Today’s most vocal admonishers condone political-bureaucratic micromanaging and controls; they seem to love shaming innocent people into obeying draconian, life-stifling edicts. If millions must sacrifice and suffer, so what? Most religions (secular and otherwise) say that this signifies “virtue.” Covid-19 bullies use science language to shield themselves from criticism and cloak their nefarious designs; they seem to sense that most Americans still respect science (not despotism).
I suspect the ease with which we have lately accepted the authority of health experts to reshape the contours of our common life is due to the fact that safetyism has largely displaced other moral sensibilities that might offer some resistance. At the level of sentiment, there appears to be a feedback loop wherein the safer we become, the more intolerable any remaining risk appears. At the level of bureaucratic grasping, we can note that emergency powers are seldom relinquished once the emergency has passed. Together, these dynamics make up a kind of ratchet mechanism that moves in only one direction, tightening against the human spirit.
Acquiescence in this appears to be most prevalent among the meritocrats who staff the managerial layer of society. Deferring to expert authority is a habit inculcated in the “knowledge economy”, naturally enough; the basic currency of this economy is epistemic prestige.
… is from page 151 of University of Glasgow Senior Lecturer Craig Smith’s superb 2020 book, Adam Smith:
The mortgaging of future tax revenues and other such financial instruments were a genuine worry for [Adam] Smith. Government financial innovation was likely to be managed by spendthrifts or ‘projectors’ like John Law, Smith’s fellow Scotsman, whose speculation led to the near ruin of the French state. In addition to the possibility of corruption and mismanagement, such schemes had another fatal consequence: capital that might be lent to productive enterprises from the economy and passed into the unproductive hands of the state.
DBx: That government might be able to borrow at zero percent interest does not make government borrowing costless. The real resources used in the thus-funded government projects could have been used otherwise. Even if you have good reason to suppose that government will generally use these resources to better effect for the people as a whole than will private enterprises, you have no business asserting that government borrowing at low or even zero interest rates is “costless.”
… why we should take seriously politicians who think that concocting increases in nominal spending power will keep the economy secure in the face of (1) government lockdowns that forcibly prevent a great deal of production from taking place, and (2) government- and media-stirred popular derangement that further dampens actual productive activity?
We are “governed” – a more appropriate term is “lorded over” – by people who, if we judge them by their publicly spoken words, are imbeciles. And these imbeciles, sadly, are cheered on by most intellectuals (some of whom even boast advanced degrees in economics).
As a father, he was also a teacher. My dad taught me that hard work eclipses talent or natural gifts every day of the week and twice on Sunday. He taught me how to drive like a Philadelphia cabbie and how to parallel park in a space equal to the length of my vehicle. He taught me that the best time to look for a job is when you already have one and that opportunities are often masked as disappointments.
He taught me that play is necessary, but that it’s more fun when your work is finished. He taught me to love my life and the people in it. He taught me to drink the wine and not to save it for a special occasion. And he taught me that family is always my safe place to land.
Walter’s influence goes well beyond my own education. The thousands of students whom I have taught are unwitting beneficiaries of Walter’s insistence on high standards, yet understanding that none of us not know it all. I attempted to pass on Walter’s focus on problem solving technique and reliance on evidence. Many academics claim to follow the science wherever it leads, but all too many wilt when the results they find are counter-intuitive or politically unpopular. Walter truly followed the evidence wherever it led. In Walter’s case, it often resulted in disagreement with what many people wanted him to believe.
Second, no political party, economist, or economic textbook has ever referred to “trickle-down” anything as a policy tool or outcome. As Thomas Sowell wrote in 2014: “The “trickle-down” theory cannot be found in even the most voluminous scholarly studies of economic theories – including J. A. Schumpeter’s monumental ‘History of Economic Analysis,’ more than a thousand pages long and printed in very small type.” It is a description typically employed by opponents of free markets and economic liberty, and one which like so many others (“fairness,” “hard-working Americans,” “equality“) has become so freighted with political suggestion as to become a near-metonym.
Most important of all, the phrase fails to accurately describe any economic phenomenon or outcome. “Trickle-down economics” is, beyond being a phrase used to evoke an emotional reaction among a certain sector of the populace, a profound illustration of economic ignorance.
California’s Legislature is considering a wealth tax on residents, part-year residents, and any person who spends more than 60 days inside the state’s borders in a single year. Even those who move out of state would continue to be subject to the tax for a decade—a provision that calls to mind the Eagles’ famous “Hotel California” lyric: “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”
There are also problems in the piece related to mythology about 1990s capitalism. In the 1990s, the piece states, “The United States, the world’s sole superpower, embraced an almost messianic belief in the ability of unfettered capitalism to improve lives around the world.” It is certainly true that many people were pretty high on capitalism in the 1990s, given the experiences with socialism around the world, but capitalism was hardly “unfettered” and the U.S. government was certainly not “messianic” about it at this time. Debates about deregulation and privatization have a real impact, and at times various governments move back and forth on the continuum a bit, in one direction or the other. But regardless of any marginal successes we on the free market side have had, we have never come close to making capitalism “unfettered.” There are plenty of fetters still in place. And the U.S. government was always pretty practical in its approach, advocating for and using subsidies and trade restrictions in areas where it wanted to impose them.
The mortgaging of future tax revenues and other such financial instruments were a genuine worry for [Adam] Smith. Government financial innovation was likely to be managed by spendthrifts or ‘projectors’ like John Law, Smith’s fellow Scotsman, whose speculation led to the near ruin of the French state. In addition to the possibility of corruption and mismanagement, such schemes had another fatal consequence: capital that might be lent to productive enterprises from the economy and passed into the unproductive hands of the state.