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Today is Ash Wednesday, and for millions of Catholics worldwide, that means the beginning of Lent. That also means a lot of complaining about not being allowed to eat meat today and for the next six Fridays, and yes, guilty as charged, I did a lot of that in my younger years. There is a certain irony to that, as Lenten discipline used to have more strict guidelines centuries or even decades ago, and there was a lot less complaining.
Many of my Protestant friends years ago used to wonder why Catholics were so hard on themselves these forty days. In recent years, many of them have put my Catholic brethren to shame by getting in on sacrifice during Lent, and doing so with zeal. Several of my Jewish friends, many of whom are not particularly religious, nonetheless abstain from all food and drink on certain high holy days without a grumble nor a whine. I don't live in an area with a high Muslim population, but the few I do know are faithful to the sunrise to sunset fasting provisions during Ramadan. I attempted a similar thing one year during Lent, and I failed miserably.
Even completely separated from any religion, there are certain physical and psychological benefits to fasting and sacrifice. A friend of mine who studied nutrition told me once how an occasional fast helps cleanse the body. Going without certain things from time to time, even when we don't have to, helps us learn to live with less, just in case we ever do have to. It helps detach us from some of the less healthy foods we put in our bodies. Such discipline can also be fiscally beneficial, as it can cut a little from our grocery bills. Sacrificing other things that entertain us can, for a time, remove certain distractions and allow us to use our time more productively.
Government could stand to learn a little bit about sacrifice, especially when politicians of both major parties lecture us about it on a regular basis. Ever since the New Deal and even before, government programs have been introduced to get us out of economic downturns. The problem is, once those programs are in place, they usually prove to be permanent, though any perceived economic benefits are not. We are told we need this program or that agency in place to keep the economy strong.
Yet, America has had several recessions, hyperinflation, stagflation, stock bubbles, housing bubbles, and a host of other economic problems since the New Deal. With every challenge that has come to our economy, another costly program is introduced on top of the older ones. When the economy picks up again, there's never any cutting back on the bloated administrative state.
The most recent example is Barack Obama's “stimulus” package, passed just one year after George W. Bush's $700 billion bailout package. Though I'm no economist, I'm often kept up at night by the thought that those two items may have pushed our nation to the point of no return, and scores of generations won't be able to pay if off. Should the economy recover, government's track record indicates what is now “new” spending will become standard.
In periods of downsizing and restructuring, companies often become leaner and more efficient. If not, they tend to go out of business. One could look at it as a sort of “fasting” period. Government, however, continues to grow in good economies and bad.
Perhaps if government learned to make sacrifices the way businesses and individuals do, to “fast” if you will, it too would become leaner and more efficient. If government cut back to levels that are sustainable (we hear them tell us about that word all the time), not to mention Constitutional, it could manage a balanced budget in a slow economy, when taxable revenue is lower. When the economy is more prosperous, government would even be capable of running a surplus as a result.
Of course, the best thing to do if that should miraculously occur would be to start applying that to our debt. With the national debt and unfunded entitlement programs exceeding total world economic output, the government needs a lot of “fasting” to turn things around.