BY RUSSELL TURNER
LESSONS THE HARD WAY
We modern humans like to think that we are so technologically advanced that no one else in the past has had to deal with the problems that we are facing today. While I do admit that we have grown intellectually, we still face the same problems that our ancestors did. I believe that there have been some very advanced cultures on this planet in the distant past but they all fell prey to the same kind of problems that we are facing today. The Roman Empire, for example, was highly developed but their society totally collapsed and it was from their own doing. Engineering and technology are not capable of preventing a culture from self-destructing. Advanced technology can make a society rich, but sadly we can become a victim of our own success.
Sadly our common sense and logic have not kept up with our advancement in science. The biggest problem that we are facing today is our inability to manage our financial affairs. All we have to do is to look at the national debt our country is amassing; here in Oklahoma we too are facing our own problems in our state budget. We have allowed our spending and the growth of government to grow to the point were our citizens cannot afford it. My parents had a saying about any person who would spend their money without using good judgment; they would say that his money must have been burning a hole in his pocket. Too many of our leaders see all of the tax revenues coming in and they make the assumption that the money will continue to come in at an ever-increasing volume even though history tells a much different story.
Over 600 years ago the Muslim philosopher Ibn Khaldun made the observation, “It should be known that at the beginning of the dynasty, taxation yields a large revenue from small assessments. At the end of the dynasty, taxation yields a small revenue for large assessments.” It seems ironic that the cause of our economic problems has been caused by the ever-increasing growth and scope of government, even with the realization of that fact the first impulse of people in government is to increase taxes and fees with the hope it will somehow get us out of the current dilemma.
The mess we have gotten ourselves into will not be easy to fix, the people that rely upon the government for a job or benefits will not be willing to give it up. We must find ways to transition our people from the government sector to the private sector. When it comes to creating new programs we need to be asking ourselves three simple questions. #1 will this program increase the size of government? #2 will the people become dependent upon the program? #3 will we have to spend money we don’t already have to implement it? If we answer yes to any of these three questions we probably don’t need it in the first place and it more than likely will make the problem even worse. I firmly believe that if we Americans don’t start asking the right questions we will have to learn our lessons the hard way.
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