If you read John Hood’s recent National Affairs article, you learned about the “states in crisis.”
Though “crisis” seems like a pretty good word for the structural budget problems most state governments face, Thomas Sowell tackles the topic of “budget crisis rhetoric” within his latest column posted at Human Events.
Politics being what it is, we are sure to hear all sorts of doomsday rhetoric at the thought of cutbacks in government spending. The poor will be starving in the streets, to hear the politicians and the media tell it.
But the amount of money it would take to keep the poor from starving in the streets is chump change compared to how much it would take to keep on feeding unions, subsidized businesses and other special interests who are robbing the taxpayers blind.
Letting armies of government employees retire in their fifties, to live for decades on pensions larger than they were making when they were working, costs a lot more than keeping the poor from starving in the streets.
Pouring the taxpayers’ money down a thousand bottomless pits of public and private boondoggles costs a lot more than keeping the poor from starving in the streets.
Bankruptcy says: “We just don’t have the money.” End of discussion. Bailouts say: “Give the taxpayers a little rhetoric, and a little smoke and mirrors with the book-keeping, and we can keep the party rolling.”
