Big Old Government

Big government doesn't work.  It's that simple.  Also, it's immoral to obligate generations of individuals to operate within and contribute to a system rife with massive policy delusions, particularly a system they had little to no part in creating.

Of course, that's using my definition of morality... policy junkies value things exactly the other way round.

Who's right?

Watching some random FDR-era YoutTube videos brings some insights on the basis for "New Deal" policies but more importantly, you can feel the antiquity.

Roosevelt hardly carried himself in a way that would please the modern eye... the affect of his speech and his mannerisms... watching him conjures images more reminiscent of Oliver Hardy than of a modern presidential figure.

But that's not his fault of course... one can't be expected to operate, down to gesture and tone, in a manner that would hold up over generations... even the avant-garde aren't avant-garde for long!

But therein lays the dilemma...

Big government policies and philosophies, like the antiquated vaudeville style huckster politicians of 1930s, never hold up over time.

Social Security has “benefited” millions from its inception in 1930s, but after it goes cash-flow negative (... purportedly in 2017) and then deep in debt from then on, one has to wonder how assessment’s of this massive and antiquated policy will fare in the minds of the households facing its crushing burden in the 2030s?

The policies that resulted in the creation of Fannie Mae and the twelve federal home loan banks must have seemed innovative in 1938, a move ushering in an unprecedented “public-private” partnership in the effort to sponsor home ownership in the U.S. but as these policies reached their 7th decade, the nation’s housing market reflected, very dramatically, their massive stimulation of mal-investment and all the attendant "unintended" consequences… Consequences that were brought to bear on virtually every household by 2008.

Would the electorate present at the time of the adoption of compulsory unemployment insurance ever have anticipated that future politicians would abandon this program’s simple, actuarially driven approach in favor of one that provides essentially a never-ending stipend to recipients?

How about Food Stamps? Would the electorate of the “Great Society” ever have supported the expansion of this program had they know that in a mere 50 years some 1/6th of the population, nearly 50 million individuals, would be drawing on its “benefits” at a cost of over over $6 billion per month?