Author: Anthony Labarga
This fall’s upcoming presidential election, as well as the budgetary disagreements which are erupting in advance, boils down to a fundamental disagreement over the future of the United States. Some political viewpoints will lead the country toward a centralized state that makes many of the decisions in the lives of its private citizens. Other perspectives imply a restrained government and a way of life for the average person which is full of liberty, but also unpredictable and hazardous. If this fork in the road is not recognized, and the national discourse continues to prefer Manichean narratives of good and evil, there will be no way to make an informed decision about what this country will become.
Discussing the fate of social welfare programs is one such moment of consideration. Curtailing programs like welfare, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security would put millions of people in jeopardy. However, the fact remains that the United States cannot go on borrowing forever, and these programs lack methods of paying for themselves. If the United States is to hold onto its myriad safety nets, concrete ways must be found to pay for them.
“Tax the rich!” however, is not a solution. According to the Congressional Budget Office and Forbes, appropriating the net worth of every billionaire in this country would not cover this year’s outlays for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The manner by which the government might appropriate wealth remains similarly uninvestigated. The wealth of the richest Americans is not held in piles of cash stored in bank vaults, but is rather mostly held as investments, stocks, debt instruments, etc. The wealth of the richest Americans is subsequently determined by assigning these various assets the value they would have if they were sold on the market. If the government appropriated all that wealth, there would be nobody to sell these assets to, and they would become nearly worthless. What seems like billions of dollars would actually be a much smaller sum if taxation was aimed at gathering large funding sources.
The current level of military spending is equally unsustainable. Although a small number of weapons and soldiers must remain for times of emergency, the current size of the military suggests that the United States anticipates an invasion seven days a week. The constant investment into myriad tools of destruction and the expansion of our military is almost certainly promoting a warlike public attitude, despite the fact that globalization of markets requires stability, cooperation and open-mindedness between nations. A large military also lacks any way to pay for itself, and the only way to afford it is to make it smaller.
The road to a big government is fraught with fiscal problems, but the road to small government is fraught with ethical dilemmas. Though the programs are unaffordable, Americans wove these safety nets and built a sprawling military because they deemed them necessary. Suppose the government were to scale all these programs down indiscriminately in an attempt to balance the budget. A curable illness would simply mean death for someone unable to afford insurance. Poverty rates would skyrocket for those past 65, who might previously have had access to Medicare. If the military were cut significantly and the country then attacked by surprise, it would be defenseless. Achieving control over federal spending invariably carries with it a human cost, a point both parties often fail to understand.
As budgets and candidates are debated this year, it should be noted that different opinions are driven by different priorities. It is very unlikely that a mainstream group consisting of millions of people have a prejudice that drives their beliefs. It is important to recognize that every approach to government comes with its own tradeoffs, and that they must be reckoned with and justified if the decision is made to implement them. In the case of governmental expansion, stable funding sources must be found and tested before irreversible programs are implemented. On the other end of the spectrum, before reducing the size of government, the fiscal soundness must outweigh the increased risk and uncertainty.
Anthony Labarga is a junior economics and mathematics double major. He can be reached at labarga@oxy.edu.
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