A new aristocracy is emerging with a privileged class of elected officials and a government bureaucracy that firmly seems to believe it can repeal the natural laws of economics. Since Emperor Nero debased the coin until it was worthless and the Roman Empire fell, political leaders have attempted such repeals. Germany tried in 1919, and the country collapsed.
We could be next.
Why have this elite brigade of elected officials and their army of bureaucrats continued to amass more and more control of our society -- printing and spending money we don't have while we the electorate sit on our hands hoping some of the crumbs will fall into our laps?
The elite classes of bureaucrats are all practicing Parkinson's Law, which says, "Work expands to fill available time." We now have agency piled upon agency with time on their hands looking for new programs or problems to be fixed. The result is a government we can no longer afford to support.
I heard Paul Harvey say more than 30 years ago: "Soon there will be more people riding in the wagon than there are pulling the wagon." The rising debt tells me we have now reached that tipping point and yet there is a long line of people waiting to climb into the wagon of prosperity delivered by our government.
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The princes and princesses of government service have long lost the notion of the civil servant who serves the American citizen. They now seem to believe they are the ones to be served. According to the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, the average wages and benefits for public employees now exceed the private sector. Do they regard the private-citizen class as the peasant class, ignorant and needing to be told what is best for them?
Are we now entering a new era of servitude, serving the privileged class as in the days of old?
And just who are the
modern-day peasants who now must serve the ruling class? They are anybody who works in the private sector, including the lowest-paid employee in the factory or mine and the president or owner of that factory or mine. They are the ones who pay all the taxes that keep the privileged class in power. We must understand that in the end there is only one taxpayer -- the private-sector worker who produces the wealth from the mines and fields of our nation; all others depend on that taxpayer.
As the bureaucracy continues to grow, it must continually be fed by a growing need for tax money extracted from the tax-paying, private-sector class. Sooner or later this monster will totally consume our liberty, and we will be back where we started about 233 years ago under the boot of a king, emperor or dictator. The government has become the beast that continues to grow and needs to be fed as the man-eating plant in the "Little House of Horrors," who kept saying, "Feed me, feed me," until the servant was devoured.
If we continue to ask more and more from our government, the government will demand from us more than what we have. The circle of bondage to liberty to abundance to complaisance back to bondage will be complete. We can hope to break this chain of bureaucracy bondage and the career politicians who have been in office forever -- or we will truly become the peasants in this new kingdom.
No matter how you look at it, or what your political loyalties are, this madness must come to an end -- or we, too, will be devoured.
Clyde Nelson of Duluth is president of the grass-roots Citizens Research Council.
