Our Threatened Freedom

Does Civil Government Cost Too Much

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: 85-169

Genre: Conversation

Track: 085

Dictation Name: Vol. G - Part 07 - Does Civil Government Cost Too Much

Location/Venue: Unknown

Year: 1980’s – 1990’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Does civil government cost too much? This is R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.

A number of years ago, Will Rogers remarked that it was a good thing that we are not getting all the government we are paying for, with that we can agree. On the other hand, who wants to pay for more government than he wants? We are getting more and more government from federal, state and local agencies, the price is getting higher and higher. According to the tax foundation, the cost of all these branches of civil government will exceed one thousand, seven trillion in 1981. This means the cost to every man woman and child is four thousand, six hundred and seventy-eight dollars, or, eighteen thousand, seven hundred and twelve dollars for a family of four. You may not pay this all in taxes today, but you will eventually, directly or indirectly. You may, if you’re on welfare, be getting 18,000 dollars in services, but even that is unlikely.

One thing is certain, and it is this. If you work for some agency of civil government, you are indeed ahead of the game. The real beneficiary of statist spending is civil government and nobody else on the whole. Moreover, at every level of civil government, the budget is prepared by the bureaucracy, and no bureaucracy is prone to cutting its own receipts. In spite of all the talk in early and mid-1981 about tax cut, there were none. All we saw were cuts in the requests for tax increases. With all those supposed tax cuts, we still had our highest budget yet.

We are in {?} paying more for civil government then we want or get. We are supporting a giant and imperial bureaucracy, which treats us either as the enemy, or as cows to be milked. The main beneficiaries of taxation are not the people, but the federal, state and local agencies of civil government. It is not the people on welfare who are getting rich on our tax money; it is the federal government and other levels of government.

When California enacted Proposition 13 and its mandatory tax cuts on property taxes, the politicians screamed that all kinds of necessary services, such as police and fire protection, would be cut. None of this happened. Instead people were less threatened by loss of housing because of heavy taxes. The economy improved and for most people the results were overwhelmingly good. Indeed, it became apparent that taxes could have been cut even further, with an improvement in the quality of life in California.

Instead of giving us better civil government, our high taxes are giving us oppressive rule, and they are being used to limit and threaten our freedom.

This had been R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.