Mary Anastasia O’Grady devotes her WSJ column today to the situation in Argentina, a nation that is strangling itself with government interference with the liberty and property of the people.
I can see no reason to think that the United States won’t continue down the same path as Argentina, with politicians and their interest group backers engaging in legal plunder until the carcass is picked clean.
Hayek wrote about the self-accelerating tendency of interventionist regimes (whether called socialist, fascist, or something else) to do more and more coercive things as their central planning and wealth redistribution schemes backfire. Argentina is Exhibit A. I fear that some years from now, people will be writing about the United States in exactly the same vein.
I surmise that 90 years ago there were Argentinian thinkers who warned that the country would pay a terrible price if it followed the socialistic demagogues who promised the people more “fairness” and “security.” People like that are always ignored by those who want immediate benefits through legal plunder.
We always hear politicians telling us that we need to do something or other “for the kids.” Well, ruining the country with socialism is something we should NOT do “for the kids.”