Email This to a Friend
There’s No Such Thing as ‘Government Money’
Washington couldn't earn an honest dime, but it sure knows how to mooch.
“If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.”
— Confucius
What happens to a society whose public discourse has become such an utter perversion of truth that the people can no longer even grasp solid reality?
If Confucius was correct, then, dear readers, we must conclude that our America is in for some very, very, very, very tough times ahead.
For in present-day America, the language we use to describe our realities has come so far afield anything even remotely resembling objective truth that we are little more than walking, talking idiots. It has become nearly impossible to distinguish a truthful statement from an outright lie.
And, no, this sorry state of affairs did not begin with Bill Clinton’s contortions over the meaning of “is.” It did not even begin with Richard Nixon’s famous, full-broadcast TV declaration, “I am not a crook.”
Perhaps the most threatening venue of this language perversion is in the two words now being bandied about in these times of economic distress the way men once invoked the pagan gods of Rome.
Two words. Just two. Yet they may be the most dangerous two words ever uttered by a heretofore sane people.
Government money.
What’s paying for the ill-founded decisions of financial institutions now in meltdown mode? “Government money.”
What’s going to save the day for corporations that gave more pension and benefit promises than they could ever keep? “Government money.”
What’s going to solve the economic woes of every city, county, and state government that provided too many services with too little a tax base and is now facing bankruptcy? “Government money.”
What’s going to pay the bill for all the years of excessive greed and largess of corrupt politicians, government bureaucrats, and business executives? “Government money.”
What’s going to pay for every slacker and debt-skipping Tom, Dick, and Harry within these 50 United States? “Government money.”
What’s the deep well of bounty that never goes dry? “Government money.”
Just Google these two words, “government money,” and you’ll see more than 36,000,000 entries. “God” still gets 541,000,000, but “government money” is gaining fast.
Page 1 of 2 Next ->
Kyle-Anne Shiver is an independent journalist and a frequent contributor to American Thinker. She welcomes your comments at www.kyleanneshiver.com.
 |
 |
 |
Podcasts |  PJM Home |
Pajamas Media appreciates your comments that abide by the following guidelines:
1. Avoid profanities or foul language unless it is contained in a necessary quote or is relevant to the comment.
2. Stay on topic.
3. Disagree, but avoid ad hominem attacks.
4. Threats are treated seriously and reported to law enforcement.
5. Spam and advertising are not permitted in the comments area.
The clause regarding "hate speech" has been deleted because readers criticized it as being too loosely defined. We agreed.
These guidelines are very general and cannot cover every possible situation. Please don't assume that Pajamas Media management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment. We reserve the right to filter or delete comments or to deny posting privileges entirely at our discretion. If you feel your comment was filtered inappropriately, please email us at story@pajamasmedia.com.
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