Food for thought for Springfield Missouri, and beyond
From the Ludwig von Mises Institute:By John L. Chapman
Posted on 2/21/2008
"In public administration, there is no connection between revenue and expenditure there is no market price for achievements."
Ludwig von Mises
Fifty years ago, Detroit was the fourth largest city in the United States, with a population of 1.7 million people, and at $8,500 per year, one of the richest cities in terms of per capita income. It was 3.5 times the size of Indianapolis, the 26th largest city, whose income was almost identical on a per capita basis.[1] Today Detroit and Indianapolis are the 11th and 12th largest cities, respectively, with Detroit's population cut in half from 50 years ago (and losing 3,000 people per year this decade), while Indianapolis has grown by 70% during the same time frame. Remarkably, Indianapolis now has a per capita income 50% greater than Detroit's.[2]
How did this happen? One answer, according to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, is that Detroit's city government is far larger, more regulation prone, and more bureaucratic than Indianapolis's city government: the ratio of residents to city employees, a key measure of city government productivity, is 50:1 in Detroit, one of the worst in the United States, but is 203:1 in Indianapolis, one of the best. More broadly, the central issue in political economy concerns the optimal delineation of the sphere of government activity versus that ascribed to markets, and in this essay we examine this question from the vantage point of municipalities.[3]
What does economic theory say about the proper role of government, and how do proponents of larger government attempt to justify their argument? Writers from Aristotle to Locke to Adam Smith have inveighed against government intervention, and indeed, neoclassical economic theory has affirmed the superiority of free markets as the institutional backdrop most conducive to the generation of wealth. ...
Rest at link above. Excellent read, unless you're a fan of statism.
Springfieldians might also need to consider the potential implications found here:
http://www.springfieldmo.gov/pdfs/budgetExercise08.pdf
Very troubling. Don't fall for it, folks. There has to be a way to avoid tax increases while fixing the shortfalls. And this argument applies to the federal level, as well.
Read well, think, and don't fall for the trickery.
Labels: Springfield Missouri
posted by The Libertarian Guy @ 9:03 AM
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