76-05-B6
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Government Cost II[edit]
Transcript[edit]Yesterday, I closed my remarks with some figures which might have raised a question or two in your minds. I'll be right back. In talking about taxes in my last broadcast, I tossed a couple of quick figures at the end about the relative number of taxpayers to tax users. I thought you might be interested in a few more details. Actually, the figures reveal a situation that should be disturbing to all of us. As I've said before, throwing a lot of figures at you by radio can be confusing, so I'll try to go slow and hold them down as much as possible. William Rickenbacker, editor of the Rickenbacker Report and author of a recently published savings and investment guide, has pointed out that 28.6 million Americans depend on government retirement and disability programs. Then add recipients of survivor programs, almost nine million unemployment benefits, to six million military, three and a half million civilian employees and dependents and you come up with a total of 81.3 million people dependent on tax dollars for their year-round living. All of those tax dollars must come from 70.2 million Americans working and earning in business and industry. Ah, but you say government workers pay taxes too, and so they do, but all their income and therefore the portion they pay in taxes comes originally from tax dollars, so they're just returning to government tax money already paid by the worker in the private business or industry. A little over 70 million private enterprise workers have a few more than 62 million personal dependents, so we're talking about a little over 132 million people sharing their income with an additional 81 million people. To sum it up roughly 70 million Americans provide a living for themselves and more than 143 million additional people. Now don't take this as meaning that there should be no recipients of tax dollars or that all who work in government are parasites. Obviously we want to provide for the needy and disabled. Just as obviously we must have and are happy to have in the military, those who provide for our security. This goes also for police and firemen and all the others providing services we want and need. The point I'm making is that somewhere there must be a figure beyond which we can't go in the growth of government without wiping out those workers in American business and industry who pick up the entire tab. This is what was behind the California initiative a few years ago to place a figure on the percentage of total gross earnings the state could take in taxes. It was also the motivation behind the measure just defeated in Michigan. The plain truth is every effort to slow government growth or reduce government cost has failed in the last 20 years. Corporation profits have risen 105 percent, wages have gone up 213 percent, government costs have risen 340 percent. There is one sensible long overdue answer. Fix in the constitution a limit on the share of earnings government can take without becoming a drag on the economy. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.
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