A while ago,I attended a panel discussion on the life of John Brandl, held at the University of Minnesota and cosponsored by the Minnesota Free Market Institute. Among the several points I could mention from that 90-minute event, I’ll stick with one.
During the discussion, one of the panelists said something like this: “We need to make government works for the people who need it the least, rather than say, Vance Opperman. Now I like Vance and all, but we need to focus government services on the poor.”
That’s a high-minded sentiment in some ways. But can it actually be implemented? Can we expand government with pure motives and pure results, giving an advantage to the poor and to nobody else? That, in my mind, is the idealized form of Minnesota socialism-lite. But can it ever be achieved? I don’t think so, which means that even on its own terms, liberalism fails.
Let’s start with the example given by the panelist. I’ve never met Vance Opperman and I don’t know much about him. But the web site OpenSecrets.org says he has given over $1 million to various political candidates and campaign committees (all Democrat, as far as I can tell) since 1993.
So who do you think will get his phone calls returned sooner? Opperman, or the putative beneficiary of one of government’s many social, health and welfare programs? Just who is getting the advantage from an expansive vision of government? I don’t know if Opperman has reaped financial benefits from his contributions, but at the least, he’s gotten to make his voice heard by those with official power, which is more than can be said for the average person, let alone the indigent, weak, or vulnerable.
Lest you think I’m picking on Opperman, I don’t begrudge him for using his wealth to express his views. Good for him. But his record does suggest that people of substantial means aren’t simply going to pay their (substantial) taxes and then say “OK, politicians. Whatever you want to do with my money is fine with me.”
So that’s one strike against the notion that government can be an altruistic enterprise, serving the least of these and nobody else. If big-time donors can get financial gain or at least enjoy their connections, the everyday people who populate government (and receive government grants) gain financially. Government is now the largest employer in the state of Minnesota. Government employees have enviable job security, generous health and pension plans, not to mention other benefits, so it’s not as though they’re humanitarians nobly sacrificing themselves for the good of mankind. No, they too benefit–sometimes rather handsomely–from expanding the role of government. Do their interests correspond with those of the poor? Given the failure of many programs (Medicaid, public schools and so forth) to adequately serve their alleged beneficiaries, the answer must be “not exactly.”
Talk about our need to have government to serve the poor, then, is largely that: talk. Among the middle-class and well-to-do, there’s a lot of self serving going on, making government not a tool of the weak, but of the powerful–and on the terms of much of what passes for support for government, unachievable.