The Voice of Young Conservatives Blog

“Only when people and communities are given more power and take more responsibility can we achieve fairness and opportunity for all”.  Sounds like another quote from our beloved Thomas Jefferson, right?  This actually comes from the Prime Minister of the U.K., David Cameron, and his Big Society Programme.

The Big Society Programme was written up earlier this year as a plan to reduce the national debt of the U.K. and transfer power into the hands of its citizens and communities.  “Big Society” is the counterpart to “Big Government”.  Cameron’s plan to save his nation from a sure economic death is outlined by five major bullet points:

Give communities power to control their future

• Encourage a zeal for charitable activity on the community level
• Transfer power from central to local governments
• Give more power to private sectors in public services
• Open government information to the public

What is it that these “Red Coats” are understanding that we aren’t?  Cameron must have Margaret Thatcher and Milton Friedman on speed dial, because this type of non-intervention hasn’t been in practice since the days of Reaganomics.  Give power to the people and their local communities and the whole nation will rise, that is the gospel of this administration.  Sounds logical enough, but the question is…does it work?

The ultimate goal of the Big Society is to empower communities so that you can dissolve power away from central government. Less responsibilities leads to reduced costs and diminished deficits, all very good things. As Claire Perry explains the goal on the U.K. Conservative Party’s Blue Blog,

Although the “Deficit Deniers” on the Labour benches like to accuse our government of making cuts in public spending for ideological purposes, the main reason given by the Treasury team for tackling Labour’s budget deficit sooner and harder was to restore our international economic credibility and keep long term interest rates lower for longer.

Thus far it has been an enormous success. Directly following the implementation of “Big Society,” the 10 year interest rates fell .4%. Why exactly is that important? Bond interest rates are a pivotal sign that investors’ faith in the market is remaining high. As the federal government divorces itself from the risk of default, interest rates will fall, the result of the market’s assessment of the risk of losing their investment. Interest rates don’t sound as sexy as say…job creation, but in the long term they are equally important, especially for a nation trying to escape a burdensome national debt.

So if limited government spending, limited government regulations on private sector, and well…just limited government seems to be working… then what is the U.S. doing?  The current administration has found it in our best interests to take the complete opposite approach.  When us mortal humans go into debt, there are various steps necessary to getting out.  The first step is to STOP SPENDING MONEY.  No matter how much money you make, if you spend more than you earn, YOU WILL GO INTO DEBT.  It isn’t a concept for upper-division economics classes, this is a concept young children understand.  Why can’t our government seem to grasp this concept?

It has been stated that the American people want to have their cake and eat it too.  We want to have our high-spending programs, yet not spend a dime. Moreover, we want to spend without any impact on the market’s judgment of our ability to pay any of our debts back. In other words, let us spend as much of we want and you don’t worry your pretty little head over it. But as our debt reaches into the tens of trillions of dollars that logic isn’t going to fly with bond investors forever.

Hopefully, this sentiment is changing.  We are waking up and realizing that now is the time to pay for our mistakes.  England didn’t wait for their debt to become out of hand before it was too late, and I believe that Americans have that same priority.  The only way to accomplish this task is to take over Washington this fall.  We need to get people into office who are willing to become fiscally responsible for Americas runaway debt.  We need to take a hint from the U.K.’s successes and imply them in our own country.  We need to change.

by Reiley Hooper