Road to Serfdom" in 1944 as a warning that central economic
planning would extinguish freedom. The book was a hit. Reader's Digest produced a condensed version that sold 5 million copies.
Hayek
meant that governments can't plan economies without planning people's
lives. After all, an economy is just individuals engaging in exchanges.
The scientific-sounding language of President Obama's economic planning
hides the fact that people must shelve their own plans in favor of government's single plan.
At
the beginning of "The Road to Serfdom," Hayek acknowledges that mere
material wealth is not all that's at stake when the government controls
our lives: "The most important change ... is a psychological change, an
alteration in the character of the people."
This shouldn't be controversial. If government relieves us of
the responsibility of living by bailing us out, character will atrophy.
The welfare state, however good its intentions of creating material
equality, can't help but make us dependent. That changes the psychologyof society.
I'll explore this tomorrow night on my Fox Business show, 8 p.m. Eastern (rebroadcast Friday at 10 p.m.).
According
to the Tax Foundation, 60 percent of the population now gets more in
government benefits than it pays in taxes. What does it say about a
society in which more than half the people live at the expense of the rest? Worse, the dependent class is growing. The 60 percent will soon be 70 percent.
Rep.
Paul Ryan of Wisconsin seems to understand the threat: He's worries
that "more people have a stake in the welfare state than in free
enterprise. This is a road that Hayek perfectly described as 'the road
to serfdom.'" (Tomorrow I will ask Ryan why, if he understands this, he
voted for TARP and the auto bailouts.)
Kurt Vonnegut understood the threat of government-imposed equality. His short story "Harrison Bergeron"
portrays a future in which no one is permitted to have any physical or
intellectual advantage over anyone else. A government Handicapper
General weighs down the strong and agile, masks the faces of the
beautiful and distracts the smart.
So far, the Handicapper General is just fantasy. But Vice
President Joe Biden did shout at the Democratic National Convention:
"Everyone is your equal, and everyone is equal to you." If he meant
that we're all equal in rights and before the law, fine. If he meant
government shouldn't put barriers in the way of opportunity, great. But
statists like Biden usually have more in mind: They want government to
make results more equal.
Two actual examples of the lunacy:
When
colleges innovated by having students use Kindle e-book readers instead
of expensive textbooks, the Justice Department sued them, complaining
that the Kindle discriminates against blind students. The department
also is suing the Massachusetts prison system because it makes
prospective prison guards take a physical test. Since women don't do as
well as men on that test, Justice claims the test discriminates against
women.
Arthur Brooks, who heads the American Enterprise Institute,
says statism is becoming the "central organizing power in our economy,"
and that the battle between free enterprise and statism will shape our
futures. He remains optimistic because a recent poll
showed that 70 percent of Americans want free enterprise. I'm less
sanguine. In that same poll, 54 percent of Americans said government
should exert more control over the economy. Brooks discounts that,
claiming people forget their "core values" during crises.
But he asks the right question: Do we want a culture of
takers or makers? Ryan and Brooks say most people want "the American
idea": freedom and self-responsibility. I fear they want a Mommy State
to take care of them. What do you think?
The choice is crucial. If we continue down the Road to
Serfdom, our destination will be a poorer society, high unemployment,
stagnation and complacency.
Tytler Cycle, anyone?
- zaipaiz
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