Categories
free trade & free markets ideological culture

Downs and Ups

We hear more about inequality when times get tough than when the economy is booming.

This suggests most people are satisfied with positive growth, but that, when the opposite occurs, some fall back to covetousness and envy. When dissatisfied, we look around for someone to blame.

So what’s roadblocking the long-​run upward trend?

There’s the recent bust in the ol’ boom-​and-​bust. But there’s a deeper problem here. Maybe.

Sheldon Richman, editor of The Freeman, notes that America’s upward mobility is stymied by a whole heckuva lot of government intervention … and that a New York Times story about how Americans “enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe” should surprise no one, for America isn’t “the land of the free” and Europe isn’t exactly  “socialist” — it’s more a case that the “economies of America, Canada, and Europe are all variations of corporatism, in which government power primarily benefits the well-​connected and well-to-do.”

America differs from Europe in the particulars of its interventionism, not in kind.

Still, things could be worse. Veronique de Rugy, writing in the February Reason (not yet online), shows that downward mobility was in evidence pre-​Bailouts. Of 1999’s 675,000 millionaires, only 38,000 remained millionaires in 2007.

That, surely, is enough 1 percenter income decline to satisfy your worst schadenfreude.

On a brighter note, de Rugy insists there’s still dynamism in the American economy, and that the lowest income earners had, during the same pre-​bust period, made substantial gains.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture too much government

Better Late Than Never?

“Too little, too late.” I am not alone to suspect that the Occupy movement — the 99 percenters — started its protest against corporate greed and government cronyism several years too late.

Where were the Occupiers when the Tea Party protests started?

Dancing in the streets over the Obama presidency? Many Occupiers may have lagged because they thought that “their man” could and would clean up corruption and make Washington work for the everyone — or at least the “middle class.”

The “too late” charge can be directed against the Tea Party, though — and has been, repeatedly. The Tea Partyers waited to organize until a liberal Democrat was in the White House, one who saw Bush’s big government and, well, raised it.

Many would admit, later, how not “theirs” Bush was. Still, few protested Bush’s big government push.

To the Tea Party’s credit, it was first — kicked off by Rick Santelli’s CNBC “tea party rant” in early 2009, against the upsurge of bailouts for banks, car companies, home-​buyers, you name it, as well as the very idea of government stimulus. (Though I ranted earlier.)

The time to protest cronyism and corruption in American government? The moment one opens one’s eyes to political reality.

Maybe the great age of protest has finally come.

I hope it’s not too late.

It always seems like citizens should have stood up to abuse of power sooner, but being late to the action is no excuse not to stand up now.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.