You’ll never find a better explanation than Sheldon Richman gives in this column today as to why government meddling with the economy cannot make conditions better — except for the politically favored. This is just as true no matter which party happens to have its grubby hands on power.
We often hear pundits talking about the “chance” that the Obama economic program will work. Liberals say they’re pretty sure it will, while conservatives usually say that it doesn’t have much chance. Richman’s column makes it clear that chance has nothing to do with it. Government intervention in the economy — which is not a machine, but rather a vast network of trading relationships — necessarily means taking resources away from uses that satisfy consumer desires and putting them into uses that politicians want.
The ugly truth about this is that while the pols claim that they’re doing all of this to help the average American, the only winners are people, companies, and organizations that are savvy at playing the political game. The hapless average American is bilked to pay for it, including money spent on propaganda to keep him enthralled with “our democracy.”
