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In December, Michael LaFaive, director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, presented a speech to We the People of Mid-Michigan on political society versus civil society.
The state budget for fiscal year 2015 will be $52 billion, he noted, a number which will likely increase in 2016.
Michigan’s budget has already increased 30 percent from the 2005 fiscal year, when it was $40 billion.
LaFaive focused on how smaller government benefits society’s freedom as a whole, while a government that takes more from taxpayers expands Michigan’s “political class” and reduces its “civil society.”
“A political society is a coercive one that requires countless mandates and regulations and rules to function while a civil society relies on peaceful, voluntary association in a free market economy,” LaFaive said.
“As government grows, civil society shrinks. When government moves beyond its core functions, it does not create things out of thin air so much as it displaces what a free people would choose to do. And it ends up performing too many tasks too poorly, including the ones we absolutely must rely upon for the sake of safety and basic, essential services."
