There’s No Such Thing as ‘Government Money’
Washington couldn't earn an honest dime, but it sure knows how to mooch.
The heavenly neighborhoods of the United States’ founders and patriots are screaming like bloody banshees! Screaming down at the pack of mongrel idiots who’ve spawned this delusion and sold it to the current generation of American people.
I can hear them in Atlanta. Can you hear them in your town? If you can’t, then you need to get yourself a history book written before 1960 — and get it quickly.
Sit down. Take a deep breath. Brace yourself.
The words you’re hearing and reading everywhere you turn in America right now — “government money” — these words are meaningless. They are a cruel delusion. There is no such thing as “government money.”
Our government does not now have, nor has it ever had, a single penny of its own. Our government makes no goods. Our government provides no saleable service. Our government has never, ever, ever, ever produced a single commodity or penny of wealth for anyone under the sun.
Our government is nothing really but a mooching relative permanently taking up residence upon our living room couch, eating our food, drinking our beer, consuming our munchies, and leaving us nothing but its garbage.
Every now and then, our government rouses itself from mooch-dom enough to use our money to provide the services they owe — such as roads, firefighting, trash collection, protection from crime, etc. But sadly, even when actually providing a service they owe us, they still manage to over-mooch on our good graces, wasting our money frivolously and lining their own pockets with loot at the same time.
Truly, any people deluded into believing that “government money” is going to rescue them would be far better served by believing that Pegasus is going to fly in and offer up financial salvation on a silver platter. At least that delusion is somewhat fanciful and rather artistic.
My first encounter with this insidious delusion was working as a secretary in 1970 for the School of Civil Engineering at Georgia Tech. My husband was a football player there and my boss was a fanatical lover of football. It’s doubtful that my flimsy resume (no experience, no references, minimal typing skills) would have passed muster if my rather generous salary did not come from “government money.”
During my two-year tenure on the “government money” payroll, I learned the foundational error that now greatly accounts for the financial meltdown of America and a public debt of nearly a trillion dollars.
This ain’t rocket science, and one need not be named Friedman or Bernanke to get it.
Our civil engineering department had a yearly budget, paid for by “government money.” The object of the budget writers was to get more money in the coming year than they had gotten in the last year. To this end, whenever the fiscal year’s end approached, there was a mad dash — fully sanctioned by every university employee, from the president to the deans to the department heads to the lowliest secretary — to spend, spend, spend until not a single penny was left in the budget unspent.
Frivolous, wasteful, purely gluttonous spending on completely unnecessary things was the order of the day and every employee got quickly into the hang of it. Imagine an outlandishly high credit limit on a credit card for which the bills never arrive at one’s own door. No luxury was considered too luxurious in the mad dash to spend every penny of allocated “government money.” The theory was that if a budget wasn’t spent out, then the higher-up bureaucrats would cut next year’s budget instead of increasing it.
I never again worked on any government payroll, but I’ve known lots of others who have. I’ve heard tales from career government workers that have nearly made my head spin.
What’s been so carelessly sown must now be reaped. We are the only source of “government money.” The laugh’s on us.
And the medicine we’ll be forced to take will not be easily swallowed — no matter how much sugar we add to the spoon.
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Kyle-Anne Shiver is an independent journalist and a frequent contributor to American Thinker. She welcomes your comments at www.kyleanneshiver.com.
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24 Comments
1. Ann:The government doesn’t have any money, never did and never will. That’s why they keep taking ours.
Dec 6, 2008 - 5:04 am 2. Amphipolis:I thought about this as I heard snippets of the debate over the auto industry bailout. The Government can’t let their pensions fail. Does that mean that every corporate pension is now guaranteed by the government?
Not only is the government assumed to have infinite resources, it is also assumed to be immune to infinite risk.
Dec 6, 2008 - 7:01 am 3. Dr. Lumplevin:Last I looked, the dollar in my pocket said, “US Treasury Note,” so yes, there is “government money” – all of it is. And this is a good thing!
Since we have thankfully (and finally – our European cousins are light years ahead of us as usual in this) outgrown archaic concepts formerly known as “deities” – there is no longer any need to suppose that “rights” (No, I am NOT imitating the Mike Meyers character, Dr. Evil either) come from such disposed of “deity.” Where do our freedom and rights come from then? Government! Where else? Since government gives me the “right” to exist, why should I complain if they own all the money and give it and take it away as they see fit?
What the hell is a Ivy League Law degree for if not to know how to rule over the rest us intelligently?
Dec 6, 2008 - 7:30 am 4. Thinking Person:Dr. Lumplevin….I sure wish Obama would have taken his Ivy League Law degree out for a trial run before he gives it a go on the entire country. Not sure I’d agree with your logic. Are you supposing that basically we are all working under a feudal serf system? Help me understand your point.
Dec 6, 2008 - 9:30 am 5. G-Ma:I am waiting on my “government money”. Also my goverment paid healthcare,
Dec 6, 2008 - 9:51 am 6. Dr, Lumplevin:and my government paid mortgage (after I quite paying for three months) and
my government cheese. Obama promised!!
Thinking Person….ummmm…./sarc?
Dec 6, 2008 - 9:57 am 7. sam:Actually Kyle its worse than you fear. Your search for “God” in google was biased toward more results because it is a one word search.
Let’s make it two words…
Googling Jesus Christ actually gets less results than the ubiquitous Government Money.
Yours is a sad observation about the manner in which people thing about “the government” (ie, you + your neighboors).
Dec 6, 2008 - 10:04 am 8. kdman:lumplevin
I cannot tell. total sarcasm or total, blithering idiot. If the first, sorry. The second, then you and yours are the minions of the Hitlers, Stalins and such of the world.
Dec 6, 2008 - 10:06 am 9. Bob:“Truly, any people deluded into believing that ‘government money’ is going to rescue them would be far better served by believing that Pegasus is going to fly in and offer up financial salvation on a silver platter. At least that delusion is somewhat fanciful and rather artistic.” Cleaver, funny and oh so true, sounding like something from P.J. O’Rourke.
Dec 6, 2008 - 10:47 am 10. Jason S:Our education system, media and government have between them done a bang-up job of making sure that the masses are devoid of the most fundamental economic premises in existence. This is what has led people to accept such absurd concepts as “government money” and the myth that governments can somehow create prosperity.
I believe the root of the misunderstanding is that hardly anyone is aware that money is not wealth, that wealth consists of material “things,” not pieces of paper.
You can print all the money you like, it does not represent a single grain of wealth above and beyond the material value of the paper and the ink which is printed upon it. To create wealth, you need to create things which are of value to humans.
There are many symptoms of the belief in the fallacy that paper money equals wealth. One such symptom is the widespread belief that unions have been responsible for improving our standards of living throughout history, by fighting for higher wages.
At the root of this fallacy is the ignorance of the difference between nominal and real wages. Nominal wages are the absolute numerical quantity of money that we earn. Real wages are a measure of how much we can buy with our earnings.
All unions have ever done is to make worthless increases in nominal wages – and they’ve done it by force and blackmail. Since labor costs come from revenues and not profits, the only way in which unions have gained increases in nominal wage levels is by forcing a rise in consumer prices. You can raise nominal wage levels all you like – if the same raises are accompanied by price rises then our real wage levels, and hence our prosperity, stays the same.
The ONLY way to increase real wage levels is by producing more wealth. More generally, the only way to increase prosperity is to produce more wealth. This can only be done by increasing the productivity of the worker by way of technological improvements in the means of production. In fact this is the ONLY way in which general prosperity has risen in history. Unions have had absolutely nothing to do with this process whatsoever. Neither have governments.
Economic ignorance such as this lead to the kind of misconceptions in which people imagine “money” to be this naturally occurring resource which the government keeps locked in a giant vault somewhere, to which only politicians have the key. Their measure of value in a politician is the degree to which he or she “distributes” this money.
Of course all of this ignorance could be eradicated if we had an education system which wasn’t dominated the anticapitalist left. For the results of this education system, just go read the comments accompanying any article about economics on the Huffington Post.
Dec 6, 2008 - 10:54 am 11. Wayne:Any group that can, with a straight face, declare that a marginal tax reduction is a “giveaway to the rich” clearly believes that ALL of it is government money. You can’t give someone something that is already theirs, therefore letting people keep more of what they (think) they have earned is, to people of that mindset, a giveaway because the government already owns it.
Dec 6, 2008 - 2:36 pm 12. Marc Boyd:One of my early jobs after I got my degree in Engineering was for a pipeline company. Pipeline companys had been created by government decree to supposedly increase competition and reduce costs. What resulted was the tariffs charged for transporting gas, oil, or products was entirely based on accrued costs plus a fixed percentage extra. The result was that every employee was encouraged to spend as much as possible to drive the tariffs as high as possible.
Dec 6, 2008 - 4:02 pm 13. njcommuter:Actually, the more we try to sweeten it, the worse it will get.
Dec 6, 2008 - 5:38 pm 14. myth buster:Be not deceived- if we ever fall into the delusion that the government gives us our rights, then the government can take them away. Our rights come from one Man, and it isn’t the President; they come from Jesus Christ, who considers every human, regardless of ability or record, worth enough to die for.
Dec 6, 2008 - 5:59 pm 15. Jeff:#2 Amphipolis: Yes, pensions are guaranteed by the government – it’s just like FDIC in that way.
They’ve taken over quite a few.
Dec 6, 2008 - 9:09 pm 16. goy:Here in our State (and I’m sure in other States) we have the corollary to “government money”: State funds.
Recently I had the misfortune to be lectured by a Russian immigrant (now a naturalized U.S. Citizen) about the fact that America is presently no better off than post-Soviet Russia, and that this is due in large part to the fact that there are no social services.
My mouth dropped open, as I have the additional misfortune of hearing, first-hand, of numerous maddening situations in which social services are not only available, but regularly abused. The following is just one typical case in point among literally hundreds of which I’m aware:
First, we have a woman whose younger son has been placed in foster care and whose ex-husband was awarded custody of her older son due to her drug abuse, which led to a physical condition for which she now receives full SSDI support and … State funds. This includes a fully paid efficiency apartment (which runs some $1800/mo) and paid livery service (typically some $150+ per day) to take her wherever the State mandates she go in order to qualify for assistance. Her medical and psych care, as well as a boatload of pharmaceutical prescriptions, are all likewise paid 100% by… State funds.
The foster family caring for the younger son receives $2700/mo. in… State funds, for maintenance of the child. The woman has quit her job because if she works her wages will be garnished for child support. The woman’s eldest, an 18-year-old daughter, is pregnant and presently subsisting on 100% … State funds. The daughter is worried about what will happen when her child is born because she’ll no longer qualify for the assistance she’s getting after the birth. This is because the father of her child – a 38-year-old legal immigrant – lives with his young girlfriend and is supported by her… State funds. He refuses to work because his wages would be garnished for child support of three other children by three separate women.
During a recent discussion with this woman (the mother of the three), attempts were made to explain to her that State funds are actually taxpayer money. She was completely and utterly unable to comprehend or accept this, asserting to the point of a mild tantrum that she was being supported by… State funds, not by taxpayers.
I haven’t yet decided which of these makes me want to blow my own brains out most: the fact that I’m paying for so many cases like the one described above, the fact that incompetent State bureaucracy actually facilitates this social services abuse, the fact that so many people fail to understand the source of State funds, or my Russian friend’s myopia.
Dec 7, 2008 - 12:09 am 17. Ann:Goy, you have my respect and admiration that you (1) are still apparently expressing yourself in complete sentences and (2) were able to do so in this thread without resorting to verbal explosiions and all caps.
This kind of situation is beyond infuriating (and as you note, we all know of them in our own communities). And then, on top of it, we are routinely lectured for our lack of compassion and greed.
In my opinion, your comments clearly illustrate that the lack of compassion (for one’s own family) and greed is the main problem on the other end of this pipeline–at the trough.
Dec 7, 2008 - 4:58 am 18. Oolon_Colluphid_Dem:Last I looked government not received tax money for social programs but received tax money as payment for valuable services like national defense, police, fire departments, roads, medicare, traffic lights, much needed environmental protections, parks, education, the production of currency, the internet, and the television airwaves.
To say that all government money is stolen, rather than earned, is preposterous.
Dec 7, 2008 - 5:23 am 19. Oolon_Colluphid_Dem:correction: “not only”
Dec 7, 2008 - 5:23 am 20. Cybergeezer:Anyone paying attention knows that the messiah is actuating his master plan of “economic justice”. Redistributing the wealth as he promised. Jimmy Carter is looking better already.
Dec 7, 2008 - 7:43 am 21. Chris Cree:When I was in the military part of my job involved managing the squadron’s daily flight schedule so that all aircrew were at maximum readiness (kept current in various training qualifications) while spending exactly the amount of training dollars (which basically equaled jet fuel) budgeted.
I was actually reprimanded at one point because I achieved full readiness before all the training dollars were spent. They told me it was like the Price Is Right. I had to spend it all without going over or we wouldn’t get as much money next year.
The government budgeting system is built to penalize efficiency.
Dec 7, 2008 - 11:46 am 22. Will Becker:Yes it’s a serf system,and has been in the making since the thirty’s. Bigger and bigger government.
Dec 7, 2008 - 5:10 pm 23. goy:Hi Ann – my biggest concern is that the cases of which I’m personally aware are just the tip of the iceberg. I don’t live anywhere near the three urban centers in our State – these are people who live mostly in the suburbs. Although the State does pay for gang members in a city south of us to be bussed up to a local clinic weekly for drug abuse “relapse counseling” treatment.
These guys are a menace when present, and openly sell drugs in the lobby and out in front of the clinic with the full (fearful) knowledge of clinic staff, who are of course deathly afraid to report the activity. The State requires the clinic to “treat” these vermin in order to maintain their State-funded contracts, and will pay for the gang members to be bussed and “treated”, but won’t pay for security personnel to be hired by the clinic, so this situation goes on unchecked. The clinic’s upper management – who of course work in an office building 30 miles from the clinic itself – don’t seem to care as long as they’re paid on time by the State.
I shudder to think how much worse this is in the cities.
Knowing that entitlements and social services in California are far more comprehensive than here, it’s no mystery at all to me that they’re on the verge of bankruptcy – with the rest of the Republic close behind.
Chris Cree – likewise, State social services systems are built to keep people dependent upon them. Once supported by this system there are numerous mechanisms in place that will actively penalize a recipient for trying to become self-sufficient. The problem in large part is caused by a conflict of interests in the mental health care provider area and the bureaucracies responsible for managing the cases.
Clinics can actively prevent a person from going back to work by declaring them ‘unfit’ once they’re in the system. I personally know of at least three individuals who are prevented from earning their own living because State mandated psych evals keep coming back “unfit”. Conveniently, the clinic which controls their psych eval continues to receive payment for their ongoing treatment. One person, who was originally admitted after and attempted suicide, following a nasty divorce where he was literally taken for everything he owned (a business, home, cars, boat, custody of his toddlers), has been trapped in this situation for almost ten years! State funds have been supporting this individual 100% throughout that time. He is legally not allowed to work!
To add insult to injury, many clinics now have their own internal pharmacies. Think about that. The clinic controls who’s prescribed what and then bills the State and/or insurance companies for the retail cost of a drug they purchase wholesale. No formularies, of course. Patients are routinely prescribed between two and five SSRIs, Abilify, Ambien, Lunesta, high BP meds if they’re over 120/80, insulin treatments for (I sh!t you not) “pre-diabetes” if they’re “overweight” (who isn’t?). The list goes on, again, endlessly.
It is utter madness – we’re talking Hieronymus Bosch madness – created by bureaucracy and lack of accountability (but I repeat myself). The biggest part of the problem, and the reason no one thinks of doing anything about it, is that the entire system is seen by those in the system (i.e., those who receive their paycheck from the system OR who are supported by the system via entitlement) as paid for by… State funds, not taxpayers like me.
Dec 7, 2008 - 7:57 pm 24. Cybergeezer:The dollar bills I have in my pocket say “In God We Trust”. When I have a money problem, I talk to God about it.
Dec 8, 2008 - 6:29 pm