G-20 Tilt Toward Cutting Government Spending

The June 30, 2010 New York Times comments in this fashion on the resolution by G-20 nations to cut massive government spending: "Hoping that history doesn’t repeat itself, the world’s rich countries are betting that the private sector can make up for withdrawn stimulus spending." The implication that both are ways of stimulating growth and that history favors spending is wrong. It's true that the Administration's reliance on spending is due partly to the fact that government spending for WWII took us out of the Great Depression. However, the spending was direct infusion of money into the private sector to make tanks, planes and guns, which directly led to greatly increased employment and production. This was far different than the sprinkling of money here and there involved in the recent stimulus. History shows that removing constraints on the private sector through reducing business taxes is another way to directly stimulate production.

Obama's Policies and the Loss of Personal Freedom

According to the June 22 New York Times, "President Obama warned insurance executives on Tuesday not to use the law 'as an opportunity to enact unjustifiable rate increases'". So the President reserves the right to declare insurance price rises unjustifiable and use the weight of the U.S. government to prohibit them. By such steps we see the replacement of capitalism by socialism. And as Milton Freedman recognized in "Capitalism and Freedom," the effect goes beyond how the economy is organized. Personal freedom is the ultimate threat. And do not think that Obama's effort to control insurance prices is a special case. If he succeeds in carrying it off, the lesson will not be lost on him.

Obama's Ethics and Policy

Colbert King, writing on a recent Washington Post OpEd page (June 19, 2010) complains that Obama, a decent husband and father, is constantly attacked by conservatives whose personal lives are a mess. Limbaugh is on his fourth wife; Gingrich is on number three; and Palin's sister-in-law and former prospective son-in-law have both been sentenced for crimes relating to drugs. "Limbaugh, Gingrich and Palin have the unmitigated gall to look down their noses at our president."

Only one problem. Whereas the ethics issues are personal, Obama is criticized solely for mishandling public policy. A more egregious lapse of clear thinking you couldn't find.