HANDOUTS CAN CRIPPLE ALASKANS

Bart Tiernan
Anchorage, AK
Nov. 19, 2002

When I was young, my brothers and I would visit my grandmother's neighbors to watch them feed their pet raccoons. We affectionately referred to them as the raccoon people. They acquired their "pets" after they had found an injured raccoon, fed it and released it into their back yard. They continued to feed the raccoon after its release. It wasn't long before the raccoon people were feeding more than 100 animals.

Once the novelty wore off and they couldn't afford the weekly food bill, the feeding stopped. Dead, starving and diseased raccoons began showing up throughout the community. The raccoons lost their ability to survive in their ecosystem. Good intentions evolved into obligation, which resulted in harm. This was my first lesson in socioeconomics and the effects of a free lunch.

Americans and particularly Alaskans today look to government for not only economic assistance but economic prosperity. This dependence, initiated and perpetuated by politicians over the years, is as dangerous to America's socioeconomic health as the raccoon people were to the raccoons.

Politicians are salespeople, not business people. They are in the business of selling themselves to voters and special interests, not making business decisions. Politicians win elections with money. Politicians obtain money by appeasing special interests, either through pork projects or favorable legislation. It is in the interest of politicians to tax and spend.

Moreover, political priorities compromise good economic policy. This is why governments build bridges and tunnels to nowhere, railroad spurs that nobody wants, and airport terminals simply because they can. This gratuitous spending is justified as economic enhancement of our economy. Unfortunately, it is artificial economic feed that trades short-term economic gain for long-term economic damage.

In Alaska, our politicians are still spending in the face of deficits that they created. We have allocated millions of dollars to straighten tracks for our state railroad, essentially an industry subsidy. Our politicians are debating reinvesting in a private company that has never made a profit. We are lending our state-paid attorneys to a private business. And what intellectual trust ever thought up the idea of our deficit-producing politicians building and running a gas pipeline?

Our politicians should be talking about spending cuts and caps, privatization of certain government functions, and tax-break incentives for private businesses. These policies preserve the economic environment; they don't leach off of it. The private sector invests and creates wealth, not governments. Governments redistribute wealth.

Excessive taxes, regulation and government-mandated costs create barriers to individual economic advancement and entry into markets by start-up businesses. Competition is inhibited. Prices increase. The cost of living increases. The poor get poorer. The purpose of law in America is to maximize liberty and opportunity for all. Overtaxing and overregulation inhibit liberty and opportunity.

Government invasion into our economy results in dependence on it. This dependence creates excessive power in an institution that is neither skilled nor suited to administer. The raccoon people, if they wished to help, should have concentrated on preserving the raccoons' natural environment, not manipulating it. Similarly, our politicians should practice restraint and reject temptations to artificially manipulate it for political gain.

Governments run deficits because there are no consequences to their poor decisions. Alaskans have re-elected almost all of the same politicians who created the fiscal "crisis." We have put Hazlewood back in charge of the ship. Where is the outrage? Where are the consequences for our politicians' failures?

Politicians, however, are not the entire problem. Voters must demand another product. We must demand that government provide only the basic services that the private sector cannot. Voters need to demand results and reject unearned or preferential handouts. Voters need to communicate their demands in order for politicians to satisfy them. We must put politicians into a box where they can do no economic harm. We need to rid ourselves of those who don't perform.

If we act like raccoons, we'll be treated like raccoons.