I dont care if he is correct in this article. Dont trust Stockman.
There is no doubt in my mind we are headed for a train wreck with the Republicans and Democrats responsible, the Democrats more so because they spend more money but the Republicans unwilling to turn back the big spending programs and adding a few government expansions of theAir own.
Bush 43-Medicare Part D
Nixon-EPA,OSHA
It is a very good rant. He has insider knowledge of what many people intuitively feel: that the System is careening out of control. Even the moochers know it in their hearts.
Bump for the morning and fresh coffee
Yet ensnared in the Keynesian delusion that society can create wealth by mortgaging its future, the stimulus-besotted denizens of the beltway blew it entirely on the one true domestic function of the state---even under the regime of crony capitalism that now prevails. That imperative is to maintain and adequately fund a sturdy safety net to support citizens who cannot work due to age or health, and to supplement the incomes of families whose marketplace earnings fall below a minimum standard of living.
And he still hates tax cuts and views tax cuts not as less government confiscation from people, but rather as government "showering money" on people. This idea comes from the philosophical template that all money belongs to the government and that it is up to government to assure that it is distributed fairly. At the same time Stockman (correctly) exposes the falacy that is modern "Keynesian economics" he turns around and disses Milton Friedman. (?) Then he talks about how "free market capitalism" merely needs to be smoothed out by the state.
In other words, Stockman is simply all over the place.
What is flailing, by contrast, is the vast expanse of the Main Street economy where the great majority has experienced stagnant living standards, rising job insecurity, failure to accumulate any material savings, rapidly approaching old age and the certainty of a Hobbesian future where, inexorably, taxes will rise and social benefits will be cut.
ping
A very long article to tell me mostly what I already knew. I used to get into heated disagreements on FR in the pre-Obama days by saying that the economy was collapsing and actual, meaningful living standards had been dropping for many years, the much touted wealth of America was in a very few hands and our freedom was gone.
I stand ready to plead guilty to being as dumb as a rock in many ways but there are some things that seem as obvious to me as the sunrise and I cannot figure out why they are not obvious to others. I was at a little gathering yesterday where people were talking about “Obamacare” and I told the others that the most amazing thing to me about it is that so many people thought and many still seem to think that it was ever INTENDED to work out well. It is as obvious as an oncoming train a quarter mile away with whistle blowing and running a hundred miles an hour that it was never SUPPOSED to do anything but destroy the private health care system. To think otherwise seems as crazy to me as thinking that someone who proposes to chainsaw both your legs off just above the knee only wants to do that because he is convinced you will be better off that way.
Bttt!