Name ONE TIME a government program accomplished its goal

[Wake-up!]

by Joe Jarvis via The Daily Bell

Wake-up!'s comments in [italics]

Illinois has the worst credit rating of any state. It has $8 billion in outstanding bills and a $3.2 billion deficit in just next year's budget. But the worst part is the $250 billion they need to pay their state pensions... When you or I have debt, the first thing we have to do is tighten the belt. We save money and cut expenses.

But imagine if instead you could just waltz up to your boss and demand a raise. And not because you're doing more work, or because you hit a home-run with last quarter's goals... just because you got yourself into debt. If Illinois was an employee, they would have been fired by now. They haven't hit any of their goals and continuously fail to deliver on the promises they have made.

But the taxpayers will once again face tax increases in order to pay for more government, more promises, and more mismanaged policy. The Governor recently proposed a graduated income tax to raise rates on the highest earners. This will bring in more revenue they say... when have they been wrong before?

Meanwhile, 137,000 net residents have left the state since 2013. Somehow I'm guessing their estimates for revenue are going to be just as wrong as their pension and budgeting calculations.

Never do governments even remotely consider that the solution is to spend less.

And never does anyone ask, what about the outcome? Why would more money solve these problems when the government has spent so much money already, and still failed to execute on their promises?

It's the same in business. We just went through a decade of low-interest rates, which meant easy money for stupid investments. People sunk money into terrible ideas that never got executed, and destroyed value. The difference is it destroyed value for a very select group of people: investors and business owners. And those people made the choice to put their own money into those businesses. [They were not coerced as taxpayers are.]

Raising the money is the easy part. Show me ONE TIME a government program did what it said it was going to do. The war on drugs, Great Society to end poverty, the war on crime, the war on terrorism...

And yet the newest crop of socialist politicians say right up front that results don't matter. When it came to fighting for a cleaner environment, [Socialist] Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez said:

"The power is in the person who is trying, regardless of the success. If you're trying, you've got all the power, you're driving the agenda... Like, I just introduced Green New Deal... and it's creating all this conversation, why? Because no one else has even tried... Some people are like, oh it's unrealistic. Oh it's vague. Oh, it doesn't address this little minute thing. I'm like, you try. You do it. Cause you're not. So until you do it, I'm the boss, how about that?"

The Green New Deal is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Forget executing on the actual plan, AOC could not even introduce the plan without botching it. But she's trying... so she thinks that is enough.

Even though trying to stop the flow of drugs into the United States increased the flow of drugs into the USA, and caused the opioid epidemic. Even though trying to rid the middle east of terrorists created more terrorists, and killed countless innocent civilians. Centuries of slavery couldn't destroy the black family, but two decades of government welfare successfully did.

AOC even cites the creation of the EPA as a win from older generations... even though the EPA routinely botches cleanups, spilling millions of tons of toxic water into formerly pristine waterways... but hey, at least they are trying.


Meanwhile, she is absolutely wrong about her critics not doing anything. Studies have found that individuals skeptical of human-caused climate change are actually more environmentally friendly compared to people who believe the government should step in to solve climate issues.


Debt is another example of government failure. Debt can create value if the government spent the money right. That is, after all, the point of debt. Not to finance run-of-the-mill functions of government. But since 2008 the government debt has grown by $12 trillion while the Gross Domestic Product has increased by only $7 trillion.

This isn't even an ideological argument. I am saying that even if you think the government should do all these things, it simply has not accomplished a single goal. And every failure is followed by calls for more money and more government power that surely, this time, will allow them to execute on what they have promised. How these politicians intend to pay for their social programs is actually beside the point. Even when they have the money to pay for their programs, they can't execute.

[The point of government is not to foster successful programs. Government has no intention of ending poverty or drug importation, or war. The point of government is to have unending programs as talking points to raise money, raise it from special interest groups through donations and bribes, and steal it from taxpayers. A suceessful program is the outer dialog that government wants us to hear. The inner dialog is the wealth government creates for itself. And at that, government is very successful.]