How I wish this were required reading for everybody in this country: Stephen Moore, in the Wall Street Journal, compares recent government “policy” to the near-parody programs Ayn Rand described in Atlas Shrugged:
For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises — that in most cases they themselves created — by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism.
In the book, these relentless wealth redistributionists and their programs are disparaged as “the looters and their laws.” Every new act of government futility and stupidity carries with it a benevolent-sounding title. These include the “Anti-Greed Act” to redistribute income (sounds like Charlie Rangel’s promises soak-the-rich tax bill) and the “Equalization of Opportunity Act” to prevent people from starting more than one business (to give other people a chance). My personal favorite, the “Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Act,” aims to restrict cut-throat competition between firms and thus slow the wave of business bankruptcies. Why didn’t Hank Paulson think of that?
These acts and edicts sound farcical, yes, but no more so than the actual events in Washington, circa 2008.
For the life of me, I can’t understand why people can’t grasp how badly our politicians are running the government right now.
It’s just COMMON SENSE.
I know that there are good, thoughtful people out there who hope the Democrats can rescue this country from the mess we’re in. But government isn’t the answer. You can’t force people, through legislation, to not be stupid and greedy. They’re going to be stupid and greedy no matter what, and when you pass a law to restrict one behavior, they’ll just express their greed & stupidity some other way.
This is an existential issue, folks. You can’t legislate what goes on in peoples’ souls.
Meanwhile, that growing pile of increasingly byzantine laws encumbers EVERYONE. You end up with lunacy. You end up with things like a tax code that’s so complicated people can’t fill out their income tax forms without professional help. As one example of many.
That’s why the minimalist approach of our Constitution is such a beautiful thing.
Probably the best article I’ve read so far on what was going on, in the last few years, on Wall Street is this one: a piece in Conde Nast Portfolio by Michael Lewis (author of Liar’s Poker.) The article does a great job of describing just what greed & stupidity looked like among the guys who engineered our current fiscal disaster.
But we don’t make it better by putting our politicians in charge — because they are every bit as greedy, and if anything more stupid, than the Wall Streeters.
They don’t have our best interest at heart — and we don’t have the resources to keep them honest. We just don’t. We’re looking after our homes, and our families, and our jobs.
There’s only one way out. We have to take our medicine and put our economy back on sound fiscal footing again. Even if it means we go through a period of economic upheaval, and uncertainty, and even hardship for a few years. We can handle it. We can come together at a community level and take care of each other.
That’s the only way out of this mess.
Common sense.
Front page, yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. Article titled The Doomsayers Who Got It Right. The “doomsayers” being folks who had the audacity, while the rest of the world was drunk on paper wealth, to suggest that a crash was coming.
Well guess what, they’re still worried.
[They] fret that U.S. government spending on bailouts and stimulus plans that preserve failed business models could increase the likelihood of a worse calamity later.
They foresee a long season in which consumers cut their spending, and instead sharply increase the savings rate. That would be healthy for savings-anemic U.S. households, which have spent beyond their means for years, but deeply problematic for a country where consumers drive 70% of all economic activity.
They also envision higher taxes and the likelihood of further declines in U.S. stock prices as the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index bottoms out as much as 30% lower than today. And while noting that “deflation” is today’s catchword, several experts say that inflation and perhaps even hyperinflation (in which prices rise at double- or triple-digit percentages) is the real issue a few years down the road as the Federal Reserve increases the money supply and relies on untested measures, such as buying home mortgages or other assets, to spur the economy.
Meanwhile, via Instapundit, this Reuters story: U.S. governors seek $1 trillion federal assistance.
Governors of five U.S. states urged the federal government to provide $1 trillion in aid to the country’s 50 states to help pay for education, welfare and infrastructure as states struggle with steep budget deficits amid a deepening recession.
The governors of New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio and Wisconsin — all Democrats — said the initiative for the two-year aid package was backed by other governors and follows a meeting in December where governors called on President-elect Barack Obama to help them maintain services in the face of slumping revenues.
There we have our leaders, America. Not the so-called “doomsayers” who actually have the tools (i.e. intellect and integrity) to make a pretty sound estimate of the effects of our fiscal choices. Oh, no. Instead we have people whose only concern is to “maintain services.”
Because heaven forbid, in the face of a worldwide fiscal meltdown, anybody has to actually do without “services.”
The medicine has been poured. It sits there in the spoon in front of our mouths, so close our noses tell us clearly how bad it’s gonna taste.
But we’re still kicking and screaming like a bunch of babies that we aren’t going to take it.
Begging our government to give us sugar instead. Make it all go away. Sugar for the auto industry, sugar for the banks, sugar for the mortgages we shouldn’t have signed in the first place. And now sugar for the state governments who have been overspending their budgets for years.
It never ends, because we’re fearful and unimaginative, and if that’s not enough we’re being led by politicians who are stupid and corrupt and whose only worry is whether their policies will buy the votes they’ll need later to get re-elected.
We’re big babies. Infantalized by our government, by the so-called socialist model that proposes government solve peoples’ financial problems for them.
Not enough money to pay off our bills? No problem! Just print more!
What could possibly go wrong if we do that?
I remember once, years ago, reading about a ferry that capsized somewhere. Near Thailand maybe. The ferry was fine. But it started to rain. Half of the deck had a canopy over it, and when the rain started, all the people on the deck of the boat rushed over to that side.
They tipped the boat over.
I feel like I’m on that boat.