7 Reasons Liberal Economic Policies Don't Work

Townhall.com ^ | May 8, 2012 | John Hawkins

[Kaslin]

There's a reason it took the country so long to pull out of the Great Depression under FDR, why Americans became acquainted with the Misery Index under Carter, and why we've had the weakest economic recovery from a recession in U.S. history under Obama. Liberal economic policies just don't work. In fact, the only time left-wingers have taken charge in the last 40 years without decimating the economy was during the Clinton years when Republicans in Congress balanced the budget and spent 6 years strong-arming Clinton to keep him from molesting the economy like one of his interns. This is no coincidence; it's a natural consequence of the errant liberal view of economics.

1) Keynesian stimulus doesn't work. As Walter Williams has pointed out, the whole idea of revving up the economy via a government stimulus is doomed from the start.

…Where does Congress get the resources for the spending? Well, there is no Tooth Fairy and there is no Santa Claus. So, the only way Congress can get one dollar to spend is to take that one dollar from Americans, borrow that one dollar from Americans, or inflate that one dollar from Americans.

So, it’s very much like the visual image of a swimming pool. A person notes there is a shallow end, so he takes the water out of the deep end and pours it in the shallow end, hoping to raise the height of the water in the pool — and you would call that person stupid.

2) You can't fund the whole country on the backs of the rich. Remember the Buffet Rule that liberals hyped endlessly for months? It turns out it would only raise 45 billion dollars over a decade. All of that money combined will amount to about 2 weeks’ worth of this year's Obama deficit. That hearkens back to the dirty little secret that liberals don't want the American people to find out. America already has the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world and the most progressive tax code in the Western world. That means the rich are already almost tapped out and since they can afford high dollar accountants, tax shelters, and lobbyists and they can just move out of the country or stop working if that isn't enough, there's just not that much more revenue to be had from the wealthy.

3) Liberals incentivize failure. If I were willing to pay anyone and everyone $500 who would send me proof that they hit themselves in the face with a hammer hard enough to leave a bruise, YOU might not do it, but you could safely predict a 10,000% increase in the number of people hitting themselves in the face with a hammer over the next few months. So, if that's true, what are liberals incentivizing with food stamps, welfare, 99 weeks on unemployment insurance, and other giveaway programs? Only liberals would be surprised when they produce more failure by rewarding people for failing.

4) They create a hostile business environment. When Uday Hussein used to run Iraq's soccer team, players who performed poorly were slapped, spit on, and beaten with electric cables until the blood flowed. This is similar to how liberals treat American businesses. They demonize them, raise their taxes, bury them in new regulations, make it easier to sue them, and harass them with regulatory agencies at every turn. Then, they become puzzled as to why those same businesses aren't creating jobs or are looking to move more of their business overseas. You can't cut the sparrow's throat and fry it up for dinner and listen to it sing at the same time.

5) The business environment becomes unpredictable. Because liberals believe in routing as much of American life through the hands of government bureaucrats as humanly possible, businesses never know what to expect. They could lose profits via new taxes, have huge new expenses because of regulations, have projects shut down by the EPA, face huge lawsuits for spurious reasons, be crippled by labor union strikes, and on and on it goes. When businesses fear the unexpected, they tend to become cautious. They don't hire, they don't expand, and they horde cash to make sure they don't get wiped out by some arbitrary decision made by a government official who has never so much as run a lemonade stand in his life.

6) Liberals cause businesses to focus on government instead of the product. In Ayn Rand's classic Atlas Shrugged, Hank Rearden's company could outperform his competitors, but they were still able to hamstring him using their allies in government. That's the environment liberals encourage today and it's why we're spending increasingly larger sums on elections. For many businesses, lobbying and greasing palms in D.C. has become just as important as their performance. Chrysler, Solyndra, Bank of America, Citigroup, and (A.I.G.) among many, many others could tell you all about that.

7) Government is inherently slow, stupid, and inefficient. Saying that government doesn't do anything very well is like noting that it's easier to get a suntan at noon than at midnight. Yet, because liberals have a totalitarian impulse to control as many aspects as possible of their fellow citizens’ lives, they never stop working to transfer as much power as possible to Washington, D.C. Since there is absolutely nothing that the government can run better, cheaper, and more efficiently than the private sector, anything the government takes over from the market degrades in quality and increases in price. As Ann Coulter has noted,

If politicians and employers had guaranteed us “free” food 50 years ago, today Democrats would be wailing about the “food crisis” in America, and you’d be on the phone with your food care provider arguing about whether or not a Reuben sandwich with fries was covered under your plan.

[traderrob6]

Excellent!

[sickoflibs]

Been watching the recent Paul Krugman stimulus tour and just listening to him closely you can see how he is a self contradicting fraud.

He says over and over:

1) History has proved that increasing demand by government spending will ‘get us out of the recession’
2) Until private Businesses are ready to hire the government musthire because people are suffering.

Compare #1 and #2. #1 is saying that he has the cure which is :government. But in #2 he is saying that it is just a pain killer and it is businesses responsibility to fix the recession.

He is saying he was right about everything, of course he is usually wrong.

All his economic theories just happen to align with his liberal social justice goals, every one.

Krugman is admitting that he knows that Obama wont get his stimulus idea into law but says he should run on it anyway to win re-election, Does this sound like an economist to you?

Liberals and MSM show how hishonest they are passing this liberal activist off as someone who knows something, he's just another lib.

[SMARTY]

“Only liberals would be surprised when they produce more failure by rewarding people for failing.”

The whole process of de programming the ‘habit of success’ and the goal of ‘personal achievement’ is begun in the grade schools.

Mediocrity is the goal ... NOT excellence.

Young people are encouraged to ‘fit in’ at all costs... THAT is more important than achievement and the fulfillment of potential! It seems excellence is nearly anathema.

If you deny your own capabilities or diminish your own potential to better ‘fit in’ with your classmates, then you have abandoned the hope of success.

This carries over into adult life. People then begin their working careers with the deck stacked against them.

These same people scream themselves red in the face alleging the ‘rich’ exploit them and deny them their place and ‘share’ in the American dream!!

It is THE great lie at the heart of Liberalism! Of course, there is no lie so greedily gobbled up by the ‘people’ than the lie that they are being exploited, disserved and cheated, etc. !!!

V O I L A!!

Liberals achieve a self-perpetuating, doggedly immoveable and fiercely loyal base of voters who may be (and routinely ARE) manipulated on the basis of this extremely crude and internecine dynamic.

It is practically a functioning definition of treason, in anybody’s language.

[ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas]

Another way of looking at it is that you can't eat all your seeds and still plant them next year. But while these policies don't work economically, they can work politically. That fact used to be frightening, but now it seems more likely every day.

[Bon of Babble]

Excellent, succinct analysis written in plain language. Bravo.

Pity so few will bother to heed your words rather than listen to the likes of Krugeman, 0bama et. al.

To expound on the schools issue — entire schools have turned themselves over to “social justice” issues, vilifying the “1%”, screaming about the “rich not paying their fair share” — and that America is an inherently unfair, racist, sexist, homophobic country.

And I mean the entire K-University curriculum!! There are no competitions any longer in case “someone gets his feelings hurt” — feelings trump real world experience nevermind the entire world is about competition — we compete for college admissions, jobs, promotions — well, unless the government intervenes via Affirmative Action and preferences and quotas.

Krugman and government are looked upon as the great saviors and equalizers — this is what children learn in the schools — also that their is no shame in collecting life-long government benefits, especially if you are a minority because the government “owes” you for past indiscretions.

There is no shame in demanding what others have earned for oneself, and obviously this not sustainable.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

Perfect! Concise and true.

It’s always a good time to review the fundamentals.

[sickoflibs]

RE :”Another way of looking at it is that you can't eat all your seeds and still plant them next year. But while these policies don't work economically, they can work politically. That fact used to be frightening, but now it seems more likely every day.’

Seeds???, that is why the Dems poll tested the word ‘investments’ . All their spending is either ‘stimulus’ or ‘investment’. They poll test everything. It might take a few more years for those 'investments' to pay off.

How about if all the grasshoppers gang up on the one ant (SJB LOL) in an election and take his seeds after eating their own and call it fairness and leveling the playing field?

[Buckeye McFrog]

I would add #8 that the human brain simply is not wired to think that way.

Hence the repeated and failed attempts to reprogram it in order to create New Socialist Man, New Soviet Man, New Sandinista Man, etc. etc. etc.

[pallis]

Free market Socialism conjures up visions of Frankenstein putting a monster together, only the socialist parts are parasites, and the object of the experiment was very much alive when it began. ...For decades it was argued that Keynesian welfarism played a symbiotic role with Capitalism and Democracy, placating the poor masses. And that argument assumed that Welfarism would always play a fringe role, but like all parasites, it has grown and multiplied until it is killing the host. Sane people look at the problem and realize the parasite needs to shrink and maybe die, so the host can survive. The left looks at this as an opportunity to kill the host, allowing the parasite to become their monster. Just look at Greece and France, at Obama and Occupy thugs. The host has become the enemy, or maybe it always was.

[ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas]

How about if all the grasshoppers gang up on the one ant (SJB LOL) in an election and take his seeds after eating their own and call it fairness and leveling the playing field?

That's a better analogy. They do eat their own seeds, but what is legally defined as the govt. obligation to their their "own fair share" keeps growing. But they don't realize how many bureaucrats and graft in congress it takes to do that.

At the same time, the govt. and the Fed are subsidizing Goldman Sachs (which pretends to be a "bank"), etc. Hiding his connections to the WS crowd allows Obama to pretend he is "against the 1%," or whatever slogan he is using this week.

There are some rich people who use the govt. to their own advantage, but leftist voters don't know how many of those love Obama.