Against Fiscal Conservatism: On Inpropriating the Expropriators

I guess he MEANS well, or he probably does. Personally, I think him and his right-wing libertarian part are basically servants of the Republican party, the businessmen/bourgeoise and the conservative agenda - that saying that a libertarian is just a rich anarchist is pretty spot on. So I agree OP, this is just an example of Ron Paul serving the establishment rather than the people, no matter what his good intention may be.

 

First, the Federal government doesn't need money, they can print it or steal it. He's doing a favor for his constituents by not distorting their economy.

Second, government spending itself is just as bad as the violence used to finance it. He obviously doesn't know why austrian economists oppose central planning.

 

He refuses to accept federal funds on principal. I don't think this was some sort of populist attempt to give back to the people, just not wanting the public's money. I don't see what the real criticism of him here is, would you have prefered if he had just kept it? And if you don't agree with fiscal conservatism what exactly are you advocating?

 

I can't speak for Chaohinon, who kindly reposted my article here; but I am the author of the article that was reposted, and in what follows, I do speak for myself.

@aaronman,

There are lots of things the government can't do without money ready to hand (like pay salaries or build expensive war materiel), and the government's capacity to tax and to inflate is finite. (Specifically, tax seizures are limited by declining productivity and by increasing compliance costs; the ability to raise money through inflation is self-limiting due to declining international credit, and eventually the collapse of purchasing power under conditions of hyperinflation.) Admittedly, the federal government is nowhere near either limit right now: they've got a long ways that they could hike taxes or inflate money before these mechanisms broke down. But how's that an argument for just giving them more money to work with?

I have no idea what you are talking about here. How does putting putting stolen tax money back into the hands of the U.S. Treasury "not distorting their economy"? The economy has already been distorted by the seizure of the money in taxes; it will be even further distorted by whatever purposes the Treasury decides to put it towards.

Could you say a bit more about what standards of badness you are using to judge that spending is just as bad as the violence used to finance it?

Speaking as a libertarian, when I measure the badness of things, one of the things that I look at first is whether it is coercive or not coercive -- whether any individual person's rights are being violated. Of course, there are many bad things that aren't coercive -- things that are stupid, or foolish, or otherwise oughtn't be done. But I tend to think that things that are directly coercive -- that involve not only doing dumb or silly things, but involve hurting people, stealing from them, beating them, bombing them, locking them in cages, etc. -- are, on the whole, much worse than follies or errors that aren't forced on people against their will.

Well, most Austrian economists oppose central planning because they advocate one version or another of the calculation problem -- either the version spelled out by Mises in "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth" (which has to do with the lack of meaningful factor prices in a planned economy) or the somewhat different, but also very interesting, version developed by Hayek in "The Use of Knowledge in Society" (which has to do with the inability of centrally planned economies to make use of dispersed, often tacit, localized knowledge). Those Austrians (like Rothbard) who believe in a strong version of natural rights also oppose government central planning because they believe that economic intervention by the state is not only economically destructive, but in fact morally criminal.

What I don't know is what any of this has to do with whether or not Ron Paul ought to return money to the U.S. Treasury. The money that goes in there comes back out in central planning; so if your aim is to get rid of or minimize central planning, then you ought to do your best to keep money from going back in to the extent that you can.

@lord chronic:

Yes, I think it would be better if Ron Paul put it straight into his pocket and used it to buy beer than if he gave it back to the Treasury. What I'd most prefer is that he pick some taxpayers at random and split it up amongst them, since they (unlike him) aren't drawing a tax funded salary, and this would represent actually "paying back the American people," and specifically people who would be getting back something of what the government robbed from them. Certainly, what he sends to Treasury is not going to be paid back to anybody, except perhaps for Goldman Sachs or Bank of America.

Anarchism.

The reason I don't want the government to get back $100,000 is because, ultimately, I want them not to get any money at all.

 

Thanks for stopping by, radgeek

Regardless of Paul's puny gift to the Treasury, the US government will have no problems with financing. This suggests it is a matter of principle, and that's why he was elected.

The money he sends back only delays the theft and destruction that has to occur for the government to continue, what's wrong with that?

Well I didn't see this was just for his office budget, but if he inflated the value of staff labor just because he had extra money lying around he would be abandoning his market principles.

Paul takes earmarks and gives back to his constituents what he can, but spending money where it isn't deserved causes market distortions. All government spending is harmful, but you're acting like what the Fed spends money on is worse than what Paul would spend money on locally. A lot of it does go towards special interests, but taxpayers still see a return on US government spending.

I can't really say which is worse, but I was speaking from an economic perspective. The theft of individual purchasing power is bad for an economy, and so is the spending of said usurped power by corrupted bureaucrats.

From a moral standpoint I'd agree the coercion is badder.

Paul spending money that is neither his nor should be spent is central planning as well.

If instead of sending it back to the Treasury he could transform the surplus into Federal tax cuts for his district I'm sure he would.

That would piss off the non-alcoholic voters. But I get what you're saying and it's not a bad thought, he could have paid himself the $100,000 and spent it at every business in town or something... but I think he believes that him deciding how taxpayer dollars are spent is just as bad as the Treasury doing it.

 

Uh, this is basic accounting?

Unspent directed/specified budgeted funds need to be returned to the appropriate general fund as an under-budget line item at the end of a fiscal cycle, since the monies were dispersed in advance. You can't roll funds over in most forms of accounting, nor should you be able to.

He can't keep the money. If he doesn't use it, it must be returned to whatever general office staff budget is in place, since the books have to be balanced out.

Maybe I'm not understanding OP's point?

 

@aaronman:

No doubt. But what's the principle?

If it's something like "The U.S. government should be as efficient as possible in spending what it steals from innocent victims," I can't see why that principle is worth defending or acting on. The primary problem isn't profligacy; it's the stealing.

No, it doesn't. It is not as if the IRS is going to collect $100,000 less in taxes or the Treasury is going to issue $100,000 less in government bonds thanks to the windfall. It's not as if government returns surpluses back to taxpayers when they have surpluses; they just look around for new things to spend the extra money on.

What market principles? In my view, there is no way whatsoever to live up to "market principles" when you are distributing stolen loot. All government spending is by definition a command economy, not a market economy, and no price that Paul chose to pay for labor or goods in his office budget, whether small or large, would be a "market" price, because (as Mises teaches us) there's no way for a command economy to approximate market outcomes.

The money went to Treasury, not to the Federal Reserve. In any case, what the U.S. government spends money on is definitely worse than what Paul would have spent it on locally. Paul's spending would merely be wasteful. The U.S. government's spending is actively evil and destructive; it goes towards imprisoning, surveilling, hurting, maiming, and killing innocent people, both within the United States and abroad.

Yes, I agree. There's no way around central planning when government allocates money. All you can do is get the money away from government as quickly as possible -- and, preferably, try to get it into the hands of some those net taxpayers it was originally stolen from. But that's precisely why Paul shouldn't give the money back to Treasury for more government allocation.

I think that would be better than giving it back to Treasury, but the best thing for him to do would be to just give it away directly to randomly selected net taxpayers without demanding any consideration in return.

@Sir Elliot:

I'm aware. What I'm suggesting is that it would be better for Ron Paul to use it on something wasteful but non-destructive, rather than giving it back to the U.S. government, which will use it for something both wasteful and destructive.

Maybe if the featherbedding gets too egregious, it would make it difficult for Ron Paul to keep his government job. But then, I'm not especially interested in figuring out ways to help Ron Paul keep his government job.

Maybe not. If it helps, my primary point is that it's misleading (and indeed stupid, if not dishonest) to describe paying $100,000 back to the U.S. Treasury as "paying back the American people." What it is, is paying back the American government, which is a different entity, and one which happens to be antagonistic towards, and parasitic on, the "people" it claims to rule.

@Kylesa:

I didn't say it's aiding bankers. I said it's aiding the U.S. government. (The U.S. government, of course, does aid bankers -- hence my mention of them -- but it also does lots of other things. Like blowing up Afghan children.)

No; I'm faulting those who claim that giving stolen money back to the pirate who originally stole it is a form of "honesty." There is no "honest" way for any politician to spend tax monies; the only thing to do is to get them out of political hands.

 

Why is everyone so quick to jump on the man? Christ.

He's running a surplus in his district - how awful.

He doesn't indulge in spending this surplus which still consists of taxpayer dollars because he doesn't believe in it. The alternative is not any better but it does point out who the crooks wasting your money are. The good doctor is not one of them.

 

In another thread, you stated that corporatism =/= socialism. I completely agree. In this thread, I'm gonna have to ask you if you understand the difference between Libertarian and libertarian?

 

@Kylesa:

How does returning money back to the thief who stole it demonstrate fiscal responsibility?

It seems to me that if you want to demonstrate fiscal responsibility with stolen money, the way to demonstrate it would be to return it to the owner it was stolen from. Not to spend a bit off the top and return the rest to the thief.

Sure: he's providing them with more money to use in violating innocent people's rights. So am I, through taxation. But I don't have a choice in the matter; I get taxed whether I want to be taxed or not. Ron Paul does have a choice in the matter: he has a budget, and he could do everything he can to make sure that the money gets returned to the tax victims it was extracted from, or at least gets spent on things which, while wasteful, do not involve committing violence against innocent people. Or he could turn it back over to Treasury, which will use it to commit violence against innocent people. Doing the latter doesn't make the violence his fault, exactly -- it's the fault of the people who commit it. But he would be doing more good for the world if he piled up all the surplus money on the National Mall and set it on fire than he does by returning it to the federal government for their future use.

If you think that "out of control government spending" is my primary concern here, then I don't think you've really gotten what I'm saying. My point is that government spending is a secondary issue. The primary issue is government violence.

Anarchy.

I'm not really interested in figuring out a way for Dr. Paul to keep his government job. If there isn't any way for him to honestly handle the loot that he's been allocated, then he ought to resign. That said:

I'd prefer he give it away to a randomized selection of the tax victims it was stolen from. (Returning the money is the only honest thing to do when you come into some money that you know to have been stolen from living victims who you could identify and return the money to.) But, failing that, keeping it and using the surplus to buy beer and pizza for his office staff would still be preferable to returning it to the Treasury.