Colorado Amendment 50 and Compulsory Charity

by Brian T. Schwartz | 7:45 am, September 25, 2008 | Comments Off

Last week a Rocky Mountain News piece by the Editorial Board stated:

There’s a widely held political consensus in Colorado, one we essentially share, that new state revenues should largely flow to one of three priorities: higher education, transportation or health care.

This consensus is irresponsible, promotes unaccountable bureaucracies, and is unfair and intolerant.

It’s irresponsible because if you really care about these issues, empowering government to address them disempowers you.  Unlike non-government charities, to which you can stop donating to if you think they’re doing a lousy job, government gets your tax dollar no matter what.  So the government programs for higher education, transportation, and health care are unaccountable to those who fund them.

Worse yet, every tax dollar government takes from you is one you could have donated to a charity that actually earned your support.  That’s unfair to these charities.  It’s also intolerant of your values because the taxes force you to support someone else’s notion of what is a worthy cause at the expense of supporting your own.

Government is supposed to protect us from thugs who want to use force to substitute their judgment for our own. It’s not supposed to be the thug.

(Thanks to Ari Armstrong for the pointer.)

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