Nevada and Nationally -- Who We Have Become
By: Doug Busselman, Executive Vice President
Having watched several weeks of the Nevada Legislature’s Interim Finance Committee and the show that has been put on to convince us that no one can afford to endure the spending reductions required to fill the nearly $900 Million budget hole – we’re now in the 2010 Special Session replaying the same saga and hearing the same concepts extolled without any real solution. College students were featured in the Senate Committee of the Whole that I sat through, telling legislators that “we’re hoping you guys will understand how we can’t afford to pay more for the degrees we’re going after.” “We’re the future of Nevada – don’t cut us!”
Although not having the opportunity to follow-up on the testimony – one has to wonder what happens when business enterprises are driven out of the state or caused to fail because of tax expenses that the market can’t support…what future will there be for these educated students (who might still not have gotten their degree) when the jobs they are ready to be hired for don’t exist? For everyone but the legislators who are in charge, it seems rather obvious that killing off the taxpayers because tax spenders can’t get enough…might not be a solution. Then again they are only trying to extract the “fair share” of anyone capable of being vilified into submission…
When Hayek wrote “The Road To Serfdom” he was attempting to convince the leaders of the 1940’s that going down the road to central planning and control would require measures to be carried out that would seriously and negatively impact freedom of those being governed. Here we are now, a couple of generations down the road and seeing in front of us the reality of his words playing out before us.
“…the most important change which extensive government control produces is a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people. This is necessarily a slow affair, a process which extends not over a few years but perhaps over one or two generations. The important point is that the political ideals of a people and its attitude toward authority are as much the effect as the cause of the political institutions under which it lives.”When reading that quotation it is difficult to not translate its meaning to our current situations at the state and national level. As a society we have gotten so accustomed to looking to our government leaders for salvation from whatever we believe to be our problem (or they convince us is our problem that they are solving) that we never get to looking into the mirror to see who should really be addressing the conditions we need to give attention to.
F.A. Hayek, The Road To Serfdom
Having watched several weeks of the Nevada Legislature’s Interim Finance Committee and the show that has been put on to convince us that no one can afford to endure the spending reductions required to fill the nearly $900 Million budget hole – we’re now in the 2010 Special Session replaying the same saga and hearing the same concepts extolled without any real solution. College students were featured in the Senate Committee of the Whole that I sat through, telling legislators that “we’re hoping you guys will understand how we can’t afford to pay more for the degrees we’re going after.” “We’re the future of Nevada – don’t cut us!”
Although not having the opportunity to follow-up on the testimony – one has to wonder what happens when business enterprises are driven out of the state or caused to fail because of tax expenses that the market can’t support…what future will there be for these educated students (who might still not have gotten their degree) when the jobs they are ready to be hired for don’t exist? For everyone but the legislators who are in charge, it seems rather obvious that killing off the taxpayers because tax spenders can’t get enough…might not be a solution. Then again they are only trying to extract the “fair share” of anyone capable of being vilified into submission…
When Hayek wrote “The Road To Serfdom” he was attempting to convince the leaders of the 1940’s that going down the road to central planning and control would require measures to be carried out that would seriously and negatively impact freedom of those being governed. Here we are now, a couple of generations down the road and seeing in front of us the reality of his words playing out before us.
Posted by Doug Busselman at 2/23/2010 2:08 PM 
Categories: Government
Tags: Nevada Legislative Special Session Nevada Budget State Spending Taxes
Categories: Government
Tags: Nevada Legislative Special Session Nevada Budget State Spending Taxes
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