Non Stop Bucks

October 10, 2012 — 4 Comments

I am not the only one wishing the political campaign dollars had been spent on the real problems instead of talking about those problems while blaming others. If you have children who must compete for attention, dollars, education, etc, picture a nation of these children. The soon to be elected leaders are trying to become head of our national household. They are advertising, traveling, and spending money like crazy to convince voters that they are the best for the job.  The race it self is boring, but the budgets to bore are outrageous.  Vast sums that can be traced to donors, and even bigger super pacs whose donations remain anonymous run the heavily negative ads.

Imagine how your life would be if the members of your household voted on the leadership who control the money spent in the household. What kind of ads would be run to woo the members of your family?  Politics always chooses winners and losers by crafting legislation.  This never ending cycle of winning/loosing/changing the laws is paid for by the people subject to those laws.  Parents and monarchs can dispense with being elected or making a promise to anyone. We know what to expect from their performance after we observe them in action.  Some are wise, some silly, egomaniacal, or weak.  The good ones seem to get better with time and experience.  They do not need to constantly campaign to stay in the monarchy or parenthood, so they can develop wisdom with all that spare time.

The country that allows all this wasteful expenditure on political campaigning is not in a position to afford to blow so much money.  Part of the big argument is about the nation’s debt.  I do not see any future in keeping the system that proclaims that  we are too big to stop borrowing and too cranky to agree on how to spend money.  The Swiss are famously cranky about how to spend money, but have solved this problem within their political system.  They keep the tax revenues in the canton, working for the people who paid the taxes, as they see fit.  They have, but do not go overboard, with the idea of a federal government.  There is a beautiful building in Bern to house the congress, which has two chambers, similar to our own.  There are no lobbyists, no free parties for the federal employees who serve in the Bundeshaus.  In fact, congress is in session in Bern for only 25% of the year.  The rest of the time these civil servants go live at home and make a living like other citizens.  The salary to serve is not high, so they must want to do it for the service aspect.  I wish the US congress could be treated like that.  If they did not have that full time free lunch waiting for them every day from lobbyists, they might be able to work effectively for the people who paid all those taxes.  Throwing new groups of bums out every 4 years does not seem to be leading to enlightened governance. It makes sense to throw out the system that creates all these bums.