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Show At Some Point Government Spending Would Lead America Into Socialism When Herbert Hoover celebrated bis 75th birthday laat month he made a speech at a Stanford university ceremony cere-mony honoring him. It waa a powerful peech in which the former president warned the nation of the danger that we will alip into socialism by the back door because of excessive government spending. There were some points in that speech which merit repetition. Mr. Hoover said truly that no nation can remain static and survive. "But dynamic progress," he warned, "is not made with dynamite. And that dynamite dyna-mite today ia the geometrical increase in the spending of our governments both federal, state, municipal and county." He called attention to the great increase in governmental spending in the last 20 years. Where all varieties of government 20 years ago cost the average family less than $200 year, the tint today Is 130.' The fuimer president said the average working citizen has to work 11 days a year to pay for obligations for past wars, 24 days a year for defense and the cold war, 12 days for other federal government govern-ment expenses, 14 days for state and local expenditures. And new spending proposals being considered would add another 20 days of working time. If these spending schemes are adopted it would mean a total of 81 out of approximately approxi-mately 233 working days a year for taxes. We wouldn't have to go much further along that road to reach the point where a citizen would throw up his hands in disgust snd accept full slavery for government as preferable to such crushing partial slavery. Mr. Hoover clearly brought out that excessive governmental spending first comes out of the savings of the people, and when savings Surplus is taken, the spending must be taken out of their hides. "There's no room for this spending spend-ing and taxes," he said, "except to cut the standard of living of most of pur people." ' How many people who have trouble making ends meet today blame low wagea or high prices or bad luck, when the real trouble ia the tax greedy hand of government which takea so much out of their earnings before they ever Ret a chance to meet living expenses. You can't apend the dollar which is taken out of your pay envelope for taxes, nor do you get any food value In return for the tax pennies which are hidden in the pries of every item you buy in the grocery store. Everyone will agree that there ia a limit to how far we can increase the tax burden without destroying our free democracy. If the government took all of what the Individual earned, obviously we would" becurng completely cieatuies of government That would be complete socialism. But there must be some point down the line, when the government taxes less than all the Individual earns but still a major part, when individual economic independence is lost It may be two-thirds of earnings, or half, or even less. But we can be sure that somewhere there is a limit at some point government spending and- taxing would take us into socialism by the back door. Mr. Hoover thinks we are close to that point There is some reason to believe he may be correct because certainly cer-tainly the tax burden Is at a level where it is seriously crippling individual Initiative Initia-tive and enterprise. And the loas of Individual Initiative and enterprise is a long, long step toward the destruction of our dynamic, free, democratic society. |