It is said that Andrew Carnegie was once asked how much money he needed to be satisfied. He simply replied “just one dollar more.” His insatiable spirit seems to be inherited by Minnesota’s current legislature, for whom a $2 billion budget surplus just isn’t enough to spend. For those who see no end to the amount of good they can do with other people’s money, there is no such thing as over taxing, regardless of the consequences of these taxes. If people lose jobs because businesses move to lower tax states, it is of course the evil corporation’s fault for looking out for the interests of their stockholders. Of course, the assumption made by many is that the money spent (those who most enjoy spending other people’s money like to call it investing it) is going to provide a benefit to society as a whole, and there is no doubt that this is true to a limited extent.
The key word in that last sentence was the word limited. Most people, even many Republicans and conservatives don’t realize that increasing funding to programs (like schools, which in this state apparently can’t ever have enough funding) does not increase effectiveness. This can be said for the medical system and every other area in which the government has a role in funding. These organizations quite literally are designed to be insatiable. Like cats in a Stephen King movie, once someone or some organization tastes the blood of government funding, it will stalk it for the rest of its life. Instead of existing to educate students, modern schools are designed to maximize funding. Why else would they need to spend millions of dollars on hiring superintendents? Of course, the point here is that effectiveness does not increase with funding levels. The law of diminishing returns is certainly in effect in any social program. The more money invested, the less efficient the program is.
The truth is that when we allow the government to do things for us, we lose control over how those things are done. It is insanity to accept government control of an industry and then complain of inefficiency or ineffectiveness. The only things government does, it does with gross inefficiency and the least possible effectiveness. Look at the tax code, or any legislation, for that matter. The redundancy and wordiness of these documents clearly attest that government can’t even write an efficient or effective sentence. Check out the website www.taxapalooza.com or watch the video on my profile to see just how two faced Minnesota Democrats are on the issue of taxes: when election time is nearing, they would never raise taxes, but as soon as they get elected they keep coming up with new ones to inflict on the Minnesota tax payer.
