{"id":16022,"date":"2021-05-26T11:17:01","date_gmt":"2021-05-26T15:17:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=16022"},"modified":"2021-05-26T11:17:01","modified_gmt":"2021-05-26T15:17:01","slug":"will-the-pandemic-promote-political-power-in-perpetuity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/26\/will-the-pandemic-promote-political-power-in-perpetuity\/","title":{"rendered":"Will the Pandemic Promote Political Power in Perpetuity?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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American Institute for Economic Research, May 26, 2021<\/h3>\n

Will the Pandemic Promote Political Power in Perpetui<\/a>ty?<\/h1>\n<\/header>\n
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\"JamesJames Bovard<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like we created another industry<\/a> in our state. The amount of money is staggering,\u201d Andrew Schaufele, director of Maryland\u2019s Bureau of Revenue Estimates, happily declared last week. The Biden stimulus plan is deluging governments across America with hundreds of billions of dollars of extra revenue that will allow politicians to stretch their power in ways that vex citizens long after the pandemic is over.<\/strong><\/p>\n

One year ago writing for AIER, I asked, \u201cWill the Political Class Be Held Liable For What They\u2019ve Done?<\/a>\u201d Lockdowns at that point had already destroyed more than ten million jobs without thwarting the virus \u2013 a debacle that \u201cshould be a permanent black mark against the political class and the experts who sanctified each and every sacrifice.\u201d No such luck. The article warned that \u201csovereign immunity\u2026 almost guarantees that no politician will face any personal liability for their shutdown dictates.\u201d<\/p>\n

The political class is coming out of the pandemic with far more power and prerogatives. Biden\u2019s stimulus windfalls for lockdown governors is like giving $100,000 bounties to drunk drivers who crashed their cars.<\/strong> Government employees have been the ultimate privileged class during Covid-19, collecting full paychecks almost everywhere while many of them stayed home and did little or no work.<\/p>\n

Maryland will receive between $55 billion to $60 billion in federal stimulus funds \u2013 equal to \u201c11 percent of the state\u2019s<\/a> entire economy.\u201d The Maryland legislature \u201ccelebrated\u201d by giving bonuses to government employees and by funding many new programs. Many other states have similarly used federal windfalls to launch new initiatives.<\/p>\n

Biden and his Democratic congressional allies are exploiting the pandemic to change the reality of work in America. Biden\u2019s stimulus package included a $300 per week bonus for unemployment compensation that means that anyone who earned less than $32,000 is better off on the dole than taking a job. The unemployment bonuses were provided even while many states had canceled any requirement for claimants to actively seek a job. Alexa Tapia, the unemployment insurance campaign coordinator at the National Employment Law Project, a worker advocacy group, derided work search requirements as \u201cjust another barrier being put to claimants, and it can be a very demoralizing barrier<\/a>.\u201d To assume that people are too fragile to look for a job sounds like a vast expansion of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Federal \u201cgenerosity\u201d to individuals who choose not to work is devastating small businesses unable to hire employees.<\/p>\n

Schools are some of the biggest beneficiaries of Biden\u2019s handout bonanza. Biden\u2019s Education Department is stocked with zealots who will likely exploit federal funding to dictate new curricula and mandate \u201cequity\u201d rules that could undermine local control of education. The same thing happened during the Obama administration when federal aid was used to bribe states into adapting \u201cCommon Core\u201d standards that undermine students\u2019 math competence.<\/p>\n

Teachers\u2019 unions used their clout to keep schools shut down long after it was clear that reopening was safe. The Chicago Teachers Union declared, \u201cThe push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism<\/a>, racism, and misogyny,\u201d while the president of the United Teachers of Los Angeles declared that reopening schools \u201cis a recipe for propagating structural racism.\u201d But many teachers are collecting windfall bonuses<\/a> thanks to the profusion of federal aid regardless of their unions blocking schoolhouse doors.<\/p>\n

Politicians are also exploiting the pandemic to seek to abolish fares for public transit. The Washington Post<\/em> noted last week, \u201cTransit systems for decades have been saddled with an obligation<\/a> to partly support themselves through chasing ridership to increase revenue.\u201d \u201cChasing ridership\u201d is a euphemism for persuading people to voluntarily pay for a service. Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) is pushing the Freedom to Move Act for federal subsidies to end local transit fares. But this is simply \u201cFreedom to Move At Other People\u2019s Expense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Free fares could quickly become a Trojan horse. Turning riders from customers into beggars would remove some of the last incentives to provide reliable service<\/strong>. If public transit is made \u201cfree,\u201d then the only people that transit officials will need to please are federal bureaucrats, members of Congress, and transit union bosses. Transit systems won\u2019t need to worry about keeping travelers safe; a survey of lapsed New York subway riders found that \u201cnearly 90%\u2026 said crime and harassment<\/a> were important factors in determining whether they return to the system.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Making subway rides free would also distract attention from the miserable performance of public transit systems that were losing ridership long before the pandemic. When the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority received a huge boost in subsidies from the Maryland and Virginia state governments a few years ago, it promptly responded by shutting down many subway stations for seemingly eternal maintenance since it no longer needed fare revenue. Many of the same activists who want to make public transit zero cost for users also want to sharply curtail<\/a> the use of private transit: citizens who refuse to abandon their cars for \u201cfree\u201d transit could be next on the enemies list.<\/p>\n

The Biden administration is sparing no expense to make parents grateful to Washington. Beginning July 15, the feds will begin delivering up to $300 per child to Americans\u2019 bank accounts and mailboxes. The Washington Post<\/em> noted that the administration \u201cestimates 88 percent<\/a> of all American children are slated to receive new monthly payments \u2014 with no action required.\u201d Congress enacted a temporary program scheduled to end after December. But a temporary handout shifts the argument: instead of debating whether a program that deluges non-needy families with cash, the question will be whether needy children can be thrown into the street by cutting off aid. The Post<\/em> noted that the handouts could \u201chave significant political consequences as the White House seeks to reshape the U.S. economy.\u201d Actually, this is an attempt to vastly change the relationship of the federal government to the American people.<\/p>\n

Throughout history, rulers have used cash to buy submission. \u201cMoney is my most important ammunition<\/a> in this war,\u201d said Gen. David Petraeus, the supreme U.S. commander in Iraq. Presidents and members of Congress have long relied on \u201cmoney as a weapon system\u201d to buy votes or undermine resistance to Washington.<\/p>\n

Government restrictions almost always follow government handouts. In 1942, the Supreme Court ruled, \u201cIt is hardly lack of due process for the government to regulate that which it subsidizes.\u201d Because the Roosevelt administration had decided to drive up wheat prices, the Secretary of Agriculture acquired veto power over the use of every acre of cropland<\/a> in the nation. In 1991, in a case involving federal subsidies, Chief Justice William Rehnquist declared that \u201cwhen the Government appropriates public funds to establish a program, it is entitled to define the limits of that program.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every subsidy creates a power vacuum that will eventually be filled by bureaucratic or political ambition. The more things are financed by subsidies, the more activities become dependent on bureaucratic approval and political manipulation. T<\/strong>o depend on government subsidies means either to be currently restricted \u2013 or to be only one Federal Register<\/em> notice away from being restricted. Subsidies are the modern method of humane conquest: slow political coups d\u2019etat over one swath of American life after another. The only way to assume that subsidies are compatible with individual liberty is to assume that politicians and bureaucrats do not like power.<\/p>\n

Biden\u2019s profusion of new handouts put a halo over his tax hike proposals and, perhaps more importantly, his plans to unleash the IRS<\/a> to be far more aggressive against Americans. The more politicians promise to give some people, the more they entitle themselves to seize from everyone else.<\/strong> French philosopher Bertrand de Jouvenal wrote, \u201cRedistribution is in effect far less a redistribution of free income from the richer to the poorer, than a redistribution of power<\/a> from the individual to the state.\u201d \u201cReciprocal plunder,\u201d in economist Frederic Bastiat\u2019s phrase, becomes the soul of political life.<\/p>\n

Post-pandemic policies are far more perilous because few Americans yet recognize how badly their rulers failed them. Instead, \u201ctemporary\u201d programs will be extended and further divide Americans into two classes\u2014those who work for a living and those who vote for a living. The more people who view government as their personal savior, the easier it becomes for politicians to demagogue to ever greater power.<\/strong> But as economist Warren Nutter warned, \u201cThe more that government takes, the less likely that democracy will survive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

American Institute for Economic Research, May 26, 2021 Will the Pandemic Promote Political Power in Perpetuity? James Bovard \u201cIt\u2019s like we created another industry in our state. The amount of money is staggering,\u201d Andrew Schaufele, director of Maryland\u2019s Bureau of Revenue Estimates, happily declared last week. The Biden stimulus plan is deluging governments across America […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16024,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2853,2124,2849,2851,2848,2316,2852,2855,45,808,203,2313,2847,2850,2856,148,506,24,252,2854,833],"class_list":["post-16022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bertrand-de-jouvenal","tag-biden","tag-chicago-teachers-union","tag-children-allowance","tag-common-core","tag-covid-19","tag-david-petraeus","tag-frederic-bastiat","tag-freedom","tag-handouts","tag-maryland","tag-pandemic","tag-power","tag-public-transit","tag-redistribution","tag-schools","tag-subsidies","tag-supreme-court","tag-tyranny","tag-warren-nutter","tag-washington-post"],"yoast_head":"\nWill the Pandemic Promote Political Power in Perpetuity? - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Politicians seized far more power during the pandemic and will use spending to further subjugate American citizens\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/26\/will-the-pandemic-promote-political-power-in-perpetuity\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Will the Pandemic Promote Political Power in Perpetuity? 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16022"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16025,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16022\/revisions\/16025"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}