Fiscal Responsibility?

[Updates below]

It's Democrats that now stand for fiscal responsibility.

-Markos Zuniga

If by "fiscal responsibility" Kos means "raising taxes rather than cutting spending," then sure. One route to balancing any budget is to increase the amount of money made. I can, for example, get another job or find ways to get my current salary increased.

Equally possible is a reduction in the amount of money spent. I could cut out some or all of my pub appearances and stop buying books and CDs.

But the government's budget isn't exactly analogous to an individual's. They share the essential characteristics: adding inputs and subtracting outputs. However, individuals earn their income by working for someone else. That income is rightly theirs because the working relationship was offered and accepted voluntarily.

Government's "revenue" doesn't work like that. It comes primarily from taxes and taxes are the result of coerced theft. Government, far from earning the money it spends, quite literally threatens society with jail and fines and property seizure if they don't fork over their "fair share." Millions of Americans choose each year to hand over their tax money because they feel they get something back for their pain.

The entire debate about fiscal responsibility has lost much of it's importance on me. I certainly agree it's better for a government to not run a deficit. I'd much rather have annual refunds of surplus tax money given back rather than a tsunami of red ink and the subsequent levels of government borrowing. Still, the debate rings hollow when you consider my point of view above: the argument is based on the assumptions that

• A percentage of my wealth isn't actually mine, but the state's.
  
• There exist people who are capable of handling that wealth without outrageous degrees of mismanagement, corruption, (further) theft, waste, and inefficiency.

Whom the power of the state goes to becomes irrelevant in my eyes. Unfortunately, Kos's totalitarian mindset doesn't assuage my fears at all.

UPDATE(6/3/2004 1:09pm)
Can't Cut the Budget; Politicians Will Eat Me!

UPDATE(6/18/2004 5:06pm)
Whom to Vote For?

UPDATE 1/18/2005 9:40am
Kos continues to amaze me.

UPDATED 4/19/2005 10:27am
The Democratic Party: The Party of Personal Liberty?, Meteor Blades Needs Economics, The Hypocrisy of Daily Kos, Economic Ignorance, For the Privatization of Freedom, Sacred Cows and Kossack Hypocrisy, and Kos Strikes Again

Posted by Drizzten at May 21, 2004 11:47 AM