Is the government the solution, or the problem?

Ronald Reagan famously said, “The Government is not the solution, the government is the problem.” This sentence resonated with white blue collar workers. By 1980 they had ceased seeing the government as the organization that had ended the Great Depression, won the Second World War, and lifted them from poverty. They saw the government as the organization that was forcing them to make sacrifices on behalf of a black population they associated with crime, welfare dependency, and inferior performance in the classroom and on the job.

With the President’s September 24 speech he told us that the government is the solution to the problem caused by private greed during his administration. In my opinion the tide is once again turning in favor of the Democrats. Please discuss.

 

the government is a big asshole machine

boooo!!!

 

First you need to ask yourself what is the government and who does that government work for. In asking yourself this question, you will find the answer. If you think the government is "for the people, by the people," you will likely see the government as the "solution." If you see the government as merely an arm of the private banks and corporations, then you might see it as a problem.

What those who buy into the false left/right paradigm of the two-party/one-party system do not understand (or do not want to understand) is that both parties are owned by the same financial and corporate interests. So no matter who is put in office, the objectives are going to be very much the same, with a few slight differences in rhetoric and other superficialities.

This is what CFR archivist, Georgetown professor and Bill Clinton mentor, Carroll Quigley, said in his book, Tragedy & Hope:

"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy." ​

Many on the Left view the government as a benevolent father figure that's there to care for and protect them from the big, bad corporations. Little do they understand that the government is controlled by the very same corporate interests they look for the government to protect them against, and along with bigger government only comes less accountability and more corruption.

Those on the Right claim to be for less government, though many of them who vote Republican seem unable to realize that every Republican to become president in recent history has increased the size of government and raised taxes, just like the Democrats on the "opposite" side. Many of them claim to be against the welfare state, yet have no qualms about corporate welfare, which is just another form of socialism for the rich. (And yes, the Democrats support corporate welfare, too.) Many on the Right claim to support the "free market" when there is no such thing, but instead a highly regulated, highly manipulated market geared towards the benefit of the corporations and those in charge of the global economy (the bankers).

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements, arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the worlds' central banks which were themselves private corporations. The growth of financial capitalism made possible a centralization of world economic control and use of this power for the direct benefit of financiers and the indirect injury of all other economic groups." ​

--Tragedy & Hope: A History of The World in Our Time (Macmillan Company, 1966,) Professor Carroll Quigley of Georgetown University​

 

The government is just a regulator. It changes and should be an instrument to shape and change social policy throughout the test of time. It should reflect the desired will of peace, order and good governance. I see it neither as a solution nor a problem. It just changes the way we live our lives.

 

During the New Deal the government instituted reforms that made life better for most Americans. I think that can happen again, and that is what I want to have happen. First it will be necessary for the rich, the business community, and the Republican Party to be widely and passionately hated.

 

You know what, come to think about Hobbes, Locke and the way the modern Philosophes like rousseau viewed government, I would have to say that government is a solution. We all engage in our day to day lives to participate in this system. We get out of bed, we go to work, go as a worker and perform our duties as a worker, we go out as a student and perform our duties as a student. If people all decided to stop being workers and stop being students, there would be no university and there would be no economy, no jobs, etc. We all willfully engage ourselves in giving our consent to the Social Contract, to uphold the fact that we acknowledge we are required to give up a portion of our individual rights to some sense of freedom, on account to maintain order and not allow the world to slip into some sort of chaos. We agree to keep this Social Contract as a way to regulate social order in our lives. Government is just a spawn of that.

 

It really doesn't change. It only changes at the superficial level, so people THINK it changes when in fact it stays the same. That's the whole illusion of "democracy." Read the quote I provided from Quigley, who was a complete government insider and supported the agenda fully.

You could say it "changes" in the increasing control it has over the people, but other than that there is no change that could be construed as being in favor of the people, which is why you see the Middle Class slowly eroding away as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

 

Yeah, I added a post afterwards. Hee hee, the thought came to me eventually.

 

The government is an evil meme trying to manifest itself everywhere

like....the epitome?

 

Yes, they created the problem (the depression) to then offer what many interpreted as the "solution" (the creation of a welfare state to manage the people better and get the country in perpetual debt to the private bankers). That's what the New Deal was all about, and much of what we see today can be traced directly to that.

I mean, FDR's son-in-law pretty much summed it up in a book that he wrote.

"For a long time I felt that FDR had developed many thoughts and ideas that were his own to benefit this country, the United States. But, he didn't. Most of his thoughts, his political ammunition, as it were, were carefully manufactured for him in advanced by the Council on Foreign Relations-One World Money group. Brilliantly, with great gusto, like a fine piece of artillery, he exploded that prepared "ammunition" in the middle of an unsuspecting target, the American people, and thus paid off and returned his internationalist political support.
​

"The UN is but a long-range, international banking apparatus clearly set up for financial and economic profit by a small group of powerful One-World revolutionaries, hungry for profit and power.
​

"The depression was the calculated 'shearing' of the public by the World Money powers, triggered by the planned sudden shortage of supply of call money in the New York money market....The One World Government leaders and their ever close bankers have now acquired full control of the money and credit machinery of the U.S. via the creation of the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank."​

--Curtis Dall, FDR's son-in-law as quoted in his book, "My Exploited Father-in-Law"​

 

Somebody please tell me how putting Paulson who expanded Golman Sach's debt level in charge of spending 200 billion dollars on worthless assets (many financial experts agree they can't unravel the value of these instruments) is going to solve anything. And once again like all things Wall Street we aren't spending actually dollars, were expanding this nation's debt. We are throwing debt on top of debt. So in essence this nation is supposed to agree to purchase a mortage it can not afford, which probably comes with a huge bubble payment down the road. How does that solve anything? Isn't that what got us in this mess?

 

I... am starting to believe recently this week that the government isn't necessary to maintain social order - a social contract alone is of some sort, in some form. First Nations people never had a government but they did have order. I'd like to re-think the way government is formed, and I wish almost every day we could come up with a new way of forming a government - a better way.

 

Ari, don't confuse the market with society. It isn't. It's a parasite that feeds off a society if allowed to. In the last couple of decades everything seems to revolve around market cycles and activities, but that doesn't have to be the norm.

The market should be secondary or even lower on the evolutionary scale. It should be seen as a tool, a means to an end. Not a god to be protected and worshipped.

 

The government ate my breakfast.

 

It remains the case that most Americans benefitted from New Deal Reforms and kept voting Democrat until the social chaos of the 1960's and '70's.

 

What got us into this mess is the Republican idea that it is acceptable to pay one fourth of the federal budget with borrowed money. In public Republican politicians pretend that tax cuts generate so much economic growth that they will balance the budget. In private, they hope that if the national debt get high enough the voters will vote to end domestic spending programs that they know benefit them.

There is plenty of money in this economy. The problem is the rich have it. The solution is the government should take if from them with extremely high taxes.

 

Ok, first the government is not the source of the problems. While Reagan was spreading this rediculous meme and decreasing governments size and influence, large multinational conglomerates were gaining more power and influence. Now today they have reached a level of wealth and power which rivals small countries and they exert a huge amount of control over our economic and even foreign policies. Part of it started with the creation of the Fed. The democrats at the time wanted a public central bank and the republicans wanted (surprise) a private central bank. They compromised and created this unholy alliance between government and private banks. Government itself is not the problem, or the solution. The huge conglomerates that exert power over our government are the problem. Privatization is a very bad idea. You can vote out politicians but you cant vote out ceos. The squeaky wheel gets all the grease and as of now the corporations are the squeakiest.

 

Exactly, my experience is completely contrary to what we are told:

Privatization is cheaper. ​

Breaking up Ma Bell was not cheaper for the average consumer. Guess what deregulation of utilities in California and privatization was not cheaper. Allowing corporations to go offshore for cheaper labor did only one thing raise their profit margin. HMOs didn't solve our health care problems, but it made huge profits for the HMOs. Privatizing our military has lead to things like huge profits for Haliburton poor service to our military and the rise of Blackwater to a private army status. Now we produce nothing but debt. Our national market is based soley on debt. And now it needs to be bailed out.


All those cheap Chinese goods don't protect our homes, kids or our pets. I am wonder what granting the Saudis access to nuclear power will do.