In the summer of 2011 I visited the Painted Desert in the Four Corners where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah meet.
As part of the Petrified Forest National Park, the Painted Desert offers little vegetation or signs of life. It is 7,500 square miles of rock. Yet its vistas are beautiful because the minerals and compounds contained in that rock glisten in the sunlight with vibrant colors of red, orange, lavender, and purple.
It’s the place I think of when I think of the phrase “less is more”.
Right now when I think of the concept of “less is more” it is in relationship to our government.
Our country was founded on principles of less government. Less intrusions from government. Less interference in our lives from government. Less power to the government and more power to the people.
What has happened to that? Government intrusion and control of our lives has become enormous!
Why aren’t more people alarmed about that? Does that alarm you?
Why are so many people allowing it to happen and accepting it without question? As if its a good thing.
It isn’t!
Giving someone else control over your money, your decisions, and the choices in your life is not good for you! Its why Brittany Spears has been legally fighting for years to overturn the conservatorship her father has had over her life since she was a teenager.
When we’re teenagers we look forward to becoming adults and having the freedom to go out on our own, make our own way through life, and make our own decisions. What changes us so much that as adults we are willing to give that freedom away to politicians?
Less government gives us more power and control in our lives; more government takes it away.
Less government means that the money we make is ours to keep and spend as we want; more government takes it away.
Right now our government is making the biggest push it has ever made in the history of the U.S. to take more away from the people for the politicians to spend. They claim it will make life better for all of us. They claim they will use it to benefit all of us. They won’t! When has the government ever put the average person ahead of the politicians and the lobbyists? Never. They lie to us all the time. And we keep falling for it. Shame on us!
Yes, there are things the government has done well. President Eisenhower’s administration created the interstate highway system. President Kennedy’s administration advanced our space exploration program. But the last president who saw the need for our government to work off of a balanced budget was President Clinton.
In the years 1995 to 1999 when Clinton was president, GDP growth and the S&P 500 were both up each year, the budget deficit was cut each year, and export of American goods increased each year. The national debt fell from 47.8% of GDP to 31.4% during his tenure. We were on the right track!
By 2020 the national debt was up to 127.11% of GDP – meaning our country owes more than it makes, and right now they are planning to increase that debt by $5.3 trillion as if it doesn’t matter. It will raise the national debt to 132.8% of GDP. And we are letting it happen.
Do you know who is purchasing that debt? It’s Japan and China. Together they own 33.5% of U.S. debt. They can bring the U.S. to economic ruin simply by requesting repayment of the debt because we don’t have the money to pay it back.
In 2020 61% of Americans paid no federal taxes. This year the remaining 39% of us who do pay taxes will work 99 days to fund the federal government. That means if you are a taxpayer, whatever you earn from January through May goes to Uncle Sam. It takes even more days when you add the tax money paid to state and local governments.
I know that voting is a right in America and every citizen gets a vote. But sometimes I think there should be a “pay to play” function in government. Those who don’t pay shouldn’t get a voice in how the money gets spent that’s taken from those of us who do pay. If everyone had skin in the game perhaps they would care more about the outcomes.
And perhaps that would create a government that finally learns how to live with spending where “less is more.”
A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take from you everything you have.
President Gerald R. Ford
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