Yesterday the Federal Government grew considerably larger as 2,700 pages of new laws, taxes, and regulations were passed by the United States Congress. What many Americans fail to appreciate is that at the same time, you as citizens became considerably smaller. The United States Congress – the only place where one can have an approval rating of 19%, still get your annual salary increase, and have a 97.9% chance of keeping your job. As citizens of a nation there are two mandatory authoritative influences in our lives. One is ourselves, and the other is the government. (We can enter into other relationships that give authority to other entities, like a loan for a house gives some authority to the bank, but those are voluntary and we can choose not to enter into those relationships.) The government relationship and the authority it has is a consequence of our living in this nation, like it or not. So the question becomes, how much authority should the government have and how much should I as the individual have? Our founding fathers recognized that there were certain things that we as individuals would not be effective at doing ourselves and delegated that authority from the citizens to the government – national defense being a good example. The founders were careful to list, as enumerated powers, those things that the government could do in the U.S. Constitution. The 10th amendment to the U.S. Constitution was intended to serve as a protection of the peoples rights. It states that all powers and authorities that are not specifically granted to the Federal Government in the Constitution are reserved for the states and the people. This means that if the Constitution doesn’t specifically state that the Federal Government can do something, then it cannot do it.

Let’s explore an illustration. Let’s say we are like a shopper going to the grocery store. There are lots of choices to make at the grocery store. Upon entering we are given two shopping carts. One that we can fill up, and another that is already filled with all sorts of items. We must checkout with both carts. Who filled the second cart? Uncle Sam. He took about 40% of your money and filled it for you, isn’t that nice? Maybe. You go around and fill your cart with the items you need. While doing this you start looking through the cart Uncle Sam filled. There are diapers in there, but they are for a boy, not a girl like you have, so you will have to buy diapers anyway. There are frozen pizzas which is nice you wont have to buy that, but there are also frozen peas, yuck. You notice bread in the second cart, that’s nice, but Uncle Sam bought the one that is $8 a loaf, not the $2 a loaf bread you would prefer. There is a bunch of stuff down in the bottom of the cart that you can’t see and your not allowed to look through it all. It doesn’t matter anyway, you have to buy it regardless of the contents. The good news is, in four years you can vote for a different Uncle Sam that will fill your cart, hopefully more to your liking. Maybe you will get those Cheerios you wanted instead of the Frosted Flakes your current Uncle Sam put in the cart for you. Unfortunately for you, Kellogg’s gave your current Uncle Sam a lot of money to (i.e. campaign contributions, bribes, call them what you like) get that Frosted Flakes in there. And your future Uncle Sam gets his money from Post with the expectation that Raisin Brand will make it in the cart. You see where this is going.

I am not saying that it’s bad that Uncle Sam has a cart, which he gets to fill and for which you have to pay. As long as there is a government, he will have a cart. The question in my mind is how big is his cart, and should it be that big? With every new law, the size of Uncle Sam’s cart gets bigger and yours gets smaller. Your cart gets smaller for a few reasons. Every choice he gets to make is one less choice you get to make. The bigger his cart gets, the more of your money he has to take to fill it. If he crams a bunch of store brand cheddar cheese in his cart you will be less inclined to buy that Tillamook cheddar cheese you prefer. Also, because of regulation you might not be able to pick your favorite brand, the entire cheese section might be designated Uncle Sam shopping only (the FDA does this all the time with medicine that never makes it to market and you can't buy if it did.) The problem isn’t that Uncle Sam has a cart, it’s that his cart has gotten way too big and ours way too small.

The government isn’t choice, it’s force. The government doesn't innovate, control spending, increase quality, or reduce costs, just look at the Postal Service, Medicare, or Social Security. This experiment of government control has been done over and over again throughout Europe and it doesn't make things better. Competition in the free market is the only thing that does, with, of course, proper government oversight to ensure abuses are not taking place. The founding fathers would be shocked at the amount of government control we have allowed in America. There is one reason that America has prospered like no other nation in the history of the world, strict limits on government power. This allows the individual citizen to reach his or her fullest potential – it is as simple as that.

To explore this idea more, start here.