Sometimes the simplest solution is the one that few seem to notice.
Take the current economic crisis. Here is something a reporter for the Los Angeles Times wrote recently that illustrates the misguided search for a government “fix” for the economy: “(J)ust as there is widespread agreement that the economy is faltering, there is also a sense that the federal government is running out of options to rebuild momentum.”
In other words, lots of government “options” have been tried already, without success. Even before President Barack Obama took office – and most certainly since then – the federal government has been “doing something,” again and again, to “fix” the weak economy.
There have been bank bailouts and automobile company bailouts and an $862 billion “stimulus.” Even massively expensive ObamaCare socialized medicine was bizarrely promoted as a way to aid the economy.
Where is the evidence that all that “doing” by Washington has worked? Unemployment remains near 10 percent, consumers are afraid to spend, and the small businesses on which our nation relies for many jobs are so worried about Democrats’ plans to raise taxes in January that they are not investing and expanding.
Will yet another government program – such as additional “stimulus” that some are unwisely clamoring for – begin turning that around? It’s hard to see how, and we surely cannot afford to add to our catastrophic $13.4 trillion debt.
The problem is, the focus is incorrectly on what the federal government should be “doing,” rather than on what it should “not be doing.”
Congress and the president should not raise taxes in a time of serious economic hardship. They should not consider additional “stimulus” after the budget-busting failure of the first stimulus to hold down unemployment as we were promised it would. They should not continue giving wasteful, market-distorting subsidies to things such as ethanol production or Amtrak.
Our nation shouldn’t have to reach a point of true economic desperation before Congress and the president try the one thing that has worked throughout history to increase prosperity – which is not for government to “do something” but for government to “get out of the way” of the free market.