The beauty of the so-called “big government” is that it actually advocates for the people, and it’s accountable to the people, no matter what the far right and the “why should I pay taxes at all, much less for the common good when I could take the money and spend it on myself or shamelessly give it to the not-so-free market” libertarians claim. There is no other nation in the world that has seen or sees the prosperity that first world nations enjoy without having large federalized governments that see to the basic needs of the people, from the defense of the nation to the education of its children to the health and well being of its people.

And yet in America we have these roiling debates over how our government, which struggles with a huge population and a sprawling landmass, has trouble doing this and spends too much money doing it. Normally I would brush off the “too much money” squawkers – these people aren’t in favor of fiscal responsibility, they’re in favor of not paying taxes and cutting education budgets if it means they can afford a big-screen TV, but there’s a reason that the most prosperous, healthy, well lived, and well educated nations in the world are in many cases the most progressive socially, the ones with the highest citizen tax rates and the most just tax burdens (as in, the wealthiest pay more to the society they draw the most from in order to sustain their wealth), and the healthiest and happiest among us.

Writing for the Campaign for America’s Future, Jeff Madrick agrees:

America had been living a free-market myth for a generation until the credit crisis of 2008 and 2009 descended on the nation—and the world. One expression of that myth, found frequently on the editorial pages of the popular media, was that government does not grow economies, business does. In other words, government, don’t meddle where you’re not needed. Politicians are even easier to belittle than government itself.

I have spent much of my professional life making the opposite point. Government does indeed grow economies. It creates jobs and it produces prosperity. When politicians make correct decisions, they indeed make economies grow. There is no example of a major rich nation in the world whose government does not educate its children and teenagers; build its roads, bridges, superhighways, and airports; establish regulatory bodies to minimize financial busts; develop sanitation and water systems, and health care standards; support those who are temporarily unemployed; and provide a public pension to the elderly and a subsidy to the poor.

This is the call of big government. Label it proportional government if the words “big government” bother you. It is people getting together to do what they believe they must. And, yes, this is what good politicians do. Let’s call it like it is.

As economies grow larger, societies more populous, scientific and social knowledge deeper, and interconnections more complex, government grows as well—at least in societies that succeed. And when government works as it should, it is also typically the leading agent of change. As economies progress, societies learn more, and expectations rise, government’s main purpose is to manage, foster, and adapt to this change. It is a profound task.

Our own government has a history of managing and adapting, often radically, to change, looking ahead, not backward. It did so in the face of influential forces, fearing the future and aiming to protect established interests, which invariably opposed new obligations for government: financing the canals in the 1820s; building free primary schools starting in the 1830s and high schools in the late 1800s; developing government-built sanitation and water systems in the early 1900s that made the cities possible; creating a central bank to mitigate the disruption of boom-and-bust cycles and regulate unstable financial markets; enforcing labor rights such as hours worked, job safety, and a minimum wage; implementing vaccination programs and health research.

Madrick goes on to debunk the myths of why so-called “big government” is a bad thing in the rest of the piece, but this is the most poignant. For America to survive, it needs to retain, foster, and grow a strong large, representative government that’s accountable to the will of the people. Corporate boardrooms and companies wheeling in the “free market” are accountable to no one, and have even pressed legislation that wouldn’t even make them accountable to their own shareholders – the people contributing money to keep them afloat.

So who else can you trust, but the people whose names you put in the ballot box? And if you can’t trust them, don’t vote for them, and if you don’t know about them, learn. If after learning you still can’t trust any of them, it sounds like Mr. Smith needs to go to Washington, or at least speak to the point outside of the Capitol. Take responsibility, instead of whining and complaining and assuming someone’s taken it from you in the form of your tax dollars.

[ The Case for Big Government ]
Source: The Campaign for America’s Future