Gambling

There are all sorts of government restricted vices for which we can use this letter as a template:

Sirs,

At first, when I read your headline “States give prostitution a closer look” (Mar. 3) I thought you were reporting on yet another “campaign reform” bill in which politicians sold themselves to favored constituencies. Hardly news – just another “dog bites man” story. Then I realized it was just a story about allowing ordinary people to purchase sex from other ordinary people – now that’s a “man bites dog” story!

Signed,
XXX

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A

Time to revisit Milton.

Funny…Bill Bonner writes in Today's daily reckoning…

*** Obama has, of course, announced his $3.6 trillion budget…and all that goes with it. Including a $1.7 trillion deficit. But his estimates were based on a recovery in the last part of this year. That seems increasingly unlikely. Our guess: the deficit will go over $2 trillion.

Congress has hunched over the numbers. The solemn chicanery of federal budgeting is underway, in other words, as politicians pretend to weigh the merits of the spending plan…

Of course, they are spending other peoples' money…and none forgets it. The idea is not to reduce spending, and certainly not to return it to its rightful owners, but to make sure it goes to the groups most important for re-election. Besides so much of this money is borrowed from future generations…and foreigners…and who-knows-whom…it is like money from Heaven.

As any system of government matures, more and more people are able to get a purchase on it. It could be a tax break…a licensing requirement that keeps out competitors…a tariff…a subsidy…a job…free food or a welfare check. And as more and more people get something from the government, more and more have a stake in making sure the government stays in business. This phenomenon contributes to the stability of the institution in the short run…in the long run, it guarantees its failure. For each little hustle is a cost…like a leech on the back of a water buffalo. The animal may be strong and fit; but put enough leeches on him and he'll wither like a dried up grape.

Of course, after a while, the beast begins to stagger and people notice something is wrong. Then, the reformers come out…promising change. But change is just what people don't want and just what the system won't permit. There are too many leeches – and the leeches vote.

Obama's new budget is the biggest bag of leeches to come along since the Roosevelt Administration. We have not seen it in detail. But from what we've gathered from the press reports, it has something in it for almost every bloodsucker.

The raw numbers are breathtaking. Whereas the feds have taken about 21% of the nation's income in recent years, now they're going to take 28%. The deficit alone will equal more than 12% of total GDP.

Put the feds together with state and local hacks, altogether they will consume 40% of the nation's total output. Whoa…that's put it close to the levels of such free-market bastions as Zimbabwe and Algeria, both with 43% of spending done by government…and Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, where the government spends 41% of GDP.

By contrast, in France, that socialistic, bureaucrat-saturated country with the croissants, 53% of GDP is spent by the government. But wait…in France healthcare is a government industry and so is the passenger train system. In America, 17% of GDP is spent on healthcare. As for the passenger trains…forget it…in America, we scarcely have any. So, if you add the 17% spent on private healthcare to the 40% you actually get a total higher than that of France. Ooh la la…the age of big government is back!

Who pays?

Ah…that's an interesting subject in itself. Obama says he's going to soak the rich. But the rich are already pretty well marinated. Reagan's tax cuts freed them to earn more money – and pay more taxes. Now, the top 5% pays 60% of the costs of government. The bottom 40% pay no taxes at all. They get all government 'services'…which is to say their boondoggles…for free.

Oil Shlock,

You wrote:

"Obama says he's going to soak the rich."

If his Welfare for Billionaires is soaking them, I wish he'd soak me like that, too.