… is from page 43 of the 1993 Fox & Wilkes re-issue of Rose Wilder Lane’s classic 1943 volume, The Discovery of Freedom:
Government need not make a profit, it takes what it wants.
Let us here not question the questionable claim that Donald Trump is a genius businessman with the touch of Midas. Even so: given Trump’s enthusiastic and self-serving support of a very expansive use of government’s power of eminent domain (exercised under the takings clause of the U.S. Constitution) – and given also the reality revealed with lovely concision in this quotation from Rose Wilder Lane – the popular assumption that a Pres. Trump will “run” the U.S. government in a way that transforms it into a producer of net value for society is a pure absurdity. A Pres. D. Trump will be at least as unable and unwilling to operate the government in a genuinely productive way as will a Pres. H. Clinton, a Pres. B. Sanders, a Pres. T. Cruz, a Pres. M. Rubio, or a Pres. J. Kasich.
…..
Trump is also, of course, a complete ignoramus about economics (with the other candidates being not much better on this front). But an understanding of economics is, contrary to popular myth, not prerequisite to being a successful business person.
