This Is How Government Makes Us Poor — Made Simple

This Is How Government Makes Us Poor — Made Simple
This story is not copyright; it is public domain.

Scenario one. Johnny wants a new widget, so he hires Freddy to produce one and pays Freddy ten bucks for it. Freddy, now richer by ten, decides he wants his field hoed, so hires fourteen year old Eddie, and pays Eddie ten bucks. Eddie, now richer by ten, decides he wants a restaurant meal and goes to Frans Deli for the ten-buck eat-all-you-want pig-out-special. Fran, now richer by ten buck, etc. Going around, that ten bucks has already facilitated the creation of a big meal, a field being hoed, and one widget, and it is still going around. In this scenario, the people have money and a lot of goods and services.

Now put a little government into it. Freddy earned ten bucks from Johnny, but after tax has only eight left. His eight only gets part of his field hoed, and Eddie has to pay tax on his eight, leaving only six dollars to go to dinner with. Fran gets Eddie's six for the blue plate economy special, but after tax has only four left. In this scenario, produced is a small meal, part of a field being hoed and one widget--while the government is richer by six bucks.

And what does the government do with the money? It wastes it! You know it does. Anybody, any organization can do something more efficiently than the government ever could dream of.

Put a little more government into it and as the taxes go up the people produce less and less, while government wastes more and more.

Now, put government into it some more. To help the agrichemical industry, the government passes a regulation prohibiting youths under eighteen from hoeing fields, so child labor won't reduce the sale of herbicides. To help the fast food industry, government decreed that restaurants who offer cooked-to-order all-you-can-eat meals have to have separate seating areas for them, while blue plate specials have to be served on real, blue ceramic plates, much to the protest of the paper plate industry, but much desired by the ceramics industry, which had the right connections to lobby for their interests. The result--produced: one widget, Freddy (an organic farmer) has to hoe his own field or go out of business which makes him overworked, depressed and afraid. Under-age Eddie, unable to earn any money at all, goes criminal and steals part of Freddy's crop in the middle of the night and Fran has to charge so much more for her food that her independent business is destroyed, making her feel she would be better off with a MacDonalds franchise.