Purpose of Blog

As you read through the weekly Leftist LUNCs, you may ask: "Why is it that Liberals typically start out with wonderfully positive and laudable intents, but end up with negative and regrettable consequences?" "Why do Leftist LUNCs continue to happen, over and over again and on such a grand scale?"

There are various answers to these questions hinted at in the Leftist LUNCs, themselves. I will briefly discuss each in this blog.


Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Gov: Wrong Tool for the Right Job--Strength in Numbers

Before reading my explanation, it would be good to watch this video by Dennis Prager on liberal compassion and the size of government::


Liberals have an affinity for government because, for one, they believe there is strength in numbers. To them, many hands make light work. For instance, medical treatment for catastrophic illnesses can wipe out family savings, but the financial burden would hardly be felt when distributed by governments across an entire community or nation  Hence, the leftist rationale for things like Obamacare.

This appears to make sense, and for some things it actually does. However, the principle of "safety in numbers" cuts two ways. Metaphorically, while it is easier for many people to raise the walls and roof of a barn, yet when there are too many people in the loft, the barn may collapse. So, not always is there strength in numbers. Sometimes, too much of a good thing is bad. Each of us have likely witnessed how poorly certain corporations run when they get "too big." The same is true for governments, if not more so. (See HERE)

Furthermore, financial and other burdens can be made light when many are carrying a few, but it is just the opposite when a few are carrying the many. For a number of liberal causes, the later tends to be the rule

For example, in relation to my article on Welfare LUNCs, entitlement spending has skyrocketed, and to make matters worse, in recent times there have been proportionately less and less tax payers shouldering the burden of those skyrocketing costs. I am not just talking about the progressive tax rate where, according to Kipplinger, the top 10 percent of income earners covered 70 percent of income taxes. And, I am also not just talking about birth rates, where in 2002 they began to decline and reached a 90-year low in 2012, coming precariously close to European rates that portend to population decline--particularly among white non-Hispanics. (See HERE) What I have in mind is the U.S. labor force that has been shrinking since 2000, where today there are proportionately less people on the job and paying taxes than in 1979. (See HERE) The labor force participation rate peaked in 2000 at 67.3 percent, and as of May 2013, it was down to only 63.4 percent. (See HERE and HERE)

In other words, fewer people are supporting more people. Yet,  more disturbing, as of May, 2013, in the U.S. there were about 155 million people employed in the private sector, and about 107 million people receiving government assistance. (ibid, see also HERE) And, nearly 50 percent of households in the U.S. were receiving some type of government help. (See HERE) When you factor in government employees (about 23 percent of the population) whose wages are paid by private sector taxes, this means that only about 40 percent of the country is supporting themselves and the rest of the country.  According to Forbes Magazine, there are now eleven states where the number of people dependent to varying degrees upon the government exceeds the number of people with private sector jobs. These states have been dubbed, "Death Spiral States."

This is critical because the models upon which many liberal government programs were built and sold to the American public (like entitlements) assumed continuing growth in population and labor force. So, the decline in both makes those programs unsustainable even were the projected costs at the time they were enacted to have remained constant and not skyrocketed. This is why, in part, many of those leftist programs end up on the verge of bankruptcy, and why we have a mounting national debt, presumably to be shouldered by future generations.

It may be of interest to also note that other leftest causes (like abortion, birth/population control, same-sex marriage, unemployment and disability insurance, Social Security, etc.) may have contributed to the decline in population and labor force, thus inadvertently working at cross purposes with funding of other liberal causes like welfare and entitlement programs.

Again, for many leftist causes, there is weakness rather than strength in numbers (fewer people supporting many). Hence, the Leftist LUNCs

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