Are You Freer Than Your Grandparents Were?
Make a list of the freedoms you cherish most. Did your grandparents also cherish them? Did they have more of them? You be the judge.
Marginal income tax rates.
Government revenues as a percentage of GDP.
Federal government revenues as a percentage of GDP.
There is much greater federal debt. This can be dispensed with by a great default . . . and will be. But in terms of taxes required to sustain interest payments, we do not feel any greater pain.
In terms of access to information not controlled by the federal government, there is no question: we are vastly freer.
In terms of international trade, we are far better off.
Consider the alternatives to Ma Bell.
Consider the alternatives to the Federal Communications Commission-regulated TV networks. Think: cable and the Internet.
Consider the alternatives to tax-funded schools. There are vastly more private schools. There is home schooling. The Khan Academy is free, K-12. The Ron Paul Curriculum offers a comprehensive alternative.
In terms of bureaucratic regulation, we are far worse off. The Federal Register is 80,000 pages a year. But hardly anyone cares. We do not feel the loss of liberty. That is why regulation grows.
Laws protecting privacy no longer protect us much. But in terms of cases successfully prosecuted by the federal government that rely on bureaucratic spying, I want to see the evidence. The government can find lots of needles in an exponentially growing number of haystacks. But they must expend resources to prosecute. The Patriot Act makes this legally possible. I see no evidence that the economic resources available to snoopers to prosecute in court have increased as a percentage of the federal budget. Big Brother can track what we are doing. There are a lot of us. We do an increasing amount of digital things. The federal snoopers are overwhelmed with data. Do you think they are more efficient at doing anything with this information? I want evidence.
Is the FBI more efficient than the DMV? I want proof.
I grew up in an FBI household. They were not all that efficient. Case loads were probably greater then than now. Gathering information in digital data banks is not the same as successfully prosecuting.
Our civil liberties are increasing. This is due to the economists' three-word question: "At what price?" The federal government has bought lots of surveillance equipment, which gets ever cheaper. It has not funded the enforcement arrangements to match this digital flood of information.
The free market is always way ahead of bureaucrats. The bureaucrats cannot keep up with innovation. Bureaucratic rules change slowly. Meanwhile, the cost of information in the private sector falls by 50% every 18 months or fewer. Moore's law defeats Parkinson's law. To think otherwise is to think like a Keynesian.
The free market adjusts to accelerating change. Accurate, useful information is mostly local and individual. The profit motive guides the use of information in the private sector. That was Hayek's insight in 1945: "The Use of Knowledge in Society."
Then there is war. Compare the death tolls of World War II (405,000), Korea (37,000), and Vietnam (58,000) with Afghanistan (2,200) and Iraq (4,500). There was a military draft until 1973. Today, the nation has an all-volunteer force.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon has not been able to win wars against turbaned people with cell phones that go ka-boom.
The most important government economic official on earth is Janet Yellen. Her eloquence guides markets. She is the establishment's backup. "After her, the deluge!" Enough said.
This is the federal government: