By John J. Duncan Jr.

One thing I saw thousands of times during my years in office was that you could never satisfy government’s appetite for money and land. They always wanted more.

Yet the least economical, least efficient way to spend any money was to turn it over to government, at any level.

Thus, the best way to create jobs and hold prices down is to keep as much as possible in the private sector.

If this was not true then Cuba, the former Soviet Union, and other socialist nations would be places people wanted to move to rather than places they wanted to flee.

Surprisingly, this was probably explained best by Edward Rendell, when he was mayor of Philadelphia, in the 1990s. He later became governor of Pennsylvania.

In one interview he described himself as a “bleeding heart liberal” who had trouble saying no.

In the 30 years before he became mayor, the city lost 400,000 people and 200,000 jobs. The city government had very bloated payrolls and was run by the unions. He said it took three employees to change a lightbulb.

Mayor Rendell testified before a Congressional committee and said: “Government does not work because it was not designed to. There is no incentive for people to work hard, so many do not; there is no incentive for people to save money, so much of it is squandered.”

This was a very surprising statement from a liberal Democrat. Almost all Democrats today want government to get more money that they can then give it to those who supported them, such as what President Biden is doing.

Besides, very few Democrats run small businesses so what do they care.

In addition, their playbook for years has been to start a tax law, or apply it at first only to upper income people, and then slowly raise it later on.

This is what they did with the sales tax in Tennessee, which started at just 3%. The federal income tax, passed in 1913, touched very few. It was only one percent on the first $20,000 in a time when almost no one made more than that.

Our founding fathers, and even leaders in the early 1900s would be shocked at all the different taxes we have today and how high they are.

The easiest thing in the world is to spend other peoples’ money. Today with Joe Biden and the Congress controlled by the far left, we are spending trillions – trillions – we do not have. And we are still paying millions of people not to work.

This is causing prices to skyrocket on everything, everywhere.

Wealthy elitists come out no matter what. But poor and lower income people are helped most when prices are kept low and steady, and this happens only when the government is small.