Governments getting bigger

This is worth passing on. It comes from the Maxim Institute....I think:-) ;

My government is bigger than yours

The significant rise in public spending by the United States government seems to suggest that the party supposedly in favour of limited government, the Republican Party, now believes that big government is good government; as long as they are the ones governing. Federal spending is up eight percent since 2005, and 33 percent since 2001. The government spends more today per household than it has since the end of World War Two.

Closer to home, government spending continues with the roll-out of the Working for Families package. While the National Party continue to criticise administrative blunders, they have not articulately critiqued the assumptions regarding the legitimate role of government that underlie the package.

The question of legitimacy is all important when it concerns the use of power. Like the big-spending Republicans, all political parties make different assumptions about the value and nature of human freedom, and consequently, the degree to which government power should be both enforced and restrained in order to protect it. People are different and when free people act, they will experience different outcomes. This is why there is always a trade-off between freedom and equality which is usually paid for at the other's expense.

Two assumptions embedded in the extended Working for Families package are that take-home incomes should be subsidised in the interests of equality rather than need, and that it is a legitimate role of government to mitigate the outcomes of each individual's unique decisions. Raising a family is costly and couples who make that choice should be applauded and supported by the community which benefits from that decision. Thankfully, this is happening in New Zealand. Those tax-payers without dependent children already support families to a significant extent through the public provision of education and subsidised health-care. Society also provides a welfare safety-net for those in genuine need, but whether welfare should extend to income redistribution is an entirely different matter.

If we accept the assumption that the government is justified in using power to arbitrarily equalise incomes, what is left to restrain it from redistributing and spending further?

It is often said that oppositions have principles and governments have programmes. Sadly one assumption which eventually finds its way into nearly every cabinet room is that big government is good government as long as it is ours.