State of the Same Old...

In his state of the union address last night the President stated:

"We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules. What's at stake are not Democratic values or Republican values, but American values. We have to reclaim them."

The President then went on to outline democrat style government expansion proposals by which these American values could then supposedly be reclaimed. The two biggest questions to my mind are, if everyone doesn’t play by the same set of rules, whom exactly is to blame, who is it that makes these ‘rules’? And, if there is a growing disparity in the outcomes of Americans, defined as ‘really well’ or as ‘barely get by’, why haven’t increases in government spending over the last three years done anything about it?

And it’s not just the last three years. For more than one hundred years the government has fiddled with regulations, the rules, and has introduced many programs supposedly designed to decrease disparities in economic outcome and yet the President, hardly for the first time, decries ‘rules’ and disparities and suggests what exactly? That we need more government ‘rules’ and government programs that, by not succeeding in stated aims, have failed time and again over many years.

If an observation were made without knowing the players of our country’s economic system, and the increase in government programs and rules as the input were to equal increased problems, not less, what would a reasonable conclusion be?