Posted on May 15th, 2023.

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, “I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

~Ronald Wilson Reagan

Amusing though it may be, it’s become anything but a laughing matter. Government causes a problem, then steps in to solve the problem, and then offers solutions to correct the problems that are caused by the solution to the problem.

They told us “It’s only two weeks, just to flatten the curve.” I recall them saying that it wouldn’t stop the spread of COVID-19, just slow it down a little to ease the burden on the hospitals. Then it was another two weeks, then a month… and then even more.

We have since learned that the masks that we were required to wear in public places could not possibly have slowed or stopped the spread. Aside from it being nearly impossible to have the masks hermetically sealed to our faces, we learned that the openings in those masks were too large to prevent the virus from entering or exiting. The packaging for the blue masks that were commonly used clearly states that they will not prevent the transmission of COVID viruses.

Many businesses were shut down. Some survived, but many didn’t. Our helpful government applied a solution: give people money. In view of the fact that we are locked into deficit spending, and have been for some time, it’s appropriate to ask from where that money would be coming. Of course, it could only be borrowed, or printed. History is replete with examples of governments that printed money without any substance behind it, resulting in runaway inflation and financial collapse.

A young person of my acquaintance recently complained that in spite of all the bloviating about raising the minimum wage, people are no better off now than they were before the minimum wage was raised. Obviously, the rampant inflation rate and other government ‘assistance’ have caused prices to rise to the point where they have offset any gains. It’s really a simple concept: you can’t create wealth out of thin air.

In the meantime, once-prospering businesses that have managed to stay afloat are hampered by the lack of an available work force. While the White House crows about new job creation, the fact is that we still have at least one million fewer people working than we had prior to COVID. Most of that “new job creation” was merely the government allowing businesses to reopen their doors, and lifting of restrictions.

It is also government’s contention that people are not taking the available jobs because employers are not paying enough. That might be plausible if people were applying for jobs, but they’re not. I’m aware of several local businesses that have not had anyone come in to apply for advertised positions. It’s hard to blame pay rates when nobody even asks how much you are paying.

To assist struggling businesses, the government then began offering financial grants to businesses, but for the most part it was only to those businesses that employed people. If a business was a one-man sole proprietorship, apparently no help was needed. Again, this money was pulled out of thin air.

Other restrictions that were placed on commerce soon resulted in a disruption of supply chains. We all know the rule about supply and demand, even those of us who don’t think it is a valid economic tenet. The fact is, anything that is in short supply will have greater value than it would if it were abundant. We see this in the real estate market, which is now a “seller’s market”. More people want to buy homes in this area than there are homes available for sale, which sometimes results in bidding wars.

I’m reminded of the poem about the old lady who swallowed a fly. To catch the fly, she swallowed a spider, and to catch the spider she swallowed a bird, and so on, swallowing ever increasingly large animals, each to catch the previously swallowed critter. She finally dies after swallowing a horse. Nonsensical though it may be, it is an allegorical reflection of the problems we are facing today as a nation.

Every time government steps in to save us, things get worse. Our national economy took a full scale beating in order to “flatten the curve”. Children, who are the least susceptible to COVID, were forced to stay locked in their homes. Government then decided that it must mandate vaccinations, in spite of the debilitating side effects of at least one of the vaccine variants, which resulted in a number of deaths, and was eventually pulled from the market.

The most frightening part of this entire debacle is that anyone who questioned the wisdom of the prescribed response was silenced, and even threatened. The mere statement of certain inconvenient facts was considered borderline criminal. In the meantime, greater than 99.7% of those who were infected with the virus survived it. Those who succumbed were people who had “comorbidities”, a fancy way of saying that they were in extremely poor health in one form or another. So the government decided that healthy people needed to fear this virus, and be willing to be subjugated in order to survive.

Some pundits have posited that all of these efforts to save people may actually have resulted in more deaths than if we had just taken the usual steps to quarantine the sick, instead of quarantining the healthy. Violent crime is on the rise, inflation is spiraling, goods are in short supply, domestic violence and substance abuse have skyrocketed, and demands on local charities have hit an all time high. Government’s answer: Let’s double down on the out of control spending. Yeah, that’ll fix it.

We are getting ready to swallow a horse.