Someone Else Will Pay
by Jeffrey Folks
Issue 130 - April 22, 2009

Recently, during a call-in radio program, I heard a young woman (she sounded young, anyway) defending Obama’s stimulus bill by saying that it was all right “to spend a little bit of our money” to help people who are “struggling.” Rarely has the “progressive” view of politics been summarized more succinctly, and rarely have so many falsehoods been crammed into so few words.

At first I was taken aback by the sheer mendacity of the call. Clearly, Obama’s spending plans involve more than “a little bit” of money: they represent peacetime spending on an unprecedented scale, and they institute a colossal expansion of government that would be nearly impossible to reverse. Once additional benefits have been extended to the uninsured, the unhoused, the uneducated, the long-term unemployed, and those who are simply so improvident as to be perpetually in debt, it will be difficult to withdraw them. Meanwhile, the consequences of this spending spree will only create greater dependence. Raising the national debt to over 60% of GDP, as projected by the Congressional Budget Office, will slow the nation’s growth for decades to come, reducing job opportunities for those who need them the most.

Nor is it “our” money that is involved, whatever the caller meant by that. What she meant, I suppose, was that the public as a collective has a right to confiscate everyone’s savings, investments, and income of any sort. It is all our money and it can be redistributed at will. The statement is true in a communist or fascist state, but it has never been true—not until now, at least—in the United States, in which the rights of private property are protected by the Constitution.

Still, “brevity is the soul of wit,” and as such the caller was eloquent indeed. In the span of just seventeen words, she managed to articulate three major misconceptions, the third of which was the notion that those in need of stimulus are “struggling.” It would seem that in some cases, at least, they are not struggling very hard. Most of those in danger of foreclosure exercised poor judgment in the first place by taking on more indebtedness than they could afford. In many cases, they misstated their income or purchased a property and then borrowed against equity that existed only on paper. This is not struggling but gambling. Nor have these struggling homeowners given up cell phones, cable TV, cruise vacations, dining out, and other luxuries: not much sign of a struggle.

Even more disturbing than the caller’s unscrupulous regard for the truth was the moral assumption underlying her views in general. It is bad enough that the caller relied on a collectivist faith in redistribution. Unstated was the self-indulgent assumption that citizens of the United States are in all areas of their lives powerless clients of governmental assistance. What was truly disturbing, in other words, was the cynical assumption that human beings are incapable of taking responsibility for themselves and must therefore surrender their free will and look to government to supply their needs. Defeated by what are in fact temporary setbacks, we are all to be made permanent clients of government welfare. We are expected to lie around our miserable little apartments for the rest of our lives and await the arrival of the latest stimulus check.

One need hardly point out that this defeatist conception of American society is simply contemptible. What a lovely idea of the future, to spend the remainder of life checking in with one’s case manager, which is what Obama proposes the federal government should become in relation to over half of the population, frittering away one’s life from one welfare check to another. What a fine prospect, to spend the next forty years sitting around in a disgusting box, flipping channels and growing obese while one’s rent, food, heating, health care, transportation, and all else are paid out by a stream of federal checks. Under this scenario, the government would continue to print money, the rest of the world would continue to purchase our debt at low interest rates, and all would be well. This is the underlying assumption behind the myth, all to popular among the creative class, that we can spend a “little bit of our money” to help “struggling” Americans (a category, by the way, that usually includes the very ones clamoring for the spending).

Ironically, though, most of those calling most loudly for government spending have no intention of paying in or of ever paying it back. Did the caller really mean to suggest that the stimulus should come out of “our” money, a category that presumably would have included her own as well as that of others? What she meant to say, I suspect, was that it should come out of someone else’s money, which she had a right to take. In this she was not alone. In mid-March 2009 Rasmussen polling showed that 62% of Americans supported the stimulus proposed by President Obama, but only a third supported tax increases to pay for it. Apparently the funds are to be drawn from a magic hat, certainly not from “my” paycheck.

And yet in the long run, this is from whence the funds must come. Perhaps support for the stimulus would diminish if the public were made aware of the future tax obligations that it entails, an obligation resulting from Obama’s budget proposal estimated at $163,000 per family of four, according to Michael J. Boskin. It is only by the sleight-of-hand of postponing repayment and relying on indirect taxation of services, special products (such as tobacco), and energy that the stimulus has the support that it does.

Oh, no, I suppose she would reply. The rich will pay the debt.

But what if the rich do not wish to pay?

They will be made to pay, she replies.

What if they are made to pay, and then there are no more rich, and there is still a debt to be paid off? Then it will be the caller who must pay.

Never, she cries. It was not intended that I should pay. Someone else must pay.

And so it goes, and always will go. We seem to be stuck with a plurality of voters who will always voice support for more debt, and that will never agree to pay it off. Those who possess even the slightest grasp of economics must understand where this leads. A plurality of voters will continue to insist on stimulus in one form or another, and they will continue to veto any plan that involves paying it back. But debt has a way of hanging around, and generations have a way of aging. Soon enough, it will not be the caller but the caller’s children who claim the right to a free ride. It is unlikely that the caller will vote to deny her own children that “right.”

Thus, we can look forward to a permanent condition of beggary: an ever increasing indebtedness and, along with that, a decline in the real quality-of-life and a decline in the ability of the United States to defend itself. This is the sad reality of Obama’s self-indulgent economic policy.

Dr. Jeffrey Folks taught for thirty years in universities in Europe, America, and Japan. He has published nine books and over a hundred articles on American culture and politics in national journals and newspapers. He is currently writing on issues in American literature, media, family, and education.