Let's start with the fact that on average most Americans including myself are forced to conform with so many regulations that the average American even before Biden's new regulations and mandates and before the 23% inflation paid over $12,000 a person for. A family of four paying over $50,000. But you never see it, because the cost is embedded in everything you buy and deducted before you get paid.
Those regulations don't include all regulations imposed on people by HOA and other organizations that you don't really choose to join but are imposed on you if you just want to live somewhere.
My wife and I try and often achieve giving 10% of what we make to charity. But in addition, to the choices we make the government makes choices that account for over 20% of what we earn after we pay for all those regulations in the prices of products we buy.
Try withholding your taxes and telling the government for the portion of its spending you don't support. Try telling the government you don't agree with crippling taxes they have put on gasoline in order to pressure you to switch to EVs (in our state, even though we have plenty of oil reserves, the price of gasoline is twice as high as other states). During Covid try telling the state that until it proved that Covid could be transmitted eating outdoors in a well-ventilated seating areas outside a restaurant that it could pound sand. The state sued restaurants and fined people, till a court forced them to show the medical studies to support our governor's attempted to look virtuous even as he hosted a party indoors in one of the most expensive restaurants in Napa Valley.
On April 1st, the government mandated a $20 per hour minimum wage for the fast-food industry. Yesterday, I took two daughters for a breakfast of three coffee, drinks, 1 scone, and 3 breakfast sandwiches. The cost over $102 plus $17 for city parking. When government mandates things, you pay them in everything you buy. I could move, but I can afford it, but I feel bad for those that can't.
Why shouldn't the guy that works hard 50 hours a week keep more of what he makes to spend on what he wants including his children? Why should the state mandate where that money will be spent and take it from him in taxes.
Originally, the full cost of our government cost about 2% of GDP, now it is over 45% in some states. And these are just what the government spends and don't include the other costs government imposes on you that you pay without ever realizing it.
Recently, our state government has taken a far more active role in mandating what schools must teach. It has also mandated the behavior of schoolteachers and what they can say. It mandated what physicians could tell patients about medical treatments. The list goes on.
You notice things like states that prohibited gay marriage because it impacted you differently than others, but those type of laws are so endemic to our society that you don't notice most of them if they apply to everyone.
I am not against regulations that focus on safety but even those should be done with great care to ensure they achieve the "safety goal" at the lowest cost. I am not opposed to supporting our government to provide for members of our society that can't help themselves (emphasis on can't). But our government has gone way beyond those two social goals, but perhaps you can't see it, because it has always been around you.
