Once the principle was established that the government could take from some for the benefit of others the battle was lost. From there it was only a matter of extending the principle to other areas. Soon food, medical care, and housing, to name just a few, were all considered entitlements that justified increasing taxes upon some for the benefit of others.

Today these programs have run amok. There is government spending not only on the personal level but upon almost every level of society. From the Federal government on down to local cities and towns, governments hand out dollars hand over fist, to individuals, to companies, to universities, to organizations, to churches, to every conceivable enterprise.

Thus all sorts of people feel entitled to all kinds of resources from government. Homeless shelters feel entitled to public funds to maintain their services. Schools and universities feel entitled to grants and other programs. Individuals feel entitled to subsidized public transportation. Seniors feel entitled to free medical care and prescription drugs.

There literally isn't space to even begin to outline how the entitlement mentality has spread throughout present day society in this nation. Such entitlements are no longer being reserved for citizens and in many states illegal aliens are entitled to benefits that surpass those of the very citizens whose taxes make the benefits possible.

Businesses feel entitled to construction projects and other contracts. Steel companies demand tariffs to protect them and farmers demand subsidies and price supports. Thus the government pays farmers not to produce, or buys up produce to prevent it from going to market and which eventually rots, is destroyed or given away. Home owners expect tax breaks on interest for home loans.

Our politicians have been very clever in spreading these benefits all across the economic spectrum so that nearly everyone has some stake in continuing the status quo. No one wants to complain too loudly and challenge the system because their particular ox might be gored. Investment in maintaining the system is nearly universal.

Yet there is one entitlement that is assumed that no one ever considers, which makes all the other entitlements possible. It is almost invisible amongst all the other entitlements but is the most important of all. It is also the most keenly and strongly felt entitlement. It is the one entitlement that no one ever speaks of.

Politicians feel entitled to spend the people's money. And to tax everyone out of house and home if necessary to fund it.

Historian, Alexander Tyler, said "A democracy can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury."

Author, Alexis de Tocqueville, added to this idea saying, "The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money."

This is precisely the situation today. And a majority of Americans have bought into it hook, line and sinker. The measure of a politician is how much he or she can raid from the public treasury to provide the latest preferred entitlement. This nation has become a giant shell game of one group robbing from another while other groups do the same to yet others, and they to yet others -- the first group included.

At heart of all these shenanigans is a simple principle: Getting something for nothing. Getting more in return than what one actually paid for. Getting an unearned benefit. In other words, socially accepted and approved greed. In the words of the French economic philosopher Fredric Bastiat, "Everybody plunders everybody."

Bastiat makes the point when the law becomes an instrument of plunder, "The law has come to be an instrument of injustice." Thus today, the law in the United States of America has routinely become an instrument of injustice, the very opposite of the principles this nation was founded upon. What's more, all of those that benefit from these entitlements demand them in self righteous indignation, as if they really had a right to the property and fruits of the efforts of others.

This is the door that Governor Lingle inadvertently opened by suggesting a tax increase to pay for the fixed rail project. This legitimized the idea that tax increases are justified if your intentions are laudable. The only discussion after that is over competing good intentions. Legalized plunder becomes acceptable in that case as long as one has the correct intentions.

Thus immediately some of this state legislators began calling for tax increases to fund their own intentions. For example, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported:

"'We are underfunded every place and have been for years,' said veteran Maui Democrat Rep. Joe Souki."

Senate Majority Leader Colleen Hanabusa (D, Nanakuli-Makua) is reported to have said,

"If the administration is willing to consider a tax increase for transportation and rail, then I think the discussion should go to other items which for me are a lot more critical: education, drug treatment, prisons and the homeless."

And then Cal Kawamoto (D, Waipahu) added his view,

"I can see raising taxes for education and I can see raising taxes for transportation."

http://starbulletin.com/2003/11/09/news/index1.html

There you have it. Especially the statement, "We are underfunded every place and have been for years." This is the entitlement mentality, politicians feel entitled to spend the people's money, period. No matter how much they spend, it is never enough, never will be enough. Something will always be, "underfunded."

Nearly all the states in this country are facing fiscal crisis. Hawaii is lucky in that regard because it isn't in as dire circumstances as most, precisely because an extended recession precluded increasing spending, while the rest of the nation was in a credit driven bubble and spending spree.

The entitlement mentality is alive and well, and growing. It will continue until our elected officials so damage the economy that it causes extensive hardship and misery. By then it will be too late, of course. The billions of dollars sucked out of the economy to pay for the good intentions of these politicians will have inevitable negative effects, just as on the mainland.

Such politicians are notoriously unable to connect the damage that their policies cause to the unintended consequences that inevitably result. They feel entitled to fulfill all the entitlements that everyone feels entitled to. An endless cycle of pandering that has no end except in economic collapse.

The one thing that keeps the cycle operating is the mistaken belief that such collapse can never happen. There will be a very rude awakening one of these days. One to which everyone who fails to understand the connection between endless entitlements and that economic collapse will be fully entitled to, especially those pandering politicians who brought it about in the first place.

Don Newman, senior policy analyst for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, Hawaii's first and only free market public policy institute focused on individual freedom and liberty, can be reached at: mailto:newmand001@hawaii.rr.com

Grassroot Perspective...