TSA, Obamacare, Tax Dollars and The Perils of One Size Fits All

There has been a lot of focus recently on the TSA pat down of a six year old girl.

The TSA is one size fits all security. It is like every other government organization. There is no difference between a 6 year old girl and a muslim terrorist in the TSA’s eyes. Instead of focusing on the absurdity of the TSA policy, let’s instead focus on one size fits all.  In the rush for security after 9/11, the government didn’t think through all the different options to make us secure, while preserving our freedom.  Now that the program is in place, government is slow to change, and the odds are good that it won’t change at all.  Want to fly?  Suck it up and accept it.

Think about this conceptually.  Virtually every government program is one size fits all.  Government programs eliminate choice.   Obamacare eliminates all kinds of choices.   It takes the freedom of choice from you, the public, and delivers it to the government.  Even when the government offers you some options, the government is choosing those options for you.  Dodd-Frank is one size fits all financial regulation.  Supposedly designed to go after the big banks, instead the first thing it went after was debit cards!  Most government programs have all kinds of absurdities locked into them.

Government regulations also can eliminate choice.  In the health care debate because of state insurance regulations, the government drives up the cost of insurance by eliminating competition.  Live in New Jersey, you can’t buy insurance from Tennessee.  As a person or business, your choice is limited by the government. We have lists of countries that are the “most free”, but check out the list of states that are most free.  Ironically, the more liberal the state, the less freedom you enjoy.

Other programs are no different.  The USDA eliminates choices for farmers.  Programs and subsidies allow the government to have a strong hand in dictating to farmers what they can plant on private land.  Social Security takes money from every one of your paychecks and invests it for you.  You don’t have a choice in how that money is invested, and over time Social Security has the worst rate of return of any retirement investment.  Medicare and Medicaid eliminate choices for treatment, choices for doctors (some doctors elect not to accept it).  Every government program eliminates your freedom.

In many run of the mill things in our lives, the heavy hand of government has stepped in to decide for us.  We don’t even notice it.  Sometimes, in the case of stoplights and operational items, it simply makes life more efficient.  But in others, like the Cook County Forest Preserve District’s (CCFPD) policy on having to get a permit to conduct a simple picnic in a public park, it forces us to jump through hoops to engage in simple activities.  You pay to have a picnic on public land that your taxes already go to keep up.  Now, the CCFPD can choose who gets a permit when and where.  They can even choose not to issue the permit if they want.

Even the poor that supposedly are advantaged by government transfer payments have their freedom eliminated by those payments.  They are commanded by their government master where to live, what they can do, and where they go to school.  The government has a virtual hand in planning every inch of their lives.  The government doesn’t lift the poor out of poverty, the government warehouses them and mires them in generational poverty.  The poor are forced to bow down to their government master.

As you begin to sift through the budget debate, think about the broader concept of being free to choose, and your individual freedom.  Every dollar you send to the government in the form of a tax is like sending a dollar to your master.  Taxes are not simply revenues that fund the government, or transfers of wealth from the wealthy to the poor.  The more government programs we have, the less choices we will have.  This limits your freedom.  That’s not what our country was built on.

That photo above isn’t just a government worker doing their job.  That photo represents the heavy, unyielding hand of government.

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