It is kind of fun to hear the liberals on one side decry the evils of deregulation while the conservatives moan about Wall Street greed. Those furthest to the left triumph in the fall of capitalism while the Republican ideologues are in a panic about government intervention and seek shelter in tax cuts. But the truth of the matter is that both sides are wrong. The American free market does not exist, and while certain types of regulation are essential for the well-being of the economy, there are plenty of Democrats out there to blame for the counter-productive deregulation.
True capitalists out there have to face the fact that Bill Clinton was a much better Republican than George W. Bush ever was. Under Bush, the Republicans talked a good show, but never really walked the capitalist walk. Rather, the government systematically intervened in the marketplace. Republicans may have called them tax credits, subsidies, permits, deregulation, or even war, but they’re all examples of intervening in the marketplace in favor of industries and companies at the expense of the free market. If you associate deficit spending with government intervention, then George W. and Ronald R were the great swelling intervenors. And yes, the Republicans’ obsession with what Americans do in their private time and behind closed doors is all about government intervention.
When yesterday on This Week with George Stephanopoulos Jim DeMint (R-SC) accused the Obama Administration and the House Democrats of trying to pass the largest spending bill in U.S. history, Barney Frank (D-MA) correctly noted,
The largest spending bill in history is going to turn out to be the war in Iraq. And one of the things, if we’re going to talk about spending, I don’t — I have a problem when we leave out that extraordinarily expensive, damaging war in Iraq, which has caused much more harm than good, in my judgment.
And I don’t understand why, from some of my conservative friends, building a road, building a school, helping somebody get health care, that’s — that’s wasteful spending, but that war in Iraq, which is going to cost us over $1 trillion before we’re through — yes, I wish we hadn’t have done that. We’d have been in a lot better shape fiscally.
. . . The problem is that we look at spending and say, “Oh, don’t spend on highways. Don’t spend on health care. But let’s build Cold War weapons to defeat the Soviet Union when we don’t need them. Let’s have hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars going to the military without a check.” Unless everything’s on the table, then you’re going to have a disproportionate hit in some places.
But it’s not just military spending. It’s also the special treatment to oil companies, mega farms, the banking and auto industries, and other areas. So when Senator DeMint says that we’re facing a decision between a free market economy and a government-directed economy I wonder which country he is talking about. Continue reading →
Grave Error 