By Thomas E. Brewton
Posted: 05/13 00:00:00/2008
Obama's Excremental Economics
By Thomas E. Brewton
As prolongation of the 1930s Depression and stagflation in the 1970s
demonstrated, Senator Obama's announced policies are a prescription
for economic disaster.
Keynesian economic doctrine, not under that name, but in substance,
is back in the news in a truly menacing way. Senator Obama proposes
to repeat the policies of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal that turned
an ordinary two-year recession into an eight-year disaster, with
unemployment rates continuously in the high teens.
The key elements of Senator Obama's proposed economic policies, as in
the New Deal and the stagflation of the 1970s, are much higher taxes,
along with a pervasive increase of business regulations and price
controls in healthcare and energy (which sharply depress business
activity and employment rates), full-frontal embrace of labor unions
(which will push up wages and benefits to levels deterring profitable
expansion of industrial production), and massive new government
deficit spending (which will accelerate the already dangerously high
rate of inflation and devaluation of the dollar). Carried out as he
proposes, Senator Obama's polices will lead us into the swamp of
stagflation.
The basic thrust of Keynesianism is the belief that control of the
economy must be collectivized at the Federal level, because private
business is incapable of providing full employment, and because the
proper goal of economic policy must be thwarting greedy businessmen
to attain so-called social justice: equal distribution of income and
wealth, without regard to merit, capability, or hard work.
Not surprisingly the New York Times editorial board and the Times's
propagandist Paul Krugman are prominent Keynesian enthusiasts.
In practice (in the 1930s Depression and in the 1970s stagflation)
Keynesian economics caused devastating harm to every citizen. In the
stagflation of the 1970s not only was unemployment distressingly
high, particularly in Midwestern industrial areas, which became known
as the Rustbowl, but inflation wiped out roughly 57% of the
purchasing power of every citizen's lifetime savings.
For an eminently readable analysis of Keynesian economics, the
economic bedrock of liberal-progressive worship of the socialist
religion, read Professor Murray Rothbard's 1947 critique, "Spotlight
on Keynesian Economics" from the Mises.org website. ( http://
mises.org/story/2950# )
One caution: when Professor Rothbard speaks of liberal economists,
he is using the classic terminology of 18th England that referred to
true freedom: laissez-faire economics, free from government
intervention, not to today's American sect of the international
religion of socialism.
Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc.
The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of
writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets.
Distributed by www.ChristianWorldviewNetwork.com
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