The Question No One Ever Seems to Ask: How Does This Benefit the American People?

Recently, I spent a week in Mexico City. It was a lot of fun. The food was good, the parts of the city I was in seemed safe, most things were pretty cheap, and I got to see everything from beautiful, old churches to caves to volcanoes to 1,800-year-old pyramids.

All in all, it was a very good time, and other than the altitude (7,200 feet above sea level), the dry air, and the pollution, all of which combined left me with a clogged nose for a full two weeks after I visited, I would highly recommend it. In fact, if I were so inclined, I could very easily write a whole article on what I saw, learned, and experienced there.

Rather than do that, let’s just talk about one thing that particularly seemed worth noting. You see, Mexico is not generally considered to be a prosperous or particularly well-run nation, but I could not help but notice that time after time, people kept referring to problems there for regular people, great and small, that the government at least attempted to solve.

For example, I was told…

* Mexico City had really out-of-control pollution, so they planted an enormous number of trees that changed the look of the city and helped a lot with the pollution.

* There were too many stray dogs there, so the government made it illegal to walk dogs off of a leash.

* People were being sold non-working phones, so the government required the people selling them to put a sim card in them and successfully complete a call before the transaction was finalized.

* Women were getting groped on buses, so the government created pink sections that only women and children could enter.

This stuck out to me because we’ve mostly stopped doing this kind of thing in America.

Our government doesn’t try to make life better for the average person anymore. Instead, our government obsesses over ideological issues, takes tax dollars from one group of people and gives it to another group of people in return for votes, or helps one group of people they hope might vote for them at the expense of another group of people. Nobody in government ever seems to focus on how they can help the American people. They focus on how they can help Ukraine, their donors, the special interest groups, people that might vote for him, but there seem to be very few politicians and activists focused on making people’s everyday lives better.

For example, how does having open borders benefit the American people? How does it make your life better to have hordes of illegals pouring over the border, breaking the law, gaming our system, and asking for handouts? If you want to say that’s not what they’re doing, then why do sanctuary cities like New York and Chicago keep freaking out about how much it costs to take care of them? “Oh, but they’re a huge economic boon!” If that was so, why aren’t sanctuary cities excited to be flooded with illegals? Because they’re a burden, not a boon.

Along similar lines, how does it benefit the American people to give out asylum to people coming to America? Particularly since our asylum system is being gamed non-stop and most people asking for asylum cross the borders of multiple other countries, including Mexico to get to our country.

Speaking of Mexico, here’s a fun little fact. Two different tour guides I had there complained about the illegal aliens coming into their city on their way to the United States, which seemed pretty ironic to me.

Here’s another question. Who does this benefit?

How exactly does it benefit Americans to have aliens here who are drinking and driving?

Similarly, we’ve had pushes to defund the police and limit their policing tactics, and DAs in liberal parts of the country have outright refused to prosecute criminals. As a result, crime and drugs have exploded. It has gotten so bad that stores in many parts of the country have started closing because they can’t cover the shoplifting losses:

How does out-of-control crime and stores being closed because of shoplifting affect the people there? Does it make their lives better or worse?

Similarly, many liberals like John Kerry have started targeting FARMING (!!!!), ostensibly because of carbon emissions, but how do potential food shortages and higher grocery bills make the lives of the average American better?

Along similar lines, do higher gas prices make the lives of the average American better or worse?

We can go on and on with this kind of thing. The massive increase in the money supply by the FED in 2020 caused an enormous amount of inflation. Obamacare helped a small number of people with already existing conditions get cheaper insurance at the price of dramatically increasing the cost of health insurance for everyone else. No matter how much money is poured into them, the performance of our public schools keeps getting worse and worse because the teachers’ unions have unlimited sway in the Democratic Party. Asking them to put the good of the kids first is too big of an ask.

How do any of these things benefit the American people?

Sure, we could point to a few wins. Any tax cuts, including Trump’s tax cuts, benefit the taxpayers who get to keep more of their own money. Although it has been a source of tremendous controversy, many people would call Trump helping to get the COVID-19 vaccine out so fast a great example of the government responding to a real-world problem in a way that benefited a lot of people. Although not all Americans need insulin, both the Trump and Biden administrations made moves to try to reduce the cost of insulin, which was initially intended by its discoverers, Frederick Banting, James Collip, and Charles Best, to be free.

But, do our politics revolve around making the lives of most people better? Do our politicians spend their time trying to figure out how to improve day-to-day life for Americans? Does anyone even seem to ask what should be the most critical question for a government official, “How does this benefit Americans?”

No.

If they did, you’d see a government with a very different focus. They’d be focused on questions like, “How do we help our students learn more about math, English, and history in school without being negatively influenced by teachers?” “How do we reduce crime?” “How do we reduce the tax burden on Americans?” “What immigration policies would most benefit the American people?” “How do we protect kids from predators and bad influences?” “What can we do to incentivize the market to produce cheaper housing, food, and energy costs?” “How do we make sure everyone gets good value for their tax dollars?” Can you imagine having a government that actually cared about spending your tax dollars responsibly? Yeah, me either.

We don’t need any more narcissistic politicians looking to cater to special interest groups, make a name for themselves, or get rich. We need more servant-leaders in DC who put their constituents and the country first by consistently viewing everything through the lens of, “How does this benefit the American people?”

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