Posted on 12/24/2008 8:44:57 AM PST by dbz77
Barack Obama wants to use the recession to remake the U.S. economy. "Painful crisis also provides us with an opportunity to transform our economy to improve the lives of ordinary people," Obama said.
His designated chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is more direct: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."
So they will "transform our economy." Obama's nearly trillion-dollar plan will not merely repair bridges, fill potholes and fix up schools; it will also impose a utopian vision based on the belief that an economy is a thing to be planned from above. But this is an arrogant conceit. No one can possibly know enough to redesign something as complex as "an economy," which really is people engaging in exchanges to achieve their goals. Planning it means planning them.
Obama and Emanuel want us to believe that their blueprint for reform will bring recovery from the recession. Yet we have recovered from past recessions without undertaking a radical social and economic transformation.
In fact, reform would impede recovery.
This is not the first time a president chose reform over recovery. Franklin Roosevelt did it with his New Deal, and the result was long years of depression and deprivation. Roosevelt's priorities were criticized not just by opponents of big government but by none other than John Maynard Keynes, the British economist whose theories rationalized big government. Before FDR had been in office a year, Keynes wrote him an open letter, which was printed in The New York Times:
"You are engaged on a double task, Recovery and Reform; -- recovery from the slump and the passage of those business and social reforms which are long overdue. For the first, speed and quick results are essential. The second may be urgent, too; but haste will be injurious. ... [E]ven wise and necessary Reform may, in some respects, impede and complicate Recovery. For it will upset the confidence of the business world and weaken their existing motives to action. ... Now I am not clear, looking back over the last nine months, that the order of urgency between measures of Recovery and measures of Reform has been duly observed, or that the latter has not sometimes been mistaken for the former."
Note Keynes's concern. Government interventions, such as the cartelizing of industry through the National Recovery Administration, "will upset the confidence of the business world and weaken their existing motives to action." In other words, investors will not take the risks necessary for recovery if their profits and freedom are subject to unpredictable government action. Economic historian Roberts Higgs calls this phenomenon "regime uncertainty."
Keynes's letter apparently had little influence on Roosevelt, who stuck to his plan. In his second inaugural address a few years later, FDR feared that signs of recovery had jeopardized his reform plans by removing the sense of emergency: "To hold to progress today, however, is more difficult. Dulled conscience, irresponsibility and ruthless self-interest already reappear. Such symptoms of prosperity may become portents of disaster! Prosperity already tests the persistence of our progressive purpose." (Emphasis added.)
What a shame. Free people enjoying their lives make it harder for the administration to forcibly impose its utopian vision on them.
Obama wants to act quickly. In the name of stimulating the economy, he plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars the government does not have to convert the economy from carbon-based fuels to "green" alternatives. Even if that were a good idea -- and it's definitely not -- it would not bring recovery. Any money the government spends must be taxed, borrowed or conjured out of thin air by the Federal Reserve, and that will reduce sound private investment. Obama has no real wealth to inject into the economy. He can only move around existing money while inflation robs us of purchasing power. Meanwhile, private investors who might have produced a better engine, battery, computer, cancer treatment or other wealth-creating and life-enhancing innovations hold back for fear that big government will undermine productive efforts.
The way to a lasting recovery is to greatly lighten the burdens of government. Then free Americans will save and invest.
Grand interventionist reforms go in precisely the wrong direction.
We can recover from this current economic crisis, but I’m not sure we’ll be able to recover from 4 or (God help us)8 years of Obama. I’m seriously scared for the future of the republic.
The one thing that was needed for big government socialists to transform our economy was the complicity of the population.
This economic mess is the BLANK CHECK that big governments nanny-staters having been waiting for for decades. First they got their President--and now that President has the willingness of the people (the most crucial element) to make that transformation.
dhimmicrats: (Useless) solutions in search of problems...
Wish Obama would listen to this advice....
I truly believe that this "crisis" was planned some years ago and manipulated to occur right before the election. We've been had.
Having said that, the only thing that could have possibly gotten a far-left, socialist and liberal extremist like Hussein elected President--is an economic collapse.
It's the ultimate irony then--that the markets collapsed in the few months before Hussein got elected. The collapse accelerated virtually 'to the day'--when the polls showed McCain taking the lead. Coincidence? I have no idea. If it's a coincidence--the odds were longer that winning the lottery.
That economic 'perfect storm' occurred and will now drive our country much further 'to the left' in virtually all aspects of our life--in a direction and magnitude that would have been absolutely impossible without that collapse.
Big government, nanny-staters, and socialists around the world are now SALIVATING AT THE MERE THOUGHT of what is to come in January.
You make an excellent point that I haven't thought about before. We live in an age of instant information populated by people who demand instant gratification. So on one front, this bodes well for the Republican contender -- whoever that may be -- in 2012.
I couldn't disagree more. That 'front' is a small one--
as Hussein (with the able assistance of the MSM) will never, ever, EVER let everyone forget about his ULTIMATE ALIBI--
THE ECONOMIC MESS HE INHERITED!!
That 'blank check' ULTIMATE FREE-PASS CARD (which he is now playing by saying this recovery will take years)--
is a 'trump card' that will reassure his election. It's worked perfectly before--FDR rode that horse of an alibi for many years.
I believe what we are seeing is the mother of all October surprises. It may also be that the October surprise is bringing more than the manipulators bargained for.
But consider this as well: In four years, the MSM will have collapsed (judging by the pace of the Dinosaur Media Death Watch that we see today). By then, millions more people will be getting there news from the Internet -- UNFILTERED by the bias of the MSM Left.
But the question remains: will this be enough to offset the lemming electorate that put Obama in office?
Dunno...
I tend to agree with you.
No October surprise in our country's history can match the economic meltdown that occurred just prior to this election.
Being a conspiracy buff, I think so also.
My question to you is ........who is the manipulator?
“But consider this as well: In four years, the MSM will have collapsed (judging by the pace of the Dinosaur Media Death Watch that we see today). By then, millions more people will be getting there news from the Internet — UNFILTERED by the bias of the MSM Left.”
I disagree. The sheeple that I have observed that do go to the internet for “news” go to MSM run web sites (cnn, nytimes) or the home pages of places like Yahoo, MSN, etc. where liberal biased headlines are shown.
It's easy for me to think it's the democrats that are the culprits - but there are too many other things that fell too easily in place to just blame them. McCain ending up as our candidate, Bush just being "missing in action" these last few years.......I guess I am a conspiracy buff too.
There are a group of people that are going to make a fortune off of this "economic crisis" - I always tend to follow the money trail.
I don't think it's just a matter of democrats vs republicans - I think it goes way further than that - these tentacles are global in nature. It's so evil if you start connecting all of the dots.
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