Viewpoint of This Book
The notion that the individual rather than the group is paramount is relatively new. Historian Lawrence Stone [1977, pp. 4-5] notes that before the modern period,
It was generally agreed that the interests of the group, whether that of kin, the village, or later the state , took priority over the wishes of the individual and the achievement of his particular ends. “ Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness ” were personal ideals which the average , educated 16th – century man would certainly have rejected as the prime goals of a good society.
Since that, however, the mechanistic view of government has come to exert a major influence on Anglo-American political thought. However, it is by no means totally dominant. People on both the left and the right regularly voice objections to the individualistic view. For example, in 2011 Democratic senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren said, “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own…[P]art of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.” And in 2012 Rick Santorum, who was seeking the Republican presidential nomination, stated, “Just as original sin is man’s inclination to try to walk alone without God, individualism is man’s inclination to try to walk alone among his fellows.” Indeed, anyone who claims that something must be done in the “national interest,” without reference to the welfare of some individual or group of individuals, is implicitly taking an organic point of view. More generally, ever in highly individualistic societies, people sometimes feel it necessary to act on behalf of, or even sacrifice their lives for, the nation.
Anglo-American economic though has also developed along individualistic lines. Individuals and their want are the main focus in mainstream economic, a view reflected in this text. However, as stressed earlier, within the individualistic tradition there is much controversy with respect to how active government should be. Thus, adopting a mechanistic point of view does not by itself provide us with an ideology that tells us whether any particular economic intervention should be undertaken.3
This point is important because economic policy is not based on economic analysis alone. The desirability of a given course of government action (or inaction) inevitably depends in part on ethical and political judgments. As this country’s ongoing debate over public finance illustrates, reasonable people can disagree on these matters. We attempt to reflect different points of view as fairly as possible.
GOVERNMENT AT A GLANCE
We have shown how ideology can affect one’s views of the appropriate role of govern-ment. However, to form sensible views about public policy requires more than ideology. One also needs information about how the government actually functions. What legal constraints are imposed on the public sector? What goes the government spend
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3 This question really makes no sense in the context of an organic view government in which the government is above the people, and there is an assumption that it should guide every aspect of life.
PART I Getting Strated
money on, and how are these expenditures financed? Before delving into the details of the US system of public finance, we provide a brief overview of these issues.