The beat goes on. Government regulation continues to exact costs of compliance. Vocal activists want living wages and stiffer environmental guidelines. A chunk of a business’ earnings pay for lawyers and accountants to navigate the law. When businesses move to countries with freer economies, it is expected that the American government will educate the displaced workers for retrenchment. Businesses that have not yet been marginalized are encouraged to apply for corporate welfare, some of which takes the form of management-du-jour training with junkets for members of departments of commerce. Economic development agencies spring up asking government to assist them in making master plans in state-of-the-art decision theatres. Taxes can double to support all this, forcing the middle class into subsidized housing (already dubbed workforce housing). Businesses that succeed in this environment are punished for being big with stiffer regulations including moratoria or special-case, citizen-backed government strictures for giving back to the community.

Though Keynes confused those who could see the emperor was naked, I share the bewilderment underlying his caution, “Marxian Socialism must always remain a portent to the historians of Opinion — how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so powerful and enduring an influence over the minds of men, and, through them, the events of history.”