THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 16, 1995 TAG: 9501130009
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Another View
SOURCE: By FREDERICK HERMAN
LENGTH: Medium: 94 lines
The media are full of the wonderful things President Clinton, the Republican Congress and Virginia Gov. George Allen are going to do. There will be a tax cut. Welfare will be reformed. Defense spending will be increased. Criminal activity will be reduced. The federal budget will be balanced. Family values will be enhanced. All of this is to be accomplished at no cost to anyone. We need but to eliminate waste, inefficiency and unneeded programs in government.
All this sounds wonderful. But I have learned over my 70 years of life that there truly is ``no free lunch.'' I have also learned to ``Beware of politicians bearing gifts'' and of ``buying a pig in a poke'' and to be skeptical of anything that appears to be too good to be true.
I fear that we are being sold a bill of goods, the real cost of which will be payable later.
For example, Governor Allen proposes drastic cuts in virtually every area of state government including cuts in the educational budgets. In this area the governor is proposing a step that flies in the face of the recommendations relating to other aspects of his program.
We have been told time and again that the answer to keeping the United States and us as individuals competitive in the economic area and able to obtain and retain better jobs lies in better education.
We have also been told that the only real answer to getting people off welfare is to train (i.e., educate) them to be qualified for better jobs.
Education has also been touted as an answer to the crime rate because it is a means of giving young people an opportunity to a better life.
If true, and there are innumerable studies to confirm it is, then the governor's proposed cuts in educational funding, like that for Norfolk Community College, would promote welfare and crime. They would promote them by eliminating educational opportunities for those who most need to escape the underculture of crime and welfare.
Proposed vocational training might help, but it is not a substitute for traditional education. We would all pay later for the governor's proposals by having to build more jails, by being more apt to become the crime victims, by having to increase welfare and by slipping farther and farther behind in our ability as individuals and as a country to compete in a global economy.
I do not like this prospective trade-off. Further sacrificing Virginia's educational system, which has already slipped badly due to prior budget cuts, to get a tax cut is not a good deal.
Another area of concern at state and local levels is the assault that is being mounted on the humanities and the arts. Every nation has found it vital for the preservation of its history, culture and national identity to foster the arts. The United States in fact is among the countries that provide the least funding of these and, again, we are the poorer for it.
We need to retain a sense of proportion. We accept the fact that one missile might cost a million dollars, yet complain when the government funds a local art group with a few hundred dollars.
Anyone can supply his own figures and his own examples. I have found it convenient to measure items against the cost of building a high school. A high school costs in the vicinity of $15 million to $20 million, which is the cost of some fighter planes. The difference is that the former is an investment in our future and in future generations which will last a long time. The latter is necessary, but it certainly adds nothing to our civilization.
I would like to remind all our politicians and ourselves that history has not dealt kindly with those who have opted out of culture. Today we remember Athens for its culture, its writers, its philosophers and its art. These are as vibrant and as important to us today as they were to politicians like Pericles who promoted them. I defy anyone except a professional historian to tell me whether or not the Athenian budget was balanced and whether or not Athens had a crime wave in 450 B.C. I also wonder if anyone cares. Once again, I get the feeling that our politicians are promoting instant gratification while saddling us with the long-term cost of leading sterile lives without the joy and wisdom and richness that the arts and humanities bring to our lives. Is a tax cut worth a barren and joyless life?
Certainly there is room for improvement in our government. Certainly welfare needs fixing, and an answer has to be found for crime. We must, however, realize that every solution has a price and that quick fixes are not answers for these problems which have bedeviled humanity for centuries.
We also have to realize that if we want government services, we have to pay for them. I do not own a boat, but I gladly help provide via my taxes for the Coast Guard because I think that the rescue of people at sea is a desirable government function. By the same token, I feel that boaters should help fund the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities with their taxes because that, too, is something our government should do - it enriches our lives.
Taxes are part of what we have to pay for living in a civilized society that provides a gamut of varied services for its citizens. As individuals we may not need all the services; but we all need some of them, and we should be willing to pay for them.
Above all, let us remember that ``There is no free lunch'' and that politicians bearing gifts are not to be confused with the three Magi! by CNB