Quotes About Government

Weighing benefits against costs is the way most people make decisions — and the way most businesses make decisions, if they want to stay in business. Only in government is any benefit, however small, considered to be worth any cost, however large.

No matter how much people on the left talk about compassion, they have no compassion for the taxpayers.

The fatal attraction of government is that it allows busybodies to impose decisions on others without paying any price themselves. That enables them to act as if there were no price, even when there are ruinous prices - paid by others.

Where recyling takes place only in response to political pressures and exhortations, it need not meet the test of being incrementally worth its incremental costs. Accordingly, studies of government-imposed recycling programs in the United States have shown that what they salvage is usually worth less than the cost of salvaging it.

The government is indeed an institution, but the market is nothing more than an option for each individual to chose among numerous existing institutions, or to fashion new arrangements suited to his own situation and taste.

The only way anyone can have a right to something that has to be produced is to force someone else to produce it for him. The more things are provided as rights, the less the recipients have to work and the more others have to carry their load.

The term "liberal" originally referred politically to those who wanted to liberate people—mainly from the oppressive power of government. That is what it still means in various European countries or in Australia and New Zealand. It is the American meaning that is unusual: People who want to increase the power of government, in order to accomplish various social goals.

What is called "planning" in political rhetoric is the government's suppression of other people's plans by superimposing on them a collective plan, created by third parties, armed with the power of government and exempted from paying the costs that these collective plans impose on others.

Freedom must be distinguished from democracy, with which it is often confused.

In the United States, government regulations are estimated to cost about $7,800 per employee in large businesses and about $10,600 per employee in small businesses.{662} Among other things, this suggests that the existence of numerous government regulations tends to give competitive advantages to big business, since there are apparently economies of scale in complying with these regulations.

Government "planning" is not an alternative to chaos. It is a pre-emption of other people's plans.

Although the word 'economy' may bring the term money to the minds of many, the truth is that for the whole of society money is nothing more than an artificial instrument that allows real things to be done, otherwise , the government could make us all rich simply by printing more bills. It is not money but the volume of goods and services that determines whether a country is poor or prosperous.

The difference is that one system involves each individual making choices for himself or herself, while the other system involves a small number of people making choices for millions of others.

Free-loading at emergency rooms—mandated by government—makes being uninsured a viable option.

The more highly competitive the market for labor and for the employer's products, the higher the cost paid for discrimination and consequently the less leeway the employer has for indulging his prejudices without risking his own profits and ultimately the financial survival of the business. On the other hand, enterprises not subject to the full stress of a competitive market—monopolies, non-profit enterprises, government agencies—have greater leeway.

All that the government can do in reality is change the tax rate. How much tax revenue that will produce depends on how people react.

Today, poverty in America means whatever government statisticians in Washington say it means.

Only after that political support is strong enough to cause fallacious ideas to become government policies and programs are the missing or ignored factors likely to lead to "unintended consequences," a phrase often heard in the wake of economic or social policy disasters.

The feeling that the government should "do something" has seldom been based on a comparison of what actually happens when government does and when it does not "do something.

The welfare state contributes to this disparity by (1) reducing the need for people at the bottom to earn income and (2) by penalizing their earning of income, since higher income leads to a reduction in eligibility for government benefits.

The next time you see a bum leaving drug needles in a park where children play or urinating in the street, you are seeing your tax dollars at work and the end result of the vision of the anointed.

A cynic once said that there is nothing more permanent than a temporary government policy.

In 1962, Democratic President John F. Kennedy, like both Democratic and Republican Presidents and Secretaries of the Treasury in earlier years, pointed out that "it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.

Political incentives are for government officials to supply public schools with things that are in demand from organized constituencies such as teachers' unions that want smaller classes, better facilities and job protection.