I admire Ronald Reagan because he walked the walk and talked the talk, which basically means he said the right things and did the right things.
Here’s another example of his wisdom.
If Reagan’s analysis sounds familiar, it may be because you’re a long-time reader and remember my 13th Theorem of Government.
The message of that theorem is that people theoretically like freebies from government.
But if they are asked whether they are willing to pay more taxes to finance a new program, they suddenly become much more frugal.
In other words, people are Bernie Sanders when asked if they want goodies financed by other people’s money, but they turn into Rand Paul when asked if they want handouts financed with their own money.
There’s even proof of this. I shared polling data back in 2016 showing that supporters of Bernie Sanders were almost completely unwilling to pay the taxes needed to finance his big-government agenda.
I also recommend the second-half of this video from the Fraser Institute, which reaches the same conclusion.
All of this sounds like good news. When asked to look at both costs (taxes) and benefits (handouts), people are not fans of big government.
However, I’ll close with two depressing political observations.
- People are susceptible to supporting big government if it’s financed by borrowing (i.e., their children will pay for it).
- People are susceptible to supporting big government if they think all the taxes will be imposed on other people (usually the rich).
Observation #1 is why I fear an eventual debt crisis. And “eventual” is now likely to be much sooner than I would have guessed only five years ago.
Observation #2 is very frustrating because there’s so much data showing that there are not enough rich people to finance European-sized government.
P.S. One positive observation is that people also tell pollsters they favor smaller government.
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Image credit: The U.S. National Archives | Public Domain.
