By DAVE HAMRICK
Editor-at-large

I hear the Census Bureau's phone lines have been jammed with people wanting to complain about the intrusiveness of the questions on this year's Census.

In one way, I can understand that perfectly well.

In the first place, the Constitution doesn't authorize the federal government to ask all those questions.

In the second place, people of conservative bent realize the only reason all those questions are being asked is so our Big Brother bureaucrats can figure out where the money is, for the main purpose of taking it away from those who earned it and giving it to those who didn't.

It's called redistribution of the wealth. Look it up; it's in all of Marx's writings.

But what mystifies me when there's a big reaction to something the government does is how people decide what to get riled up about.

Frankly, I can't get too worked up about the Census in a negative way. It's just numbers. If you want the numbers used responsibly, elect conservatives to national offices, and stay involved enough to keep them under control.

But here are a few items that people across the country have not jammed the phone lines about, which really leaves me scratching my head:

” The selling of our nuclear secrets to avowed enemies of all that the United States stands for, i.e. the communist Chinese government, not by some Benedict Arnold lab guy, but by the president of the United States, for campaign contributions.

It seems like a pretty big deal to me, but it raised nary a ripple in the pond of public opinion.

” Social Security. I shouldn't even have to say more on the subject, but apparently people still don't realize the degree to which our government is robbing us blind. We're paying 15 percent of our incomes into a system that allegedly will repay the money after we retire — if we are lucky enough to live long enough —at an average return of less than 2 percent.

If we don't live long enough, whatever money we didn't have paid to us goes back into the pool and is given to someone else.

If you invested just half of what you've paid in Social Security in any garden variety mutual fund for the entire period of your employment, not only would you earn 10 to 12 percent instead of 2 percent, you would also get the money all at once so that you could invest it in an income-producing instrument. After your death, your heirs would get what was left.

Conservatives always get accused of being heartless. But how much more heartless can you be than to rob a low- to moderate-income person of 15 percent of his income for his entire working life, giving it back to him at such pitiably stingy levels that he can qualify for food stamps, and then take it away from him when he dies?

But we get excited about some questions on a form.

” The lack of a balanced budget amendment and continued refusal of the government to grant meaningful tax cuts.

When Republicans took over Congress, they promised to bring a balanced budget amendment to the floor for a vote, and they did that. But everybody knew they didn't have enough votes to pass it.

The press barely covered the debate and the vote, and the whole issue went by with hardly any public notice.

Surely people can see how much better things are for the country as a whole with a budget that seems to be coming into balance. Surely they can put two and two together and figure out that the dark days of the '70s and early '80s were caused by a government that spent too much and taxed too much.

Deficit spending is a cancer, and we're in remission. But the only permanent cure is a constitutional amendment that forever removes the power of the government to spend our children's income before they're even born.

And on the tax question, taxes are taking almost half of what every man, woman and child in this country is able to earn. Can people not get excited about the fact that these bloated, parasitic governments are soaking up half of the economy?

” The income tax system itself. While we're on the subject of taxes, let's not forget that huge amounts of taxes are hidden.

First, we have an income tax system that punishes success. Every little notch up the ladder of success that we're able to climb is punished with higher taxes. Then, on top of that, it's so complex that the people who wrote it can't understand it, yet we can be fine or jailed for failure to understand it properly.

Finally, its very complexity is a smoke screen that is used to hide tax increases. For instance, the Clinton Administration won't even be credited for passing a tax increase when, during the first two years when Democrats were in charge of Congress, it did away with several deductions. But doing away with a deduction is a tax increase, no matter how you slice it.

A simplified tax system like a flat tax or a sales tax would empower the people to keep an eye on their government. What we have now is a way for the government to keep a grip on its people.

But go ahead and make those phone calls to the Census Bureau.

I'm sure if I kept going for another five or six thousand words I would get down to the Census on my list of things to get upset about.

Back to Opinion Home Page | Back to the top of the page