Have you noticed how many people seem to want “the government” to do more and bigger things “for us” – things like more welfare, more medical care, more unemployment benefits, more subsidies for crops, more bailouts for businesses, and more handouts of many kinds for almost everything else?
Yes, it might seem “nice” in some respects if government would just relieve us all from a lot of the stresses of life. Why, we sometimes ask, doesn’t government just “do more”?
And yet, have you noticed that most of the people who urge government to do more for them do not want government to tax them more, personally, to pay for it? There is not much eagerness to pay higher taxes to fund more benefits.
But where, after all, does the government get the money to do anything?
Two places. One is – yes, that bad word: taxes! Or the government borrows it – which means putting taxes, interest costs and associated burdens on our children.