Really Big Government on Its Way
Via the Blog Ankle Biting Pundits. Where is El Borak!? These sound like fightin’ words… :-)
Next time some libertarian friend of yours tells you that there isn’t a dime’s worth of different between liberal Democrats and “big government conservative” Republicans, slap him upside the head.
Irwin M. Stelzer has a rundown in the Daily Standard of some of the delightful things the new Democratic Congress will treat them (and us) to. They include: a minimum wage hike; pharmaceutical price controls; tax increases, protectionism, and lots and lots of frivolous investigations into corporate “price gouging.”
But hey, those damned Republicans tried to keep that girl in Florida alive, so screw them, too, right?
Sphere: Related ContentApparently the Ankle-biters are not paying very close attention to those they wish to slap, because the areas they point the finger at the Dems for are precisely the areas the libertarians are pointing the fingers at them:
First, a minimum wage hike. Of course it’s stupid economics, as are all price controls, and yet I note that it is an this area where the current GOP President has already signed on with the Dems. True, Bush is not “all Republicans” or even most of them, yet the lack of distinction lies not in how high each party wants to set it but the fact they wish to set one at all. I note the complete absence (despite 6 years of GOP rule) of a move to eliminate government mandated wages, so while the GOP may think raising the current arbitrary level is bad - depending upon how high and how fast it’s raised - they are perfectly willing to live with the current badness. It’s like the old joke that if the Dems wanted to burn down the Library of Congress, the GOP would insist that it be phased in over three years.
Second, pharmaceutical price controls. Yes, the Dems want to do that, yet I remind the ankle-biters that the GOP is the party that last implemented price controls. And is not the socialization of pharmaceuticals via Medicare Part D, wherein the government contracts with the company to provide medicines free of charge to the user, any different in result than direct price controls? If it is, the distinction is very minor. Under the Democratic plan, the shareholders get screwed, under the GOP one, it’s the taxpayers.
Third, tax increases. The Ankle Biters studiously ignore the fact that there is no such thing as a free lunch. So the Dems want to pay for their spending binges via taxation (theft) while the GOP pays for theirs via inflation (theft). The real problem is the spending, not how it’s paid for.
Fourth, protectionism: Yes, the Dems are protectionist and that ultimately hurts consumers to the benefit of government and politically-connected companies. Yet the GOP does the same thing when they need votes. I hope the move backfires on the Dems as it did on Bush, but let’s not pretend the Republicans are paragons of free trade. If one wants free trade, all one has to do - all one can truly do - is remove one’s own tariffs. I note that we have yet to do so.
And last but not least, frivolous investigations. Like this one, I suppose.
In each case, the Democrats are wrong, but the GOP is a party that does the same things, just to a lesser extent. If the argument is an argument over extent - as it appears to be for the ankle biters - then the GOP is quite distinct from the Dems. But if the argument is over whether we ought to have price controls, investigations, protectionism, wages mandated by law, or trillions in government spending in the first place, then there is no significant difference between the parties, all the yapping of the ankle-biters notwithstanding.
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December 27th, 2006 at 7:08 pm
I typed a long-winded and vitriolic response that apparently disappeared into whatever black hole noisemerchantry is inevitably drawn, but I’ll try the short version again.
Yes, the Dems want to (and will) raise taxes, but taxes are not the problem: spending is and will always be the problem. So the Democrats pay for their spending benders via taxation (and use the tax code for all manner of nefarious social manipulations), but the Republicans refuse to pay for theirs at all, preferring to borrow the money from those yet unborn. So which is worse, a guy who steals money for his weekending drunken binges from his neighbors, or one who raids his children’s college fund to do so? Not a dime’s worth of difference as far as I’m concerned.
On the minimum wage hike, of course it’s stupid and counterproductive, but I note that it’s also one issue on which our GOP president has already found common ground with the GOP. And I also notice that there has not been much of a GOP move to eliminate it altogether. If raising it is bad, then having it is bad to only a little lesser extent.
Of course, the Democrats are protectionist, as all of their economics is harmful. But while the GOP makes lots of free trade noises (el Presidente calls it “a moral imperative”) they are more than willing to apply tarriffs and limitations to trade when it is convenient (like when they are running for election in steel-producing states: http://www.freetrade.org/node/324). If a nation wants to engage in free trade, all it has to do is drop its own barriers, something we have not done and refuse to do. If it’s a moral imperative, then we should not wait for other nations to go along. So where’s the difference?
On frivolous investigations, the author must have forgotten about this one: http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/04/25/bush.energy/
When it comes to results as opposed to rhetoric, there is nary a bit of difference between the parties on the national level. They both believe that the government ought to be the prime mover in society, the engine behind the economy, and the lender of last resort. The results therefore are the same, even though each party takes a slightly different road to reach them.