Proof Nobody 'Gets It' About Economy

Mitt Romney, replying to a question by Gayle King on CBS This Morning said, "Well, of course, we have to have regulation on Wall Street and on every street to make sure that our economy works well..."

Do we, Mr. Romney? We cannot call our system 'free enterprise' when that phrase, meaning an economy run by the forces of the market place, is instead run by political ideology. It doesn't matter if we mean your ideology or Obama's or Marx's. If an economy isn't free of politics, then you can't use the phrase.

On the self-declared Marxist website Political Affairs, author John Case discussing science-based economics wrote, "You cannot ever make economics non-political." However, he then goes on to explain how libertarian, Austrian-school economics is not political. He even states unequivocally that "The 'Austrian School' is the opposite of a data or evidence driven framework." Case cites Paul Samuelson's Keynesian economics as "a more scientific framework for economics." Case doesn't like libertarian economics.

Austrian economics is exactly the opposite of government's Keynesian-driven 'evidence', dealing exclusively instead with business evidence, the kind business people deal with on a sometimes hour-by-hour basis. Business professionals make decisions based on whatever they need to know when they need to know it, such as the rising prices of their materials or the falling price of their goods, or of their competitor's goods; the cost of transportation; the cost of labor, etc. These are not the things about which a government should worry; in fact, a government which protects men's rights ought to stay completely away from the things business professionals need to worry about.

A free nation needs to worry about protecting society from men who set out to bilk victims and receive ill-gotten gains, not about men working within legitimate market forces. Artificially affecting market forces makes the economy less able--in some cases impossible--to operate. When a government manipulates market forces using the evidence it chooses to see, it has no objective basis on which to set those manipulations. What objective standards could it possibly use since it is not operating a business?

As one example, should government help the trucking industry maintain status quo rates to prevent drivers from being laid off, or leave it alone so that producers can ship more cheaply, thereby creating more jobs or paying workers more (or both)? How can competition properly lower production and consumer prices, when government helps trucking companies maintain their current rates instead of letting market forces determine those?

But not even the conservatives like Romney seem to get this fact. Paul Ryan is nothing more than a conservative who attracts Tea Party labeling by being less progressive. Romney's desire to 'regulate every street' makes him sound very threatening. Does he mean such things as retaining the corn ethanol requirements, part of the Renewable Fuels Standard, that caused farmers to sell or slaughter livestock this summer because corn became so expensive when the drought prevented corn and wheat from growing? Using corn for ethenol is predicted to cause the price of our food to rise by as much as 14% in 2013.

(Read how farmers switched from growing white corn to yellow corn, "making the base of most Mexican foods unaffordable." What happens in one place, affects other places. Should things be affected by honest markets, or political ideologies?)

Economist Richard M. Salsman wrote in The Objective Standard, "There is a lagged influence between academic economics and public policy, but increasingly since the 1970s academic economists have recognized that free markets work, that 'market failure' reflects poorly defined and ill-protected property rights, and that boom-bust cycles and sapped prosperity are consequences of bad public policies."

He uses as examples of 'academic economists' the Nobel Prize winners F. A. Hayek of the 'Austrian-school' of economics (1974), the idea of 'monetarism' from Milton Friedman (1976), 'rational expectations' from Robert Lucas (1995) and Thomas Sargent (2011), the 'public choice' of James Buchanan (1986), and of supply-side economics by Robert Mundell (1999).

These are the economics that John Case and other Marxists, and progressives like President Obama and Hillary Clinton, abhor. Let's see whether Romney and Ryan come anywhere near such "academic" standards as those which advocate a really free economy.

'Like' Curtisedwardclark.com on Facebook
© Curtis Edward Clark 2012

Ron Paul vs. Paul Ryan

    I was surprised to read that Congressman Ron Paul was criticizing Paul Ryan's huge $4T budged overhaul.
    In part, he said he thinks we are “drifting to a point that our big government [ ] tells us what we can do and be responsible for us. And if we don’t have a house, they’ll give us a house. If we don’t have education, they’ll give us free education. If we’re hungry, we get food stamps. And deficits don’t matter. And if you need money, you print the money. And we have this moral obligation to police the world."
    But that makes sense--sort of. Ron Paul is correct, but where has Paul ever said this or that government program is un-Constitutional? Has he only criticized 'big' government without attacking its roots? You have to eradicate the roots of anything be they plants, government programs, or ideologies--or they will grow back again.
    Paul did say more, to that end. "We are dealing with a problem in Washington as a budgetary accounting problem and that’s not it. It’s a philosophy problem." Paul said. What is the philosophy of government?
    The congressman went on to question the role of government in the economy and welfare system. "Ryan," he said, "doesn’t reject that notion. I do.”
    On the Mangru Report hosted by Dan Mangru, posted on Paul's own fan website, Paul says this:

"As long as the American people think that we have to police the world and have this world empire and that we have to take care of people from cradle to grave, no tax system will work. You have to change the philosophy of government. Then you can do away with the income tax and not replace it with anything just as we had before 1930."

    But I still have to ask what Paul's philosophy of government is? Is he afraid to confront the idea of un-Constitutionality run rampant, or have I simply been missing those new articles and TV interviews?
    Perhaps it is because Paul only thinks that we are drifting toward Big Government that I am peeved about his remarks. That makes me skeptical of whether he is up to the job of helping to lead us out of our suicide-by-altruism mentality.
    I will do some homework, and find out. Ron Paul is correct about Paul Ryan--but only if Ron Paul believes the current philosophy of government itself runs counter to Originalism and to what is specifically written, both in the Constitution and in the letters and papers by the Founders about that philosophy. Otherwise, he is no different from Paul Ryan; he only wears a different suit to hide what he isn't showing.
    Show us the beef, Congressman Paul. Show us your Originalist interpretations.


© Curtis Edward Clark 2011
Visit the Atheist-AA Google Group
http://groups.google.com/group/atheist-aa

Budgets and Constitutionally Social Issues

    Monday I wrote that the fight about the budget ought to be about ending Federal programs that are not within the limitations of the Constitution, not about 'over spending'.
    This week, with the Congress racing to find a compromise to keep from shutting down the government, calls are being made to defund things like Planned Parenthood.
    This is partisanship at its worst. Certainly Planned Parenthood ought not be Constitutional, and if an Originalist could prove it is, then some law or another ought to be changed or written so that positive rights are wrong.
    Michael Reagan, on Fox News on Tuesday of this week, said that it was always politic in the past to keep social issues out of the fiscal conversation that takes place in public. Fiscal discussions and social-issue discussions should be separated.
    Fine, keep them separated. But don't be partisan about the social-issue discussions. Not all Tea Party thinkers, not all Republicans, not all conservatives, not all independents think Planned Parenthood should be defunded.
    But it is like the woman I wrote about Monday who seemed to be saying the government should act un-Constitutionally by allowing the EPA to regulate, where some members of Congress are of the belief that the actions of the EPA usurp those of the legislative branch.
    Does the existence of Planned Parenthood as a government subsidized entity defeat the originalism the Founders would have expected of the limited powers they wrote into the Constitution?
    Congressman Paul Ryan, R.-Wisconsin, announced this week a budget that will cut spending by $4 trillion over the next decade.On "Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace", Ryan said, "We need to engage with the American people on a fact-based budget, on stopping politicians from making empty promises to people and talk to the country about what is necessary to fix these problems." He continued, "But if we keep kicking the can down the road and keep making more empty promises to people, then we'll have the European kind of pain and austerity."
    Perhaps Ryan is simply trying to keep social issues out of the fiscal conversation. But he is obliged to bring in those social issues, which is he is doing to some extent. In his own words, he told Wallace this: "If you're 55 or older, you won't see changes. You won't have to reorient your lives around these things."
    Why is that, Congressman? Are you going to address the Constitutional issues that allowed these social issues to become funded in the first place? Or will a more leftist Congress at some future time be able to re-fund them? 

    Ending Federal programs that are not within the limitations of the Constitution is the first priority not only in preventing a future Congress to re-fund them, but to stop a future Congress from inventing new ones. If we address the Constitutional issues, the budget problems will go away on their own.

    I understand it is much easier to fix a budget in the short term, because fixing the Constitutional issues will require many long and ugly arguments, and make us face ourselves as people living under a normative set of laws that have been abnormally ignored and mis-interpreted, both legally and socially.

    It must be done. If it is not, this will be a never-ending story. But the story must end if you wish to see your budget cutting efforts succeed in the long run. Social issues are Constitutional in nature, when they are allowed to determine anti-Constitutional legislation.
 

© Curtis Edward Clark 2011

Visit the Atheist-AA Google Group
http://groups.google.com/group/atheist-aa