HOW GOVERNMENT WRONGS PEOPLE
The continuing greed of our "public servants" for power and government revenue is causing
many people to endure hardships. These include economic losses, losses of rights, and actual damages.
Some of the people who are wronged in this way can find no way to put an end to such abuses, other
than committing such crimes as the Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah Federal Building. Part of the problem is
that there is usually no way provided for a voter to vote against bigger and meaner government. All of the
candidates promise more government to win the votes of the greedy.
It is time to get rid of the "government comes first" mentality, and put the people ahead
of government again. These are cases where government seriously wrongs people:
- Government recklessly harms people economically -
The "gimme gimme" government:
- Taking 75 percent of the economy in taxes destroys the economy:
- Consumers pay all business taxes through increased purchase prices.
- Removal of this much money from the economy causes loss of jobs.
- High taxes force businesses to leave the country and jobs to be outsourced.
- Most people can't live on the 28 percent the government leaves them to live on.
- Because they have to pay high taxes, businesses have to make shoddier products.
- People lose their homes because they can't keep making mortgage or rent payments.
- The high taxes cause the trade deficit.
- High taxes cause poverty.
- Taxing low income people is wrong:
- Tax revenue seems to be more important to government than helping the poor.
- Minimum wage earners are paying income tax.
- Unemployment payments are taxed.
- Social Security benefits are taxed.
- Pensions are taxed.
- Sales tax is charged on necessities.
- Property tax prevents home ownership and greatly raises rent payments.
- Government will not even think of Fair Taxation.
- Minimum wage causes troubles, and cures nothing:
- Can employers magically produce money to pay minimum wage increases? No!
- To pay the higher minimum wage, employers have to raise the product prices.
- It really produces minimum income tax revenue for government.
- Raising the minimum wage causes unemployment and inflation until the benefits are gone.
- Supporting labor unions is unfair:
- Unions expect employers to magically conjure up money to pay union wages.
- Unions raise prices and cause inflation and unemployment.
- The politicians that vote for unions are those who get contributions from them.
- Unions are really monopolies, which cause economic problems wherever they exist.
- Duties on imported products cost the people, not the foreign governments:
- Duties unfairly protect union wages from competition in the free market.
- Duties cause higher prices -and government gets the money.
- In the long run, nations that impose duties lose economically.
- Taxing business costs consumers:
- Consumers pay the tax if the business raises the price to pay taxes.
- Consumers as employees pay the tax if the business reduces wages or workers to pay taxes.
- Everyone ends up paying if the business folds due to loss of profit caused by taxation.
- Programs to create jobs don't work:
- It doesn't work that way. Government can't create jobs through economic policy.
- For every ten jobs government "creates," eleven jobs are destroyed by taxation needed to get the
money to create the jobs.
- Government can "create" jobs in only three ways:
- CUT TAXES!!!!
- Improve transportation and utility access.
- Remove taxation and regulation so business can expand.
- All other government job programs cause others to lose jobs elsewhere.
- The jobs are lost due to economic side effects from the program's taxation.
- Nobody seems to notice the jobs destroyed by government policy, because the effects are indirect.
- The real purpose of "Creating jobs" is to elect Democrats.
- Creating jobs is really creating ways for business to profit by hiring.
NO PROFIT MEANS NO JOBS.
- Government erroneously ignores market forces:
- Nothing can stop markets from reaching a balanced position.
- The effects of a rebalancing market usually undo the intended effects of an economic policy.
- The unwanted effects of rebalancing markets are usually inflation, unemployment, business failure,
surpluses, or shortages.
- Taxation, wage controls, price controls, and government spending unbalance markets.
- Government erroneously treats taxation and the economy as a zero-sum game:
- Raising tax rates ALWAYS causes smaller economic output.
- The smaller economic output reduces revenue more than the tax increase raises it.
- Legislators who want an unrealistic revenue level raise taxes again, causing a still smaller economic
output and still smaller revenues.
- This is why a tax cut can increase revenue.
- Government changes the rules in the middle of the game:
- People make long-term decisions based on regulations, then the government changes the regulations, causing
these people to lose money or property.
- Bankruptcies result from making decisions that later cannot be reversed when the rules change.
- The Savings and Loan scandal in the 1980s was caused by the government:
- Savings and loans sold tax-free bonds to get money to loan out for interest.
- Government banned tax-exempt investments offered by savings and loan firms.
- People cashed the bonds at interest penalty to get tax-exempt government bonds.
- As a result, savings and loans did not have enough unloaned money to cash all of the bonds.
- Government ignores the costs of its regulations:
- This is an unfunded mandate, which is a hidden tax on those affected.
- These costs are the causes of business failures, layoffs, and bankruptcies.
- They cause some businessmen to cheat to survive.
- They cause businesses to flee the country, taking jobs with them.
- Property tax robs the poor:
- It requires people to have monetary incomes to keep their houses.
- Nobody is allowed to live on subsistence farming.
- It raises the amount social service agencies spend on rent, since some of it is paid to another government
in property tax.
- It causes expenses to assess property, and court fights over assessment and collection.
- It discriminates against the poor and retired.
- It is the primary cause of the high cost of housing.
- Property taxes and mortgages are the two main causes of homelessness.
- Government unfairly favors itself over individuals:
- When a person declares bankruptcy, government comes in and takes all of the taxes due first. Then all others
who are due money have to divide what is left.
- When someone dies, government seizes the estate until all of the taxes are paid. Then the others who are due
money have to divide up what is left.
- If people owe taxes, government makes them homeless by selling everything they have.
- Government unfairly favors business over individuals.
- When a bad check is written, the individual who took the check in good faith loses the money, instead of the
bank that has the account the check was written against. The bank should go after the actual bad check writer,
not the innocent payee.
- When a mortgage is defaulted, government helps the bank sell the property, instead of helping the poor
person pay the mortgage. God's laws require canceling debts.
- Mortgages and property taxes are the two main causes of homelessness.
- Government allows interest to be charged, in defiance of God's laws.
- Government allows rent to be charged, in defiance of God's laws.
- Government requires people to pay all their lives to own their home, in defiance of God's laws.
- Government takes the estate to pay for nursing home care in defiance of God's laws, instead of allowing the
estate to be inherited by the heir.
- Government allows landlords to buy up property, keeping low-income people from owning homes, and costing
people more money to live.
- Government tries to plan what the economy will do:
- Nobody can know in advance which goods and services will be needed.
- Planning land use devalues the land and causes people to have to drive farther to get to work.
- Economic "stimulation" causes only temporary effects, and then reverses them.
- Making the wrong choice when issuing government bonds can have devastating effects.
- Government penalizes people for working:
- Parking fees and parking meters penalize people who live far from their jobs.
- Income taxes penalize work.
- Welfare rewards idleness, penalizing work.
- Tax and worker rights laws make it harder to get a job.
- Government wrongly forced changes in standards onto consumers:
- HDTV and DTV require everyone to replace TV sets, VCRs, and video tapes with new products.
- Doing this to "create jobs" is a false economy.
- It also creates a solid waste problem as the old equipment is thrown out.
- Irreplaceable recordings will be lost forever when old equipment breaks or wears out.
- Scientific data collected on old standard media will be lost.
- They almost lost the 1960 census, because the old computer tape drives were sold for scrap.
- Government wrongly allows Microsoft to have the power to require people to replace their computers every
three years (it also costs government more).
- Deficit spending hurts everyone:
- Government deficits reduce business investment by soaking up available funds, causing business failures.
- Government can do what individuals are prohibited from doing: print money.
- Government borrowing, and government printing money, both cause inflation.
- Since any form of deficit spending by government causes inflation, the purchasing power of each salary
is reduced when government borrows money.
- Government purchasing power is also reduced by inflation.
- The net result is that the government has less purchasing power in the long run than it would have had
if it hadn't spent into deficit.
- Government ignores the hidden cause of deficits.
- Government wrongly charges for required services:
- This is a sneaky way to get more revenue without cutting government spending.
- It is effectively a tax, since the service is required, but is not subject to the constitutional
limitations on taxation.
- Government wrongly requires a single solution to a problem to be used:
- This prevents better or more economical solutions from being used.
- It also prevents research to develop better solutions.
- This is usually imposed to make the enforcer's or inspector's job easier.
- It is another unfunded mandate.
- Government wrongly prevents competition:
- This is usually done to protect a business that is doing something government likes.
- Patents, copyrights, and exclusive contracts wrongly create monopoly powers.
- Government allows exclusive contracts to exist. These are also monopoly powers that should be abolished.
- Competition is often prevented to make government's regulatory job easier. Utility franchises are an
example of this abuse of government power.
- Officials fear the free market, because they can not control it.
- Officials want to be the ones to offer a service, so people will revere them.
- Handouts and free health care destroy markets:
- This is the legal way liberals can cheat, buying votes for themselves.
- Medicare and Medicaid are the main causes of high medical costs.
- Welfare and Social Security are causes of unemployment.
- Any free service will be overused and overloaded.
- Government can't do it right or efficiently. The Walter-Reed Hospital scandal is an example of
government-run health care.
Government behaves self-righteously -
the "me first" government:
- Unfair government election methods are exploited by politicians:
- Voters are wrongly not allowed to say "YES" to more than one choice in a race.
- Voters are wrongly not allowed to say "NO" to a choice unless there are only two choices.
- Voting "NO" on all choices is wrongly counted the same as not voting at all.
- There is a bias toward the choice most different from the others when more than two choices are presented.
- Requiring signatures for third parties to get on ballots disenfranchises voters.
- Requiring registration several weeks in advance can disenfranchise voters.
- Government should be providing fair elections
- Politicians use scare tactics to make people favor bad policy:
- False scapegoats are blamed for effects of bad government policy.
- "The King can do no wrong." is the policy that government never admits it is wrong.
- Global Warming and Hydrogen Power are two scams based on bad science.
- The energy crisis in the 1970s was caused by government price controls intended to help the poor afford fuel.
It made fuel unavailable instead. When the regulations were repealed, the crisis disappeared immediately.
Government blamed consumption and Arabs instead.
- Campaigns accuse opponents of trying to destroy Social Security or Medicare, when they really are trying
to save them from bankruptcy.
- Government control of education is wrong:
- What easier way is there to mold minds to believe what the current administration favors than to drill it
into childrens' heads in school?
- Priorities are given to nonproductive aesthetic skills instead of productive employable skills.
- Government control allows the party in power to create voters favoring them at the polls.
- Government uses its control of the schools to deny religious education to those unable to afford private
school.
- The US Government did not control schools until after the Civil War.
- Government is massively inefficient at doing anything, including education.
- Government always chooses the wrong methods (Such as choosing Whole Language over
Phonics).
- Government wastes tax revenue for nice, but unnecessary purposes:
- Government takes money from hard working people and spends it on the whims of legislators.
- This is a slap in the face of the honest taxpayer.
- Governments won't do it right by soliciting voluntary donations from people favoring such spending.
- Private enterprise could provide these functions if there is a demand for them.
- The following are NOT necessary uses of tax revenue:
- Sports Arenas
- Anything involving fine arts
- Anything involving performing arts
- Recreational facilities
- Museums and monuments
- Entertainment
- Utilities
- Government wrongly charges for justice:
- Do the wealthy deserve justice more than the poor?
- When someone is unjustly accused, he loses, no matter what the legal outcome is. He has to pay the lawyer.
- When it costs more than the value of stolen property to get it back, something is seriously wrong.
- Court costs ARE a necessary function, and should be paid by the loser of the court case, or by taxes if the
loser can't pay.
- Lawyer fees are ridiculously high.
- This is another example of the "me first" government.
- If laws were written so anyone could understand them, the costs would be much lower.
- The person really at fault, including the false accuser or the police officer who makes a mistake, should
pay the costs.
- Government tries to be your parents, but for its own purposes:
- Tax evaders sometimes get longer prison sentences than murderers.
- Police think their "duty" is to pry out people who want to live in isolation.
- Government prohibits dangerous items to protect us from ourselves, as though we don't have brains.
- Prohibiting acts dangerous to others should be allowed, but keeping people from risking their own lives
should not be allowed.
- Government controls marriage and child custody, which are really religious issues. What happened to
separation of church and state?
- When they banned religion from public schools, they didn't remove Atheism, Secular Humanism, Statism,
or Political Correctness.
- Political Correctness is really a religion. Democrats plagiarized it from the Baha'i Faith.
- Conscription to fill the military is wrong:
- It's just a way to save money through substandard military pay.
- Governments that force people to defend them are not worth saving.
- They can never fully count on or trust the conscriptees.
- There is too much judicial power:
- Judges can insert their own personal whims into the law, without any vote by a legislature or an
executive's signature.
- The will of the people is thwarted by judicial activism.
- Appointed judges can do as much damage as they please without threat of removal.
- Too many legislators are lawyers, and will do anything to enhance the need for their profession.
- All government employees, including judges, have the motive to increase the size of government, to ensure
their own continued employment.
- There are too many levels of government:
- How many? UN, Federal, State, Conservancy district, County, Library, Museum, School Board, Solid Waste Board,
City, Township, Arts district, Drainage, and Precinct?
That's FOURTEEN!
- How about three: Federal, State, and County? The rest are unnecessary duplications, or items that should not
be under government at all.
- The whole purpose is to get more politicians into office to take our money!
- Taking private property for public use is usually wrong:
- Only transportation and water supply are uses that require specific plots of land.
- Government wrongly uses eminent domain to get property cheaper than it can get it on the market.
- Government sometimes takes property to unfairly drive out an unpopular business.
- Officials have taken the property of political opponents.
- Zoning is an unconstitutional taking property rights without compensation.
- Government keeps property seized for use by criminals for crime. If there is an innocent owner of the property,
it should be returned to that owner.
- Government destroys seized weapons. This destroys economic value, affecting the entire economy. The weapons
should be sold instead.
- Revenue from seized property can cause conflicts of interest. The money raised by selling seized property
must not be used to increase the budget of any agency that can seize property.
- Giving government employees special exemptions to laws is wrong:
- This is unequal protection under the law.
- Police have too much power to destroy property, or arrest those who can't afford a lawyer.
- Unelected government agents have too much power.
- Without citizen's arrest, police can decide what laws are to be enforced and what laws are ignored,
defeating the power of the legislature.
- Government wrongly suppresses religion:
- Too many government officials want to be worshiped in place of God.
- Jesus told government officials, "You shut the Kingdom of Heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do
not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to."
- Removing religion from schools favors Atheism, Secular Humanism, Political Correctness, Statism, and
other religions with no deity.
- Government sometimes promotes or aids activities offensive to some religions:
- Homosexuality is offensive to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, yet government promotes it. Now they
want homosexual marriage.
- Homosexuality is not hereditary. The studies that said it is were bad science. Yet government continues
to repeat this lie.
- Abortion is offensive to many religions, yet government says it is a "right."
- Many religions have teachings that are incompatible with evolution, but government says it is fact.
In fact, it is bad science.
- The law now encourages sex outside of marriage, and penalizes marriage.
- Such wrong government practices caused the revolts at Waco Texas and Oklahoma City.
- The practices of many environmental movements are based on ancient Celtic religions, yet they have
become part of the law.
- Hair-splitting regulations, unenforceable laws, and laws specifying names are all unjust:
- Using weights and measures to set limits causes unwitting violations when measuring equipment is
unavailable, defective, or impractical to use.
- Passing laws that cannot possibly be enforced is government lording itself over the public in its purest
form.
- Prohibiting the copying of software or recordings is totally unenforceable, and is a restriction on
knowledge, which should not be restricted. It is also a monopoly power that must be removed.
- Government gives special powers to celebrities. This must be abolished. There should be no such thing
as a celebrity.
- Passing laws specifying certain people or firms is more government lording itself over the public in
pure form, and is discriminatory.
- This is another place where lawyer legislators make regulations producing more business for lawyers.
- It is impossible to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals. So why do they keep trying? All that does
is keep honest people from defending themselves against criminals.
- There are too many laws:
- This is another case of legislators guaranteeing business for lawyers.
- Nobody can know all of the laws, which makes everyone unwitting lawbreakers.
- Obsolete laws stay on the books through neglect.
- This is a way to make some people fear government, and others ignore it.
- Government intrudes where it does not belong:
- Government has no business telling people what foods must not be eaten, because they "might be bad
for you." The fact that they keep changing the lists shows their total ignorance on the subject.
- Government has no business interfering with religious activities, unless they endanger the lives of others.
- Government has no business monitoring the everyday lives of people.
- Government has no business requiring what is to be taught in school. Parents should decide what their children
will learn.
- Government has no business in knowing about your business, unless illegal activity has been shown.
- Government has no business keeping any records on honest citizens, other than lists of people licensed as
trained to do certain hazardous acts.
- Government has no business licensing businesses, unless physical hazards to the lives of customers are normally
encountered in the business. Prevention of fraud and collection of taxes are not sufficient reasons to license
business.
- Government has overbearing citizenship and identification requirements:
- When governments control who can be a citizen and who can be in the country, that is the ultimate oppression.
There should be no such thing as a citizen.
- Anyone living or owning property within the borders of a country should be counted equally, and people should
be allowed the same status in several countries at once.
- Policing borders is an abuse of power, except to prevent invasion.
- Some Christian religions prohibit identification numbers. Required identification numbers violate the religious
beliefs of individuals in these religions.
- Government monitors people by keeping track of where they live and work. This is wrong.
- No government needs to know who people are, unless they have committed a crime.
- Making enforcement easier is NOT a valid excuse for government intrusions.
- Government gets the first take in bankruptcies and estates:
- This "me first" attitude of government is a hardship, both monetarily and psychologically, on
those who have already suffered a loss.
- Others who were owed money by the bankrupt or deceased lose out because government comes first.
- Government seems to believe that inheritance is "unfair." Why? If a father works hard to give
something extra to his children, or wants the property to stay in the family, why should the government be
allowed to interfere, due to its own greed?
- The Bible says that people should get property by inheritance, not purchase.
- Government gives special rights to certain people.
- Patent and copyright laws give too much monopoly power to the creator of the work, including these
powers that are abusive:
- Protections last too long. Three years is sufficient for devices and works other than fiction, and ten
years is sufficient for fiction. Any more is paying the creator of the work over and over for doing the
same work only once.
- This is another form of monopoly power.
- The prohibition of copying for one's own use is abusive if the work is no longer on the market. It should
end the year following the date the work is withdrawn from the market.
- Once he releases the work, the creator's right to destroy all copies deprives the public of them
forever, and should be prohibited
- Accidental disk damage can deprive the buyer of software he rightfully paid for. This is wrong. Backing
up software must always be allowed.
- Protecting some programs, such as operating system software, with copyright causes incompatibilities
between computers, and should be abolished.
- Standards, such as video and disk formats, must not be owned, but must be public domain, so all can
comply with them without cost.
- When government agents have special rights, they become abusive.
- Allowing sport stars and diplomats to get away with lawbreaking must be stopped.
- Any nut with enough money can wrongly get special rights passed into law.
- Licensing must be restricted to activities dangerous to others if not properly done. Otherwise, licensing
is not warranted.
- Radio spectrum space must not be sold, but allocated so all uses have a chance, not just the highest
bidders. Some uses have no bidder to sell to.
- Spending money to attract business forces government budgets up. Only spending on transportation upgrades
should be allowed, and these must not be contingent on a business actually accepting the invitation.
- Allowing only government officials to have weapons is invitation to tyranny. The penalty for using
weapons for crime should be increased instead.
- Laws against treason and espionage wrongly protect the government from the people:
- Too often, government secrecy is used to cover criminal activity by agents.
- Government hides technology advances from the "enemy" and from the citizens the advances could
benefit too.
- Secrecy should be used only to protect the lives of operatives, military capabilities, and invasion
intercept procedures.
- The death penalty must not be used to protect a government from its people.
- If a government is doing wrong, it deserves to fall.
- Daylight-saving time harms people, and costs them money and energy:
- They steal an hour from us for April Fools, and give it back for Halloween.
- This is something government should not have power over.
- More time and resources are wasted setting clocks, curing headaches, and repairing cars wrecked when people
not used to darkness or bright sun suddenly are driving in new conditions.
- When automobiles and air conditioners are factored in, daylight-saving time wastes more energy and
money than it saves.
Government behaves stupidly -
The "we know best (don't we?)" government:
- Abuse of statistics is cheating the public:
- Reporting useless values confuses people.
- Slanting the calculation of economic values to favor a viewpoint is cheating.
- Using wrong statistical methods is wrong-headedness.
- Using the wrong population in the study is laziness.
- Reporting impossible accuracy in figures is stupidity exposed.
- Failure to study control cases not containing the studied item is bad science.
- Doctoring charts to make changes look larger or smaller than they are is sleaze.
- Inverting scales to make the careless think the change went the other way is more sleaze.
- Using length instead of area for comparative symbols is cheatery.
- Bureaucrats will always have statistics ready (and handy), to show the "disaster" that will happen
if the budget for their department is cut.
- Reporting economic statistics can actually change the economy.
- Anybody can prove anything with statistics given enough cases to weed through.
- Selective enforcement of traffic laws is wrong:
- Police often concentrate too heavily on speed.
- Not enforcing the harder to enforce laws leaves the public exposed to danger.
- Following distance is too often neglected, but sometimes enforced wrongly when it actually performs its
intended function (such as when the driver ahead slows suddenly).
- Sometimes enforcement is based on what the judge will convict on, which is a wrong approach.
- Even worse, sometimes enforcement is based on what will bring in the most revenue in fines.
- Police officers usually have to witness the violation. Citizens aren't trusted to report traffic violations.
- Meanwhile, the real problem drivers are still on the road.
- Selective enforcement usurps legislative powers.
- Using fiscal years for budget purposes:
- This is wasteful when the budget for one year depends on the amount spent the previous year.
- It causes crunches in departments when the budget has not been passed yet.
- Agencies must request large amounts at once, instead of saving up for big items.
- Spending binges occur in government departments at the close of a fiscal year. They do this to use up any
excess money, so it doesn't get turned back to the general fund.
- Legislators get more pay by not passing the budget on time, forcing an extended session.
- Waste From failure to coordinate agencies is wrong:
- Failure to communicate causes timing of actions to be upset.
- New pavement is torn up for sewer work because of unforeseen delays.
- Agencies duplicate efforts because each is ignorant of the other's actions.
- Materials needed by one agency are thrown in the trash by another.
- Endless squabbling over resources wastes more money and time.
- Failure to pass a budget on time costs more in special legislative sessions.
- Maybe there shouldn't be any agencies.
- Packing budget items into a single bill violates constitutional protections:
- Either house, or the executive, can force an item to be in the budget. The original design required the
approval of all three to spend money on an item.
- They spend money they haven't collected yet by doing a whole year's budget at once.
- Politics, rather than real needs, determine the budget.
- Too many times, the budget is designed to get legislators re-elected, by providing frills, rather than
running the government properly.
- Concentrating on the wrong items causes waste:
- Criminal justice wastes much effort trying to rehabilitate instead of punish.
- Law enforcement wastes resources trying to "prevent" crime by harassing honest people for creating
"potential" for crime, instead of instead of catching criminals after the crime, as they should.
- Legislators play around with the number of days in the school year, the size of classes, and other idiotic
"solutions," instead of tackling the problem of inadequate schoolteachers who are more interested in
their union "rights" than the rights of children have to a good education. They also let unions dictate
Whole Language instead of Phonics.
- Instead of fixing bad roads, governments ticket drivers for making mistakes while trying to negotiate
the defects.
- Excess taxation to fund social programs causes the problems the social programs were created to fix.
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