There's a connection between government's growth and our growing American tendency to not tell the truth about how things really are. Of course, the minimum wage discussion underway now is one good example.
Others are government efforts at "saving the middle class" and fixing our public schools, including growing student loans with no correspsonding improvement in educational outcomes or jobs. Still others are the horrible financial condition of the U.S. Postal Service and many of our state and local governments' public pension underfunding. Then there's our acknowledged $16.5 trillion in national debt and another roughly $100 trillion in unfunded entitlements for our growing population of oldsters. We could go on but you get the message.
So why isn't the seeking and telling of the truth a hot commodity throughout America these days?
Notable & Quotable suggests the answer:\
"Ron Bailey writing at reason.com, Feb. 1:
For decades, an increasingly large percentage of our economic output has been moved from the positive-sum game of markets and private property to the zero-sum game of government and politics. According to the Office of Management and Budget, total government spending in the U.S. rose from 17 percent of GDP in 1948 to 35 percent in 2010. As public choice theory predicts, the more resources government bureaucracies control, the more lobbyists, crony capitalists, and entitlement clients will appear seeking to divert handouts into their pockets. Such would-be beneficiaries need experts to construct the facts that they use to justify to political patrons and agency bureaucrats why they deserve a share of the government's largesse. To the extent that we live in a "post-truth era," it is in good measure because it pays so well to dissemble, exaggerate, and spin for government grants and favors."
Summing Up
Spin is in.
OPM is in.
MOM is out.
All three weaken our society.
Whatever ever happened to seeking and telling the truth setting us free?
Thanks. Bob.
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