In a recent article by Robert Samuelson at RealClearPolitics.com called “How Big a Government Do We Want?“, Samuelson talks about a proposed Value-Added Tax (VAT) which its proponents suggest would relieve the US of its disproportionate tax burden and help to pay the deficit.

While a sales tax SEEMS like a good way to redistribute taxes to everyone who buys (instead of charging higher income taxes to people who earn more money), it is not a good solution. Implementing a VAT is complicated and, as Samuelson suggests, will only increase government.

And that is what concerns me more. Of course I don’t want higher taxes, but a bigger government is even more worrisome – because they create unnecessary spending (case in point: More of our income taxes go towards the federal pension than to education).

What’s the perfect size of government? I want it to be no larger than it was approximately 100 years ago. It want it small, the way it was before the big government era when we thought “the bigger, the better.”

Here’s why: The government is killing us while it benevolently attempts to provide us with a cradle-to-grave safety net:

• It’s killing us with taxes
• It’s killing our spirit of independence and non-government dependence
• It’s killing our “can-do” spirit

The US was founded on liberty and opportunity and both of those things are quickly disappearing as we become overtaxed and then enslaved to debt.

Large groups of Americans now wait eagerly for their government check:

• Farmers
• Corporations
• Earned Income Credit recipients
• Seniors who obtain more in benefits/insurance value than their tax contributions would have ever bought on the open market

The government, through its hand-outs, is creating class warfare, age warfare, and warfare between small business and large business.

• Those that earn more are encouraged to dislike those that earn less.
• Those that earn less are encouraged to be suspicious of those that earn more.
• Those that are older are encouraged to be hyper sensitive to younger folks who don’t want to pay for their benefits.
• Those that are younger are beginning to begrudge the payments they must make to seniors who are better off than they are, or already have their homes paid off, while they also receive extra tax deductions, and in some instances may be excluded from paying property tax on the local level.
• Small businesses looks askance at corporate welfare.
• Large businesses seek to gain preferential tax treatment over smaller competitors.

Everyone SAYS they don’t like taxes and big government, but they’ve already been “bought”. They want everybody else’s government check be reduced or stopped – but they don’t want their government benefits or preferential treatment touched.

Do we have the guts to have a smaller government? Do we have the will to fight for reduced government that may actually cause our own governmental benefits to be cut? As I survey the present landscape, I don’t see much reason to be optimistic.