The American Freedom Network

After the Tea Parties – The Pledge

    It’s all fine and well to protest our revolutionary descent into fascism under Bush and Obama, but it will avail little if the demand for government services does not correspondingly abate.  Everyone who wants their taxes cut, or at least not raised, should be able to point to their own willingness to give something up. 
     Government operates on supply and demand principles.  Adam Smith wrote about ‘political economy,’ not ‘economics.’  The Public Choice School, led by Nobel Laureate James Buchanan (The Calculus of Consent), demonstrated that public agencies and government employees operate according to principles of self-interest, just as do their private-sector counterparts.  What we commend in private enterprise – new products, more customers, growth – we condemn in government, with epithets like ‘justifying their existence.’  Few, indeed, are they who will go hungry to advance the common weal.  (Government has the added advantages of being able to offer new products paid for by tax dollars, and of being able to corece people into being ‘customers,’ as with speed traps.)
     The national debt is a pittance compared to the $95 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities that we have.  These liabilities are for earned benefits (veterans, civilian employee retirements) and programs (FDIC, Social Security, Medicaid, etc.).  without asking those who would suffer to participate, and without knowing if such action as I propose would be legal and binding, would others be ingterested in taking The Pledge to give up their entitlements?  It’s easy to point out spending that does not affect us, but will we give up what we can afford to, earned (like my VA benefits) or otherwise?  The Pledge could reduce demand, both for current spending, and for unfunded liabilities that will either become future spending, or will become casulties of what a friend (“the Shoemaker”) calls, “The Era of Broken Promises”?
     As a starting point for further discussion, I offer the above as a possible activity to follow the Tea Parties.  War protesters burned their draft cards;  will we burn Social Security cards?