Walter Williams, Making Sense As Usual

I'm a fan of Professor Walter Williams even before two of my kids had him in class and said he was "the best teacher I ever had." He always makes sense. When I see the Bishops' Conference releases a document on the economy, I figure I'm getting the latest justification for big government. Williams, on the other hand, seems to have a pretty good handle on the idea that forcing Peter to pay Paul money Peter doesn't owe Paul is theft, plain and simple. That's not to say Peter doesn't have a moral obligation to do works of charity and redistribute his own income, but charity and coercion are incompatible. Let's fact it, the IRS, with the backing of coercive government, will put you in jail and fine you out the wazoo if you don't pay your exorbitant taxes. But I'll let Williams speak for himself; he does it so well:

I think it immoral for Congress to forcibly take one American's earnings and give them to another American to whom they do not belong. If a person did the same thing privately, he'd be convicted of theft and jailed. We might ask ourselves whether acts that are clearly immoral and despicable when done privately are any less so when done by Congress.

Close to two-thirds of the federal budget, so-called entitlements, represent what thieves do: redistribute income.
Some people might say, "Williams, the programs that you'd cut are vital to the welfare of our nation!" When someone says that, I always ask what did we do before?

For example, our nation went from 1787 to 1979 and during that interval produced some of the world's most highly educated people without a Department of Education. Since the department's creation, American primary and secondary education has become a joke among industrialized nations.  Read more....

I'm with Williams. The government is like a Mafia don who takes your wealth at the point of a gun and dispenses it, in many cases, to buy votes. Where's Elliott Ness when we need him?