Looking back over the past three years or so, it is not hard to spot many harmful things our federal government has done in attempts to “fix” the troubled economy:
* There was the $700 billion bailout of banks, insurance companies and automakers, some of which had performed terribly. Propping them up protected them from the consequences of their actions and created an expectation that government will use taxpayer dollars again to rescue badly performing companies.
* Then there was the $862 billion “stimulus.” It used borrowed money, which future taxpayers must repay with massive interest, for the supposed goal of “creating or saving” millions of private-sector jobs. In fact, it protected government positions while the private sector lost jobs by the millions.
* And last, but hardly least, there was ObamaCare, the trillion-dollar-plus socialized medicine plan, whose higher taxes and other negative effects are only just beginning.
Each of those acts by Congress represents the false belief that it is better for a small group of people in government somehow to “plan” the economy for us all than for hundreds of millions of Americans to guide the economy naturally through their voluntary, everyday decisions of what to buy, where to work and so forth.