Quote:
Originally Posted by RIJIMMY
really? the govt was less overbearing in the 40s, 50s, and 60s?
lets see, how about..
1. The draft
2. Higher tax rates
3. Segregation
4. McCarthy-ism
5. Rampant censorship
6. Testing of biological weapons on civilains and military
7. The war on drugs
8. FBI on John Lennon, Louie, Louie, etc
Granted the govt is still sticking too much of its nose in my business (see my cupcake rant) but I think I have more freedom now that I ever did.
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Numbers 7. and 8. were a later time period than justplugit's 40's, 50's, and early 60's, and the war on drugs is still on. The draft was fulfilling individual duty to protect freedom, not an imposition on freedom. Segregation in jusplugit's time period was mostly a cultural rather than a governmental issue and where it was governmental it was State rather than Federal. The elimination at State level was good, but cultural segregation still exists and may take some time to disappear, if ever. Censorship that existed was, again a local issue and dependent, again, on cultural views. No culture is free of some form of censorship. That is one of the defining views of culture--it censors that which is counter to or threatens itself. There is less banning of books today, but there are still cultural taboos, e.g.--political correctness. McCarthyism may have been an overreaction to the Communist threat, that is still debated wheather it was or not, but it was mostly a threat to a few Communists and fellow travelers not to average Americans. It was open, blatant, opposed, and temporary. Today there are subtler and more lasting threats to individual liberties that effect us all. And the testing of biological weapons was one of those abberations, more horrible than most, that occur in every generation, not some, again, threat to the liberty of average Americans.
But the higher tax rates? Tax rates have increased greatly with the onset of our "progressive" era views of the function of government, but may not have VISIBLY risen since the 40's and 50's. The Federal income tax has gone up and down and been shifted to higher brackets and been eliminated in others. Certainly, for almost half of the people the tax is lower because they don't pay it. It was spread more evenly in jusplugits era, even though it appeared that the wealthier had a high marginal rate, they paid less than now due to loopholes. So, actually, today, the middle class and above pay the burden with a greater share of their income paid by the wealthy. If that's your idea of being freer . . . fine. But the cost of government, at all levels, has risen exponentially. And what you don't see as a "visible" tax, you are paying, at a much, much higher rate today in the form of "hidden" taxes. A far greater portion of your income today either directly goes to government or is forced by government through regulation. For example:
By Clyde Wayne Crews, Ryan Young
April 25, 2011
Originally published in McClatchy News Service
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Appeared: The Sacramento Bee, The Pittsburgh Tribune, St. Paul Pioneer-Press, The Portland Oregonian, The Bradenton Herald, The West Hawaii Today, Press of Atlantic City, Desert News, Tulsa World, and Bellingham Herald.
"The federal government is on track to spend more than $3.5 trillion this year. What most people don't know is that government actually costs about 50 percent more than what it spends. That's because complying with federal regulation costs an additional $1.75 trillion - nearly an eighth of GDP. And almost none of that cost appears on the budget.
Regulation is a hidden tax that raises the price of goods. It's tempting to think that businesses bear most of the burden. But consumers are the ones who actually pay, because companies pass on their costs.
Just how regulated is the economy? The just-released 2011 edition of the Competitive Enterprise Institute's annual "Ten Thousand Commandments" study has some answers. At the end of 2009, the Code of Federal Regulations was 157,974 pages long. In 2010, 3,752 new rules hit the books - equivalent to a new regulation coming into effect every 2 hours and 20 minutes, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
An additional 4,225 regulations are at various stages of the pipeline right now.
Not all regulations are created equal. Some cost more than others. If a rule costs more than $100 million, it's called "economically significant." There were 224 of those last year - up from 174 in 2009. Agencies aren't required to say how much these regulations cost, aside from acknowledging that each one of the 224 costs at least $100 million. At a bare minimum, last year's economically significant rules alone will cost $22.4 billion. The real number is likely much larger.
The total cost of federal regulation is $1.75 trillion. That's true in terms of money. But money isn't everything. Regulation also has opportunity costs. Workers spend millions of man-hours every year filling out forms and following procedures. That time could be spent on other things instead, such as finding ways to lower costs, improve quality and increase worker productivity. When there's too much regulation, progress and innovation slow down.
There is a second opportunity cost that is often overlooked. Companies don't sit idly by when regulators propose new rules. They try to influence the process. Most companies, especially larger ones, often favor new regulations in their industries. They will pay lobbyists a lot of money to influence the rules in a favorable way - say, by handicapping a competitor.
UPS and FedEx are fighting just such a battle right now in Washington. UPS is subject to stricter labor regulations than FedEx. It could argue that it should be under the looser system, too. But it isn't. UPS wants FedEx to have to abide by UPS' stricter regulations. FedEx, naturally, is fighting back.
All the time and energy that UPS and FedEx are spending competing against each other in Washington is time and energy they aren't spending competing in the marketplace.
When government is given a lot of money and power, lobbyists and their clients will swarm to Washington to fight over a piece of the pie. This is the source of a lot of the city's corruption. The way to reduce that corruption isn't to pass more regulations. It is to repeal them. The best way to keep money out of politics is to keep politics out of money.
There are many reforms that Congress and President Obama can pass to make that happen. One is for Obama to appoint an annual bipartisan committee to comb through the Code of Federal Regulations for old, obsolete and harmful rules. They would pass their findings on to Congress, which would be required to vote on the entire package without amendment. That last step would prevent a lot of backroom dealing.
Right now, Congress doesn't vote on most regulations. The agencies pass them on their own. The problem is that only Congress can pass laws, not the executive branch. To end this regulation without representation, Congress should vote on all economically significant regulations, at least for starters.
Because even good rules go bad as technology changes, all new regulations should automatically expire after five years, like a carton of milk. If a rule turns out to be useful, Congress can vote to renew it for another five years.
Because regulation is a hidden tax, most people don't pay it much mind. They should. Even in this age of trillions, $1.75 trillion is a lot of money."
There are, of course, other hidden costs to you, the average American, caused by government that are occurring today at a greater level than in the 40's and 50's, such as the greater volume of of money being printed which inflates the economy and lowers the value of the dollar. Since the LBJ Great Society, government debt and government inflation has eroded the value of common assets, especially savings accounts.
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As I mentioned in this and other threads, we live in an era of an administrative State which "regulates" us through hundreds of unelected independent agencies who each make decisions on how, what, who, where, and why we will act in such and such a way. The totallity of those decisions is growing exponentially with each admininistration, and it takes more of our money, and it limits, bit by bit, more of our decisions. This has only been made possible by a progressive ideology which saw the Constitution, properly, as a hinderance to Central power, and so disregarded the Constitutional limitation granting legislative ability only to Congress, and unconstitutionally delegated its regulatory power to our current regulatory agencies. Return to Constitutional rule would be a corrective to the Federal Government's excessive confiscation of wealth and its creeping encroachment on our liberty.