Thomas Sowell‘s latest column suggests that our “unusually” slow economic recovery shouldn’t surprise anyone who has looked at the impact of growing government economic intervention in other countries.
Some very sharp downturns in the American economy, such as in the early 1920s, were followed quickly by bouncing back to normal levels or beyond. The government did nothing — and it worked.
In that sense, this is an unusual recovery in how long it is taking and in how slowly the economy is growing — while the government is doing virtually everything imaginable.
Government intervention may look good to the media, but its actual track record — both today and in the 1930s — is far worse than the track record of letting the economy recover on its own.
Americans today are alarmed that unemployment has stayed around 9 percent for so long. But such unemployment rates have been common for years in Western European welfare states that have followed policies similar to those the Obama administration is currently following.
Those European welfare states have not only used the taxpayers’ money to hand out “free” benefits to particular groups, they have mandated that employers do the same. Faced with higher labor costs, employers have hired less labor.
