Tag: crisis

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Head Over Heals for Stimulus

Which thinker is more relevant right now, Lord Keynes or Naomi Klein?

We’ve hit hard times. The Keynesian advice is to spend a lot of taxpayer money to make up for the lack of private spending, thereby jump-​starting the injured market order.

Naomi Klein, on the other hand, is best known for her book “The Shock Doctrine,” in which she charged that free-​marketers were conspiring to use social and economic crises as excuses to “take over” and remake the world in their favor.

Let’s look at the evidence, shall we? We’ve hit a crisis. The government has done the Keynesian thing. Unemployment went up, but … who has made the biggest gains?

USA Today reports that federal workers are enjoying a boom in both employment and salaries. “Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession’s first 18 months” — and that’s not counting overtime and bonuses!

It’s not markets being stimulated, here, but government.

Not only is this Keynesianism on its head, but Naomi-​Kleinism, too. Those who have taken advantage of the crisis are the ultimate insiders. As a Washington Examiner editorial puts it, “bad times for the rest of us are good times for the federal establishment.”

We could wish Naomi Klein were right.

But things aren’t getting better because she’s wrong.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom

Panic in the Streets

A few people get sick, and schools shut down.

We have been having and enduring flu epidemics for some time. And people have died even in minor outbreaks. The difference now is that the patterns of epidemiology have become nightly news.

Why the talk about shutting down everything — schools, businesses, government offices? To prevent a major pandemic, like the 1918 Influenza outbreak, which killed millions.

The president went out of his way to tell us to avoid panic. The vice president, on the other hand, went on one of his jags and helped foment more panic.

The media, of course, abundantly repeated the message of panic.

Last autumn, the head honchos in Washington sowed the seeds of panic by proclaiming the mortgage-​based financial bubble the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. Hardly before anyone had received a pink slip, the government was giving away billions of dollars.

And then, they switched rationales and plans. And then they gave away more. Rinse. Repeat. Only the panic remains.

Well, stock up on water and masks and food. And cash. Or gold. That’s fine. But be wary of stocking up on too much government. When we panic we are not thinking straight, that’s when we are likely to lose the most. With the government and the media leading the charge.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.