Corrupt Governing

Everyone knows that when it is due, (which is almost all the time) taxing is a heavy burden. The people must unwillingly give their money to the government who coercively forces them to surrender great amounts of it. The money is distributed from hand to hand until it arrives to those the government has determined. Then, these hands will use the taxed money in something its original owner never would have. Instead of having used the money to engage in one pattern of spending, now the government will spend it in something else, in this way, contributing to a change in the allocation of resources.

Spending money is something most people like to do. By counting the amount spent and earned in the things or services, we can obtain the productivity and economic growth of the nation. However, there are several things here that need to be considered.

When people use their wealth, they do this voluntarily and spend it in products or services they have a necessity of or a preference for. Doing this, we notice that the volition of the people chooses the correct allocator of resources or seller. When this takes place, the buyers are happy with what they acquired and the sellers rejoice in their winnings. In other words, there exists no burden.

The moment a seller starts to not give the people what they want or need, their productivity in the economy will drop to zero. He or she cannot go after people with a weapon to force them to buy their product or service. This would bring the weight of the law on such merchant and greater discontent to the people of what he or she does. If the entrepreneur is obstinate and continues to produce things the people do not buy, the productivity will still continue to be zero. Will there be any contribution to the economy? No, as a matter of fact the consequence of such actions will obstruct or hinder economic growth because valuable resources will be wasted.

This is what the government does. It plunders the money of the people, allocates resources in a way the people do not want, claims they improve the life of people with what they produce and give , and boasts in that they have increased the economy. Governmental authorities say that they are productive, if we were to assume this, their productivity would be measured by their spending. Ultimately, this means that the government’s capacity is measured by how much they tax from their people.

Progressive taxation is the policy vindicated by the benefit principle. This type of taxation retrieves a percentage of money relevant to the annual income one earns. If you earn more, the higher the percentage of your tax will be. Earning extra income loses its meaning in this system. Who charges a person who earns $60,000 annually 30% more for a hot dog, than a person who earns $30,000 annually? Logic would soon tell us that it would be more reasonable to earn one cent a year to get everything for free in a price system with this functioning.

Ignoring this, the government continues to declare that everybody has to be taxed according to their ability to pay. Nevertheless, you cannot know with certainty that a person who earns $60,000 yearly is less able to pay than someone who has an annual income of $100,000. In order to be correct and righteous in this judgment, you must know the savings and expenditures of each person. Having higher savings and fewer expenses makes someone more eligible to pay than someone who has few or no savings and high expenses.

Any form of justification does not defeat the negative facts that encounter taxing and government spending. The government provides all sorts of public goods and services to try in making the lives of people better. But because taxation is done coercively and not voluntarily, we do not know if the desire of the people is being catered and if the place were resources have been assigned is where the people would have wanted them to be. With these policies the people only use what the government provides because they have no other choice. Their money was used to proportion what the government offered, thus they must use it or nothing at all.

Public goods and services, which are offered at the expense of others, are thought to be free by many people. When something is “free”, the demand of it will increase. The growth of requests to use public resources creates shortages and gives greater frustration to taxpayers because the amount of taxing also increments. In the occurring of these events, there will be incessant reclamations of inadequate number of supply, congestion, and so on. Consumers will be accused of being the cause of the negative impacts and inefficiencies in the accommodation of resources, not those that are responsible of supplying them. In the end, the government will tell consumers to be patient and use less of a resort (water, electricity, gas, streets, etc.) to stop causing trouble.

You would think that the things in the public sector are owned by the public, but you would be wrong. If one tried to sell his or her shares in a post office, it would be useless. None of us owns a public good or service. It is the temporal government officials whom own the public sector. Owning something for a short term means you have to exploit it to its maximum in order to secure something out of it. It also means that the government officials are the ones who have the full transitory range of control over the use of the “public’s” goods and services. Therefore, the whole public sector’s capital value will be lost and there will be unprofitable depletion because there is no personal benefit to the partial owner in conserving the resource for the future. The people are worst off because they profit little or nothing at all.

Subsidized people and Welfare participants are the only true beneficiaries, which are mainly poor people, middle-class people, and bureaucrats. However, if the benefit principle would truly be applied, no one would benefit. This principle requests that you have to pay the amount equivalent to your governmental benefit. Today, the rich are taxed to transfer the money to the poor. If no government protection existed, the rich could easily pay for it and it would be cheaper to guard the property of the prosperous in a vault, than the 100 acre household of poor people. Hence, the poor benefit more than the rich from the government. Additionally, to pay according to the benefit principle would literally mean that bureaucrats need to pay back their salaries and everyone receiving a subsidy and participant of the Welfare State would have to pay back what they acquired from the government, which is an absurdity.

The Welfare State is a system that causes a downfall in society. The wellbeing of the general nation is hampered through the concealed truth of the Welfare State. Those that benefit the greatest are ones that prefer the receiving of money without performance of labor and at the expense of others. These are people that spend their time, energy, and resources in convincing the government they need welfare policies. Bureaucrats handle the lobbying and in the end, the government finds it convenient to keep the operation of the system. A system that detriments the people and for this motive, should not remain.

When a government rests on the hands of a bureaucracy, we notice that the best decisions (those that truly benefit the whole people) are not taken. Primarily, because when someone is not using resources efficiently, they should shift into producing something consumers demand to increase the standard of living, and not go after the “big government” persuading it to give them a subsidy gathered with the property of others. Secondarily, because the welfare system gives people the incentive to enter the circumstances that make them eligible to receive the provision. This does not solve problems faced by the people, like poverty, but only increases the conformity of people to prevail in their problem in the receiving of free sustainment. Lastly, because the resolutions made by the lobbied government do not seek the wellbeing of the people, but only perpetuate the bureaucracy, which can use audacious maneuvers like the “Washington Monument Syndrome” to obtain what it wants.

We cannot rely in the welfare state to resolute the difficulties society encounters. We also cannot rely in the government officials filled with personal interests and bureaucrat convictions to deliver us from the struggles we face. As we may notice, this way of thought only depends in a corrupt system that does not take into account the will or the property of the people, but only controls and coerces to obtain anything it wants at no personal expense and not caring about the individual rights of many citizens. This system does seek welfare, but the one of the politicians, not of the people.