Tag: More Liberty – Less Government

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Liberty: Death by A Thousand Cuts

George Noga

State and local governments routinely assault our liberty in countless ways.

Liberty: Death by A Thousand Cuts

By: George Noga – May 29, 2022

MLLG usually focuses on issues of national scope; however, Americans are more directly affected by local and state government laws, taxes, regulations and actions. Throughout the USA, local governments assault our liberty in thousands of ways; this post describes some of the most egregious. Fortunately, the Institute for Justice (IJ), a public interest law group, ferociously defends liberty in many of the following cases.

Legal Marijuana: Pre-legalization, marijuana (1) enriched criminal cartels; (2) created powerful economic incentives for distributors; (3) spawned turf wars resulting in murder and mayhem; (4) corrupted police, judges and entire governments; and (5) made drug dealers into role models. The purpose of legalization was to end all these horrors as it did with alcohol. Instead, local governments, particularly in Colorado and California, imposed such high taxes and onerous regulations on legal growers and sellers that the illegal trade still is profitable. To top it off the craziness, the Biden Administration is proposing a 163-page bill imposing an added federal 25% tax and voluminous new federal regulations. Now we have the worst of both worlds.

Occupational licenses; barriers to entry: The impetus for licensing comes from industry groups with vested interests in preventing competition. California prohibits anyone without a high school diploma from attending vocational school unless they pass a government exam. Sale of home baked goods require commercial grade kitchens. A Texas town refused to issue a license to a one-man business without adding 28 parking spaces. To become a barber in 20 large cities requires over a year of training and compliance with costly regulations. Any barber who wants to open a shop must navigate a mind-numbing array of zoning, permits, taxes, inspections and licenses. All together, this costs over $3,000, requires 16 forms and over 55 steps before opening.

Asset forfeiture and policing for profit: Police in many states confiscate cash from citizens during routine traffic stops without charging them with a crime. They use this money for their own benefit, giving them a nefarious motive. In Philadelphia alone, there have been 30,000 such cases. In one Alabama town, police pull over residents for spurious reasons, handcuff the drivers, search the cars and have them towed and impounded. Owners are forced to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars to recover their cars. As always, most victims are from disadvantaged communities. Shakedowns just like this take place every day in cities and towns across America.

More Examples of Death by a Thousand Cuts

There are many other instances where state and local governments stifle liberty. Due to space constraints, we can only summarize the most egregious ones herein.

Guardianship laws: In many states older people often are declared incapacitated with little or no due process. They lose the right to drive, vote, marry, hire an attorney, travel, consent to treatment and even choose with whom to talk or visit. Young people are free to make poor life choices without consequence; why not older people?

Food trucks: Many locales enact restrictions that make it impossible to operate food trucks, denying owners the right to earn a living.

Pandemic issues: States and cities imposed unconstitutional, arbitrary and capricious emergency edicts. It was okay for liquor stores to be open but not churches. Children lost one or two years of learning. Many lives were needlessly uprooted or harmed.

Property rights: Local governments disrespect property rights. They prohibit small homes by mandating minimum size, ban working from home, outlaw front yard vegetable gardens and ban businesses from placing signage in their own windows.

Fourth Amendment: Unreasonable and illegal searches, seizures and surveillance take place routinely in many jurisdictions. In Tennessee they enter private property to install cameras to search for hunting violations. In Florida, police harass families because a computer algorithm predicted a family member may commit a crime in the future.

School choice: Governments beholding to teacher unions restrict charter schools, teach CRT, gender dysphoria, the 1619 project and indoctrinate students in a state religion that directly conflicts with parental values. They oppose choice in every way possible.

We conclude with the story of Jaime, who has been a model citizen his entire adult life. He was hired for his dream job of an ocean rescue lifeguard, which required EMT certification, 200 hours of coursework and an exam. After meeting all of the requirements and passing the exam (on his first attempt), Jaime was denied a license because of a youthful non-violent drug conviction 20 years ago. His appeal required mounds of documents and time-consuming bureaucracy. Jaime’s story has a happy ending only because IJ took his case and ultimately prevailed. However, there are thousands and thousands of other cases like Jaime’s out there that cry out for justice.

The state and local government abuses of power described herein are but the tip of the iceberg. There is one, and only one, way to remedy this government lust for more power and that is – you guessed it – more liberty and less government.

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“California Screaming” leads off our next post which covers multiple topics.

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More Liberty Less Government – mllg@cfl.rr.com – www.mllg.us
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Questions From Readers

George Noga

My facts have been challenged only twice in over 600 posts.

Questions From Readers

By: George Noga – March 20, 2022

I receive many questions and comments from readers for which I am grateful – even for the ones that are critical. I try to respond to all reader questions and you may email me at mllg@cfl.rr.com. Certain questions are asked frequently and may be of interest to all readers. In this post I respond to three of the questions I am asked most often.

Question: How do you stay informed? In addition to a lifetime of heavy duty reading, I read the Wall Street Journal thoroughly each day. I read the front page of each section, particularly the front section. I scan the What’s News column (front page far left) to see what other articles to read. I spend most of my time on the 3 Opinion pages. I watch the Journal Editorial Report on Fox News Saturdays at 3:00 PM. Contrary to what you may have heard, the WSJ’s news coverage leans to the left; however, the opinion pages are conservative and provide an excellent forum for reliable fact and opinion.

I also read Reason and Forbes magazines, Cato Institute publications and Imprimis, published by Hillsdale College. I subscribe to Praeger University videos and to daily emails from the Mises Institute and LewRockwell.com. I peruse these sources and read whatever is of interest. I read several books each year – exclusively non fiction; many of the books are selected based on reviews published on the WSJ opinion pages.

Question: How do you perform research? At any given time I have a list of around 30 topics I want to blog about and I have a file for each topic. As I go about my daily reading and see an idea or fact that fits one of these topics, I make a copy and put it in the file. My prior 600 postings also provide a wealth of data. When I begin drafting a post, I already have much of the data needed. I then independently check each fact, usually on the internet. There have been occasions when I have backed away from publishing a post when the facts were not 100% supportive. In all my years of blogging and with many thousands of readers, I have had facts challenged only twice.

Question: What are your political bona fides? I was hyperactive in politics in college; I held several of the highest offices in student government and would have had a very good shot at being elected Student Body President if I had remained in college for another year. While in grad school, I worked in a gubernatorial campaign that defied all odds to unseat an incumbent governor. During that campaign I worked closely with top national political operatives. I was in line to receive a subcabinet appointment in the Nixon Administration but Watergate caused the Senate to suspend confirmations.

I was offered gubernatorial appointments but declined most of them; I did serve on the Industrial Development Authority but declined reappointment to a second term. I wrote an op-ed column for a local newspaper and headed up a major arts organization. I served on the advisory board of the James Madison Institute (JMI), the leading state think tank. I was honored by JMI as a “JMI Angel” for my work on school choice in Florida. I cofounded and cochaired the Center-Right Coalition of Central Florida.

I started the school choice movement in Florida in 1994. The organization I started and ran for 10 years, (now called Step Up For Students) today provides scholarships to over 100,000 children from low income families at a cost of $700 million a year. I also served on the national board that began voucher programs in over 100 US cities. My post of 7/25/21 about the history of school choice in Florida is on our website.

If you are interested in learning more about More Liberty – Less Government, our mission statement or me, please visit our website at: www.mll.us. Click on the ribbon at the top of the page where it says “About MLLG & Author”. There also are hundreds of past postings – most of them indexed. I just updated the information on the website and even if you previously have been on the website, you may want to browse it again.

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Next on March 27th: the good, the bad and the ugly of the pandemic.

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More Liberty Less Government – mllg@cfl.rr.com – www.mllg.us

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Into the Eye of the Debt Hurricane

George Noga

Update on the Crisis of Spending, Debt and Deficits
By: George Noga – September 20, 2014

     By some metrics the debt storm has abated. Compared to earlier deficit projections published herein, the USA is slightly better off, with the difference due entirely to the massive Obama tax increases. The deficit this FY ending September 30 is $500 billion, equal to 3% of GDP; meanwhile GDP is increasing around 2%, meaning the deficit is growing only slightly faster than the economy, a marked improvement. However, great damage already has been done; moreover, we are merely in the eye of the debt hurricane – it may appear sunnier at the moment, but the deficit storm will soon resume with even more ferocity and we will all be blown away.

The Seen and the Unseen

     The US economy already has sustained massive body blows. The reason we don’t clearly see the damage is due to the difference between the seen and unseen – or, more to the point, the difference between the reported and unreported.

  • In past recoveries following major recessions, the US economy has grown by an average of 5% for the subsequent 5 years; this results in a compound growth rate of 27.6%. Instead, we have experienced 2% compound growth yielding only 10.4%. The difference of 17.2% is the growth deficit. Simply, the average American today is 17% worse off than he/she should be; but we don’t see what should be; we only see what is. Nevertheless, the reality is that every American has been impoverished by 17% just during the past 5 years.
  • We see the increase in federal tax revenue and the concomitant reduction in the deficit. Unseen are the massive tax hikes that produced the revenue. Individual tax brackets increased with the top rate going to 39.6 % – a 13% increase. Investment related taxes were savaged with capital gains rates going from 15% to 23.8% (59% increase) and dividends from 15% to 43.4% (289% increase). Medicare taxes increased 62% and the upper limit was removed. There was a new surtax on investments of 3.8% and the death tax went from zero to 40%. New individual and employer Obamacare taxes took effect along with scores of other Obama tax hikes. The 35% corporate tax rate (world’s highest) is responsible for shifting jobs and investment abroad and businesses keeping $2 trillion overseas. The unseen effects of these massive tax increases will hobble the economy until abnegated.
  • We can see the reduction in the official unemployment rate; what is unseen is the jobs disaster that is America today. There are 12 million out of work, 12 million on disability and nearly 50 million (one in 5 households) in breadlines – err, on food stamps. The labor force participation rate hit a 35 year low. All (net) jobs being created are part time; there are legions of 29ers and 49ers. The true rate of unemployment is 15%, not the 6.2% reported.
  • We see Social Security and Medicare meeting their current obligations but we do not see the demographic time bomb looming for both programs. There is nothing on earth as certain as demographics; 77 million more boomers will retire (10,000 every day) and begin Social Security and Medicare. Spending on both these programs will grow by 8% compounded – doubling every 9 years. Within 10 years we will spend our entire budget on entitlements and interest on the debt leaving nothing left over for defense or for the rest of the government.
  • We see interest rates on federal debt hovering around record lows costing only $225 billion currently. We blissfully do not see what the interest would cost given a return to average interest rates, i.e. interest cost would increase $500 billion per year to $725 billion, or triple today’s cost. And that’s the rosy scenario. This is a no-win situation: keep rates low and the economy is grotesquely distorted and savings and investment are savaged or raise rates where they should be and the budget deficit goes thermonuclear.
  • We see government regulation exploding, uncertainty rampant and the scepter of Obamacare hanging over all of us like the sword of Damocles. We do not see the stultifying effects of all these on job creation and the economy.

     Looking at the gestalt paints a funereal picture. Average Americans already are 17% poorer over the last 5 years than they would have been in a normal economic recovery – and they will continue to get relatively poorer and poorer each year without any end in sight. The tax and regulatory burden, particularly on investment, has skyrocketed, halting new investment and job creation. Behind the “official” 6.2% unemployment rate lays a dystopian jobs nightmare; we are turning into a country of part time workers. We are reaping a demographic whirlwind still in its early stage. We are living on the razor’s edge regarding interest rates; we have a Hobson’s choice: ballooning interest costs or maintaining negative real interest rates. Finally, all this exists within a milieu of hyper-regulation, vast uncertainty and, of course, Obamacare.

Current CBO Projections for Spending, Debt and the Deficit

     Recently (July) the CBO released its latest forecast. The CBO alternate baseline forecast (its most realistic) assumed the average middle class family’s tax burden doubles over the coming generation; it also assumed no more recessions, wars, terrorist attacks, natural disasters and that interest rates remain low perpetually. Despite these horrific (taxes doubling) and grossly unrealistic assumptions, the results are disastrous. The deficit increases by over $100 trillion and the CBO stops forecasting because it can’t conceive of a functioning economy under those circumstances. And all this, dear readers, is based on an uber-optimistic forecast; the reality is much, much worse!

     We have been grazing on the fiscal commons for a long time; the pasture is about to give out and the spring lambs are doomed to a life of quiet desperation. We can muddle through for a few – perhaps several – years with temporizing and half measures. Soon enough time will run out and the ineluctable tipping point (Minsky Moment) will be reached. It will get ugly for an extended period, i.e. a lost generation., Eventually, when we emerge from the rubble, we may get it right again – only because there are no other choices – and America will again enjoy more liberty and less government!