History can teach us a lot if it is studied; but liberals such as a John Brummett refuse to learn from it, if they study it at all. His column on 10-4-2012, Teamwork-what a concept, in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette championed private enterprise and government cooperation. Government stimulus money helped open a clinic in Clarendon in what had been an area of closed business and boarded up windows on abandoned buildings. The Mid-Delta Health Systems Community Health Center had moved into a new facility to better serve those who needed medical and dental care. That’s all well and good on the surface, but Brummett and other liberals fail to see the reason that the buildings were available.

A bit of historical perspective is in order to understand the shallowness of Brummett’s thinking that government is the answer to the things in life. During WWII wages were frozen and businesses had a difficult time hiring and retaining good employees. The employees paid for their medical care out of pocket or they had private insurance to cover major expenses. Though medical care was relatively inexpensive, employee wages weren’t keeping up with expenses due to the wage freeze. In order to give the employees a raise, business owners began to provide medical insurance to compensate for the wages they could not raise. The medical insurance coverage payment by the employers did not violate the wage freeze.

However good that may have been, that is where the change began. Soon, employer provided medical insurance became a bargaining chip for both employees represented by unions and non-unions employees who represented themselves when being hired. As the years flew past, employer paid medical insurance premiums became a quasi-right. (Now, in 2012-13, the government is forcing employers to provide all manner of coverage that violates the conscience of the employer.)

As the shift took place from employees paying insurance premiums to the employer paying for them, the cost of medical care began to rise because the government became more and more involved by passing laws that hospitals and doctors had to follow. As the intrusion by the government grew, business taxes grew and regulations, which were not needed until the government became involved, added to the expense of the business owners. As a consequence of added expense, business were forced to close, employees moved away and the small towns died, becoming derelicts due to government meddling.

And the situation isn’t any better now. The new taxes and regulations that are proposed will force more business to close. A current article in Human Events outlines the peril that small businesses face with an increase in taxes. How many more Clarendon’s have to occur before the liberals such as John Brummett will see that government is killing the economy that depends on small businesses? The answer is never if history has a message at all.

But not to worry about it is the standard answer of the liberals.  Government will provide stimulus money (though there isn’t any money, don’t give it a thought, it will be printed) to help the local communities to enter into those grand partnerships with Big So Wonderful and Generous Nanny. That will please the Brummetts and other ilk of the world and they will rejoice and proclaim that government once again stepped in at the time of need while never considering that it is the government that has caused the need in the first place.

The libs will never learn that government isn’t the answer; that it is the problem. Yet, they blindly plunder on as they try to build a utopian existence that makes Alice in Wonderland look like reality. Maybe that is where they got the idea. But Alice did awaken.

© 10-5-2012. DEC