WHTT Enforce Responsibilities
Government power has grown to massively bloated size and scope over the last century. One reason for that cancerous growth is that government borrows funds (which become obligations that our children must repay) and then uses those funds to expand its projection of force into areas that no reasonable person would think that government should do. Much of the expansion has been in foreign affairs (and wars) that do not represent the interests the people of the USA. Another reason for the huge growth of government bureaucracy has been giveaway programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Those programs are bad in that they discourage Americans from saving what they will need for the future because government makes promises (that often cannot be kept) to take care of the future needs of everyone. This massively bloated and out of control government must be restored to a small size and a limited budget in which it is mandated to do only the things that are necessary to enforce responsibilities.
The responsibilities that I see as required for action by the government, and as appropriate for spending American’s money to accomplish, are summarized below:
- Provide for the national defense. This applies only to protecting the borders of the USA, and to preventing foreigners from harming USA residents within the USA.
- Operate and control the courts and police. Both are needed to prevent, if possible, or to punish criminal activity like fraud, corruption, theft, or attack. The courts are also needed to protect property rights which are essential in a free society.
- Protect the national economy. Americans developed an exceptional standard of living through hard work and innovation in the 1800s and 1900s. Unfortunately, American workers were blindsided by the government promoting “free trade” by allowing, and perhaps encouraging, USA businesses to move good paying jobs out of the USA and into foreign areas where people work for the equivalent of slave labor wages. Although that increased profits for the businesses, it decimated the job opportunities for workers in the USA to the point that the level of unemployment and debt among Americans has reached epidemic levels which threaten national security. “Free trade” is far from free when the competition is the foreign equivalent of slave labor that Americans cannot compete with economically. Instead of “free trade” that drives USA jobs into foreign nations, America must implement a policy of Fair Trade. Fair Trade would require that all the trade with any single nation must have a balance of payments that does not favor either nation. If an Asian nation wants to sell things to Americans, then we should welcome the trade, but we must also require that the same nation buy as much value in American products as they sell to the USA. The simple way to implement that form of Fair Trade is to impose tariffs on all products from that nation that are sufficient to balance the trade with that nation. As the foreign nation buys more products made in America, the balance of trade favoring the Asian nation will reduce, and so too will the tariffs applied to all the products that nation sells into the USA. One result will be an equitable Fair Trade which maximizes efficiency by encouraging nations to produce the products they can at lowest cost, but to purchase a comparable value of products that can be better made in the USA. Another result is that manufacturing jobs will be restored to the USA, so American workers will have a reasonable chance to find employment again. There would be a “negative” result in that many products now imported from foreign nations would rise significantly in price. Those higher prices would be a cost we willingly pay to avoid buying from the equivalent of slave labor and to enable American workers to regain the jobs that have been taken away from them.
- Ensure that parental responsibilities to children are fully met. Children have rights, but parents have responsibilities. The children cannot defend their rights, so we must demand that government protect children’s rights.
Most other activities now being done by the government could be accomplished just as well by non government entities which people could use (and pay for) or not use as they choose. The resulting much smaller government will maintain the security we want while providing much more space in which Americans can live in freedom once again.
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