Government Isn't the (Only) Problem

People are protesting against Wall Street. About time.

You’re supposed to hate government. You’re supposed to think government is the problem not the solution. You’re encouraged to look at government’s many faults and failings to support this dim view. But this philosophy’s proponents have an agenda. It is not about making government better. It is about getting government out of the way so that the richest people and corporations can control the economy and the people’s representatives have no say except to say “yes” to whatever the big money people want.

Remember this anti-democratic strain of politican thinking when you watch people at Tea Party rallies protesting government. Some of them presumably only mean to protest government excess and waste. Others, including their very-well-to-do backers, have a more extreme agenda. Some, at last, are loudly not buying it.

Significant protests have broken out against Wall Street. This marks a nice contrast to protests that focus on the evils of big government. The legislators are flawed too, but unlike those on Wall Street who privatize profit while socializing loss, the legislators are charged with the service of the whole country, even those who can’t afford to own shares.

Naturally, the legislators can do a poor job discharging that service. Yet we the people at least get to vote them in and out, something we can’t do with the corporate executives who, even after doing a lousy job, often get to leave with their personal finances in excellent shape, to put it mildly. They do so after helping put more workers out in the cold and, if the Republicans have their way, will get to keep their Bush-era tax cuts too.

Government at its best acts as a check against this kind of ridiculous inequity. At its worst it exacerbates the problem by cutting taxes for the richest people while helping big business crush labor, slashing budgets for programs that poorer Americans need, and doing virtually nothing about this prolonged economic malaise that its malign neglect of its regulatory responsibility helped bring about.

The government can’t do as much as those protesting from the left may wish. But it can at least limit the effects of growing economic inequality and insecurity. Some adhere to a view of government so negative and cynical that they would allow the big money interests to have free rein, whether that is their intention or not. That would be a mistake. Criticize government, to be sure, but also believe in government. The big money people will not regulate themselves any more than they will provide secure employment at decent wages or good pensions. Government can help in these areas, and should. That goes whether it's called socialism or - as I would prefer - common sense.