No matter who is president, Idahoans will get what they don’t want: more government | Opinion
No matter how you vote, we’re just going to get more government.
Earlier this month the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget released an analysis of the economic plans promoted by both major-party candidates for president. The tax and spending plans from both Harris and Trump are policies that will lead to more deficit spending and an increasing national debt. Neither candidate is seeking to slow things down.
According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, government expenditures now account for 34% of the US economy. This is up from 30% in 2000 and only 20% at the close of World War II. Meanwhile, the Pew Research Center finds that American’s trust in the federal government has declined. Today, only 22% of the population “say they trust the government in Washington to do what is right just about always or most of the time.” This is down from 54% in 2000 and more than 70% in the early 1960s when the survey began.
It appears America wants less from the candidates, not more. Every politician at every level needs to consider a more limited role for government in the economy.
At the Center for the Study of Market Alternatives (CSMA) on the campus of Northwest Nazarene University (NNU), we study the role of government and the efficiency of its economic policies. The CSMA was founded in 1976 by Caldwell businessman Ralph Smeed, dedicated to the study of political, economic and religious liberty. Smeed partnered with professors from Boise State University to publish articles (many on these same pages) and hold forums on why government policymakers were choosing to intervene in different areas of our lives. Smeed and his fellow scholars critiqued policies that infringed on individuals’ right to freely exchange in the marketplace.
The CSMA at NNU continues to serve as an educational resource for the exploration and promotion of freedom and free markets. We study the consequences of not letting people decide for themselves how to sell, spend, and invest freely in markets.
As Smeed did in his day, CSMA scholars look to the founder of modern economic analysis, Adam Smith, for insights on the proper role of government. Smith, and the other so-called political economists of the 18th and early 19th centuries, demonstrated that specialization and markets make us better off, and that free trade makes nations grow and improves the standard of living for all people. It’s free markets, not government policies, that make a nation great.
Smith said, “Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice.” He demonstrated with logical reasoning and historical evidence that the purpose of government is simply to maintain justice and ensure people have secure possession of their property.
Smith further showed that when governments try to stop the natural course of individual choice, they ultimately resort to oppression and the stealing of private property to survive. Smith argued that a government official “who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would ... assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.”
It’s not surprising most Americans don’t trust government. The U.S. government has grown beyond its proper role.
It is surprising the presidential candidates are promising even more.