I have no use for Republicans, conservatives or supply-side economics. But if the economy grew in the wake of Reagan's tax increase, it grew in spite of the tax increase, not because of it. All things held equal (ceteris parabus, as the economists say), money in private hands is more likely to promote health, wealth, economic growth, lower golf scores and human happiness than money in the criminal government's hands.
How can it be otherwise? Do you believe the government wiser, more omniscient and ethical than the rest of us--the millions of semi-freely ("semi," thanks to the criminal government) acting players in the marketplace? Do you trust the IRS, the Pentagon, DEA, FDA, CIA, BATF, FBI, etc., more than Joe the Plumber next door?
Yeah, I know. We need the government to protect us from Goldman Sachs, General Motors and Northrop Grumman. Never mind that Goldman Sachs, General Motors and Northrop Grumman would have ceased to exist years ago without the government taxing Joe the Plumber to fund its corporate-welfare schemes. After all, that's why we have a government: to protect us from the greedy capitalists.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/06/24/253569/reagan-1982-flashback-economy-boomed/
How can it be otherwise? Do you believe the government wiser, more omniscient and ethical than the rest of us--the millions of semi-freely ("semi," thanks to the criminal government) acting players in the marketplace? Do you trust the IRS, the Pentagon, DEA, FDA, CIA, BATF, FBI, etc., more than Joe the Plumber next door?
Yeah, I know. We need the government to protect us from Goldman Sachs, General Motors and Northrop Grumman. Never mind that Goldman Sachs, General Motors and Northrop Grumman would have ceased to exist years ago without the government taxing Joe the Plumber to fund its corporate-welfare schemes. After all, that's why we have a government: to protect us from the greedy capitalists.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/06/24/253569/reagan-1982-flashback-economy-boomed/
posted by Tony at 10:33 AM
1 Comments:
When the vast majority of people were taught in state-run or state-regulated schools, it's easy to see why people think the state is necessary.
Impressionable young minds buy the narrative of robber barons, wild banks, monopolists, dirty meat packing plants and sweatshop labor that the state uses to justify various agencies.
Standard economics courses do not challenge the externality and public goods arguments that are also used to justify the state.
People really do believe that government agencies are better able to regulate society than society itself.
Both Kruschchev and a Soviet Mig pilot who defected visited the United States and thought that the supermarket was some kind of CIA propaganda. They could not imagine how a system of free exchange could have produced something so vastly superior to the state-run grocers in the USSR.
I think the same thinking prevails among most Americans.
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