Home Cultural Issues Other Cultural Issues Prager 5 Minute Videos How Big Should Government Be? Left vs. Right #1 | 5 Minute Video
Prager 5 Minute Videos

How Big Should Government Be? Left vs. Right #1 | 5 Minute Video

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How big should the government be? And what is its proper role in the daily lives of Americans? The Left and Right have opposite answers.
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Script:

One of the most important differences between the Left and the Right is how each regards the role and the size of the government.

The Left believes that the state should be the most powerful force in society. Among many other things, the government should be in control of educating every child; should provide all health care; and should regulate often to the minutest detail how businesses conduct their business — in Germany, for instance, the government legislates the time of day stores have to close. In short, there should ideally be no power that competes with Government. Not parents, not businesses, not private schools, not religious institutions; not even the individual human conscience.

Conservatives, on the other hand, believe the government’s role in society should be limited to absolute necessities such as national defense and to being the resource of last resort to help citizens who cannot be helped by family, by community, or by religious and secular charities.

Conservatives understand that as governments grow in size and power, the following will inevitably happen:

1. There will be ever-increasing amounts of corruption. Power and money breed corruption. People in government will sell government influence for personal and political gain. And people outside government will seek to buy influence and favors. In Africa and Latin America, government corruption has been the single biggest factor holding nations back from progressing.

2. Individual liberty will decline. With a few exceptions such as an unrestricted right to abortion, individual liberty is less important to the Left than to the Right. This is neither an opinion nor a criticism. It is simple logic. The more control the government has over people’s lives, the less liberty people have.

3. Countries with ever expanding governments will either reduce the size of their government or eventually collapse economically. Every welfare state ultimately becomes a Ponzi Scheme, relying on new payers to pay previous payers; and when it runs out of the new payers, the scheme collapses. All the welfare states of the world, including wealthy European countries, are already experiencing this problem to varying degrees.

4. In order to pay for an ever-expanding government, taxes are constantly increased. But at a given level of taxation, the society’s wealth producers will either stop working, work less, hire fewer people, or move their business out of the state or out of the country.

5. Big government produces big deficits and ever increasing — and ultimately unsustainable — debt. This, too, is only logical. The more money the state hands out, the more money people will demand from the state. No recipient of free money has ever said, “Thank you. I have enough.”

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27 Comments

  5. The beauty of big businesses they flouish without government subsidies, tax breaks, incentives, bailouts and government contracts. Just look at Lockheed Martin .. uh I mean the big banks….I mean Elon Musk….Well l mean the Auto Manufacturers…..No the oil companies.. Looks like free enterprise cost a lot of government money, our tax dollars. Seems like the poor support the rich.

  9. Warning: Long comment, but I suggest you read it all.

    This video is heavily biased and fails to accurately represent the left and the right.

    The right is represented more as libertarians than conservatives. Most Republicans want to take away rights like abortion and many rights like gay marriage

    Leftists don't actually want to grow the government more than they feel they need to, they just feel it needs to be bigger than the right does. They do not want "unlimited" government or regulating to the most minute detail.

    The German regulation the video seems to be referring to is one which prevents retailers from opening on Sunday and public holidays, which German churches and labor unions alike are very resistant to repealing. This is an example of other organizations competing with secular government.

    0) What is big government? Is it government which passes a lot of regulations? Is it government that spends and collects a lot of money? Is it government which has a lot of authority? Regulations don't target individuals, they target organizations. Regulations on companies may make it harder to go into business, but they can also prevent industries from being consolidated by megacorporations; making markets more competitive. A government that spends and collects a lot of money may take away available capital from individuals, but doesn't take away freedoms, except maybe someone's ability to afford to do certain things. However, the money collected will, assuming the government isn't completely rotten to the core, be used to provide services to the public, making it so that people don't have to individually pay for those services as their taxes already are. Lastly, government authority doesn't actually decrease or increase at significantly different rates under Democratic or Republican control. The government maintains the same amount of power and authority under both types of administrations. These different types of big/small government aren't very interconnected either, regulation doesn't require that much funding to enforce, and providing services and increasing taxation doesn't require much regulation. One can have a government which highly regulates businesses without very high taxes.

    1) Any unchecked organization can harm the public. Corporations, even when functioning as intended, can cause massive amounts of harm to the public. Big government didn't cause Cleveland's Cuyahoga River to become so polluted it caught on fire 13 times, businesses and and a lack of government regulation did. Children weren't sent to coal mines during the Gilded Age because of governments, it was governments who got them out and into schools.

    2) Consider "0" again. What is big government?

    3) How does a welfare state become a ponzi scheme? If people pay in to the government and get services out of it they're just paying for their own services. How are European countries experiencing this, so called, problem?

    4) No political party wants government spending to increase (adjusted to inflation) forever, only until a certain point. No one wants an "ever-expanding government."

    5) This is only the case if sufficient taxes aren't raised, which the rest of the video assumes they are. Also, 1.08 Trillion dollars of the government's 7.59 Trillion annual spending this year is on the military, and the right is perfectly fine with increased military spending.

    6a) The killing was done by people who had total control over governments. In Germany, Hitler was the government, in the USSR, Stalin was, and in China, Mao was. These weren't democracies where elected leaders had to split a great deal of power, they where totalitarian states where one person had total control of the government. I don't see how a "small" government under one person's total control would turn out any differently. Evil individuals with checks on their power can only do so much harm. Evil individuals with no checks on their power can do nearly unlimited harm.

    6b) Big businesses can bribe even "small" governments, or even just local governments or the police, to do their bidding, I suggest that people learn about the Gilded Age, which was among the most abhorrent examples of this happening in the US. Third world corruption is also often the result of business interests and cartels, which are, quite frankly, illegal businesses, bribing governments or law enforcement. A lot of issues blamed on governments have business interests behind them. Corporations can also, definitely, build concentration camps and commit genocide when there is no strong government that can resist them.

    7) Insufficient evidence is given to prove this point. Also, if people are paying into a government that provides for the poor, then isn't that just mandatory charity in which selfish people and giving people both pay rather than just giving people? Wouldn't selfish people otherwise just keep that money and improve their own lives while giving people would be the ones subsidizing the poor.

    Lots of problems are caused by combinations of governments and corporations, so it's easy to just blame one, even when both are responsible. Like most things in life, balance is key.

  12. This is low key stupid af. I get being anti-communist and anti-Left but ant least do it right. Lenin, Marx, Mao, and many others literally talked about the abolition of the State and the ushering in of a society without the state or social class. The least you can do is present their position correctly.

  17. Democrats represent the people and believe in government as an essential tool for the good of society. They see gov as providing necessary services: defense, police, fire, utilities, etc. They also see gov as a tool to address the needs of the people: medical, education, poverty, retirement, unemployment, etc. Republicans represent the rich and corporations. They believe gov is the problem, and they want small gov because they don’t want to pay taxes or have their freedoms restricted. Many middle-class and poor people don’t understand big gov provides them with services and benefits, thus saving them money and enhancing their ability to improve their lives. Government programs redistribute the wealth DOWN to the people by absorbing the cost of living for the middle class and poor. Small gov restricts services and benefits, making it possible to cut taxes and redistribute wealth UP to the rich. The vast majority of regulations apply to corps, not the middle class. These regs control how corps do business by restricting them from abusing employees, polluting the environment, and defrauding the public. Millions of regs require corps to produce safe & effective products: food, drugs, toys, automobiles, clothes, electrical devices, and services. Although regs protect the public, they diminish corporate profits. Progressive taxes also encumber the rich with the financial responsibility to pay for big gov while it provides relief to the working class and poor according to the depths of their poverty. It should be noted that the working class creates the wealth and should receive a fair share of it. A significant benefit small gov offers the rich is to starve gov departments of revenue necessary to function effectively. A weak gov cannot prevent corps from abusing the public with impunity. That is MOST important to the rich. Good gov relies on people who believe in gov, not people who see it as a problem and want to impair its activities. A political problem for the rich is that they lack the numbers to win elections. For that, they must fool middle-class people into voting for small gov by manipulating their prejudices and ignorance. The rich benefit by distracting the public from serious legislation onto empty issues that don’t influence how they make money: issues like abortion which inflame the public, distract their limited attentions, and expend their political revenue. These issues have no impact on the rich who don’t care which way the decision goes. If abortion is outlawed, they can afford to send their women to Paris for a weekend holiday.

  25. While the things Prager says in this video about big government is indeed true, it would be nice if he actually practices what he preaches, as Dennis actually supports big government. Republicans do not believe in a constrained state, as much as they might lie otherwise. It would be nice if they did.