The Government is Too Big …and Too Small

There seems to be a single logical spectrum that runs beneath all of our political discourse. That is, whether you believe government is too big or too small. Freedom from obtrusive governmental interference is the logic behind the party alignment of outdoorsy libertarians and evangelical Christians. In a two-party system, you have to pick a party that either fights for a bigger or a smaller government. The problem is that our federal government is both too small and over-reaching.

A federal government is tasked with designing and implementing the systems that will most benefit the lives of its entire citizenry. Our government must set out to control a certain percentage of the overall wealth within its financial system and invest that money in the parts of societal progress that can never be serviced by capitalist enterprises. Helping the sick, preserving natural resources, and working towards social equality will never be profitable industries, but they are absolutely necessary for our society to persist. We cannot avoid tomorrow’s epidemic with research only being performed by industries that will have to recoup the cost of research and implementation for a vaccine. We will not make the transition to sustainable living in time to lessen the impacts of climate change with innovation borne solely out of profitability. We will not avoid a future of violent social stratification, punctuated always by gunfire, without systemic changes in our approach to administering justice and a dedication to purging our nation of deceitful financial institutions that perpetuate poverty through exploitative practices.

For these reasons we need a bigger government. We need a much bigger government that funds itself by reappropriating a percentage of the wealth that has stagnated at the top of our system. You only need to skim away from those who could never spend all their money in a lifetime anyway and they would be left with more than enough to ensure their grandchildren would never have to work a day in their lives. Isn’t that enough empowerment in a nation where people still starve to death? Really, about the only thing you could hope to spend billions of dollars on in a single lifetime in this country is politics.

Our government has the resource pool to address all of our dire needs and make virtually everyone’s life better. But it can’t, because too many people think our government is too big. They see it when they have to pay out money for a government that doesn’t represent them when they are barely scraping by as it is. They see it when they want to start a business and can’t do it because some code prevents it. They see it when a group of mostly straight white men get to decide whether or not a gay couple will get equal respect under our laws. People see that government is too big when they see news footage of those being killed with bullets our tax dollars bought. I would say to you that these are not symptoms of a government that is too big, but the result of one that is over-reaching.

We have fought to gain consensus great enough to design political systems that would address our common needs. It is a difficult task and is necessarily imprecise. Even gifted politicians are not fortunetellers. We are facing a wholly new set of policy demands in light of technological innovation, but we are also facing a landscape of immense opportunity. While we will need bigger government to fully address the humanitarian needs ignored by capitalism, but we have the opportunity to make our government more efficient and less obtrusive. We can have a better funded government that lowers taxes for virtually everyone. We can have a federal government that helps local governments implement technology to make their systems less cumbersome. We can use technology to drive voter engagement across all segments of society. This in conjunction with fairly drawn district maps will bring forth greater diversity in our political systems. We can make significant cuts and redefine priorities for the biggest line item in our national budget. It is possible to reel our government in while growing it to meet our needs. It cannot be simplified to big vs. small, Republican vs. Democrat because we will only continue in our debilitating gridlock. Rather than demanding a smaller government, call out for a better one.