WHAT PEOPLE DON’T UNDERSTAND ABOUT GOVERNMENT

It takes a motor to make a vehicle go; it takes brakes to slow it down or bring it to a stop. Both are vitally necessary to the proper usage of a vehicle.

If one were to make an analogy to a vehicle, then government would be the brakes. And this is where people get confused if they think that government can can create jobs and make the economy go. Government is not the motor that drives the economy. It is the brakes that slow it down. The motor is the private, productive sector.

The government can only “create jobs” and make the economy go to the extent that it lets up on the brakes and allows the motor that is the private sector do the real job of making the economy go.

The policy of too many governments to make the economy go, like the current one in the US, is to apply more brake; that is, more taxes, more regulation, more government oversight and more government intervention. Simply put, more government. 

This is simply wrongheaded, if not insane. It must stem from the myth that government is responsible for everything and capable of doing everything.

Brakes have their functions, but doing everything is not one of them.