America as Bottom Up Country - Essay Example

This is the line taken in Howard Fineman's "The Thirteen American Arguments". But to what extent is the United States of the 21st century really a bottom-up society, and does the Internet really enhance the powers of the ordinary person To answer these questions, we must first identify the ways in which government impinges on the citizen, and vice-versa. In a representative democracy the powers of the government, once it is elected, can be surprisingly draconian, and they are certainly very great.

They always include the power to incarcerate citizens, and in some cases to kill them. There is obviously considerable variation between governments such as that of France, where the President can exercise almost monarchical powers in some situations, and governments such as that of Switzerland, where power is mainly decentralised to the Cantons and can be diluted by citizens calling for a referendum. The constitution of the United States probably places it about three quarters of the way between the centralist authoritarian extreme and the decentralist pluralist extreme.

In other words, America is far closer to Switzerland than to France. This is hardly surprising, as the Founding Fathers in Philadelphia set out to devise a constitution that was full of checks and balances. The main ones are the separation of powers between Federal government institutions, namely Congress, President and Supreme Court, and the sharing of powers between the Federal and State authorities.The theory seems clear, but the practice has often been murky. Although Lincoln is to be applauded for taking up arms to free the slaves, the Union armies effectively crushed the southern states for attempting to pursue an independent line.

And governments down the ages have imposed swathes of regulations on their citizens, some of which compel people to do things, others of which forbid them from doing things. These regulations reach into every facet of our lives, ranging from speed limits to compulsory school attendance. Furthermore, the system of taxes and government spending in the United States, as elsewhere, has created an increasing transfer of effective decision-making power from the people to the government. In most Western countries, governments now tax and spend around 35-45% of their national income.

In the case of America, the figure is around 36%, of which about half is spent by the Federal government and the rest by State and local governments. This means that ordinary people are losing more than one third of all the economic resources they create. And more than one third of the vast American economy is at the disposal of government officials, rather than being available to spend according to the preferences of individual citizens. The power to decide the allocation of economic resources is one of the most important ways in which people can shape their own lives and the society they live in.

The era of big government programs which arrived with President Roosevelt's admirable New Deal in response to the Great Depression, is alive and kicking. It has suffered some set-backs, most notably during President Reagan's time, but with the fiscal deficit ballooning under President Bush in the past few years, and with President Obama promising a raft of fiscal stimulus measures to kick-start the ailing economy, Big Government is certainly far from finished.So what powers do ordinary people have over the government Well, of course, they have the