Daniel Hennninger has an excellent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal today. If you haven’t seen it, check it out. He nails the Obama administration’s greater flaws on the head.
The tremendous irony of the progressive movement is that they thrive on “good” causes. They love small business, but they do more than anyone to kill it (e.g., 1099 forms for expenditures meeting or exceeding $600). They care for the poor, but they do more than anyone to keep them poor (e.g., minimum wage). Their remedies for crony capitalism only exacerbate it (e.g., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). They profess their love of political freedom, but actively move to subvert it by dismantling economic freedom (e.g., forced purchase of health insurance).
Dear progressives,
Economic freedom is a necessary condition for political freedom. In the entire history of the world, there was never a nation that had political freedom without economic freedom.
Your good intentions are paving the road to serfdom. Or since you don’t like roads these years: Your good intentions are laying the high-speed rail tracks to serfdom. Quit breaking business — the engine of true progress.
In short: Don’t tread on us.
While it is certainly is good news that the state of Maryland hasn’t denied permission to developers hoping to install slots in a new casino planned in the Anne Arundel Mall, the rationale on which the decision was based and the fact that they require permission at all is deplorable.
The amount of tax revenue and number of jobs that a new casino could generate for the state should not be the basis for government getting out of the way of private business owners. The government should not be in the way in the first place.
The Maryland state lottery has been drawing money from residents since 1973 and it is sheer hypocrisy and protection of the state’s monopoly for politicians to limit the amount and types of gambling offered by private operators.
Beyond hypocrisy, the real issue is individual liberty and the proper role of the government. The question is, should governments limit the choices of individual consumers and business owners if their actions do not violate the rights of any other individuals? Certainly not. The government shouldn’t be in the business of determining if gambling should be allowed, what kinds, how much, or where it should be allowed. These rights should be left to individual property and business owners.
President Obama faces the immediate challenge of getting funds again flowing through the financial system. And, apparently, his advisors are relying on “pump priming”—pouring money into the system to encourage more money to flow. This metaphor is misleading.
I grew up in a poor area of rural Louisiana where some families still relied on old style hand pumps. The process for pulling water from underground aquifers depended upon the vacuum principle—that is the (generally) leather seal in the pump casing would often dry between uses—loosening the seal and making a vacuum impossible. Pouring some water into the pump pipe would moisten the leather, recreating the seal and restoring the potential vacuum. That system worked well for many centuries.
But an economy is not a pump and the banks aren’t leather seals.
Bankers and other players in our financial system are sentient individuals, not machines. Unlike pumps, they must and do consider the prospects for future actions—that the forces that were artificially induced will soon dry up. And they suffer consequences unlike the leather simile.
Thus, our challenge is to ensure that we restore confidence that the forces that today start the financial waters flowing are not ephemeral, that the forces of economic freedom and responsibility have been restored. A set of arbitrary, inconsistent and short-term priming activities is unlikely to restore our system
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