Celebrating our winners.
FEE recently held our second-annual essay competition in cooperation with the Bagwell Center at Kennesaw State University. The contest was open to any student at KSU, and their prompt was related to the work of the Bagwell Center’s visiting fellow, Grover Norquist, and the Taxpayer Protection Pledge that his organization, Americans for Tax Reform, asks political candidates to sign.
The winner and runner-up each offered carefully considered responses, and we are sharing excerpts below.
Our winner, Aliyah Johnson, is a junior nursing student from Conyers, Georgia. In addition to being a nursing student, she serves as the Vice President of the Student Government Association, President’s Parliament Scholar Ambassador, Kennesaw Campus Tour Guide, and KSU Brand Ambassador.
Her essay, “The American Odyssey: The Quest for Strength Through Stewardship,” discusses the values of what governments do with taxpayers’ money—and how this needs to be balanced with the needs of taxpayers. She writes:
At its core, this debate is about stewardship. Taxpayer dollars represent trust, the consent of citizens who expect government to manage resources wisely and transparently. Ethical governance requires protecting opportunity while demanding efficiency. Budgets do not collapse overnight. They erode slowly; one unchecked program, one unexamined expense, one easy decision at a time. And by the time the consequences arrive, they are no longer theoretical. Fiscal responsibility is about trust. Trust that the government will not take more than it needs. Trust that it will not spend more than it should. Trust that it understands the weight of every dollar earned by working families. It is about protecting what matters, before there is nothing left to protect.
Our runner-up, Omya Airi, also offered a nuanced approach, suggesting flexibility in policy with an end goal of reducing the deficit and government waste. As she wrote in her essay, “Flexible Fiscal Responsibility Without Ideological Rigidity”:
As the debt grows, the government becomes more vulnerable to changes in interest rates, as an increase in those rates will cause net interest expenses to rise sharply, consuming an ever-larger percentage of the budget. These expenditures don’t provide any new services to citizens; they are a transfer from the current citizenry to bondholders. In this regard, structural deficits operate not as a stimulus but rather as a delayed form of taxation. In addition, there is an equity issue with running large deficits over time, as current citizens get the benefits of government spending while future citizens will have to pay the taxes and face the resulting inability of the government to respond to future crises.
Omya is a first-year university student studying finance and economics, with a growing interest in real estate investment and wealth management. She plans to pursue a career in finance while continuing her study of economics at an advanced level.
Aliyah and Omya’s insights showed a keen grasp of the issues at hand, particularly the practical dimensions of the deficit, and the challenges of restraining government excess. As Omya writes: “The persistent deficits of the federal government represent more than a purely macroeconomic abstraction; they represent increased interest burdens, investment crowding out, and reduced policy options for the next generation.”
Young people will be faced with the consequences of government choices, as they are taxed to pay the bill for previous generations. Choices have to be made, and as Aliyah summarizes it: “Every federal dollar represents a moral decision. It reflects what a nation chooses to protect, what it chooses to reform, and what it is willing to let go.”
We at FEE were impressed by the quality of these essays and the understanding they represent, and were delighted to award the prizes at the Bagwell Center Dinner. They were the best in a strong field of entries, and we thank Bagwell Center Director, Professor Tim Mathews, for coordinating this contest with FEE. We wish Aliyah and Omya the best as they continue their studies.
As part of their awards, Aliyah and Omya were also offered admission to FEE Summer Campus, an opportunity for college students to learn with peers from across the world about the principles of liberty and the free market. To join them, apply now.
