OCR Text |
Show i1-- SPENDING YOUR MONEY If YOU want a thing well done, do it yourself. Like many another old saw, that is a substantial truth with exceptions. ex-ceptions. You would not attempt to fill your own teeth, for instance. in-stance. But you probably believe you can spend your own money more wisely than some stranger. Government was established under our Constitution to do a limited lim-ited number of things which individuals can not do for themselves. Among these things is "to provide for'the common defense." No government seems to do this very well, otherwise the world would not become entangled in the bloody business of war. Another task necessarily assigned to government is the maintenance mainte-nance of order and protection of property. Government does not accomplish this very well. The frequency of crime, the costliness and delay of court procedure, are constant evidence that the task is badly handled. Since government performs so poorly the basic jobs for which ' it is created, why should it be expected to do well a multiplicity of other things? Would it not be better to hold to the original American doctrine? Once the American believed that the individual should bear most of his own responsibilities. Some he delegated to the township town-ship or county, where his servants could be watched closely and held to account. A few he assigned to the state, and vigorously he resisted resist-ed the assumption by Federal government of powers which he wanted want-ed to be kept closer under his eye. Now we have drifted to a point where the individual surrenders surren-ders one clay's earnings or more out of every five four out of five if his earnings are high for government to spend. Government simply a number of men, nearly all strangers to our personal acquaintance, ac-quaintance, with no special wisdom. As post-war plan number one, hadn't Americans better start to whittle government down to proportion, so that we can personally decide how we choose to spend more of our money? |