October 13, 2010 12:58PM # Hiding the Cost of Government Leads to Bigger Government By [Michael F. Cannon](https://www.cato.org/people/michael-f-cannon) --- SHARE At the *Daily Caller*, Duke University Prof. Chris Conover writes: > There you are, about to sign the papers, when the car salesman offers to throw in a $1,000 options package. He knows those options will cost you a further $440 by reducing the performance of your new car’s engine, but he doesn’t tell you that. > > > Sounds sleazy, right? Congress does it every day. > > > Politicians love to rail against car dealers and mortgage lenders who surprise consumers with hidden costs. Yet Congress hides from voters a huge part of the cost of government: the hidden costs of taxes, which include lost income and jobs. Failing to account for these costs creates a bias in favor of bigger government and a less efficient tax code. Read the rest of Conover’s oped [here](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12470), and his Cato study [here](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12197). ##### Related Tags [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Health Care](https://www.cato.org/health-care) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).