72 lines
3.4 KiB
Plaintext
72 lines
3.4 KiB
Plaintext
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BING-BING-BONG
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==============
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By M.L.Verb
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It's easy to get confused by government programs. Everything seems so
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convoluted.
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To avoid fighting a war, for instance, the government spends tons of money
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getting ready to fight a war. To fix a stinko economy, the government adopts
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policies that throw a lot of people out of work. And so forth.
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All of which should have prepared us for the president's new farm program. It
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follows the same creative, roundhouse, triple-bankshot approach that allowed the
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government to call rippping up neighborhoods "urban renewal."
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Here, as we get it, is the deal: The government doesn't want farmers to grow
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so much grain. So if farmers agree not to grow so much, the government will
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give them free grain.
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Did you follow the bouncing ball?
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The problem is there is too much grain on the market and that drives down the
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prices. So if farmers will only agree not to grow so much grain the government
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will compensate them by giving them back some of the surplus grain that the
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government took off their hands in the first place because they grew too much of
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it.
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Since the government always has to have a slick name for its programs, it has
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decided to call this one "Crop Swap."
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Incidentally, a pretty good rule of thumb is that the more clever-sounding the
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name of a government program, the worse it will work. Remember WIN buttons?
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Remember Model Cities? Remember "peace with honor?" Remember tax reform?
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Anyway, what are the farmers supposed to do with the grain they didn't grow
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but will end up with? Well, among their options, says the government, is to
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sell -- put it back on a market that already has too much grain.
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Look, you may just have to take my word for it -- as I have taken Mr.
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Reagan's word for it -- that this all makes sense.
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Whether it does or doesn't, it certainly reveals to us once again the
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go-North-to-get-South thought patterns that seem to run rampant -- and sometimes
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amok -- in the government.
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Everything in representative government seems to be done by indirection, by
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kicking something way over there on the theory that something way over here will
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react in a certain way. If, for instance, the government thinks it's a good
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idea for people to own their own homes, it doesn't go out and build homes and
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sell them to folks. That would be the direct approach. Instead, it lets
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home-buyers claim mortgage interest payments as a tax deduction.
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The government, in fact, uses the entire tax structure to get folks to do all
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kinds of things they normally might not -- like give to charity or put
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insulation in their attics (where hardly anyone ever goes anyway) or invest in
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failing businesses because they need the tax losses.
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Government economists are the ones most likely to play this bing-bing-bong,
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8-ball-in-the-corner-pocket game. They propose to raise government revenues by
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cutting taxes. Bing-bing-bong. They propose to cure inflation by raising the
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unemployment rate. Bing-bing-bong. And they propose to reduce the unemployment
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rate by curing inflation. Bong-bong-bing.
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The point of all this is that whenever you hear a government bong, you have to
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figure that it was preceded by at least two bings; and a bing by at least two
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bongs.
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Which, no doubt, is what we should have expected from a president who --
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remember? -- told us that a vote for John Anderson was a vote for Jimmy Carter.
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