George Will wonders if the Obama administration is capable of backing away from the statism it embraces. Few American politicians ever say: "The federal government ought to take over the banks, healthcare, and big auto companies and keep them." But probably more than a few agree with Michael Moore that government-guided capital is superior to private investments. Why trust the little people who go to stores, start businesses, hire new people, buy stocks and bonds, buy cars and computers, sign mortgages, build houses, and pump their own gas when there are so many bright people in Washington, D.C. who know better than those idiots at Wal-Mart?
'Even more than the New Deal and the Great Society, Obama's agenda expresses the mentality of a class that was nascent in the 1930s but burgeoned in the 1960s and 1970s. The spirit of that class is described in Saul Bellow's 1975 novel Humboldt's Gift. In it Bellow wrote that the modern age began when a particular class of people decided, excitedly, that life had "lost the ability to arrange itself":
'"It had to be arranged. Intellectuals took this as their job. ... This arranging has been the one great gorgeous tantalizing misleading disastrous project. A man like Humboldt, inspired, shrewd, nutty, was brimming over with the discovery that the human enterprise, so grand and infinitely varied, had now to be managed by exceptional persons. He was an exceptional person, therefore he was an eligible candidate for power."'
We sure miss Milton and Rose Friedman. I studied Friedman's economics as an undergraduate when market theories were busting down Keynesianism. Jimmy Carter was president. Inflation was soaring. Unemployment was rising. Interest rates were ridiculous. Ted Kennedy, champion of the Henry Wallace wing of the Democratic Party, ran against Carter, a president of his own party, in 1980. Kennedy favored wage and price controls. Furthermore, he supported the Humphrey-Hawkins Bill.
This forgotten piece of legislation fortunately never passed. It would have mandated the federal government to create jobs through public works to employ whatever number of people were needed to drive the unemployment rate down to four percent. It might sound good if you are out of work, but such a mandate would generate waste that would make a long war seem like an efficient use of resources. Soviet agriculture: here we come!
Ronald Reagan in the meantime was promoting the radical idea that markets generally work when the politicians keep their hands off the millions of little decisions that consumers, investors, and employers make. You know I'm not a straight up libertarian by any means; I'm a fan of Wilhelm Roepke, G.K. Chesteron, and Hilaire Belloc. Nonetheless, if I had to choose between the libertarians or the statists, I'll go with the libertarians.
Ted Kennedy's speech at the 1980 Democratic Convention, eloquent as it is, is a passionate defense of statism. It is remarkable in its shift of emphasis regarding the American dream. Our founders and Mr. Kennedy's Irish ancestors believed America was the place where little people could own property, improve their lot by their own sweat, and flee west if necessary to avoid strangling governments, religion, or social customs. Mr. Kennedy defends the American dream as the belief and right in the federal government to intervene to force equality of results and to tax those who most vehemently oppose central power. At best, Progressivism is "Hamiltonian means for Jeffersonian ends." In practice, the federal government becomes the multi-stop shop for transactions large and small. Only the hurdles are not set by price and cost and supply and demand, but by politics.
'Even more than the New Deal and the Great Society, Obama's agenda expresses the mentality of a class that was nascent in the 1930s but burgeoned in the 1960s and 1970s. The spirit of that class is described in Saul Bellow's 1975 novel Humboldt's Gift. In it Bellow wrote that the modern age began when a particular class of people decided, excitedly, that life had "lost the ability to arrange itself":
'"It had to be arranged. Intellectuals took this as their job. ... This arranging has been the one great gorgeous tantalizing misleading disastrous project. A man like Humboldt, inspired, shrewd, nutty, was brimming over with the discovery that the human enterprise, so grand and infinitely varied, had now to be managed by exceptional persons. He was an exceptional person, therefore he was an eligible candidate for power."'
We sure miss Milton and Rose Friedman. I studied Friedman's economics as an undergraduate when market theories were busting down Keynesianism. Jimmy Carter was president. Inflation was soaring. Unemployment was rising. Interest rates were ridiculous. Ted Kennedy, champion of the Henry Wallace wing of the Democratic Party, ran against Carter, a president of his own party, in 1980. Kennedy favored wage and price controls. Furthermore, he supported the Humphrey-Hawkins Bill.
This forgotten piece of legislation fortunately never passed. It would have mandated the federal government to create jobs through public works to employ whatever number of people were needed to drive the unemployment rate down to four percent. It might sound good if you are out of work, but such a mandate would generate waste that would make a long war seem like an efficient use of resources. Soviet agriculture: here we come!
Ronald Reagan in the meantime was promoting the radical idea that markets generally work when the politicians keep their hands off the millions of little decisions that consumers, investors, and employers make. You know I'm not a straight up libertarian by any means; I'm a fan of Wilhelm Roepke, G.K. Chesteron, and Hilaire Belloc. Nonetheless, if I had to choose between the libertarians or the statists, I'll go with the libertarians.
Ted Kennedy's speech at the 1980 Democratic Convention, eloquent as it is, is a passionate defense of statism. It is remarkable in its shift of emphasis regarding the American dream. Our founders and Mr. Kennedy's Irish ancestors believed America was the place where little people could own property, improve their lot by their own sweat, and flee west if necessary to avoid strangling governments, religion, or social customs. Mr. Kennedy defends the American dream as the belief and right in the federal government to intervene to force equality of results and to tax those who most vehemently oppose central power. At best, Progressivism is "Hamiltonian means for Jeffersonian ends." In practice, the federal government becomes the multi-stop shop for transactions large and small. Only the hurdles are not set by price and cost and supply and demand, but by politics.
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