Here’s a letter to the Washington Times:
Richard Rahn (“Risky unrealism“) and Wayne Allyn Root (“The Marxist in the mirror“), each in his respective column today, tempts even the most optimistic amongst us to the precipice of pessimism. From Mr. Obama’s soak-the-rich class warfare through his demonization of speculators to his continued insistence that economic growth is best achieved when big government spends big bucks on big plans drawn up by Really Smart bigshots (such as Jeff Immelt), the president’s hostility to free markets is rampant and dangerous.
What H.L. Mencken wrote about the dirigiste economic ‘planning’ and interventions uncorked in France in 1848 by that country’s best and brightest geniuses applies to America today: “Every day they announced some new and grander scheme to bring in the millennium, and every day they abandoned some busted one. Meanwhile, the plain people went on looking for jobs, and not finding them…. Its goat was the French taxpayer. He had to pay, in the end, for all the crazy building of gaudy railway stations, and all that frantic dredging of rivers and digging of canals. Starting out with the thesis that the Rotten Rich were scoundrels and ought to be squeezed, the Brain Trust proceeded easily to the thesis that any man who had any property whatsoever was a scoundrel, too, and ought to be squeezed equally. The rich, in the main, managed to escape, but the little fellow could not get away, and squeezed he surely was.”*
Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux* H.L. Mencken, “New Deal No. 1,” in Mencken, ed., A Mencken Chrestomathy (New York: Knopf, 1949), pp. 212-213.
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How often do your letters actually get printed?
“…the president’s hostility to free markets is rampant and dangerous.” Don
From Bloomberg
Investing April 7, 2011
Record Earnings Point to More Stock Market Gains
Record corporate profits …..
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_16/b4224041337171.htm
Funny thing happens when you print money…..
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BASE
I just happened to remember this graph today. What do you know, it’s been updated.
Inflation. First it hits t-bills, then it hits bank stocks, then it hits…
I hopes were dashed. Muir is incorrigible. muir’s reading comprehension failed again.
/i/my/
Incorrigible?? That’s good… right? Thank you! Right back at you bro…
It’s funny for me to watch my cats and neoliberal economic thinkers chase their tails.
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/bernanke/Screen%20shot%202011-04-27%20at%2010.36.26%20PM.png
It’s so touching to have someone concerned about the plight of America’s rich.
Are you a product of American public schools? You obviously can’t read.
Thanks Methinks. Difficult to know what part of “The rich, in the main, managed to escape, but the little fellow could not get away, and squeezed he surely was” is ambiguous.
Can read, comprehension fail.
The rich do not pay their fair share.
How do we know this? Because they are rich.
If they paid their fair share then they wouldn’t be rich.
We will know that the rich have paid their fair share when they are no longer rich.
Wait a minute. There’s no more rich. We squeezed them dry.
That’s OK because they’ll keep producing wealth like they always have.
What?
Punishing the creation of wealth has discouraged people from creating wealth?
That’s OK.
Government can legislate wealth into existence.
Laws are magic.
Why am I starving?
Can we count on your support in our Adopt-a-Millionaire campaign?
Can we count on you, Plac, to get a job, save for retirement, and buy insurance in case you get sick? Or do you just plan to mooch off everyone else?
He prefers to mooch.
“From Mr. Obama’s soak-the-rich class warfare through his demonization of speculators to his continued insistence that economic growth is best achieved when big government spends big bucks on big plans drawn up by Really Smart bigshots (such as Jeff Immelt), the president’s hostility to free markets is rampant and dangerous.”
“What H.L. Mencken wrote about the dirigiste economic ‘planning’ and interventions uncorked in France in 1848 by that country’s best and brightest geniuses applies to America today: “Every day they announced some new and grander scheme to bring in the millennium, and every day they abandoned some busted one. Meanwhile, the plain people went on looking for jobs, and not finding them…. Its goat was the French taxpayer.”
You see, the vast sea of mundane knowledge possessed by the many is much smaller than the backyard pond of “special knowledge” supposedly possessed by the few. Spontaneous order could never be, as vast complicated systems need “planned”. Further, equal opportunity is straight out, equal outcomes is the path to prosperity. Zero sum thinking is the purest realism.
Sound good? It’s the direct path to Dystopia.
And Dinotopia. Rim shot.
From time-to-time, I read something I wish I’d written. This is one of those times. Bravo!
Mencken was one of humanity’s wisest AND most literate members!
France 1848.
Bastiat’s time. He tried.
What’s most sad is that my dear learned friends from France had never heard of him until I mentioned him to them. He was ignored then and he’s ignored now….shunned by the entire French Public School system…not even worth a mention. I finally met a Frenchmen some time later who learned about him….only because he took a class in college that discussed classic liberal economic thinkers. He was always, as a result, the first Frenchman I met who’d heard of Hayek.
We should commission a statue of Bastiat to be made and send it to France like they did with the Statue of Liberty. Would the French accept it and display it?
On a side note, it is interesting to me to have watched the evolution of the Boudreaux line of thought regarding whether Obama was/is an actual socialist/marxist/liberal/democrat/communist/regressive.
It began with the unwarranted but generous “we don’t have enough information”, and has progressed to the reasonable equation of Obama with at least Marxism.
It was obvious from the get-go, Don. What took you so long? Long before he won the presidency it was obvious what we were getting and equally obvious as to what he wanted to accomplish. The signs and warnings were all there.
Like I said in a little essay I wrote back in November 2008 after he won the election, “The tornado (Obama) is in the trailer park (The Whitehouse). We don’t know what damage it will cause, we only know for sure that it is going to cause damage.”
Now you know what an Obama can do in the Whitehouse, our big problem at this point is that he is still there.
If Jeff Immelt does as bad a job as P. Obama’s business advisor as he has done with GE, we are screwed. GE’s stock was approx. $50 when Immelt took over and is now $20 and has been as low as $7. It also shows what a idiot P. Obama is in picking such a failed executive to help him.
Don,
There is the same general hostility towards the rich (and speculators) in France. It will even be one of the main topics of the next presidential election. All politicians or almost propose to charge the rich more. We must find some money to fill gaps and pay down debt and our economic growth is weak and unemployment is high. But the rich are not responsible for the deficits and indebtedness of the state! The culprits are those who propose to tax them more!
The people are a hopeless rabble. They will always scream for the blood of the rich, the Jew, the other.
whyy do midgets have really small dicks????
because craig is gaaayyyyy! just like this stupid ass blog…