A Message from the Ivory Tower
By Robert Ringer - Wednesday, November 23, 2011
A couple of days ago, Gennaro Bernile, a professor of finance at the University of Miami, handed down these words of wisdom: “The big debate is how do you reconcile shrinking the government with not killing the economy, because the government is a big chunk of the economy, and if you shrink the government, you shrink the economy.”
And you wonder why ivory-tower types have a reputation for being disconnected from the real world? Professor Bernile’s statement is just another version of the too-big-to-fail scam. Instead of calling it failing, he calls it shrinking — the government is simply too big to shrink.
You can just feel the big spenders in Washington chuckling while warning us, “You can’t cut us down to size, because the economic consequences would be too grave.” In other words, they can violate the Constitution, overspend, overtax, and overregulate us, then, when the predictable problems are upon us, we’re warned not to try to attack the cause of those problems because it would cause too much pain. Very clever … very, very clever.
What they don’t say — and, in fairness, most of them probably do not understand — is that if you cut the size of government with a meat-ax approach, the economy would explode overnight. Which, in turn, would dwarf whatever our current bloated version of government contributes to the economy.
Of course, in reality the government contributes nothing to the economy, because it creates nothing. It merely takes money from those who produce products and services that people want and uses the stolen loot to pay its employee-voters for administering programs that are, for the most part, either unwanted or, more important, unconstitutional.
As America continues to look more and more like Greece (or, worse, Oakland), the argument will cosmetically shift to, “You can’t cut the size of government, because the result will be bloody revolution.” Again, very cute.
My take is somewhat different. I believe — and have for more than thirty years — that revolution cannot be avoided. The reason is that politicians have made it clear that they will not stop spending. The only question is whether it will be a revolution that demands an end to big government or one that demands a still bigger government to take care of everyone’s needs.
I can’t wait to see which one it will be.
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Copyright © 2012 Robert Ringer
ROBERT RINGER is a New York Times #1 bestselling author and host of the highly acclaimed Liberty Education Interview Series, which features interviews with top political, economic, and social leaders. He has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, The Tonight Show, Today, The Dennis Miller Show, Good Morning America, The Lars Larson Show, ABC Nightline, and The Charlie Rose Show, and has been the subject of feature articles in such major publications as Time, People, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Barron's, and The New York Times.
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