Tom Coyne, writing for the Louisville Courier Journal, had an article covering President Obama’s visit to Elkhart. One quote, in particular, stood out to me. Speaking of the stimulus plan:

“I don’t think it’s going to help enough of the right people,” said Sue Wyatt, 64, of Bristol, who works as a hotel manager and a hair stylist. “I think it’s going to give more to the rich and a lot less to the poor.”

It’s hard to blame her for this perception, given the talk of the TARP funds pouring into the hands of, by and large, the same bankers who were instrumental in getting us into this mess; funds being used to subsidize their lavish lifestyles — lavish, in particular, I would suppose compared to a woman in Bristol holding down two jobs. The funds also are pouring into the hands of companies who simply can’t obtain this stunning results without paying their CEOs more than $500,000 per year.

Negative perception of government is inevitable, I suppose. First, it is a very large organization, and with such organizations, the failures are going to be noticed more than the successes. Second, you have at least one of the major parties proclaiming that government is the problem and often seeming dead set on proving that very thing after getting elected.

Going unnoticed, however, are all the ways in which government works and makes our lives better. Notice those property rights you have? Like them? Me too. But, here is the thing. There are no property rights without government. Instead of property rights, without government, you have property only so long as you can hold it by force. I’ve used this one often in the past, but only because it gets overlooked: without government, you have a Hobbesian state of nature, the war of all-against-all leading to lives that are solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Government courts help us enforce contracts and other property rights. Government employees with guns will help enforce court orders if not complied with “voluntarily.” Those same government employees with guns will help you out if someone is trying to take your stuff by force. The point being that the “no government” crowd often seems delusional in that they just think people will magically refrain from stealing your stuff. In fact, it wouldn’t even be “stealing” inasmuch as there would be no law prohibiting the strongest from acquiring as much stuff as they could until such time as a bigger, better armed mob came along to take it from them.

Government does other fundamental things such as regulating weights and measures, organizing and maintaining drainage for a jurisdiction, maintains the roads, maintains traffic controls, clears the snow, takes away the trash, defends the country, helps keep the air and water clean, provides for a minimum of workplace safety, regulates the currency, provides for a creator’s monopoly on intellectual property — just to name a few off the top of my head.

This is not to say that government is a universal panacea — but neither is it the universal toxin we seem to hear about from some quarters. For those who, however grudgingly, acknowledge that government can do some good — we’re now just haggling over the price. How much government is good and why?

I’ll have to leave my rant here. I had a notion to forge on into some discussion of the New Deal and how it made the lives of ordinary Americans better than they had it before FDR and how a certain contingent of high society still hates FDR for committing treason against his class. But, speaking of property rights has reminded me that I have to head to work and try to acquire some of my own. Maybe later.