-By Frank Hyland
This is not an easy column to write. Normally the subject is a loon like Michael Moore and he has again done something that is easy to criticize. This one is about me, though, and — even more difficult — about you (the “You” writ large, that is). For this one, I had to spend considerable time in front of the mirror even after finishing shaving, and we all must do that to resolve this problem.
This is about being honest about ourselves to the point that it will hurt, at least in the pocketbook.
The biggest story, still ongoing, is about unionized state workers in Wisconsin. But other stories are related and need to be put in the same context. For one, a new poll says that almost two thirds of Americans think we’re on the wrong track; that figure will continue to rise along with gasoline prices. That many or more of us, though, want budget cutters to look elsewhere for the place to cut, as opposed to their own wallets. In truth, we are resurrecting that catchy jingle saying, “Don’t tax me. Don’t tax thee. Tax that man behind the tree.” It will not be easy, though, because another report to put in the same context is that more than one third of us receive our income from the US Government in one form or another. It is easy for me to say that I’m not on “welfare.” The trouble is that creative characterization of Federal Government programs over many decades has convinced many of us that we receive income from “entitlements” or because we show up at our desk every day in the public sector — the US Education Department, for example. We have come to believe, therefore, that we are entitled to the money. Less and less money will be available, though, as ten thousand or more people – read Baby Boomers – retire each and every day.
We are stuck on chanting, carrying banners and signs, and on pinning labels on each other at present. Competing bills wend their way through legislatures accompanied by loud yelling of negative terms applied to the competitors. Nor do we have a prayer of getting out of the situation the same way that we got into it – by spending more and more “funny money.” That, obviously, is not how we will extricate ourselves from this situation. How, then? If we were all given varying amounts of money to begin a “game,” and we then refused absolutely to put any of the money on the table, game over. The way forward, then, is to figure out and then decide which one(s) of us must put money on the table and how much.
In the end, “need” will turn out to be the fundamental determinant of the way forward. But that means true need, not today’s defined “need” that has been so confused with “want” by both advertisers and government that the result is the anger that we see in the demonstrators in Wisconsin and elsewhere around the world when their wants are not perceived as needs by legislatures, governors, and presidents. To make a long story short and to get to the point, means testing will prove to be the way that we extricate ourselves.
The starting point for means testing, and this will not go down easy with all concerned, is that ALL income originating from the public sector must be defined as some form of income redistribution. The public sector does not produce money; it takes money in the form of taxes on your income. The public sector produces laws, regulations, rules, and other problematic products. So if someone is 80 years old and subsists solely on a Social Security check, they have a true need. If, on the other hand, someone is 35 or 45 and is a Plumber, or a Security Guard, their income derives from other citizens’ taxes, not from the marketplace. Somewhere between the two examples is where the line must be drawn, but it must be drawn or over the cliff we go.
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Frank Hyland is a long-time Writer/Editor who has written for The New Media Alliance, and also for The Reality Check and has appeared weekly on Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Conservatism on Sunday evenings on Blog Talk Radio, along with Babe Huggett and Warner Todd Huston.