I've been accused on more than one occasion of being "far right" or "too far right" or similarly misconceived labels.  While my views are conservative - of course - I'm actually in the mainstream of people who understand how life really works and try to construct their views and policies logically in accordance with that understanding.  People who misconstrue our leanings are the kind of people, unfortunately in the majority in this and many other countries, who want to believe that somehow, government can work some kind of magic and produce free lunches.

Here's how life really works, folks.  Resources are finite, although, in a healthy, entrepreneurial economy, the pie does grow steadily.  The fact is, however, that, at any given moment, resources are limited, which means that when government takes money from the private sector, including private individuals, the private sector has less to spend.  One of first things one learns when studying economics is that economic systems are a series of trade offs, hence the well-known economists' saying, "There is no free lunch."

It's actually worse than that, though.  The private sector is accountable for the money it uses in its productive activities, because inefficient activities soon lose business to their competitors and go out of business.  Government has no such incentive to be efficient, and since civil servants are human beings, possessing the same faults as any other group of people, they're mostly not inclined to put much time or effort into ensuring they keep costs to a minimum and productivity to a maximum.  The net result of this is that tax dollars taken by government don't create nearly the prosperity that money invested in the private sector does.

None of this, true as it is, means that government has no role in the economy.  Clearly, public goods such as roadways need to be constructed by government activities (even though the government could do with some lessons in how to pay for them), and the constitution, proven to be the greatest governing document ever written, recognizes this.  But activities such as having one sector of the public pay for the living expenses of another group has nothing to do with public goods or the constitutional duties of the federal government.  One could even make the case that taxing one segment of the population to give money to another segment is nothing more than legalized theft.  I've also heard it called "Robin Hood economics," an apt appraisal if I've ever heard it.

But moral, economic, and constitutional considerations aside, the implications of rewarding unproductive - some would even say lazy, others would say misguided - behavior are extremely destructive for society as a whole.  When members of society who play by the rules and do well, by working hard and making good decisions, observe that other members of the same society getting by and in some cases even doing fairly well in spite of not working hard and making good decisions, it makes at least some of the productive members of society wonder if it's really worth it to put forth a maximum effort.  They probably won't quit their jobs and go on welfare, but they may decide that it's time to vote for politicians who will send some of the pork their way, and if taxes get too high at the margins, some of the higher-paid members of the workforce may decide to take long vacations at the end of the year.  Since these high-paid workers are the most critical and/or productive people we have, we're going to miss their contributions to our well-being.

I don't believe that most of the people at the lower end of the economic spectrum are there because they're lazy; I think most of them have made bad decisions - having a baby too young, marrying the wrong individual, or declining to get higher education or some other well-paying skill - that have put them at the bottom.  Now, they're suffering the consequences of those bad decisions.  We've already seen that if society decides to bail them out with tax dollars taken from society's most productive people, it may have a negative impact on the work ethic of the most productive sector.  But giving money to these folks also amounts to subsidizing bad decision-making, and any economist can tell you what happens when you subsidize something - you get more of it.  So the net effect of transferring wealth from people who earn it to people who don't has a doubly bad effect - it discourages productive people from being so productive and encourages less productive people to engage in decision making that tends to guarantee that they'll continue to be unproductive.

I believe the majority of American citizens really do understand what I've just said, but they simply don't want to consider the implications for our society if we make everyone who makes bad decisions live with the consequences of those decisions.  They'll delude themselves into thinking that these folks are just unlucky - "there but for the grace of God go I" - but the fact is that the number of truly unlucky people is fairly small, small enough that private charity can help them take care of their problems.  The biggest advantage of private charity is that its distributors can tell the difference between unlucky people and bad decision makers and help only people who really deserve it.  Government has no such discretion.  Legally, they must distribute welfare equitably, no matter what the cause of the need for it, which also attracts chiselers and cheats who take tax dollars they're not entitled to.  The best thing we can do for this relative handful of unlucky people, therefore, is recognize that sometimes, life isn't fair and  use private charity to try to get them back on their feet.

The scenario I've outlined above is a logical extension of the consequences of pursuing liberal policies of "caring" based on an understanding of human nature and how people react to situations in which they're faced with choices.  There's no doubt that if we pursue such policies, these situations will develop as I've outlined.  We already have ample evidence, for example, that when governments offer "free" medical insurance, the health care system is quickly overwhelmed, resulting in rationing, and the economy as a whole suffers.  It's therefore not a matter of being "far right" but rather simply being right, and while I understand that the majority of Americans currently don't want any part of it, we can only hope that events over the next few years remind enough of them why they finally turned their backs on liberal policies almost 30 years ago to usher in almost 28 years of prosperity.  In any case, I'll be there to remind them of what's at stake..