Get Ready To Pay -- The Pol Has A Plan

Politicians, embracing economic fallacies debunked generations ago, continue their crusade to plunder the public purse.

Florida's Gov. Charlie Crist is a pol with promise. Not a year in office, he aspires to the front of the rogues' gallery of con men and scalawags who comprise the elected class.

Voters enthrone them into seats from which they cannot be dislodged, then awake to find they have contracted the socialist democracy's disease of higher costs and suffocating taxes.

With Florida facing a budget shortfall of $1 billion, about 1.4 percent of its bloated budget, lawmakers are stumped at what to cut.

A whopping 1.4 percent reduction. What in the world can they do?

The governor applied his business acumen, previously unknown, and proposed that the state spend some of its reserves.

On what?

Why, on the tried and true scheme — to create jobs and stimulate the economy.

If a politician wanted to stimulate the economy, he could return tax money to taxpayers under the radical theory that citizens could stimulate the economy by spending their money themselves. But politicians think government can spend it better.

By that thinking, why not tax citizens 100 percent of their income? If the government can spend it better, then government should take it all. Thus could the governing parties reach the zenith of progressive economic enlightenment, the holy land of that dusty diatribe "The Communist Manifesto," the very latest in progressive thought, published in 1848 and debunked every day since, in theory and in practice.

The governor proposes to take money from Peter Citizen to build highways and schools and to give to first-time homebuyers to boost construction.

The Associated Press story said, "Construction increases employment, which fuels spending, which brings in state tax dollars, solving the state's financial crises, the thinking goes."

Thinking?

Florida is ground zero for the real estate bust.

We have enough unsold residences to house the state of New Jersey, and the governor wants to build more.

Never mind this pandering lunacy. Let's examine the economic fallacy behind it.

The governor confiscates $100 from Peter Citizen to give to Paul Carpenter to build a house, thus enabling a carpenter to spend another citizen's money and stimulate the economy.

Unfortunately for Peter Citizen, he cannot stimulate the economy himself with $100 because he has been robbed of it.

At best, robbing Peter to pay Paul has a stimulative effect on the economy of exactly zip. Either of them would have spent that $100.

But it is worse. Redistribution of income requires a third party: the bureaucrat. For the trouble of effecting this theft, the bureaucrat rakes $40 off the top for his salary, benefits, pension and Saturday night steak dinner with a California cabernet.

Peter loses $100 and Paul, the beneficiary of government benevolence, gets only $60.

Peter Citizen and Paul Carpenter produce goods and services for which there are demands in the market. The government bureaucrat produces nothing. He confiscates and redistributes other people's money.

Thus do redistribution schemes lower economic productivity, by diverting capital to non-production.

It gets worse still. When the politician robs Peter of $100, not only does Peter lose, but another party suffers.

That is the party who would have benefited from Peter's spending: the restaurateur, the auto dealer, the charity or the carpenter himself.

They would have got the whole $100, without the $40 political extortion fee.

There we have it — government economic stimulation. The only thing that gets stimulated is the size and power of government.

Most voters do not see economic fallacies. They cheer into office the hucksters who promote them. They get what they deserve from this line of thinking.

The rest of us get it, too.

Phil Lucas is executive editor of The News Herald in Panama City, Fla. Contact him at plucas@pcnh.com. To find out more about Lucas and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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