We have nothing to fear from BIG GOVERNMENT!
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Author: CS Admin
Uhmmm,Yeah. So…how’s that Been working out for you?
(Public Approval Rating for congress: 15% | Re-election rate for congress: 90%)
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Photo credits (endorsement of this message is not implied): cc Randy Stern on flickr / cc Raelene Gutlerrez on flikr
Let’s talk Turkey. Not the bird, the country. America has fallen behind in yet another category: preposterous promises by politicians.
It’s becoming clear that Bernie Sanders, Vermont’s independent “democratic socialist” U.S. Senator and now Democratic Party presidential contender, is a piker, a penny pincher, a cheapskate, a tightwad, a Scrooge. At least, by comparison.
It’s one thing to promise free stuff — say, zero-priced college for everyone! — but is the generous senator willing to give entrepreneurs $100,000 to start a business?
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu is.
Well, 100,000 Liras anyway.
In the run-up to Sunday’s Turkish election, the fearless leader of the Justice and Development Party announced his plan to subsidize new businesses.
And so much more. And why not? “Once you have a job, salary and food. What is left?” Davutoğlu rhetorically asked last week, answering, “A wife.” He told male citizens: “first consult your parents and, God willing, they will find you a suitable one. If they don’t, you can come to us.”
Meanwhile, no U.S. candidate proposes any government support whatsoever for men seeking wives. Or women seeking husbands … or wives. Or men seeking husbands. Etcetera.
No dating subsidy, either, or help with high wedding costs — not even a Costanza regulation to protect brides from the dangers of deadly wedding invitation envelopes.
Of course, government big enough to give folks everything they desire is also big enough to take everything — including free speech — away. This week, Turkish police stormed two “opposition” TV stations taking them off the air days before the vote.
That could never happen here, though … could it?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Government is so corrupt that its power to intervene in the market can be bought and sold by the rich…
…Therefore government should be bigger and more powerful.
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Why do so many people (especially politicians) favor high tariffs, “managed trade,” embargoes and domestic subsidies, all of which — first as “mercantilism” and then as “protectionism” — have been debunked, repeatedly (demonstrated as ineffective economic policy), since Adam Smith’s famous 1776 attack?
Economist Donald Boudreaux, in an excellent defense of economic principles, explains why the Bernie Sanderses and Donald Trumps of this world support anti-free trade nostrums — out of sheer ignorance:
The typical politician opposes free trade because he … doesn’t understand that the purpose of trade — any trade — is to enrich people as consumers and not to enrich people as producers. He doesn’t understand that exports are a cost and that imports are a benefit; he thinks that it’s the other way ’round. He doesn’t understand that the specific jobs lost to imports are not the only employment consequences of trade; he doesn’t understand that trade also “creates” jobs in the domestic economy.… He, in short, doesn’t understand the first damn thing about the economics of trade.
But what protectionists do understand are direct appeals to “good results” (like more and better high-paying jobs). The fact that their proposals throw a monkey wrench into the diverse mechanisms of trade, yielding worse results?
They just don’t see them.
Why? Because real economies are complex, and protectionists lack the science that would help them trace the consequences of their policies.
The fact that they’ve focused their whole attention on the business of “governing,” and making simplistic, direct appeals to people who are also uneducated in economic principles, doesn’t help.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
The standard case for government-run industry runs like this: some goods, by their very nature, are best provided by government … to ensure high quality and low cost.
City sewers, firefighting, roads and education are traditionally explained as requiring government operation, organization, and tax funding.
The trouble is, it’s no longer plausible, really, to say that one of the most expensive and omnipresent of these industries, “public education” (government schooling) guarantees much of anything.
Certainly we aren’t getting quality at low cost.
But a few folks do get wealthy.
I wrote about Barbara Byrd-Bennett a few weeks ago. She’s the Chicago public school administrator who had to resign her CEO-ship because of the overwhelming evidence against her scamming Chicago’s schools … for over $2 million in kickbacks.
And now, it turns out, she has a prehistory — in the Motor City. “Federal investigators were looking at Barbara Byrd-Bennett’s role in a $40 million textbook contract that was awarded while she worked in Detroit,” explains the Chicago Sun-Times, “long before she became Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s schools chief.…”
Republican, democratic government relies upon an alert press and citizenry to catch folks like Byrd-Bennett. Why? Because government, by its nature, is most efficient in delivering wealth from many into the hands of the few. Having it serve the many is difficult, and requires eternal vigilance.
Which is one reason why we need limited government: the more extensive government’s scope, the harder to keep track of all the frauds and exploitative con jobs.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
