James Carville’s own poll says that 55% of the American people think that Barack Obama is a socialist.
I was amazed last night to see that even the clueless Bill O’Reilly has figured it out. “Spread the wealth around” wasn’t enough for him, but appointing someone to head up Medicare who says that it’s wealth redistribution was apparently the last straw.
We can’t do anything about the White House for another two years, but I’ll bet that a Speaker of the House other than Nancy Pelosi would be a huge shot in the arm for business confidence.
[Update a while later]
The Lady Gaga economy:
Right now, there’s lots of demand for Lady Gaga, say; but maybe too many houses, cars for sale, and hokey Internet startups.
Economic recovery requires massive spending cuts, deregulation, privatization, tax-cutting, avoidance of monetary inflation, and elimination of government-granted monopolies and favors. But, more importantly, economic recovery requires allowing prices and wages to adjust to market clearing levels. Politicians don’t allow that, so downturn is deliberate policy in a sense. Politicians instead stimulate demand in random, whim-driven ways that create new distortions that harm us later (when they’re out of office, or their earlier misdeeds are forgotten or forgiven).
Such policy prescriptions foster political ends that have little to do with actual economic recovery. Recession is already inevitable if government does not perform its core function of preventing the interest group manipulation that distorts smooth economic enterprise. It’s doubly so when politicians deliberately distort the economy’s workings.
Beyond performing its “classical” functions of maintaining order and thwarting contrived scarcity, government can only serve as a transfer mechanism. Inherently limited in what it can contribute to the real economy, it can certainly subtract a lot.
And it certainly has.
[Update a while later]
The Money Honey weighs in:
You are seeing businesses follow the growth outside of the United States. But absolutely – that is the positive. The reason that they’re not hiring right now is because there is a tremendous amount of uncertainty. And that has everything to do with the policies coming out of this administration. Higher taxes in 2011, higher expenses as a result of health care costs. That’s why they’re not hiring.”
Well, duh.
Could they wipe out health-care deform? It would be nice to see more judges take the Tenth Amendment seriously. Not to mention the Ninth. As a commenter notes, this could perhaps be the David to the Commerce Clause Goliath.
…of “progressives.”
The Founders’ understanding of the origin of government, in turn, proceeds from a recognition of the difficulty many individuals have in honoring the obligations that flow from the equality principle. Government is formed, in other words, for the express purpose of better enforcing this duty among men, thereby better securing the freedom of all. “If men were angels,” as Madison famously wrote in Federalist 51, “no government would be necessary.” Precisely because men are not angels, because many are strongly inclined to violate the rights of others when it is in their interest to do so, individuals consent to enter into the social compact, and establish government on the understanding it will use its powers to restrain those domestically and internationally who would violate their freedom. In principle, then, the power of government is not absolute but is limited to whatever actions are necessary to secure the natural rights of its members.
By rejecting the existence of natural rights, accordingly, the Progressives consciously repealed this limit: “It is not admitted that there are no limits to the action of the state,” Merriam observed, “but on the other hand it is fully conceded that there are no ‘natural rights’ which bar the way. The question is now one of expediency rather than of principle. . . . Each specific question must be decided on its own merits, and each action of the state justified, if at all, by the relative advantages of the proposed line of conduct.” In devising the content of the law, legislators need not worry about respecting the individual’s natural right to rule himself, because “there are no ‘natural rights’ which bar the way.”
In principle, accordingly, all of the rights previously believed to inhere in the individual — e.g., the rights to life, to physical liberty, to decide whom to marry, to enjoy the fruits of his labor, to speak freely, etc. — were now subject to public disposal. Whether and to what extent government allows individuals to control any aspect of their personal concerns was now purely a matter of how it viewed the consequences of doing so. To illustrate just how far the Progressives were willing to take this, Merriam, in drawing the foreign-policy implications of this change, declared: “Barbaric races, if incapable, may be swept away; and such action ‘violates no rights of these populations which are not petty and trifling in comparison with its [the Teutonic race’s] transcendent right and duty to establish legal order everywhere.’” As Progressive economist and New Republic editor Walter Weyl summed up this shift in 1912, America was now “emphasizing the overlordship of the public over property and rights formerly held to be private.”
Read all.
The new financial regulation bill includes racial and gender quotas for all. There are plenty of reasons to oppose this monstrosity. This is just one more, but it’s a big one.
Are the elite starting to turn against Obama?
“If you’re asking if the United States is about to become a socialist state, I’d say it’s actually about to become a European state, with the expansiveness of the welfare system and the progressive tax system like what we’ve already experienced in Western Europe,” Harvard business and history professor Niall Ferguson declared during Monday’s kickoff session, offering a withering critique of Obama’s economic policies, which he claimed were encouraging laziness.
“The curse of longterm unemployment is that if you pay people to do nothing, they’ll find themselves doing nothing for very long periods of time,” Ferguson said. “Long-term unemployment is at an all-time high in the United States, and it is a direct consequence of a misconceived public policy.”
But…but…Nancy said that paying people unemployment was the fastest and best way to create jobs!
Ferguson was joined in his harsh attack by billionaire real estate mogul and New York Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman. Both lambasted Obama’s trillion-dollar deficit spending program—in the name of economic stimulus to cushion the impact of the 2008 financial meltdown—as fiscally ruinous, potentially turning America into a second-rate power.
“We are, without question, in a period of decline, particularly in the business world,” Zuckerman said. “The real problem we have…are some of the worst economic policies in place today that, in my judgment, go directly against the long-term interests of this country.”
Gee, Mort, I could have told you that two frickin’ years ago. Why did it take you so long to catch on that you were one of the rubes?
And I loved this:
Ferguson warned: “Do you want to be a kind of implicit part of the European Union? I’d advise you against it.”
This was greeted by hearty applause from a crowd that included Barbra Streisand and her husband James Brolin. “Depressing, but fantastic,” Streisand told me afterward, rendering her verdict on the session. “So exciting. Wonderful!”
Brolin’s assessment: “Mind-blowing.”
To be fair, though, I suspect that you could blow Brolin’s mind with a butterfly wing.
This can’t be good for his renomination prospects. The long knives will be out on November 3rd, I suspect.
Most Americans don’t want to pay higher taxes to bail out public employees and entitlements:
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Adults shows that only 19% would be willing to pay higher taxes to avoid layoffs of state employees. Sixty-nine percent (69%) say they would not be willing to pay more in taxes for this reason. Another 11% are undecided.
Adults feel similarly when it comes to funding entitlement programs. Twenty-two percent (22%) would pay higher taxes to prevent cuts in entitlement programs for low-income Americans. Sixty-three percent (63%) say they would not pay more to keep these programs afloat. Another 15% are undecided.
Americans are slightly less opposed to paying higher taxes for education. Thirty-four percent (34%) say they are willing to pay higher taxes to provide funding for public education, but 54% say they are not. Another 12% aren’t sure.
Of course, it’s already too late, since a large part of Porkulus went to exactly this, and at some point, we’ll have to pay for it (not to mention the interest on it). What I find the most interesting about this poll is that (unlike most Rasmussen polls) it’s of adults. I wonder what likely voters think?
This will be a potent campaign issue (among many) against Democrats this fall.
Keynes versus Hayek. Of course, it’s never an argument about how best to revive an economy — it’s an argument about how to either maximize government power, or to liberate the people from an overspending, overtaxing tyrant.
[Update a few minutes later]
Lynne Kiesling has more thoughts:
This theme of “economic control becomes political control” is crucial to making sense of the corporatist nature of political activity, and why regulation is so pernicious for individual well-being and liberty.
Hayek is, if not one of the first to make this connection, certainly the most prominent early proponent.
It’s taxpayers versus Washington.
Let’s hope that the Republicans finally figure that out this fall, and don’t forget it.
Whatever happens, I think we’re in for a rough ride. This fall may be the last chance to stave off real catastrophe.