Uncle Sam ignores taxpayer wishes, provides false hopes

College students are told outright, and implicitly, that
everything they have learned up to the point of entering college
has been an outright lie. While most of this reeducation centers
around liberals’ mistrust of a government “run
amok” internationally, it is useful to remember that the
government kills with kindness as often as with neglect.

One major example of this overkill is the bloated social welfare
programs currently administered by the government. It is truly sad
that so many people believe the current situation to be
unchangeable. In fact, the concept of Mother Government tending to
every social problem is contrary to the intent of our
nation’s founders.

The welfare state in existence today is a perversion of all that
is intelligent and self-sufficient. We have one man primarily to
blame for inaugurating the role of the federal government as
shepherd to the nation ““ the sainted Franklin Delano
Roosevelt.

Usually remembered as the man who ended the Great Depression,
FDR’s manifold social spending programs were in fact a
colossal failure. Rarely noted, but damning for those who would
dare to engineer society, is the fact that it was World War II, not
FDR’s programs, that put an end to the Depression. This puts
the entire concept of social engineering to shame. With an entirely
sympathetic Congress enacting every piece of his legislation, FDR
and social engineering had no excuses. In essence, his
administration was given carte blanche by lawmakers and the public
alike to fully pursue what they saw as the ultimate truth ““
and this “ultimate truth” failed ultimately.

Worse yet is the fact that one of FDR’s programs continues
to haunt us to this day. Social Security was Roosevelt’s
crowning glory but is now merely an albatross. Social Security is,
to be blunt, a pyramid scheme. A young worker puts money into the
system to support those who have retired and are receiving
payments. The young worker in turn expects that when he reaches
retirement age, he will begin collecting payments transferred from
a new generation of younger workers. Such a scheme worked fine in
the early days, when the ratio of workers paying in to workers
receiving payments was nearly 40 to 1. But Roosevelt’s big
gamble long ago turned sour for America. The current ratio of
payers to receivers is an unsustainable 3 to 1.

But liberals stubbornly worship the idol of Social Security.
Clinton proposes dumping a huge chunk of our current projected
budget surplus to prop up the dying program. And why not do such a
thing? The sentiment for sustaining Social Security is so strong
that even Republicans have agreed to such a bailout, albeit smaller
in size, with the stipulation of program reform.

This public affection is based on false history. Social Security
was never intended to be the sole support for seniors ““
instead, it was there to provide, as the name states, a measure of
security. The raw economics bear this out. Each worker contributes
7.65 percent of his salary. These funds are collected by a central
agency, which then places them in low-yield government
investments.

Those seniors who made no other savings and expected their
Social Security check to provide for them in old age were nothing
short of idiotic. Saving only 7.65 percent of earnings over a
lifetime, even if placed in aggressive investments, is not enough
to sustain a person in retirement. Since the investing of the money
is far from competitive, counting on Social Security to sustain a
retirement is economic suicide.

Many would ask what the harm is in placing the euphemistically
named “budget surplus” into the Social Security system.
The harm is obvious: the money has not simply dropped from the sky
““ it came directly out of taxes on you, your family and your
business. To take the people’s money and use it to sustain a
pyramid scheme is an outright crime, and is only succeeding because
the general public has not been informed of Social Security’s
flaws.

The real crime in the entire concept of social spending is that
it sets up Uncle Sam as a kindly benefactor of the public. The
reasons why the federal government is unsuited to administer social
programs are numerous. The waste of money is the primary reason.
Programs administered on a national level are funded by legislative
decisions in our nation’s capital. Is a committee of
congressmen able to best decide where a given amount of money
should go to improve a community?

Far too often, a government grant is available only for a
specific type of project; say street improvements, or when the
community truly needs an after-school program. But the community is
forced to use the money for unneeded improvements to their streets,
or lose it altogether. The manner in which funding is delivered
from a taxpayer to the community in which he lives is simply
outrageous. The taxes are collected by the Internal Revenue
Service, allocated by Congress, passed on to the national program,
and sent to the local level, where the needed services are finally
procured. To allow even one middleman between our money and results
is unacceptable, but to allow four or more middlemen to each take
their cut is a slap in the face of hard-working taxpayers.

Such a situation, in effect, allows Uncle Sam to play Fairy
Godmother with our money. After paying our taxes, are we supposed
to be grateful when the funds eventually trickle back down to us,
minus numerous administrative cuts? Thankfully, there is an
alternative to this sick merry-go-round, but it requires a true
revolution.

The federal government must divest itself of all social
programs, and return power to state governments, or better, to the
people. Private charities should be what drive our social spending.
Without being compelled to support federal programs, Americans will
be free to fund, with their money, locally administered and locally
serving charities. As private sector enterprises, charities are by
necessity more dynamic, more proactive and more innovative. By
contrast, the current situation is a nation of “swivel
servants,” protected by powerful unions, overpaid and
underworked.

The federal bureaucracy is a stratified behemoth that must be
crushed. The revolutionary demand “no taxation without
representation” must now be “no taxation without
accountability.” No federal social program as yet reports, or
is directly accountable to, the public. On the other hand, a
private charity must remain innovative and accountable at all times
to the community, or risk losing funding.

Some object to the idea of the majority of social spending being
done through private donations to private charities. These cynics
believe that social programs are a public good, which many
appreciate but few support, and thus must be funded through
compulsory donations (taxes). The Red Cross refutes this notion.
There is no compulsory funding of it, yet everyone receives the
benefit of its many programs. Indeed, charitable contributions
would likely skyrocket were Americans relieved of the burden of
supporting social programs run by an inefficient bureaucracy
without accountability. Total donations might be lower, but
programs would, overall, serve more people more effectively.

As a call to arms, the need for elimination of federal social
programs cannot be ignored. The cost, in wasted money, and wasted
lives, is too great.