I don't believe there are evil people out there conspiring to keep the poor down and take all their wealth. That makes for good movies and even better space opera novels (both of which I enjoy immensely), but its both lousy economics and lousy history. Rich people have opportunities that the rest of us don't. That's just a fact of life, and while I'm envious of those opportunities, I'm not of the mind to deny them to others just because I don't have them. And frankly, if rich people were to conspire to take other people's wealth, they probably would be better off conspiring to take the wealth of dumb rich people than either smart or dumb poor people -- because rich people have more wealth to take.
Keynes had a better solution in 1933 than Hoover/Roosevelt. The big reason we had the Great Depression is that the Fed stomped on the growth of money at the very time it should have expanded it. In the 1930s there was a "liquidity trap."
However, being the solution in 1933 doesn't make it the solution in 2006-2013.
As for fiscal policy (taxes or government spending), he was wrong. Economic growth comes because of innovation on the supply side, not by stimulating the demand side. Increasing taxes chills innovation. As for spending, my belief it is not the amount of spending that matters, it is what the money is spent on. If the people who are the best at doing something (i.e., can do it at the lowest opportunity cost) happen to be the recipients of the spending, then government spending is a good idea, if they aren't, it isn't. Thus, spending on the marines to do the national defense thing is a really good use of funds, much better than spending it on mercenaries who read Soldier of Fortune.
Now I tend to think there are very few of those situations. Building of interstate highways, building the Hoover Dam, some national parks. Some courts. (The most precise term for what I am is a "minarchist" (short for "believes that there are some "minimum" roles for government.)
And I tend to think most of transfer payments (approximately half of all government spending) are NOT transferring money from those who do things at a higher opportunity cost to those who do things with a lower one. I generally believe transfer payments are a *bad* thing.
(Which is part of the reason Dakota and others like to call me uncompassionate. [grin1] )
Keynes was also wrong in his notions that one could use fiscal policy to smooth out the business cycle. For the opportunity cost reason and because that kind of short term economic manipulation requires timing and information policy makers simply don't have.
By good guys you mean whom? lib good guys, conservative good guys, both?
The problem with politicians is they like power. Sometimes because they think that power will allow them to get the social/economic/strategic outcomes they believe the country needs, sometimes because they just like power for its own sake. I think the latter are far less prevalent than usually portrayed -- I tend to think people in politics generally do things because they tend to believe what they are doing are the right things to do. (Man is inherently fallen/sinful, not inherently evil.)
I simply think they value power-based "solutions" far too highly. I tend to believe that voluntary interaction gets far more "good" accomplished, than using coercive power to "make people do good" does. Acton said that power corrupts, but he meant it in two ways. It doesn't just corrupt the person with the power. It corrupts the interactions between people more generally. "Power" solutions tend to reduce decisions to zero-sum games. Voluntary interaction (e.g., trade) tends to be a positive-sum game.
If I'm watching a Packer game, I want a zero-sum game with the Packers winning. But in just about everything else, I want win-win solutions. And politics to me is, almost always, a zero-sum game with "some gotta win, and some gotta lose." Because everyone can't have power; if someone has it, someone else doesn't.
And that to me is why power is corrupting.
No I do not.
The greatest part of this country IMO is that Americans have regularly refused to be satisfied with the status quo. For most of its history this country has epitomized a world view that to an unprecedented degree (in historical terms) values innovation and the "creative destruction" of entrepreneurship. That to an unprecedented degree is willing to accept criticism from both within and from outside. That to an unprecedented degree has accepted diversity and difference, not in the politically correct sense of "diverse protected groups of race, religion, gender, etc." but in the real sense of voluntary association (Tocqueville's point) and individual difference. America wasn't built, America didn't grow, America didn't become the world economic leader, America didn't become the only surviving "Superpower" by conforming to the status quo ante. America did and became all the things because Americans have, over and over again, millions of times, been willing to say, "to hell with the way things have been done before, there's a better way and we're going to make it happen.
Oh, along the way, a lot of those people saying "to hell with the old way" have been loons, deluded idiots, and dangerous subversives. Absolutely. But America has grown to be great, and it has stayed great because it has allowed those loons, idiots, and subversives to do what they do. Because some of those loons, idiots, and subversives have turned out to have it correct.
Like those loons we call the Founders. Like the loons and dangerous subversives that were the original Tea Partiers. Like the loons who were willing to risk it all on the Frontier, who believed that man could fly, who thought man could land on the moon and return safely.
Am I dissatisfied with this country? I'm dissatisfied with my job, and what I've made [or rather failed to make] of the gifts God gave me as an individual. Profoundly so.
But dissatisfied with this country? Only to the extent that we seem to have been overrun by the naysayers. In my opinion, ours is a time of opportunities with maybe one precedent in human history, the original Industrial Revolution. And unlike Britain circa 1800, where they were starting from a point of historical poverty, we are starting from a point of unprecedented wealth. Not just in the sense of purchasing power, but in terms of life expectancy, health care, and especially in terms of opportunity.
If I were 18, without a penny to my name, *this* is the time and the place I'd choose to be.
Despite the sewer that is Washington DC and American political decisionmaking, despite the screwed up educational system, despite the profound ignorance which my fellow citizens demonstrate daily with respect to history and economics (damn straight I'm an elitist: I don't believe Americans are evil or stupid; but I do believe we're generally damnably ignorant).
Individuals, voluntary associations, people willing to say the hell with the status quo, people who saw power as something always needing to be limited not something to be increased or re-distributed, people who valued trade and craft and innovation -- THOSE are what made the country great.
Originally Posted by: Wade