Two must-read articles by Michael Leeden
Over at Pajamas Media, Michael Leeden has written two must-read short articles.
First, “We Are All Fascists Now” explains how what we are witnessing in America is more correctly called economic fascism than socialism. It’s a convincing argument and I think I might begin using the term “fascim” more in my own writing (with regular caveats as required for who think I’m talking about Nazism.)
Second, and more important, is his article entitled “We’re All Fascists Now II: American Tyranny” in which Leeden explains how Alexis de Tocqueville’s prophecies about the slow death of America under its “democracy” seem to be coming true. Basically, there are two important points: One, government inserts itself into every aspect of life. Two, people delude themselves into thinking it’s OK because they elected the government.
And for those who want to read the Tocqueville uninterrupted, the relevant chapter, called “What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear” can be found HERE. It’s well worth the 5 minutes…
| Print article | This entry was posted by Rossputin on 02/20/09 at 02:14:42 am . Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. |
Yours truly
-
Following Obama's Economic Policies
Facebook NetworkedBlogs
XML Feeds
02/20/09 @ 05:50:03 am
Ross:
I have a question: Am I incorrect in believing that, absent the stimulus bill, the $1.6 TN would not have been available? In other words, the money was just created out of thin air for the purposes of funding this bill. There was not $1.6 TN out there waiting to be utilized by the private sector OR by the gov't, and the government 'won.'
Would it be correct to assume that only the gov't could have borrowed the money; it was not available to be borrowed by the private sector?
Greg
02/20/09 @ 05:58:18 am
Sorta correct, Greg.
The government will borrow the $1.6 trillion since clearly they won't be getting increased tax receipts anytime soon.
Clearly that money won't be available to the private sector...but you shouldn't assume that the private sector would want that much money in that time frame. For example, right now there's a lot of talk about how banks aren't lending even though they got TARP money. And there's plenty of truth to that, but there's also the demand side of the equation: Levels of business activity are down so much that there is much lower demand for loans.
So the key with the $1.6 trillion is not just that it will squeeze out private sector borrowing, but that it will simply squeeze non-borrowed money out of the private sector in the form of permanently higher taxes, leaving entrepreneurs and corporations unwilling or unable to create or expand businesses...which would be precisely the activity needed to get out of the financial downturn.
The political side of it is that the "stimulus" creates many new government programs and expands others. So the spending increase will be permanent despite the hopeful/cynical assumption in the bill that they'll shut down or downsize these new or larger programs in two years. This means a permanent increase in the intrusion of government into our lives...not least into health care, something which few people are talking about.
Is it not also amusing that liberals were so upset with our "culture of consumerism" and our low savings rates, and now they're doing everything they can to prevent people from saving money? Not only are they trying to structure the stimulus to prevent savings (after seeing that much less of Bush's one-time tax rebate got saved than they had planned), but with the cost of the "stimulus", taxes will be so much higher for so much longer that saving will be extremely difficult over the medium term.