Yep, it’s time to dip into the old mailbag again. This time I’m not so much het up by the use and misuse of, in this case, the aphorisms of our past, so much as inspired to a more sober simile. But first, one of the hoary old aphorisms from the mildly offending mail:
1) In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress!
— John Adams
In passing I note the effort to whip up some anti-government sentiment. But perhaps this one is more apropos to what I have in mind:
4) I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle!
–Winston Churchill
The implication being that taxes are bad. But, as long time readers know, the counter-example is Kansas, where their storied tax-cut has lead to a shambles in the State budget, their Laffer Curve more of a Laffer Cliff.
Source: Warbird Daily/Ty Brown
Remains of an engine from a B-17 crash site.
But his led me to consider, in light of these thoughts, contributing my own poor simile.
A nation is like an aeroplane; the failure to properly fund and manage any part of it is like ripping a wing off. We all know what happens after that.
Mr. Churchill made many mistakes in his life, one of which was the Gallipoli Campaign, so his words should be subject to examination – not beatification. Government has its part to play, and without properly funding and managing it, the nation can spin out of control, environment destroyed, unethical unbound by the judiciary, and a prudent use of resources unknown. None of these are hypotheticals, but are grounded in the realities our forefathers knew so well – generally, because they had their faces ground into each one. Our task is to realize that it’s all about the bell curve, discovering the most propitious point on the taxation curve, where greater than or less than results in poorer results for society at large, as I wrote about here. Simply being anti-taxation, or anti-government, is childish.
And, having been there, I can say that.
