Too many people want “the government” to do too much for them.  They want “the government” to educate them all the way through college, to feed them, to house them, to ensure their access to medical care, to ensure they have a job, and to make sure they have money when they retire.  Most of those people do not understand the ramifications of this kind of thinking.

There are many other ways to meet your needs than having “the government” take care of you.

You can take care of your own needs – self reliance.  As long as there have been people, people have provided for themselves by growing their own food and maintaining their own shelter.  They traded resources with others.  For instance, if person A had more of one crop than he needed and person B had more of another crop than he needed, they could trade the surplus with each other.

You can mutually agree with others on a voluntary basis to provide services/resources that may not be needed regularly – insurance.

You can rely on the kindness of friends and family to meet a need you haven’t been able to meet on your own, and hopefully help them in return when they are in the same situation.

You can join a congregation where you can have your needs met and you can meet the needs of others.

You can seek help from charitable/service organizations, where people have volunteered to share their resources.

You can negotiate with a business (such as your employer or a supermarket) to get what you need in return for supply something the business needs.

You can even voluntarily join a local commune.

As you can see, there are many ways to meet your needs without getting “the government” involved.  And you should seek to get your needs met that way, instead of by “the government” because the government really isn’t some separate, magical entity that can conjure up resources out of thin air.  The government gets resources by taking them from YOU, and people just like you, because you ARE the government.  We all are.  We’ve elected fellow citizens who then hire more people to be our public servants and govern day to day.  But we pay them.  We fund their work.  All of their resources come from us.

So, in order for the government to do something for you, it has to take resources from you and other people like you in the first place.  In this case, let’s say the resource is money - which represents goods and services and thus can be traded for goods and services.  In order for you to receive a service from the government, you are taxed.  The money is then filtered though your local, state or Federal government, where overhead costs (staffing and the like) take a chunk out of it.  Sometimes the state will not directly meet your need.  It will send the money to your county or city government, who will then try to determine how to meet your needs.  Likewise, sometimes the Federal government will not directly meet your need, but will send the money to the state or local governments.  In each case, someone has to be paid to administer all of this, so less money is coming back to you.

Now, for sure, I’m discussing the average person who is paying an average amount of taxes and getting an average amount of government services.  Yes, if you are paying less money in taxes than the average person and/or getting more government assistance than the average person, you could be coming out ahead, because you are using the force of government to take money from people who have more than you and to give it to you, even though you may not ever meet those people or have anything to do with them.

Is that fair?
Is that efficient?
For most people, it is a loss.

You may look around at people who have more wealth than you and say “I want that, too”.  Guess what?  You can get it without using force to take it away from someone who already has it.  How?  You can generate your own wealth by using the resources you have, and you’d have more resources immediately if you were to keep more of what you pay in taxes.

Now, to be sure, the rich people would be keeping more of their own money, too.  After all, if someone is paying $10 million in taxes and you are paying $10,000 in taxes, and you each get to keep ten percent of that because of a tax cut, the rich person will be keeping $1 million and you will be keeping $1,000.  Just imagine if you took that $1,000 and invested in a new idea, and you worked hard to make that idea successful, and you ended up turning that $1,000 into $500,000 (it has happened before).  Would you like it if someone else came along and took that money away from you by force and gave it to someone else?  Would you be likely to repeat what you did before, given that your reward would be taken away?

When people keep more of their own money instead of having to pay higher taxes, that money doesn’t just disappear under a mattress.  Rich people often donate much of their wealth to charitable causes, or put their money to work by buying new things, hiring people and starting up businesses, stimulating the economy.  That means you will have more opportunities to acquire more, too, because someone needs to ready these goods and provide these services.  But the more that is used up in government overhead, the less money there is that can be used to develop new business, or be donated to people who are in need of help.

Will every need be met under such a system?  No, but is every need met under the “government does something” system?  No!  My point is that more needs will be met if people have more freedom with more of their own resources instead of having the government take their resources and try to figure out how to redistribute them, using up some of the resources in the process, and creating a class of people who just sit around waiting for the government to take care of them.

Government’s role is set forth in the Constitution.  It is supposed to be limited to what is in there.  Each branch is supposed to stick to what is in there for that branch.  Everything else is supposed to be up to the states, municipalities, and the people.  The "people" is YOU.

So the next time you catch yourself or someone else saying that “the government” should do something about a perceived problem, check to see if the government is specifically told to do something about it in the Constitution, and if it isn’t, then it isn’t up to the government.  It is up to YOU and other citizens to “do something”, and maybe the state you live in or the municipality you live in.

I maintain that it is better that YOU decide what to do with your own resources.  I prefer liberty, freedom, and personal choice over forced wealth redistribution and more government involvement in our daily lives.

Ask yourself and others: Should our government be doing this?  Can’t this be handled some other way?