Hands off government1/15/2024 ![]() Much of the public has lost its taste for large and expensive government, but its brief shift in sentiment allowed enough of an opening for the ratchet to click forward into a new position. That explains why we're likely to be stuck with some elements of the expanded state apparatus and extended government powers that were allowed to metastasize during the 18-months-and-counting of the pandemic. "The coronavirus crisis is already allowing the implementation of ideas that would have been considered very radical just months ago." "Crises have always granted reformist policymakers powers to bypass legislative gridlock and entrenched interests," Cornell University historian Nicholas Mulder gloated in March 2020. The ratchet effect is celebrated in some quarters by people who see opportunity to remake the world. He coined the term "ratchet effect" to describe the phenomenon of hard times promoting government growth. "After each major crisis the size of government, though smaller than during the crisis, remained larger than it would have been had the precrisis rate of growth persisted during the interval occupied by the crisis," wrote economic historian Robert Higgs in his 1987 book Crisis and Leviathan. Americans quickly reacquired a preference for smaller government, and yet we're still stuck with a surveillance state and airport security theater. Which is to say, the public was quickly disabused of the notion that the state was worthy of such trust. That surge in trust in government resulted in the Patriot Act and the Transportation Security Administration. "The other pro-government response came in the weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks amid heightened concern about terrorism and a surge in trust in government." "Last year marked only the second time in Gallup's 29-year trend that at least half of Americans endorsed an active role for the government on this item," the polling firm adds. The only other time Gallup has registered a popular preference for bigger government was 20 years ago, which is a hint at the dynamic that's at play. ![]() In 2020, as politicians warned that we faced death by this new disease unless we shuttered businesses, sheltered indoors, and avoided one another, a rare majority of 54 percent thought government should take on a more active role. "Currently, 52% say the government is doing too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses, while 43% want the government to do more to solve the country's problems." "Americans have shifted back to favoring a more hands-off approach for government in addressing the nation's problems after a rare endorsement of a more active role last year," Gallup recently reported. ![]() But that lingering inflation of state power will continue over the objections of a public that has lost its taste for an activist state. History suggests that we're unlikely to see government fully return to its preexisting constraints even after everybody agrees the pandemic has passed along with whatever debatable need there might have been for officials to expand their reach. Americans who notice an increase in the size and intrusiveness of government since COVID-19 first appeared in headlines may wonder whether this will be a permanent condition.
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