Taxpayer debt better used elsewhere
Seth says:
We need to get past this idea of saving, because the status quo is leaving the building, and quickly. Not just in print of course, but in your industry too.
Wouldn’t the last few years have been different, and more productive, if we hadn’t “saved” the domestic unionized car industry? Or crazy risk taking banks? Or over the last decades if we hadn’t kept “saving” social security?
All these things mentioned must fail. The only question is when and who feels the pain. The ENTIRE game of the last 30 years has been politicians keeping the pain from their voters for as long as possible.
It would be better if those that failed felt the pain the most, don’t you think? Instead we’ve wasted trillions and ensured that the ultimate failure will be felt extremely by everyone.
Wouldn’t it be better if the trillions of debt, assuming we were going to do it anyway – a safe assumption, had been spent on truly productive things and not temporarily saving failures?
February 2nd, 2010 at 4:37 pm
A very interesting concept – saving by the government. We don’t really save dying uneconomic industries; we arrange a slower death that eases the transition of the many people whose lives depend on the industry. Some things, like shipbuilding, we keep alive because we need a domestic capacity for national security. Some things we let die even though we would need a capacity if we got involved in a serious war, like steel. And perhaps someday, passenger railroads. Other things we keep alive because the public doesn’t want to give them up; chalk that up to democracy. Recently, the president proposed a Social Security escape from a need for saving it – privatization. The public hooted it down.
The general problem with dying entities is that the present job holders and other interests vote today, whereas the future winners after the death and disruption are unknown and therefore have no great interest in killing the doomed industry. Call it economic foolishness; it’s the way the public feels about transitions. We don’t run a government as a business because government has different objectives, like stability.
February 2nd, 2010 at 8:17 pm
If the government stuck to its Constitutional duties less industries would die, the economy would be vibrant and able to absorb those that ended up in dying industries, and education would be better so people would be better able to switch.
February 3rd, 2010 at 7:20 am
#2: If govt. stuck to constitutional duties, some industries wouldn’t be as big as they are, and thus, “too big to fail”.
February 3rd, 2010 at 7:34 am
Imagine where the US economy and government would be if, in the ardor for strict Consititutionalism, we never had the trust-busting of the late 19th century and monopolies were unrestrained. Would we have great industries and enterprises with a much lower average standard of living? Would wealth be highly concentrated in the 400 with a small middle class and a huge mass of unorganized low-wage workers? Would high-tech start-ups be allowed to challenge entrenched monopoly positions? Would the monopoly that invented or bought the transistor have suppressed the development of personal computers in favor of mainframes from companies like IBM? Once again, be careful what you wish for.
February 3rd, 2010 at 7:52 am
trust busting is within the constitution, OR if not, it could have been specifically added.
So yes, I can imagine lots of things, mostly a world where I’m not raped every paycheck