Can Liberty Activists Accept Government Money?

From Campaign For Liberty:

Can Liberty Activists Accept Government Money?


By Michael Cummins

View all 5 articles by Michael Cummins

Published 10/07/10



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The Right of Recovery



When Americans showed up in droves to accept free money in last summer's 'Cash for Clunkers' program, President Obama pronounced the effort, "successful beyond anybody's imagination." The mainstream media echoed his sentiment, broadly labeling the program "wildly popular."





The president's declaration of success employed a sly and manipulative political marketing technique. Squeezed as they are by the government's financial demands and the poor economy, of course consumers were eager for financial relief. But their acceptance of the Cash for Clunkers benefits hardly constituted a stamp of political approval for the program itself, or, for that matter, evidence that the program was successful in its primary goal, which was (purportedly) to improve the nation's economic health.





But, lately, some economic libertarians appear to have themselves accepted the fallacious equation of participation in a government program with an endorsement of the program itself. They feel that it is not quite right -- and maybe even hypocritical -- for an individual to, for example, collect unemployment benefits while working politically to oppose such handouts.





A related phenomenon has emerged in the wider world of electoral politics. In a late 2009 blog post, Damon Root took Michele Bachmann to task for collecting agricultural subsidies despite her political advocacy of free-market principles. (Ms. Bachmann's family's farm in Wisconsin accepted over $250K in federal subsidies over an eleven-year period.)3





In Washington State, Ron Paul endorsee Clint Didier came under fire during the 2010 senatorial primary for having accepted farm subsidies. In response, he vowed to decline future subsidy opportunities. No doubt, Mr. Didier did the smart thing, from a political perspective. But it is quite disappointing that he felt that this pledge was necessary. In the same vein, it is a shame that a liberty activist might feel uneasy about collecting unemployment benefits, perhaps even to the point of accepting the financial hardship of total loss of income.





From the perspective of economic freedom, the funds designated for these handout programs are ill-gotten gains on the government's balance sheet. Neither the Constitution nor free-market principles permit the federal government to raise money for such purposes. But that does not mean that it is wrong for a person to accept part of the money's dispersal. This is because individual citizens are forced to take on the liabilities that the government imposes in the raising of the funds, whatever their opinion of how the money will be used. And if money is unjustly taken from someone, they have every right to take it back.





For most people laid off of work, their history of sustaining the tax burden alone justifies the collection of a few weeks or months of jobless benefits. Most have endured years of being undercompensated due to the levy of unemployment payroll taxes on their employers. It is not possible to calculate precisely how much a given person has contributed to the funding of a benefit program, especially since government borrowing and inflation habits impose deferred liabilities on the citizenry. But this indeterminacy does not nullify unemployed persons' general right of recovery.





Besides, the government has completely cornered the unemployment 'insurance' market. Workers do not even have the option of purchasing private unemployment insurance, as they would in a free market.





The subsidy checks that farm owners receive are generally much larger than those received by the unemployed. Farm subsidies distort the food production market in America, no matter how evenly they are distributed. But a farm owner who declines a subsidy actually intensifies the program's distorting effect, to his own disadvantage. It is unfair to ask a farmer to allow a competing farm to enjoy a unilateral supplement in operating capital, especially since the farmer himself has, as an American citizen, been forced to help fund the program from which the supplement is provided. Furthermore, his subsidy rejection might make matters worse, politically. If his competitors sense that their receipt of federal money gives them a relative leg-up within the food production market, rather than merely making them a little richer in absolute terms, they will likely become ever more vocal political supporters of the farm subsidy program.





But beyond issues of fairness, there is the sheer impracticality of keeping oneself pure in an increasingly socialized America. If and when the federal government completely monopolizes the health care system, will a good liberty activist be expected to avoid doctors? If a person politically opposes the now-almost-universal government backing of mortgages, is it hypocritical of him to buy a home on credit?





The more government crowds out the private sector, the less practicable a truly free-market way of life becomes. Liberty activists and politicians have a lot of work ahead of them, on the political front. To insist that they also endure the private hardships that come today with the deflection of all government help, while taking on the unavoidable liabilities of funding the government, is to unnecessarily -- and unfairly -- compound their burden.







Copyright © 2010 Michael Cummins