It is one of the unfortunate ironies coming out of the Biden administration that, with all the obsession about so-called equity, policies they are putting forth will only hurt the very low-income Americans they pretend to want to help.
The Biden administration is growing government at a record pace.
If what they want is opportunity for every American, government policy should aim to encourage economic growth. Bigger, more intrusive government achieves the opposite. It stifles economic growth.
The Biden administration submitted its first 10-year budget to Congress last month.
The budget projects average annual economic growth for 2023 through 2031, after they’re done with all the stimulus spending in 2021-22, of 1.9%.
What does 1.9% growth mean?
Economist John Cochrane, of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, notes that from 1950 to 2000, the U.S. economy grew at 3.5% per year. Average real income over that period grew from $16,000 per person to $50,000.
Suppose instead of 3.5%, growth over that period of time was 2%, asks Cochrane.
With average growth of 2% instead of 3.5%, a $16,000 income would have grown over the 50 years to $23,000 rather than $50,000.
In recent years, since 2000, average growth has been more sclerotic, in the range of 2%.
What’s the problem? Too much growth of government, says Cochrane.
There are different indices that measure government intrusiveness. Cochrane points to the Doing Business report from the World Bank, which measures the difficulty in starting and running a business.
Other more general measures of economic freedom — one from the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, Canada, another from the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. — look at size of government, regulation and taxation.
They all point in the same direction. More government means lower incomes and slower growth.
Per Glenn Hubbard, who headed the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, the average percent of the U.S. economy that government was taking in those 50 years after World War II, when growth was averaging 3.5%, was around 20%.
The average percent of the economy that government will take over the next 10 years, per Biden’s budget, is 24.5%. At least Biden’s economists are being honest to project anemic economic growth that will accompany this huge growth in government.
One of the major spending initiatives in Biden’s plans is what they are calling the American Families Plan, with a price tag of $1.8 trillion.
At a time when we have historic drops in our fertility rates and marriage rates, somehow the Biden administration thinks, contrary to experience, massive new government spending and entitlement programs will be a boost to the American family.
Hoover Institution’s John Cogan and Daniel Heil call this massive expansion of government entitlements “the largest expansion since Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society.”
“For the first time in U.S. history,” they note, “except possibly for the pandemic years 2020 and 2021, for which we don’t yet have data — more than half of working-age households would be on the entitlement rolls.”
With all our division and disagreements today, there is no disagreement about the shame that the vile institution of slavery was once present and legal in America. We all agree it is a blot.
We all also agree that racism is deplorable.
But the reason slavery and racism are terrible things is that every human being must live with dignity and in freedom.
How can we arrive to the conclusion that the remedy and antidote to slavery and racism is putting all Americans on the government plantation?
Not only is it immoral, but it doesn’t work. Government is supposed to be about protecting, not confiscating, our life, liberty and property.
If we want every child in America, of every background, to realize his or her potential, let’s strive for their dignity by making sure they grow up in a free country.
Star Parker is president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education and host of the weekly television show “Cure America with Star Parker.” To find out more about Star Parker and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
So, why did Joe Biden not campaign in 2020? Why was the Presidential election stolen? The Dems aren’t going to show their hand at campaign rallies and no sane person would vote for such colossal incompetence.
Since he has been in office, Biden has avoided Congress and has ruled by executive order. We have an individual who, along with his Party, have aligned themselves with an anti-America sentiment and have, perhaps, become indebted to a number of shadowy figures—both domestic and foreign—and it was time to pay up. Trump stood to upset an intricate scheme devised by some very hungry power brokers—both Globalists and Leftists—and they had everything in place and they weren’t going to let it go up in smoke.
America as a Nation—its values, its founding, its principles—is still the greatest on Earth, but her leadership has sank into a quicksand of depravity. The Democrat Party is willing to sacrifice it all for their self-enrichment and tyrannical power. No cost is too much nor any sacrifice too great to remove any and all roadblocks in their blinding quest to establish an imposing government.
THE left, for decades have done all they can to grow the govt, and WITH THEIR UNIONS, and rules they have put into place, its HARD AS HELL, to ever fire most of those ‘federal workers’..
The Marxist has found the perfect person, Symbol, to fill the office of the President. Joe Biden won’t ask any questions but will do what his Handlers tell him to do and he will be grateful that his Handlers put him in the presidency even though he’s not permitted to act on his oun. By the way, those that Joe Biden’s wife hasn’t interest in the Teachers Union, remember that she was a former member of The Teachers and belonged to “The Teachers Union.
The new hire,at a educational Institution is very helpful and friendly to those they work wi un till they become tenured, then, it’s like a light switch had been hit and the teacher turns into a different individual.
Liberty. I WOULDN’T be shocked at all, to find out she is STILL A high ranking official IN THAT teachers union.. I mean brainwashing Cabal!
Sleepy Joe uses undeliverable promises to put lead in his political lovemaking where the political product produced is just as unreliable, impotent and devoid of sanity as the son Hunter he produced. With guys like him trying to become a newly minted modern version of a Democrat social Founding Father, America needs to get ready for fondling over founding, from the guy who can’t even find where he put the keys to his car in the morning. Just more of his patriotic July 4th Declaration of Social Dependency, where the concept of independence becomes anathema.
He always planned to financially subjugate the lower income and middle income people from the start, so what is new.
Exactamundo.. HOW Best to ensure they stay serfs and vote for you. KEEP THEM IN economic stryfe.
“Cochrane points to the Doing Business report from the World Bank, which measures the difficulty in starting and running a business.”
I think all Californians agree that obtaining sufficient fresh water is a problem.
Recently, an Israeli inventor developed a desalination process that uses less than half as much energy as competing processes.
After unsuccessfully doing battle with seventeen California regulatory agencies, he folded up his tent and went home.
Government becomes more counterproductive every time Democrats get hold of anything.
A Quote seems to inform us about Big Government spending their. Helping assistance to The needy when this quote says differently, ” The most most fearsome words ever heard, Hi,I’m from government, And I’m here to help! . ” By the way, Joe Biden’s Wife use to be a Professor and was a Member of the ” Teachers Unnion…