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Government Santa
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Posted on Dec 24 1999
Imagine that it was the night before Christmas, and Santa came trespassing–breaking and entering. Only instead of smuggling in gifts for the good children, he held mom and dad at gunpoint and demanded 40 percent of their combined household income.
Imagine that good old Santa returned the very next day, on Christmas day, and presented the fleeced family with gifts purchased with their very own hard-earned money—-money forced from their hands only the previous night. If you can imagine such a scenario, you now have a good grasp of how government really works.
Said former President Ronald W. Reagan: “The nine most frightening words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.'” He also added, “Government is not the solution; it’s the problem.”
Reagan was right. We should be afraid of big government. Government bears gifts extorted from its very own constituents. The beneficiaries are also the victims. It is as if Santa Claus robbed his victims only to later offer them gifts, minus the commission (overhead expenses and administrative costs) for himself (and his crony elves).
When politicians send us Christmas cards or wish us a “Happy Thanksgiving” through various advertisements, in newsprint or on television, never forget that it is usually our hard-earned money that they are using to wish us well. It is as if someone took money from your wallet in order to buy you a Christmas card or a gift. What a terribly nice gesture indeed.
Government simply does not trust us to allocate our financial resources properly. The deeply entrenched bureaucrats and politicians in big government believe that they can almost always allocate our private resources better than we ever could as private individuals. Hence, the prodigious tax and spending.
In the coming new year, we should take our private resources back, and reclaim what is rightfully ours. Give government Santa the big boot. Force him to leave us alone. We can buy our own holiday and non-holiday gifts without his constant meddling, taxation, regulation and interference. If we were only allowed to keep more of what we earn, we could do a lot more with it, for others as well as ourselves.
