Corey O’Connor was sworn in as Pittsburgh’s 62nd mayor on Monday. The Democrat, and son of late Pittsburgh Mayor Bob O’Connor, is promising a fresh look at streamlining government processes to bolster economic development. He signed an executive order Tuesday morning to get that ball rolling.
That’s a great start and we wish his administration success in this endeavor – and any others that slay the shibboleth that government is the be-all and end-all in a democratic republic.
To that end, we offer Hizzoner (a term we use with respect and not irreverence) some important quotes about government to consider. (A tip of the hat to John Hawkins and his Culturcidal website who curated these in 2024):
Frederic Bastiat: “Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone.”
Neal Boortz: “Don’t look in other people’s pockets. You have no business there. What they earn is theirs. What you earn is yours. Keep it that way. Nobody owes you anything, except to respect your privacy and leave you the hell alone.”
Winston Churchill: “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
Benjamin Franklin: “I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.”
F.A. Hayek: “A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.”
Henry Hazlitt: “The larger the percentage of the national income taken by taxes the greater the deterrent to private production and employment. When the total tax burden grows beyond a bearable size, the problem of devising taxes that will not discourage and disrupt production becomes insoluble.”
John F. Kennedy: “A rising tide [in the economy] lifts all boats.”
Laurence J. Peter: “Don’t knock the rich. When did a poor person ever give you a job?”
Ayn Rand: “America’s abundance was created not by public sacrifices to ‘the common good’ but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America’s industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance – and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way.”
Ronald Reagan: “Millions of individuals making their own decisions in the marketplace will always allocate resources better than any centralized government planning process.”
Adam Smith: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”
Thomas Sowell: “It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication — and a government bureaucracy to administer it.”
Margaret Thatcher: “I think we’ve been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it’s the government’s job to cope with it. ‘I have a problem, I’ll get a grant.’ ‘I’m homeless, the government must house me.’ They’re casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbor. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There’s no such thing as entitlement unless someone has first met an obligation.”
Thatcher, again: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
