Private vs government charity - a discussion on KGAB

Maureen Bader and Glenn Woods discuss the difference between private charity and coerced charity through the government apparatus on KGAB radio. If you've ever wondered why government programs to help the poor often create a dependent class, be sure to listen.

Government-Funded Do-Gooding – the curse of the modern age

Have you ever wondered how do-gooders without money, without power, do good to others? They get government to fund their do-gooding by expropriating funds from other people. What does everyone else get? We get a myriad of government programs with negative consequences. These sanctimonious pseudo-helpers create a death spiral for both taxpayers and those they profess to bless.

How do do-gooders get away with this? Do-gooders swathe themselves in a shroud of good intentions. For example, what happens when do-gooders lobby for the creation of government programs to help the poor. Taxes go up but even more destructive, people end up in poverty for the long term.

According to a Cato Institute study, The Work vs Welfare Tradeoff (2013), welfare beneficiaries in Wyoming earned $33,119 annually. With a state median salary of $36,130, these generous benefits create a “welfare cliff” encouraging low-income individuals to stay out of the workforce. But as the study confirms, a job is the best way out of poverty. 

The shroud clouds misleading methods so it should come as no surprise that these illusory good intentions lead to bad results.

But does this mean helping people a bad idea or are the means used by modern do-gooders the problem?

Let’s look at how this works. When a person wants to help someone he can do it in one of two ways. The old-fashioned way is to help someone directly using one’s own funds. In this situation, doing good is secondary to living a productive life. The giver gives his own money voluntarily. The idea is to help a person through a short-term time of difficulty. The idea is for the recipient to become more self-reliant. The idea is a hand up, not a hand out.

The modern way is fundamentally different. In this situation, the giver lacks his own funds and must get the funds somehow as he considers doing good his primary justification for existence. How is this do-gooder able to get the money he doesn’t have? He uses the power of government. Politicians are more than happy to help do-gooderize the victims.

That politicians give other people’s money away is not exactly news. How does this work together with the do-gooder’s primary justification for existence? Politicians are more than happy raid people’s wallets to help the poor because this help gives politicians unlimited taxing power. Medicaid alone cost Wyoming taxpayers about $260 million in 2015, for example.

What else happens when do-gooders use the power of government to do good to others?

After all, do-gooders need people to do good to. Do-gooders pervert their victim’s self-reliance, initiative and independence to create the dependent class necessary for the do-gooder to justify his existence. Do-gooders work to perpetuate dependency – they draw people into a dependent lifestyle. Politicians are happy to help because this creates a dependent voting heavily motivated to vote for glad handing politicians.

The results confront us every day. Anti-poverty activists, bureaucrats and philanthropists have increased welfare state programs to both capture funds from the productive and to draw the needy into a web of dependency. Do-gooders take both people’s money and people’s self-reliance.

Let’s take this to its logical conclusion.

The 20^th Century has given us quite a few examples of how using one group to benefit another leads to a government policy oppression and how this has resulted in the starvation and murder of millions. One very evil man, such as a Hitler or Stalin, can’t do it all by himself. They need the help of do-gooders and their shroud of do-gooding to kick of their programs of oppression. 

But the ‘ends justifies the means’ mentality is not exactly new. And when the ‘ends’ are the greater good, justified by whatever means, we can get bad results. For example after the slaughter in 1649 of about 30,000 people, including women and children, Oliver Cromwell said to the English Parliament: “I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbued their hands in so much innocent blood and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future, which are satisfactory ground for such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret.” [Emphasis added by the author.]

Once a person decides that an individual is nothing more than a means to an end of a higher purpose, the tools of a totalitarian society can be unleashed. The complete disregard of the happiness of the individual, spying, and eliminating noisy nonconformists are necessary outcomes. Nothing is prohibited as long as the person means well.  It allows for the violation of the individual for the greater good, however defined.

Love of money might be the root of all evil, but lack of it is the seed. The ends justifies the means ideology has bad consequences because bad means corrupt the ends. Do-gooders and politicians get together because they have the same motives, they seek the same ends, to exists for, through and by others. But each individual is an end in himself, not the means to an end for someone else. In the face of all the atrocities of the 20^th Century, why do do-gooders still support the measures of murders? Because they have been told that the death of millions might ultimately benefit a greater number. The ends justify the means, even if that means murder.

Sex Week Spending and Other Questionable Erections

Maureen Bader and Glenn Woods discuss Wyoming's stimulating spending priorities. With tax hikes on the horizon, citizens must become more aware of the political spending priorities. Sex Week, Taj Mahals, never ending bike lanes - this type of erection will result in higher taxes for Wyoming families.

Budgetary woes may leave sex week cold

Earlier this year, Wyoming’s Casper College Wellness Center hosted sex week in the college’s union building. For the third year in a row, between 250 and 300 students have joined together in this arousing event. Who knew taxpayer-funded colleges had such stimulating spending priorities?

No doubt parents and taxpayers are thrilled to know that government is doing something to fuel the sex lives of students in taxpayer-funded colleges. After all, if the government didn’t promote sex, there wouldn’t be any…oh really?

Unfortunately, college budget cramps tightened the screws on a number of programs including nursing, and released instructors and computerized electronic databases. But who needs Internet porn when students can get a taste of the real thing at the Wellness Center?

The budget squeeze has dampened programs across the state, even dousing government spending fires such as Wyoming’s Capitol building renovation in Cheyenne. Originally, the renovation was a stripped down facelift. Plans soon heated up and a towering Taj Majal arose from the wet dreams of enthusiastic legislative empire builders.

This uplift aroused quite a bit of tension. When it looked more and more like empire stimulators desired bazillions of dollars for their Taj Mahal, Wyoming’s Governor Mead drew a line in the sand on the Capitol blowout. Undeterred, excited legislators bore down hard to abort that strategy, trying to screw over another budget to deliver their baby through the back door.

Just what had these legislators so steamed? They said a historic renovation would stimulate tourism to Cheyenne and keep the construction industry in the family way. After all, if government didn’t promote tourism we wouldn’t have any…how progressive!

But with a limp minerals sector, where would the money come from to pay for these wet dreams? No problem. Politicians would dig deep into the pants pockets of Wyoming families to continue stimulating their cronies. Luckily for taxpayers, the tourism and construction industry stimulus got squeezed out in the end. As compensation, perhaps free-spending legislators can give them free condoms, just like Casper College gave to expectant students during sex week.

But Casper College is also in trouble. Although total college revenue is down by about $13 million (state taxpayers fund about half of all college spending), expenses fell by only about $5 million. This math fertility comes from the vacuum aspiration of the college’s $10 million budget nest egg. But this sucking sound has left the nest egg empty. How do sex promoters hope to continue funding sex week and other crucial college programs such as love your body next year?  All college spending would likely be stimulated by a deep dive into your pants pocket in the form of – wait for it – higher property taxes! More sex stuff at the college, however would likely come from higher student fees.

No doubt, students would be thrilled to pay higher fees for sex. After all, sex week is replete with important initiatives. For example, an information table dispensed free condoms and pens. For Valentine’s Day, the center’s “Love Table,” offered surveys for couples and small games such as guessing how many Hershey’s chocolates are in a jar…how enlightened!

Some of the more instructive presentations, and I’m not making this up, included: “Awkward, Jerk-wad, or Stalker? When ‘Creepy’ Becomes Criminal, and How to Protect Yourself.” After sex week, the center hosted a “Love Your Body, Treat It Well” week to provide information and activities to help people develop healthy strategies to take care of and appreciate their bodies…how informative!

But if college officials are not able to strip taxpayers of funds for sex at the college, and with the tourism miscarry by stimulated legislators, maybe college officials can get taxpayers to fund sex week at the new Capitol. That would certainly stimulate something.

Better still, how about a pregnant pause? Instead of expecting more money from taxpayers and students, eliminate programs that offer, and I’m not making this up, HIV testing. Cuts to the nursing program could help make this a reality.

Sweet on Subsidies

Sugar beet farmers are back at the trough, with hat in hand, looking for a handout. Why? Because Wyoming had a cold and rainy winter – wow! What a surprise!

Farmers have grown sugar beets in Wyoming for years so one wonders why they haven’t noticed those cold and rainy winters before. But maybe they have noticed and just don’t care. Why might they not care? Because they can harvest your wallet.

What happens when government gives tax dollars to people who make bad decisions? Flood insurance is a good example. Flood insurance is not available in the private sector as part of the standard homeowners policy because people using their own money view flood risk as uninsurable. After a series of floods in the Mississippi basin in the 1960’s, the federal government created the National Flood Insurance Program to provide flood insurance to communities and homeowners. When the taxpayer takes on the flood risk, people are encouraged to continue building in flood prone areas. Gee Martha, it looks like a flood is on the way again. Don’t worry Billi-Bob, the government will give us a bucket for a bailout again.

Incidentally, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s 2017 High Risk report: “Since the program offers rates that do not fully reflect the risk of flooding, NFIP’s overall rate-setting structure was not designed to be actuarially sound in the aggregate, nor was it intended to generate sufficient funds to fully cover all losses.” This is a lose-lose proposition.  

But you know what’s strange? Government didn’t always give money to people who made bad decisions. Imagine what might have happened had government given money to the horse and carriage sector back when the car was invented. As more and more people drove around in cars, fewer and fewer rode around in buggies. This meant buggy builders lost customers, stables didn’t need all those stallions, and harness makers either went out of business or started making car seat covers. Did government support buggy makers? No it didn’t and we don’t see buggies on the streets these days.

However, here in Wyoming, the Wyoming Business Council is in the business of keeping those metaphorical buggies on the road. It subsidizes businesses that can’t get cheap loans in the private sector, including farmers who don’t care about Wyoming’s cold and rainy winters. In fact, since 2000, the Wyoming Business Council has given out more than $5 million to a group of farmers including about 38 in a cooperative known as Wyoming Sugar. The WBC may now give an additional $6 million to these 38 farmers because the USDA, another government subsidy handout organization, declined to give them a federal handout.

But here’s a question few seem to have asked. If farmers hadn’t received payments in the past would they have moved on to other crops more suitable to rainy and cold winters?

Farmers can raise a lot by plowing. Yes, farming is an important activity and yes farmers are valuable members of society but do we want farmers and farming dependent on government welfare? I don’t think so.

Sugar Subsidy Farming

Maureen Bader and Glenn Woods talk about the latest proposal for subsidies to sugar beet farmers in Wyoming. But is creating a welfare dependent agricultural sector good for the state and ultimately for the country?
 

Internet Retail Sales Tax Grab Attempt in Wyoming

In this eight-minute Podcast, Maureen Bader discusses the problems with the Wyoming government's attempt to tax Internet sales in Wyoming, with Glenn Woods on KGAB Radio 650 am in Cheyenne. Politicians use two excuses to justify this tax grab. First, they say they need the money. But the revenue they expect from this tax will in no way cover the shortfall in state funds--the government has a spending problem, not a revenue problem.

Second, they say they want to level the playing field between Main Street and the Internet. If politicians really wanted to help Main Street, they would lower the burden of regulations and taxation on Main Street sellers, not extend the dead hand of government to innovative sellers using technology to assist their sales efforts.