When he?s not dispelling myths about market transactions and the ?zero-sum game,? Robert J. Samuelson is also explaining that all of the talk about ?stimulus,? ?bailouts,? and ?emergency? programs obscures an important point about federal government growth:
The question that President Obama ought to be asking?that we all should be asking?is this: how big a government do we want? Without any-one much noticing, our national government is on the verge of a permanent expansion that would endure long after the present economic crisis has (presumably) passed and that would exceed anything ever experienced in peacetime. This expansion may not be good for us, but we are not contemplating the adverse consequences or how we might minimize them.
We face an unprecedented collision between Americans’ desire for more government services and their almost equal unwillingness to be taxed.
Samuelson goes on to discuss the ominous numbers involved with current spending patterns and deficits, and he explains that ?Obama would make matters worse.?
What Samuelson does not explore is the notion of weighing the ?desire? for more government services against the ?unwillingness? to be taxed. I suspect the ?unwillingness? is stronger than the ?desire.?
If so, then government must get in the game of setting priorities with the resources it has, a notion Joe Coletti has pushed for North Carolina in his Can-Do Budget.
